The Chicken Who Saved Us

by Adams, Kristin Jarvis;

  Julie stood next to me as we stared at my eighteen-year-old son. I couldn’t help but be angry. He was supposed to be in high school, planning for college, poring over acceptance letters, scheming and dreaming big dreams about what he wanted to do when he grew up. But what I really wanted was to see him on our porch talking to Frightful. She was his confidant, the seer into his soul, the keeper of his dreams.

  Day Zero: 6:00 a.m.

  “There’s only room for one person in the ambulance, miss,” the EMT said to Julie. “Can you meet us at the University Hospital?”

  She grasped my hand and squeezed, then left to get her car. Despite the sedative Andrew was given an hour before, he was wide awake when they loaded him onto a narrow gurney. They bundled him like a sausage and cinched the straps firmly across the bed. He panicked, shouting to the taller of the two, “You’re choking me, you conformist!” A fleeting look from the tall guy told me this was a line he hadn’t heard before. Neither had I, for that matter. I followed them down an unfamiliar hallway with a long line of fluorescent lights before Andrew and his gurney were hoisted into the back of a waiting ambulance.

  Once in the ambulance, I convinced them to loosen the straps. Andrew calmed down enough for me to answer Jon’s phone call.

  “Hannah’s doing just fine. How are you guys doing?” he said before I had a chance to speak.

  Andrew began twisting his body out of the straps and I placed a hand on his chest.

  “We’re okay. Tell me, how is Hannah really? Is Dr. Lewis there yet? Have you seen him?” I asked, pelting him with questions.

  “Relax. She’s fine.”

  Like his mother, Jon remains calm and almost stoic in tense situations. He has an uncanny ability to remain level headed when most everyone else around him is responding to the crackle of panic in the air. It’s one of the reasons I love him so much.

  “What does ‘fine’ mean?” I asked.

  “When she walked out of the changing room in the hospital gown, she had her quilt wrapped around her like Cleopatra. The nurse suggested she leave it with me, but Hannah said, ‘Not a chance!’ I watched her wad up the hospital blanket and chuck it on the floor as she settled into bed.”

  I could picture her dramatic entrance and laughed despite my growing anxiety.

  “They’re taking her in now. Dr. Lewis said it would be about two hours start to finish. They’re planning to take the marrow from her hip bones,” he said. My stomach flipped.

  “I’ll call you as soon as she’s in recovery.”

  Day Zero: 6:40 a.m.

  “I’m scared, Mom,” Andrew said over and over again as the ambulance pulled into the side entrance of the University where Julie was waiting for us. I held his hand and refused to admit I was terrified, too.

  “It should take about forty-five minutes or so,” said the EMT who had ridden in the back of the ambulance with us. “We’ll wait here in the hallway and take you back when he’s finished.”

  Andrew’s reaction to being loaded on the gurney told me they had underestimated the amount of drugs required to sedate him. Although he seemed okay in the waiting room, I saw a fresh wave of panic spread across his face when a pack of radiologists in white lab coats arrived all at once and began barking orders.

  “I’m not going in there,” he told Julie.

  She stayed by his side while I signed papers and met with the lab coats.

  “What is he supposed to do?” I asked the radiologist.

  “He will need to lie completely still for twenty-five minutes while we map the perimeter of the body and then apply the radiation,” Mr. Lab Coat said.

  My mouth hung open.

  “Oh, and he will need to be alone in the room. We will wait in the control room and give him directions through the speakers.”

  “Yeah, right. How do you suppose you’re going to have a terrified autistic boy stay still while strapped down to a cold plastic table and respond to a voice from outer space?” I growled.

  “We do this all the time. He’ll be fine,” he said.

  Not a chance in hell, I thought.

  The radiation room felt eerily reminiscent of the gas chambers Andrew had seen on his black and white World War II documentaries. The lead walls were covered in cement from floor to ceiling, the entire back wall painted with a giant nuclear symbol with the word DANGER printed in huge block letters. An eighteen-inch thick lead door on railroad tracks sealed off the room from the outside. When Andrew was wheeled around the corner and caught sight of the image, it sent him into a full-scale panic attack. In one swift movement, he extricated himself from the radiation table, Houdini style, and rolled off the side. Julie and I heard Andrew’s screaming through the monitors.

