“Do you want a snack?” Craig called after her.
Hana’s hand reached from behind the door, snatched a package of cookies, and slipped back out again.
Quinn grabbed a bag of pretzels from Craig and showed me the phone to confirm she’d complete her Jason-mission before she followed Hana out the door.
Craig surveyed the room like he wasn’t sure what just happened. “You girls are the weirdest. What was up with Hana?”
It took all my strength as a friend to stifle my laughter and Hana’s big secret. Thankfully, I was saved from having to answer his question because Mom arrived.
She rushed to the bed and kissed my forehead and cheeks repeatedly. “What happened, are you okay, sweet pea? I’m so sorry it took me so long to get here.” To Craig she said, “Thanks for calling.”
He nodded.
She bent down to give me a big hug and whispered softly in my ear, “My sweet baby, I love you so much.”
This was what I needed—Mom hugs. If my leg wasn’t broken, why was I still here? “Sorry I ruined your big date. How was it?”
She pulled back from the hug and waved away my concern. She’d dyed her hair—her usual brown—and she was wearing a soft, green sweater. “Actually, sweetie, you saved me. I just wish it wasn’t because of this.” She gestured the length of the hospital bed.
“Really? Why?”
“Stupid man couldn’t stop talking about how much money he makes and how his ex is a B-I-T-C-H who was trying to steal it all from him. Real romantic. Won’t be doing that again for a while.”
On the other side of the room, measuring his height on the metal scale, Craig said, “C’mon, Sonia, you can’t let one jerk keep ya down. I dare you to date three more giant douchebags so you can get them out of the way.”
Mom laughed. “I don’t know, we’ll see. Anyway, who cares right now. I’m just glad you’re safe.”
There was one firm knock on the door, and then a doctor burst into the room, his eyes darting between Mom and me like he wasn’t sure who to talk to first. He had a whole mad-scientist look about him.
Hana and Quinn slipped back into the room.
The doctor strode over to my mom and me. “Hello, I’m Dr. Springfield. Are you the patient’s mother?”
“I am. And her name is Ellie.”
“Yes, of course. Hello, Ellie.” He gestured at Craig, Quinn, and Hana all huddled in the corner. “This is a rather large group. Would you like me to wait for anyone who’s not family to leave before presenting the news?”
Mom gave me a look that told me it was my choice.
“News? That’s ominous.” I laughed like this was a good joke. Why so serious? “No, I want my friends here. They can stay.”
Dr. No-People-Skills disapproved. Or maybe his face always looked like that. “All right then.” He threw the X-rays up onto a light box and flipped on the switch to illuminate them. “The good news is, you didn’t break or even fracture the bone, which, considering how much the bone has weakened, and the nature of your fall, is surprising. However—”
“What do you mean the bone has weakened?” My mom gripped my hand tightly and stood up. “How? Why has it weakened?”
“Yes, I was getting to that.” Dr. Assface pointed to a spot on the long thighbone on the scan, about two inches above my knee. “See, here on the femur. This area here appears to be a tumor.”
“A tumor?” Mom asked, incredulous.
“Most likely an enchondroma. A benign bone tumor that originates from cartilage. It could even be a bone spur, but due to the apparent weakness in the bone, you will have to stay overnight so we can get a better look at it in the morning. We’ll order scans for tomorrow.”
My body froze, except for my heart, which was beating too fast.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. How could I have a tumor, an enchon—whatever it is? I’m only seventeen.” It was all I could think to say.
Dr. No-Bedside-Manners gave the air of zero-time-to-explain. “Yes, they’re rare in someone your age, but that’s why it’s most likely benign.”
“Most likely benign?” Mom asked as her eyebrows shot up her forehead.
Those words. Tumor. Benign. They blew through my center like a cartoon cannon ball, leaving a hole where my stomach used to be.
“Yes. We’ll need a better look. An oncologist will meet you in the morning. They’ll move you to an inpatient bed soon. Mrs. Hartwood, if you could fill this out?” He handed Mom a tablet.
