by Leah Scheier
—Heartsick in Wisconsin
Dear Heartsick: Liam, if this is you—not cool. If not, try Rain’s Chocolate and Chili, a sweet and spicy way to reignite your love!
Chapter 25
I’ve already racked up almost a week in tardies and absences. But after my mother is readmitted to the hospital, school once again takes the backseat. Over the next two weeks I get up at 6:00 a.m. to drive my brother to Missoula County Hospital, return to school to attend the bare minimum of classes, then rush back to the hospital. Evenings are spent on a mountain of catch-up work. I barely see Liam. He tries to be helpful by dropping off homework assignments and texting cheerful messages, but I don’t have the energy to respond. Our days on the ward are the same as last time—bewildering, exhausting, and dull. Hours of beeping machines, fluorescent lights, and dripping fluids.
This time, though, I’m far less patient with everyone around me, especially with my mother. It’s one thing to get sick; it’s another thing to make yourself that way. Especially when you have children who depend on you, I want to say. But I’m sure my accusations will just increase her stress, so instead I sit quietly and resentfully beside her.
She seems unwilling to speak to me either, but after enduring hours of my silent vigil by her bed, she finally breaks the ice. “You’re mad at me.”
“Yeah, well, can you blame me?”
“No. But I wish you’d see things from my point of view.”
“What point of view is that? You think being sick is natural? Holistic? Just tell me so I understand.”
“I don’t want to be here any more than you do. I just needed to believe that I could fix this. On my own terms.”
“What does that mean?”
“I mean, this isn’t the first time doctors have failed me. Do you know how many physicians I went to—” She hesitates and glances uneasily at my brother. He’s engrossed in a book and doesn’t look up at her when she pauses. “How many different opinions I got? His first pediatrician told me that there wasn’t any hope. If he didn’t speak by age four, he would never speak. One doctor actually said, ‘At least you have one normal one.’”
“Mom—”
“All the therapy, all those interventions, all those tests they made him go through. For what? Eventually I decided it was enough. I didn’t want to be told how to raise my child.”
“This isn’t the same thing.”
“It is to me. They were wrong, don’t you see? They told me that I should accept his diagnosis and learn to live with it. But I refused. And, in the end, who was right?”
“Maybe you were both right,” I suggest. “You have accepted it.”
“No. I didn’t accept anything.” She sinks her voice and leans closer to me. “He’s doing better than ever. Some home tutoring and his sister. That’s all he seems to need.” She takes a deep breath and gives me a weak smile. “A few days ago he told me that Hope is his girlfriend. Can you believe it? He has a girlfriend. I wish I could find those doctors and—and rub it in their faces.” She clenches a fist and waves it in the air.
“Well, maybe you will one day,” I tell her. “But you won’t be able to if you’re constantly in the hospital.”
“You still don’t get it, Rain.”
“No, I think I do,” I tell her softly. There’s so much beneath her decision to fight her doctors, I think. I want to talk about her control issues. Her powerlessness in the face of an illness she doesn’t understand, that she doesn’t want to understand. Her belief that trusting someone other than herself will only lead to her betrayal. But I don’t say any of those things. The psychology book in my head is more useful when it’s hidden. “I miss you at home,” I tell her, taking her hand. “Please, Mom. We both miss you.”
Her large, hollow eyes fix on mine, and she opens her mouth to speak. But then her face freezes; she’s staring intently at something over my shoulder. I turn around to follow her look and rise quickly to my feet.
Standing there in the doorway, partially hidden by a balloon-and-teddy bear mountain, is my father. He looks just like he did at the diner, but rougher. His gray hair is mussed, his chin dark with stubble.
“Hi, guys,” he says.
“Hello, Dad,” Ethan replies from the corner. “Thank you for coming. I have to show you my list. I’ve collected five more points.”
“That’s great, Ethan,” he replies, smiling uncomfortably. “Let’s talk about that later, okay?”
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
He seems hurt and a bit confused. “Your brother told me that you wanted me here. So I came.” He’s very carefully avoiding my mother’s eyes.
“What’s going on?” she hisses at no one in particular.
“What’s going on is I took the red eye from DC last night because I thought my son and daughter needed me,” Dad snaps at her.
“Rain told me to call Dad,” Ethan explains. He doesn’t seem concerned about any of this. As if our family being together in the same room is something that happens every day, as opposed to the first time in ten years.
“Dad, can I talk to you outside?” I interject. I’ve been so careful about keeping stress away from my mother, and now Mr. Stress himself has waltzed into her hospital room. I have to get him out of there. “Ethan, you can stay with Mom.”
The hall is humming with nurses and half-dressed patients with IV poles, so we make our way down to the cafeteria and settle at an empty table.
“This isn’t good for her,” I begin. “Your being here might make her worse—”
“Well, I’m sorry about that,” he interrupts. “But your mother needs to take her medicine like an adult. And stop blaming everything on me.”
He’s in lawyer mode now, all final statements and confident declarations. But I’m not going to let him push me around.
“You’re the reason the two of you split up, remember?” I point out. “Ethan may not know that, but I do.”
“You’ve only heard her side of the story, Rainey. But I have my side too. Even though you’ve never bothered to listen to it.”