  “I’ll be outside waiting in the ambulance,” the EMT said, clearly disturbed.

  My knees began to tremble and I couldn’t breathe, and for some reason I started to itch all over. We were on a strict time schedule. I knew he had to have this radiation now in order for enough hours to pass before having the second treatment. Hannah was at the hospital having her bone marrow aspiration, and Andrew had to be ready for the marrow when it arrived that evening. I swallowed hard when the cup of coffee I drank earlier that morning threatened to make a return appearance.

  I stormed into the control room, demanding to talk to Andrew. Begrudgingly, the technician agreed, and the doors were opened again.

  “I want Frightful!” he shrieked when I reached him. He curled in a ball on the floor, but no matter how hard I tried to console him, he continued to scream for Frightful.

  A minute later, I heard a kind voice from behind and looked back to see one of the nurses entering the room. “Let us help you get back on the table and I will bring you some comfy pillows to hold,” she said to Andrew in a soothing voice.

  Andrew covered his head with his arms and rocked back and forth. “I want Frightful,” he sobbed.

  “Who’s Frightful?” she asked.

  “My best friend.”

  A confused look passed across her features, telling me she was wondering what cruel parents would name their poor kid Frightful. I allowed her to ponder that one while I scooped Andrew off the floor by his armpits. Several long minutes later, with a little distraction, we were able to coax him onto the table with a promise to stay still. When I walked back to the control room, I was met by a posse of scowling radiologists. It was against the rules for anyone other than staff to be near the equipment. Tough shit! I thought.

  “I’m staying in here and talking to my son over the speaker,” I announced.

  I glared at each of them, daring someone to challenge me. No one argued, so I stayed and told him stories. We talked about Shadow and Iron Man, Harry Potter and Fudge. I told him Sue was planning to visit and had a new Frightful adventure to share. I talked about our dogs, Finn and Sawyer, and his chickens at home, all probably wondering why we weren’t collecting the eggs they so carefully laid for us. After nearly an hour, I heard these sweet words announced over the speaker: “We’re done now, Andrew. You did a good job.”

  Day Zero: 10:45 a.m.

  Jon and I were scrunched in the far corner bench of the Starbucks downstairs. Two cups of untouched coffee waited on the little table in front of us, a half-eaten sandwich stuffed back into its plastic container. Remarkably, the coffee shop was quiet, and it was a welcome relief to have some privacy.

  I picked up my coffee, made a show of blowing on it, and asked, “How’s Hannah?”

  Jon’s shoulders drooped a little. “She was still in recovery when I arrived, so I spoke to Dr. Lewis and the anesthesiologist for a few minutes. They made four separate holes in the back of Hannah’s hip bones and from there, accessed her marrow by angling the needle in different directions within each opening.”

  I stifled something between a grimace and a sob. Jon put an arm around me and picked up his coffee with the other. “When I left, they had just sent the raw marrow to Fred Hutch downtown to be strained for bone fragments and impurities.
This afternoon it will go through additional testing and processing to prepare it for infusion tonight.”

  I could tell he didn’t feel like talking, but I wanted to know more, so I blew on my coffee again, peeled off the lid, then stuck a finger in and sucked the foam off. He didn’t take the hint. “So? Was there anything else? Did you see her?”

  “I did. When they wheeled her in the room, she gave me a weak smile, but I think she was still struggling with the anesthesia. I held her hand for a long time, but I doubt she will remember my visit.” He put his coffee back down, untouched.

  Struggling to take it all in, I concentrated on the monstrous front loader behind the barista, pushing a pile of steel beams away from the coffee shop windows and into the path of the waiting crane.

  “How did she look?” I finally asked.

  “Not real great. She’s pretty wiped out. They tried to get her to stand up a few minutes after she was wheeled in, but she was immediately sick, so they laid her back down.”