She took it, looking at the doctor as if she might bludgeon him with it as he walked out the door. I wished she would. Mom examined the tablet like the writing was in a foreign language, practically tossed it down on the chair, and came to the side of my bed where Quinn and Hana had already flocked to me. Craig lurked behind them with his head down, hands in his leather jacket.
Quinn started, “Ellie, this is crazy.” She squeezed my hand, and I didn’t squeeze it back, on account of my center being blown through and making me immobile. Her eyes started to well up. “Whatever this is—”
“Dr. Assface is the worst. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Anger brought energy back to my limbs, and I took my hand back from Quinn, squashing the bed sheet between my fists. I needed everyone to leave. “Anyway, all he did know is that if it’s anything, it’s nothing. Benign. So, I’m fine. You don’t have to worry about me, but thanks.”
They stared at me like maybe I’d hit my head harder than they realized.
“Craig, girls,” Mom said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Ellie’s already had a very long night. Clearly we’re not going to get any answers out of…Dr. Assface. So, I think it would be best if you three head home, and we all get some sleep.”
“Of course,” Quinn said with a sincere smile. “You’re right about that doctor. He’s the worst.”
“Capital D Douchebag,” Craig added.
“My guess is he’s on drugs,” Hana said and leaned down to give me a hug. “Call us the second you hear anything tomorrow.”
Quinn gave me a hug next. “Love you, Ellie.”
Craig didn’t fight his way around Quinn and Hana to give me a hug but just gave a small wave and said, “Night, sis,” being the one person I could count on to not make a big deal out of this. Who knew Craig would ever come in handy?
They trudged out the door and Mom followed them, telling me she was going to see about the room transfer. The quiet of the room hit me, the outline of my legs under the thin sheet looming like a ghost. I shut my eyes and pressed my fists hard against my forehead, breathing deep through my nose, trying to keep the tears at bay.
Chapter Five
I woke up to loud knocks on the door and the overhead lights blaring cruelly bright. Disoriented, my eyes squinted open, blinking to adjust. This is real. I’m really in the hospital. Sheets twisted, skin clammy, head throbbing, I gasped for air and scrambled to sit up.
My phone slipped down the blanket. I’d fallen asleep with it clutched to my chest. When we’d settled into the new room the night before, I got a text from Jason.
Quinn told me no more visitors. :( I promise I didn’t mean to scare you down the stairs. Can I see you tomorrow?
I read it over and over before falling asleep with it in my hand. Can I see you tomorrow? It’d been the one glimmer of hope in my surreal night. I should be paralyzed with embarrassment from my tumble and tragic party departure, but here I was in a hospital bed, in ugly pink pajamas Mom had found at the gift shop, so my emotional capacity for embarrassment was lower than usual. Hey, thanks, possible tumor, for giving me that. Was he about to kiss me last night? He wouldn’t have texted if he didn’t care.
Mom stirred in the cot next to me as a doctor strode into the room and stood impatiently by my bedside. I glanced at the clock: 5:04 a.m. So not nice. Had this doctor missed the section in med school about the healing power of sleep? The poster on the wall behind the clock was of snow-capped mountains with the words Indomitable Spirit written on the bottom, l
ike a threat.
“Good morning. I’m Dr. Nichols, your oncologist.” She wore a white doctor’s coat and her black hair pulled back into a bun. With a quick glance at her clipboard she said, “Nice to meet you, Ellie,” and then shook my hand so firmly I wondered if I’d have to stay in this room another night for crushed finger bones. A plump older nurse trailed in behind her and introduced herself as Darlene.
“Mrs. Hartwood?” Dr. Nichols said.
“Please, call me Sonia.” Mom rose awkwardly from her cot, still dressed in her clothes from the night before, and came to stand next to me at the head of my bed, rubbing her eyes.
“I examined the X-rays, and we definitely need to get a better look. Ellie, today you will get blood work done and a series of scans,” Dr. Nichols said as the grandma nurse tapped away on her tablet. “MRI, bone scan, and CT scan with and without contrast. We’ll also want to schedule a biopsy as soon as I have an opening.”