“I never bothered? Dad, you abandoned us!”
“No. Your mother left me. She took the two of you and just…left. And I was too ashamed to challenge her decision. Too embarrassed to fight for you.”
“You should have been. You were the one cheating!”
He sighs and rubs a hand over his bloodshot eyes. “It isn’t that simple. You can try to boil it down to infidelity and divorce if you want. But it’s way more complicated than that. When you’re young, sometimes it’s easiest to just classify people into good guys and bad guys. You were only five years old when your mom and I split. And I probably seemed like the obvious bad guy to you, so you chose her side. I get that. But, Rain, you aren’t five anymore.”
“Yeah, but I know the difference between right and wrong. And what you did was wrong.”
“I realize that. But I’ve been punished for it, haven’t I? And I’m trying to make it right by explaining.”
“Explaining what? How you cheated on Mom?”
“Rain, I met your mother in law school. We were twenty-three years old. A few dates later, a couple of drinks, and we made a bad choice one night.”
I glance down at my hands, my cheeks reddening. His story was hitting a little too close to home.
“Well, your mom got pregnant that night. When she told me, I didn’t know how to handle it. I could have faked it, I guess, pretended to be supportive and then eventually, slowly drifted out of her life. That’s what most guys do, you know. They hold the girl’s hand, sit by her side when she pushes out their child. They smile and tell her she’s better off when she drops out of school to raise the kid. But meanwhile, they’re off pursuing their own careers as if nothing’s happened. And before you know it, they’ve found a job in another city, and their role as father boils down to
a weekend babysitting here and there. Well, I didn’t want to be that guy. So when she told me that she was going to keep the baby, I asked her to marry me. She was carrying twins, as it turned out. And she had all these dreams of law school. I didn’t want her to abandon her dreams.”
I glance up for the first time. “So you married her out of pity?” I ask, my voice cracking. “Did you even love her?”
“Of course I loved her. But we’d barely gotten to know each other. Oh, I told myself that we had so much in common. We both wanted to be lawyers, we liked some of the same movies—I was desperately grasping for a silver lining. But it wasn’t long before it started to come apart. Hell, we were bickering on our honeymoon.”
“But there was another woman,” I point out, maliciously. “Before your divorce.” His side, as he calls it, is sounding a bit too innocent and accidental. “You made that choice. Instead of trying to work it out.”
“Yes, I did. Rain, what can I say? I met the woman of my dreams as a married man. Ethan was throwing tantrums, biting us, hitting you—your mother was trying to study for exams and dragging him to a hundred specialists. And we were fighting every single night. Some days we were barely speaking. And then this girl I was tutoring—well, I suppose you know that part.”
“I do.” There’s no forgiveness in my tone. He doesn’t deserve it.
“Look,” he continues defensively. “It wasn’t so easy for me either. What was I supposed to do? What happens if you meet the love of your life when you’re already married? Are you supposed to just walk away?”
“Yes! Yes you are!”
“Rain—”
“You had kids who needed you, Dad. Who still need you.”
“I know. I realize that.”
“So yes. You should have just walked away.”
He nods meekly. “And been miserable?” He doesn’t sound defensive anymore. Just quiet and very tired. I feel a little sorry for him, even though I’m trying not to. It would be so much easier to just judge and dismiss him like my mother has. But I realize suddenly that he’s exhausted because he hasn’t slept since he got Ethan’s call. That he dropped everything to fly here and be with us when we needed him. I don’t know how to dismiss that. I can’t.
“You’re looking pretty tired,” I say in a softer voice.
He rubs a finger over his stubble. “Yeah, well. Deposition yesterday. Red-eye flight right after. You know.”
A shadow falls across my lap, and I look up to find Ethan standing over us. “Mom needs you,” he says.
I rise reluctantly. “We’ll talk later, okay?” I’d like to say more; I want to be warmer, less stiff and hesitant. But I haven’t decided how to act around him yet. Love for both my parents should be infinite, unbound—but it isn’t that way for us. It’s an equation, and I feel like every drop I give to him I must subtract from my mother’s due.
“I’ll be at the hotel—for as long as you two need me,” he tells me before I leave. “I’m not planning on going back until your mother’s well again.”
Cooking with Rain
SERENITY THROUGH YOUR GUT
Where I answer all your burning food-related questions!
Dear Rain: Just so you know, I was not Heartsick in Wisconsin. I am and forever will be your Wacky Mac from Missoula. I miss you. What can I do?
Dear Wacky: I miss you too. Please stop hijacking my blog.
Chapter 26
My phone rings five minutes after my response goes up. I smile at Liam’s name on the screen, but before I can answer, my stomach twists and lurches. I run to the bathroom and heave into the sink.
When I finally stumble out into the hall, Ethan offers me a plate of scrambled eggs. I’m pretty impressed that he’s made them himself, but the smell sends me right back to the toilet.
I thought I was finished with this stomach bug. But now it seems to have returned full force.