  I wondered if they would still try to send her home that afternoon.

  “They were planning to give her a bag of fluids to help perk her up. She’s still scheduled to go home this afternoon, although that’s hard for me to believe,” he said, answering my unasked question. “I stayed with her and talked to her for a long time. I told her how proud I am and that she’s my hero.” He took a deep breath. “I didn’t know what else to say.”

  We sat together a few minutes longer as the early lunch crowd began to trickle in. He already knew about my terrible morning with Andrew—there was everything and nothing more to say. Time was in motion and we were rapidly approaching the waterfall on which the transplant team had put us months ago.

  Day Zero: 11:15 a.m.

  I heard Hannah’s voice down the hall talking to a nurse. It sounded hesitant, small, like that of a girl far younger than fifteen. A second nurse pointed to the door of her room where I hesitantly peeked around the corner.

  “Hi, Hannah,” I said. “Are you feeling any better?”

  She gave me a weak thumbs-up, and my heart flipped in my chest as I admired my daughter’s bravery. She looked just like Jon had described her; ghostly white, not a trace of pink in her face. I noticed she was still reclining and had what looked like a second IV bag hooked up to a pole behind her chair.

  I suddenly had a desire to unplug my child from the blinking machine and run out of that place as fast as I could. I wanted to run until my chest burned and my mind was numb enough to forget what had become of our lives.

  Instead, I took her hand. “You are so brave, sweet girl. I love you from the East to the West.”

  Day Zero: 12:05 p.m.

  I was enjoying a moment of quiet on the nearly dead sofa in the playroom when a young volunteer found me. “There are two women waiting at the front desk asking to come in and visit.”

  I suspected one would be ‘Books on Tape’ Sue. Anne told me she was planning to stop by around lunchtime. I couldn’t think of who else might be visiting.

  “We’re here to see the hero of the day!” Pastor Becki said, when I spotted her at the front desk.

  Sue smiled at me. “I brought a friend.”

  “And lunch!” Becki threw her arms around me before handing me a bag from my new favorite deli. Becki’s energy was such a departure from the events of the day that I couldn’t think how to respond.

  “Can we see Andrew?” Sue asked.

  The three of us slipped into the room unnoticed. Sue found a chair next me on the cot and Becki reclined in the rocker next to Andrew, who was in a drugged sleep. Becki kicked off her shiny orange flats and curled up in the chair. “Lunch time!” she said.

  She reached in her voluminous purse and pulled out bags of gummy bears, gummy worms, and Sour Patch Kids candies, spreading them across the bed. I couldn’t imagine what she was up to.

  “Gummies are Andrew’s favorite, aren’t they?” she said, popping a lime green gummy worm into her mouth. The nurse who had just walked in ogled. Becki handed her the bag of gummy bears. “Bring this to the nurses’ station. We’re celebrating Andrew and Hannah today!”

  My mouth hung open. The last eight hours had been surreal, the morning at the University of Washington a living nightmare. Hannah just came out of surgery and Julie was playing referee between the doctors, and Jon and me. I had no idea where Jon was. I wanted to crawl into a hole, but Becki was offering me gummy worms in celebration.

  “Maybe Frightful wants one?” she asked, winding a green and yellow worm around the felt beak.

  I snorted. Becki’s eyes crinkled at the corners, glinting like someone who never stopped expecting to be amused.

  “I’ll have some, too,” Sue said.

  A handful of colorful worms flew at us both, landing in our laps and on the bed. I bit into one, studying Becki as she laid a hand on Andrew’s shoulder, whispering something about Frightful in his ear. I smiled. What was it about her that always brought light into a room? And how could the silliness of flying gummies break the tension of months of worry? By the time we reached the bottom of the bag, I found myself belly laughing at some crazy story of hers about stealing her mother’s car when she was thirteen, so glad that some of her light had rubbed off on me.

  When the room quieted, Sue handed me a polished slice of stone—flat across the bottom, an irregular hump at the top—a handheld mountain.

  “For Hannah,” she said.

