by Leah Scheier
I remember the word Please. Whispered over and over. Please, Liam, I want you. How could I have said that? It didn’t sound like something I would say. Not yet. We just started dating.
But I definitely remember I love you. Did Liam say that? Did I? Who says I love you to someone they’ve just started dating?
I should have stayed and waited until he woke up. But I’d run off and left him there lying in my vomit. He was probably freaking out. There was nothing I could say now to excuse myself, except possibly plead temporary drunken insanity. But we’d all had too much to drink, and I was the only one who’d acted like an idiot. I know I should call him, but I need a little more time to figure this out. It’s obvious we went too far; but I need to remember what exactly happened before I can decide what to say.
He deserves a reply though. Even if it’s just a stall until I get my thoughts together. I stare at my phone for a long time before finally touching the screen. I’m writing Liam a carefully worded answer when I hear a sudden shout outside my door and the soft thud of something hitting the landing.
“Rain! Wake up! Come quick!” It’s Ethan’s voice, but it rings out so loudly that I jump up from my bed. I’ve never heard him call out like that.
I drop my phone and rush out into the hall. Ethan is crouched over the prostrate form of our mother who’s fallen in the doorway of the bathroom. I stand frozen for a moment, and then I spring to action. “What happened?” I ask him as I turn her over. “What’s going on?”
He reaches out and shakes her roughly. “Are you all right, are you okay?” He glances up at me. “You call 911,” he orders flatly and hands me his phone. His tone and movements are robotic, like someone going through a rehearsed protocol. Then his hands are on her neck and his ear is by her mouth. I start to dial.
“Do you know CPR?” I ask him shakily. I learned the basics a while ago but my mind is a total blank now. I’m praying he remembers.
“I know CPR,” he replies calmly. “But she doesn’t need it. Her pulse is good, and she’s breathing. We have to put her in recovery position.”
I watch him quietly as he turns her on her side and gently smooths her hair back from her face. She’s breathing normally, but her closed eyes are sunk deep into their hollows, and her face is pale as a corpse.
“What’s the nature of your emergency?” the voice on the phone demands.
“I don’t know,” I gasp out. “Something’s happened to my mom. Just come quickly please.”
Chapter 17
Ethan seems to be enjoying himself in the ER. That alone distracts me from the terror of the evening. He’s practically bouncing in his seat, eyes darting all over the triage area, curious fingers touching everything in his path—the oxygen nozzle on the wall, the multicolored test tubes on the nurse’s trolley, the buttons on the beeping monitor attached to our sleeping mother.
I calm down a little after the paramedic assures me that she only fainted and wasn’t in immediate danger, but Ethan’s frenetic curiosity still chafes a bit. Our nurse is amused by his interest at first, but he eventually begins to fray her nerves too.
“The blood pressure cuff you’re using is too big,” he tells her. “My mom’s gotten very thin and she needs a smaller size. Your reading will be falsely low.”
She nods grimly and makes the adjustment.
“My mom’s dehydrated,” he declares after a moment.
The nurse grunts and points at the clear bag on a pole. “That’s why we’re giving her the IV, hon,” she explains patiently.
“I know,” he retorts. “But shouldn’t you be measuring her urine output as well? That way you can calculate how much fluid she’s losing.”
She turns to stare at him for the first time. “How old are you, sweetheart?” There’s a frustrated edge to her voice.
“I’m sixteen. And you haven’t answered my question.”
“He means well,” I say apologetically. “My brother has autism. So sometimes he can cross some boundaries—”
She nods and gives him a doubtful look. “My cousin’s kid has that. But he doesn’t talk.”
“I have excellent verbal skills,” Ethan says.
“Yes,” she remarks acidly. “You sure do, sweetie.”
“My name is Ethan,” he tells her. Then he turns to me. “And if I crossed boundaries you should tell me, not the nurse.”
That shuts me up. But Ethan doesn’t stop buzzing around the room until our mother begins to stir.
When she opens her eyes, I sit down by her side.
“What happened?” she asks me weakly.
“You fainted. The doctors are trying to figure out why.”
“The doctors haven’t been in to see you yet,” Ethan puts in. “And the nurse doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
I’m thankful she’d just left the room and didn’t hear that. “They’re taking good care of you,” I say, throwing Ethan a warning look that goes right over his head.
Mom doesn’t seem convinced. “What are they doing to me?” she complains. “I don’t want to be here. I hate hospitals.”
“People say they hate hospitals,” Ethan declares. “But a hospital is just a building. What they really hate is the feeling of helplessness that comes with being sick.”
“I want to go home,” my mother insists. “I’m taking this needle out of me.”
“Mom!” I put my hand out to stop her. She’s already started peeling the tape from her arm and plucking at the tube. “Stop! Let them check you and find out what’s wrong. It was awful to see you passed out like that. What are we supposed to do if you get sick again?”
The ring of fear in my voice seems to give her pause, and she stops messing with her IV. But the rest of the evening doesn’t go by easily. She challenges the nurses at every step. “If I’m dehydrated why are you taking more blood?” she demands. “No, I don’t want a CAT scan. I won’t be irradiated for no reason. I’m sorry, I can’t eat this food; it’s full of preservatives.”