“A biopsy? What do you think it is? Dr. Springfield told us it’s probably benign, that it could just be a bone spur,” Mom said.
Dr. Nichols shook her head. “It’s not a bone spur. There is a chance the tumor is benign. The scans and biopsy will give us a more precise picture of its depth and location. Until we know more, Ellie, I don’t want you running, jumping, or doing anything that could put too much force on your leg.”
“What? I—I don’t understand.” Mom shook her head, eventually finding more words. “What do you think it is? Does it look malignant? What happens if she does accidentally put too much pressure on it?”
A hundred mini boa constrictors flooded my throat, tightening and squeezing, suffocating my voice and breath.
“I’m sorry. We can’t answer most of those questions until we get a better look. The physical limitation is just a precaution. If the tumor is malignant and Ellie were to fracture or break the bone, it would make our treatment options more complicated. Don’t think too much about it. It’s a precaution.” And with that, Dr. Nichols left.
That was it. No more reassuring words, just “don’t think about it.”
That seemed impossible. But she’d said there was a chance it was benign. I have to hold on to that, to think only of that.
The gripping coils in my nerves just rooted deeper. Relief would only come with an answer.
At least, I prayed it would be relief.
“We’ll be doing the MRI after the blood work,” said Nurse Darlene. She handed me a mint-green gown. “Please put this on with the opening in the back, dear, and make sure to take off your bra and any jewelry. We don’t want any metal in the machine. I’ll wait for you in the hall.”
Mom’s face matched the fear that was coursing through me. This was all happening too fast. No discussion, no satisfying explanations.
She gave me a kiss on the forehead. “I’m going to go talk to the nurse for a minute.” She smoothed her bedhead down then held my chin and kissed my forehead again before leaving.
Once I had on the gown, I tried to wrap the flaps to cover my back and tuck them under me as I sat on the edge of the bed.
I should be at Quinn’s—still asleep—making banana pancakes in a few hours. What is going on?
I glared at the mocking mountain picture and imagined my indomitable spirit ripping it off the wall and smashing it to the ground with my indomitable strength.
There was a tap at the door. Craig. He set down the bag of stuff that Mom had asked him to bring from our apartment and sat next to me on the bed. “So, a tumor, huh? That sucks.”
A single “ha” slipped out of me. It wasn’t what I was expecting him to say at all. “Yeah.” I gave a sad smile.
He simply looked back at me. A choky feeling rose up in my throat. He surprised me by wrapping his arms fully around me and hugging me tight. I realized it was the first time we’d really hugged, and it went on and on.
What is he doing? But then, it was the nicest sort of hug. He held me so tight and so close, it was kind of comforting. Brotherly.
Tears streamed down my face, my body shaking against his. He was so big, and I felt so small. I had no idea how I’d get the tears and the shaking to stop now. Craig squeezed me tighter, and finally I put my arms around him and hugged him back.
“It’s okay, little bird, it’s okay,” he whispered.
I was a little broken bird.
When Craig was gone Mom came back into the room shaking her head. “The nurse says your MRI will take an hour or so, and that I can’t go with you.” She scanned my eyes like they’d reveal if I’d be okay, and gave me a long, too-tight hug that told me she might not be.
Darlene pushed me in a wheelchair down the antiseptic-smelling hall. Would this be my future? A wheelchair forever? Don’t be ridiculous.
I willed myself to go through the motions. Needle prick, filling vials—one, two, three—dots of blood, press the gauze. You can do this. Get through today.
The MRI room was cold, with a monolith of a machine in the middle of the room. It stood higher than I was tall and was more than twice as long, with a deep, cylindrical hole at its center. At the entrance, there was a bed-pod of sorts.
The technician, Troy, who seemed like he should be surfing on the California coast instead of working in this high-tech room of bad news, cinched straps around my ankles. Troy explained to me the importance of the straps. “Is this all right? Not pinching?”
“I know I’m in here because of a tumor and everything, but I have to ask, how do you get your curls to stay shiny and curly but not look scrunchy?”
His raised an eyebrow and smiled. “My secret is I don’t wash with shampoo. Ever.”