  I turned the warm, smooth stone over in my hand. A gathering of white crystals meandered across the bottom and skimmed the top edge. The center was a non-descript translucent grey. My face must have revealed that I deemed it nothing particularly spectacular.

  Sue waited patiently. “Hold it to the light.”

  I held it to the window. For the second time that day, my mouth hung open. Tiny fractures, filled with minerals of gold, ruby, and rich caramel brown, wove their way across the top of the mountain. The center lit up like an early morning sunrise, rays of white streaking the sky in anticipation of a warm summer day. The transformation was completely unexpected.

  “It’s an agate. I collect them near my childhood home in Goldendale, deep in the Columbia hills.”

  “When did you find this?”

  “With my grandfather when I was a child. Every spring, we visited his ranch and checked the dry creek beds for water. For a few short weeks a year, the run-off from the winter snow would create little creeks. We found all sorts of things: arrowheads, bits of bone, and buckets of agates.”

  “You’ve had it all this time?” I asked.

  “It was waiting for the right home. Hannah is your light today. She is here to transform the darkness.”

  The room was quiet now except for the grind and swish of the IV pump. I looked over to Becki, a gentle smile lit her face. She understood the seriousness of the situation we were in and equally understood the need for laughter in order to heal.

  As they prepared to leave, Becki hugged me, whispering in my ear. “I will hold your pain for a little while so you can rest.”

  When both women walked out the door, my heart felt the tiniest bit lighter. Although Andrew slept the entire time, I would be willing to bet that somewhere in his subconscious, he enjoyed Becki’s laughter and Sue’s voice and was comforted.

  Day Zero: 2:40 p.m.

  I carefully opened the silver locket and took it out of the box. It had a tiny inscription on the back: “Giving the Gift of Hope.” Inside were pictures of Andrew and Hannah, taken from a photo of them holding their new baby chicks from that long-ago Sunday drive. I hoped Hannah would like it. Jon and I had wrestled with what to do for her. Nothing seemed adequate.

  When I arrived to check on Hannah, Julie was sleeping next to her, slumped in a folding chair, her Kindle open on her lap. She didn’t look much better than Hannah.

  I kissed the top of Hannah’s head, breathing in the scent of her. Her face was still so pale. A grey-green tinge had crept into the edges around her mouth and nose.

&n
bsp; “Any better?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Your Dad and I wanted to give this to you. Do you want to see it?”

  She shook her head again, but put out her hand. I placed the jeweler’s box into it, folding her fingers around it much the same as with Frightful’s Christmas gift to Andrew. She started to cry. A nurse came in to check on her and assured me that everything was okay. Her vitals were strong; she just needed rest.

  “For later then,” I said, kissing her closed eyelids before slipping from the room.

  Day Zero: 7:00 p.m.

  Peace descended on the room like a slow, easy exhale—something completely unexpected after the crackling energy of the day. Flood lamps lit the top of the crane and the first three floors outside our window. Sparks from various torches cascaded down the side of the building like our own personal fireworks show. Very fitting, I mused.

  From my vantage point on the cot, I watched Jon struggle to untangle a set of earbuds. Julie had curled herself into a ball near the window with a cup of tea. Somehow, the three of us had managed to navigate this day of insanity and were back in the same place we started.

  “How did the radiation treatment go?” I asked Jon. After a disastrous morning, he had been elected to take Andrew to his second radiation treatment.

  “Better, I guess. An anesthesiologist was waiting at the University when we arrived, but the anticipation was a killer. He flipped out much like he did this morning with you and Julie.”

  I flopped onto my back to study the tiny holes in the ceiling tiles. Neither Julie nor I spoke as we recalled our hellish morning.

  “Did anyone tell you guys when the infusion is supposed to start?” Julie asked.

  “I heard one of the nurses say they expected it between seven and eight,” Jon said, giving up on the earbuds.

  More than the surgeries, chemo, radiation, and preparatory medications that Andrew had been subjected to, the infusion of the marrow tonight would require us to take a giant leap of faith. There were no promises—and no turning back.