I plead with her every time the nurses come in, and I fight with her until she agrees to the doctor’s orders. It’s obvious they’ve found something wrong with her, because they refuse to let her go, but no one will speak to any of us to explain what’s happening. Hours after she’s admitted, Dr. Handel, the attending physician, finally comes in to speak with us. As he settles down in front of her, Ethan turns to me and holds up his phone. “Liam just texted me. He says that he’s been calling you and you aren’t picking up.”
“I left my phone at home,” I whisper to him. “Just tell him that I’m speaking with a doctor. And I’ll call him as soon as I can.”
All talk and thought about the party will have to wait. There’s no way to message Liam through my brother while my mom is listening. I don’t want her to suspect I’d lied to her and gotten drunk. She has enough to worry her now. I’m scared the doctor has come in to tell us some awful diagnosis. His face looks grim. Ethan types out my response quickly and then turns to listen.
“Your blood count was very low,” the doctor explains. “We don’t know why yet, but we’re running a few tests and hopefully we’ll have more answers for you soon. I understand that you’ve been feeling sick for quite a while.”
“Not that long,” she says defensively. “It’s probably stress.”
“Well, it might have been triggered by stress, but there’s definitely something else going on. Can you tell me how long you’ve been bleeding?”
She glances at Ethan and then shakes her head at the doctor. “I don’t want to talk about this in front of them.”
“Mom!”
The doctor shrugs at us and motions toward the door. “Maybe you two should wait outside.”
“But I want to know what’s going on!” I protest. “What kind of bleeding? What is he talking about?”
“Rain, please!” Her eyes narrow, and th
e faintest flush of color darkens her white cheeks.
“He’s obviously talking about intestinal bleeding,” Ethan remarks. “And the most likely causes are either colitis or Crohn’s, which are inflammatory diseases affecting the large intestine—”
“No more anatomy lectures, Ethan!” I snap. “I want to hear what the doctor has to say.”
But the physician is staring quietly at my brother. His expression is serious, but his eyes wrinkle at the corners. “Actually, he’s right. How old are you, young man?”
“Sixteen. Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“Well, most of my medical students wouldn’t have gotten that diagnosis.” He smiles. “But that’s not the point right now. Your mother has asked that you two leave the room. And a doctor has to respect the wishes of his patient.”
It’s like Dr. Handel has just given Ethan one of the ten commandments. My brother rises immediately and gestures to me. “Come on, Rain. I have to respect the wishes of the patient.”
“She’s not your patient, she’s our mother! And I want to know what’s going on—”
“It’s okay,” she murmurs, holding up a hand to calm me. “You guys can stay. Ethan clearly knows more about this than I do.”
We settle back down into our chairs, and Dr. Handel begins his “differential diagnosis,” as he calls it. (Which basically means “we don’t know what’s wrong but here’s a list we’ve come up with.”) The next hour is a blur of words I can’t understand. The doctor talks and gestures with his hands, my mother sits stone faced and tight lipped, Ethan nods sagely and throws out random questions that make me crazy. In the end, though, I only want to know one thing. “She’s going to be okay, right?” I ask him finally. “It isn’t something…something really bad…like—”
“Like cancer?” I’m terrified and relieved that the doctor has anticipated my fear. How did he know that’s what I was afraid of? “No, Rain. There aren’t any signs of that on the CAT scan. But there is a long road ahead. And there are still more tests to run.”
“What if I refuse the tests?” We all turn to stare at her. It’s the first time she’s spoken since the doctor began talking. “I want to consult a friend of mine,” she continues. “She’s an alternative healer, and I’d prefer to try that route first. So I’d like to check out of here now.” Doctor Handel clears his throat and rubs a hand over his eyes.
“Well, you always have that option, of course. We can’t force you to stay. But I strongly recommend—”
“I know what you recommend,” she interrupts. “But I’m feeling a lot better. So what will happen if I leave now?”
“You could die,” Ethan states flatly. “And then Rain and I would have to move to DC to live with Dad.”
“Ethan!” I exclaim. “Tell her you don’t mean that!”
“But I do mean it. One of the complications of untreated colitis is cancer. Or worse, a perforated bowel. If that happens, she could be dead by next week—”
“Okay, okay!” the doctor interjects. “I think your mother gets the picture.”
She definitely seems to. I don’t know if it’s the threat of imminent death or the prospect of her children moving in with their father that changes her mind. But it does the trick. She sits back against her pillow and gives the doctor a resentful look. “All right, fine. I’ll give it a couple of days.”
I let out an audible sigh of relief. Ethan stares at the IV pole.
“Can we stay with you?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “You have school tomorrow. And I don’t want you breathing this hospital air.”
We go back and forth for a while, but eventually we reach a compromise. Ethan and I can stay during visiting hours for the next two days. But we must sleep at home, and we have to promise to keep up with our schoolwork.