“For real?”
“For real. Only once in a while with baking soda and apple cider vinegar.”
“Whoa, I love shampoo. I don’t know if I could ever be that strong. Also, fair warning, you better pull those straps tighter or I’m gonna bolt.”
He chuckled and gave a good show of pulling the straps imperceptibly tighter. “I’m going to go ahead and guess you are strong enough.” He grinned, patted me on the shin and handed me some earplugs. “It’s pretty noisy when the machine gets going. These will help. If you need anything over the next hour there’s a microphone here so I’ll be able to hear you. No need to be scared.”
Yeah, right.
The bed-pod slid me into the tunnel. The earplugs barely blocked the loud whirring. I kept hearing “tumor…tumor…tumor” in rhythm to the MRI noises. Here I was, alone, strapped down with no control. No escape.
Think of something nice, something happy. The vision of Jason at the beach came to mind. Now as the machine roared around me, it instead chanted, “torso…torso…torso…” Much better.
“Hey there, you awake?” Troy’s voice pierced through my torso-trance.
My eyes flew open, my skin a bit flushed.
“You’re all set, trooper.” Troy moved me out of the tunnel, undid the straps and helped me off the machine.
I clutched my gown tightly around me as I said, “Thank you,” and climbed back into the wheelchair for my next carnival ride. Whee.
The bone scan and first CAT scan were quieter than the MRI. In preparation for the second CAT scan, another nurse injected me with a contrast solution. I had to wait for a few hours so the “nuclear medicine” (a serious oxymoron) could be fully absorbed into my bones. She explained the solution would create “hot spots” to highlight any diseased area of the bone. I somehow managed not to throw-up from her description.
She wheeled me back to the hospital room where Mom and I ate lunch and played gin with the cards Craig brought us, biding our time, trying not to think about my bones being momentarily nuclear and possibly diseased.
“Gin,” I said as I put my last card down, and Mom groaned—it was my third win in a row. I bet she was purposely letting me win since I was not winning at real life today.
My phone rang. It was Dad.
“Ellie-bee. Are you okay? Your mom said they kept you overnight and you�
�re getting scans?”
He hadn’t called me Ellie-bee in years. It made me feel like I was ten again. “Hi, Dad. Are you coming to see me?” My voice sounded higher-pitched and needier than I meant, but I needed one of his bear hugs right now.
He coughed into the phone. A tic of his when he was uncomfortable. “Well…” He wasn’t coming. “We just got to the airport. We’re about to catch a flight to Maui for Barb’s work conference and our vacation.”
Oh right, Barb’s “We Can Do It” conference, where she was getting an award for reaching a super special level of sales. Platinum, I think. Some sort of metallic recognition. I said nothing, wishing I hadn’t asked if he was coming to the hospital.
He uncomfortable-coughed again. “Do you want me to cancel my flight?” He whispered the last part, clearly not wanting Barb to hear him say that.
Yes. Except I want you to just do it and not ask me. “No. It’s okay. I have Mom here, and Craig.”
And all my friends who seem to care so much more about me than you do.
Most of me wanted him to have a nice trip to Maui, just not the part that needed him to be here and hold me and call me his Ellie-bee.
We said our good-byes. I put my phone down and reached across the pile of cards and gave Mom a huge hug. She would have canceled her trip the second she knew I was in the hospital, even if it had been for some minor injury.
Breaking from the hug, I gathered up the cards and started shuffling them. Mom stared at me. “What, Mom?”
“Oh, you just have a glow about you.” She laughed.
It took me a second to understand. “Mom, did you just make a joke about the radioactive tracer they put in me?”
She nodded, giggling some more. My mom’s smile was the best.
When my last scan of the day was over, Darlene wheeled me back to the room. “You can change and head home now, dear. It will take a while to get the results from radiology.”
“Thanks for your help today, Darlene.”
“You bet, kiddo.” She smiled and walked out.
As I changed out of the gown I studied my leg. It looked normal. Healthy. They are being overly cautious. It’s nothing.
A Messy, Beautiful Life Page 5