I manage to choke down a little tea before staggering off to school. But then it happens again at lunchtime when I smell the cafeteria food. Luckily, Liam is busy tutoring someone through lunch, so I don’t have to explain myself to him. But I feel Hope’s eyes boring a hole into my neck as I push the tray away and grasp weakly at the metal railing.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“I need to sit down,” I say and let her lead me to a corner table. I wipe my forehead and concentrate on taking deep breaths. My mouth floods with rancid spit, and I swallow the urge to gag.
“Have you caught something?” she asks me when I look up. “Brought some virus home from the hospital?”
God, I really hope so. A while back Ethan made me watch a documentary about hospital “superbugs” and the way they spread from staff to patients and visitors. Right now, I’m praying it’s a superbug.
Because here’s the thing. My period has been acting crazy for a couple of weeks, faking me out with a few of days of warning spots and then disappearing. But the nausea had vanished, so I hadn’t really worried.
Until yesterday at breakfast. I’ve been nauseated since then, and no amount of lemon ginger gelato seems to help. So I’ve started praying for Ebola. Cholera. The bubonic plague. Anything other than what it could be.
“I have to go to the drugstore,” I tell her.
“Okay.” She looks blank. Come on, I think. Figure it out, Hope. Don’t make me say it out loud.
“I…I need to get a…a test.”
She laughs and rolls her eyes. “What, are you pregnant?”
Oh yeah, it’s hysterical. Me, Rain Rosenblatt, Ms. super cautious, never-been-kissed Rain. I’d laugh too if I were her. But the smile fades from her face when she sees my expression.
“Rain…” Her lips twitch as if she’s waiting for me to laugh with her, waiting for the “gotcha!” moment. “Stop joking. You’re not—”
“Hope, I need to get a test,” I repeat dully. I’m halfway between gagging and crying, and if I have to say any more I’m going to end up doing both in front of the entire cafeteria.
“Holy shit,” she says. Her mouth falls open. “Oh, God! The Halloween party?” She glances around the room and lowers her voice. “Are you sure?”
I don’t reply. Of course I’m not sure. That’s why I need the test.
“Does—does Liam know?” she falters.
“Of course not!”
Another tug of nausea twists my stomach, and I duck my head and clap my hand over my mouth. My shirt is clinging to my sweaty back, my skin goes hot and cold, and I close my eyes and take a ragged breath.
“After school today?” she offers. “I’ll drive you to the pharmacy.”
I nod and raise my head to meet her eyes. She’s gazing at me quietly, her lips pursed together. Thank God for Hope, I think. No judgment, no questions, no explanation needed. There when I need her the most.
“It’ll be okay,” she says.
I manage a weak smile. “I know. I just want to be sure.” But I have no idea what I’m going to do if it isn’t okay.
Chapter 27
I can’t do it. There’s no way. Technically I’m ready. I’ve chugged a half liter of Gatorade and am ready to go.
The procedure is simple enough. Pink cardboard box with the silhouette of a pregnant belly, white stick, and dummy-proof fold-out instructions. But there’s nothing that explains what to do after, besides the obvious “consult a doctor.” They don’t mention what you’re supposed to say to your boyfriend who had a whole life planned for himself that didn’t include this, what to tell your estranged father, with whom you’ve just started talking again, how to break the news to your sick mom, who will be so disappointed and hurt that she might get even sicker. The box instructions don’t include Ethan in any of this either. Lord, how will I tell my brother?
I can do the peeing part.
But I can’t face the truth.
I drop the stick
into the sink and walk out of the bathroom. Hope is standing on the other side of the door, her body tense with anticipation, her lips pressed into a thin line.
But she’s not alone. Ethan is standing next to her. And Hope’s hand is in his.
They are holding hands.
I’m briefly distracted from my own worries. What is happening in front of me? My eyes widen, and I shoot Hope an accusing glare. Did you tell him?
She gives a barely perceptible shake of her head. “I told Ethan that I was upset,” she explains.
“I hold her hand when she’s upset,” Ethan puts in helpfully.
It probably never occurred to him to ask what’s upset her or to wonder why his girlfriend is now staring at me expectantly. But his outstretched hand, that small, warm gesture, is enough to make her happy. She’s scared for me, poised and ready to help me, but her own course is calm and clear. Hope glows as she stands there quietly waiting for the verdict. I gaze at their joined hands.
“I just need a minute—” I begin. And then my phone buzzes in my pocket.
I pull it out and touch the screen, welcoming the distraction, anything to keep me from thinking about the flat, white stick waiting for me in the bathroom.
The message is from Liam.
I see capital letters and exclamation points but the words blur in front of me, and for a moment the text is meaningless.
Call me please!!! I really need to talk to you. SOMETHING AMAZING has happened.
I stare at the phone stupidly. And then it buzzes again. It’s Mom this time. Your father is staying in town, and you didn’t tell me? I was counting on you to be honest with me.
And then again. From Dad: Can I come by later? I stopped by the hospital, but you weren’t there. Your mother is pretty upset.
“What’s going on?” Hope asks me.
I have no idea what’s going on—with anyone. My mind is bouncing between the joined hands in front of me, the expectations of my mother, the hopes of my father, and the boyfriend whose life I’m about to destroy. I can barely stop to think about myself in the middle of all of them, the ticking bomb that’s about to explode.