And since visiting hours are over, it’s time for us to leave. “Tomorrow I can borrow the car to get us here,” I tell Ethan after I kiss Mom goodbye. “But how are we getting back tonight?”
“I texted Hope,” he says as I close the door behind us. “But it’ll be an hour before she can get here.”
I settle back on one of the waiting room sofas and watch him as he types away on his phone. “You know,” I say after a moment. “That thing you said back there about Mom dying and us going to live with Dad. That wasn’t right, Ethan.”
He sits down next to me and slowly puts down his phone. “Yes, it was. That’s what would happen.”
“No, I mean, the facts may have been right. But it was wrong to say that. It made it sound like you didn’t care.”
“It did?”
I sigh. “Yes. It sounded like it didn’t matter to you if Mom died. Because then you’d just go off and live with Dad.”
His eyes widen. “Does Mom think that’s what I meant? She thinks that I wouldn’t care?” He inhales sharply and springs up from the sofa. “I’ll tell her she’s wrong—”
“No, no, sit down! Mom knows you, Ethan. She knows you care about her. But other people… They might take it the wrong way. So if you want to deal with people—with patients, for example—then you have to be careful when you talk about dying.”
He digests the information for a moment. “I still have to tell the truth.”
“Yes, you do. But a doctor also should be compassionate. And you want to be a doctor, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll have to get used to talking to patients who are scared and vulnerable.”
“What should I have said?”
“Well, you should have said, ‘The complications can be very dangerous.’ Leave out the part about dying. People can figure that out themselves.”
“Oh.” He glances at me and smiles. “Thank you.”
It feels like years since he’s smiled at me like that. The spontaneous, unexpected warmth, our twin connection, the understanding we’d once shared—I’ve been missing that so much. But now that simple smile, that feeling of being needed is so precious, that for a moment I’m at a loss for words. Without thinking, I reach out and touch him lightly on the shoulder. He doesn’t flinch or pull away. “That’s what I’m here for, Ethan.”
If it wasn’t too sinister, I’d say Ethan is more pleased to hear that his diagnosis turns out to be correct than concerned with the fact that our mother has a lifelong illness. The giant cardboard hologram of a human intestine which Mom had relegated to the shed now makes a reappearance in the living room. Over the next two days my brother spends hours covering it with Post-it notes and lists of various medication names.
I pass most of the following days in the hospital with Ethan and evenings doing the homework Hope drops off for me. During dinner Ethan regales us both with excruciating details about the digestive system. I learn to eat through it. Hope seems weirdly fascinated by his lectures, or maybe she’s just better at faking interest than I am.
It’s not that I don’t care about my mother’s illness. But I only want to know what I need to know, namely, what I can do to make her better quickly. And so far, all I can understand is that she needs to take some pills (which she doesn’t want to do) and that her children need to stop stressing her out (which is very hard to do while I’m yelling at her to take her pills).
It’s a fine balance.
But I try my best to reason with her calmly, even as I tell myself she’s being completely unreasonable. And frankly, Ethan doesn’t help much at first. Now that he’s realized that telling people they’re going to die imminently is unacceptable behavior, he’s a bit tongue-tied. By the second day of mom’s hospitalization we still haven’t convinced her to take her meds. So I take Ethan aside.
“Secret Rule?”
“What can I do?” he responds immediately.
“Tell Mom that you’re going to ask Dad to come stay with us. Tell her that you’re scared to be home at night without a parent.”<
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“But I’m not scared. Are you?”
I’m not, of course. But if I tell him that, the lie will stick in his throat when he talks to Mom. So I nod. “Yeah. I’m terrified.”
“But I’ll protect you.”
“I know you will, Ethan. But three is way safer than two.”
“So why don’t you tell Mom you’re scared?”
“Because you’re the one who talks to Dad. She won’t believe it if I say I’m planning to call him.”
“Wait, so do you want me to ask Dad to come stay with us?”
“No! But if Mom thinks you will, then maybe she’ll take the pills and get better.”
“Oh! Oh, I get it.”
“Exactly.”
And just like that, we’re coconspirators again, the way we used to be when we were little, and I had to be his voice. Only this time, it’s Ethan who’s speaking for me.
And he does it perfectly, with merciless and relentless precision. He texts Dad in front of her. He gets into animated discussions with him right outside her door. He even mentions buying the hot dogs dad likes from the grocery store. Mom turns a little green after the last one. So maybe he tilts the scales too far in the “stress” direction, but it finally works. She swallows her medicine.
And Ethan and I go home.
Chapter 18
It’s been three days since the party, and I still don’t know how to face Liam. My mother’s hospitalization has been a good excuse so far, but I cringe when Mom insists that I’m going back to school on Wednesday. I can’t avoid him anymore. But I have no idea what to say to him, how to act now that our relationship has progressed to the next level. Worse, I can still only remember bits and pieces of that night. But those snapshots are enough. I know that Liam and I went way too far—about as far as two people can go. And I’m actually thankful there’s still a black fog over most of it and that my mom’s illness is distracting me from dwelling on it too much.