The End of Forever

by Lurlene McDaniel

  He hesitated but followed her down the hall. At the closed door of ICU, Erin explained the situation through a speaker in the wall to Becky, the daytime nurse. They were admitted, and Erin continued to lead him through the unit toward the partitioned area where Amy lay.

  Amy’s body was motionless, but Becky approached and announced cheerfully, “You’ve got visitors, Amy. It’s your sister and a friend named Travis.” Becky patted Amy’s arm. The ventilator hissed, and Amy’s chest rose up and down under the white sheet. Dark bruising had appeared around her eye sockets, and her coloring seemed ashen, not pink and glowing.

  Erin stroked Amy’s cheek. “Travis is with me, Ames. And when I stopped by school to get my books, everyone there asked about you. Even Miss Hutton.” Erin felt as if she were talking to a doll. She glanced toward Travis, who had backed up all the way to the wall, his expression wooden. “Do you want to tell Amy anything?” she asked.

  “No.” He looked cornered, trapped. “I want to go now.”

  “But you’ve hardly seen her,” Erin protested.

  “I’ve seen her enough.”

  Becky stepped forward and told Erin, “Perhaps you could come back later.”

  Travis brushed around them and hurried to the door. “I’ll see you outside, Erin.”

  He was gone, and Erin faced the nurse over Amy’s bed. “I–I guess it was getting to him,” she apologized.

  “It’s not unusual.”

  “I’d better go check on him.”

  Becky nodded, and Erin took one last lingering look at her sister and said, “I’ll be back later, Ames, all right?” She felt a little foolish asking permission, because Amy couldn’t answer. Erin turned quickly and left ICU to look for Travis.

  She found him back in the waiting room taking long gulps from a can of cola. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Sure.” He shrugged and looked sheepish. “It was tougher than I thought, seeing her that way.”

  “She’s going to be fine,” Erin said. “It’s gonna take some time, that’s all.”

  Travis shifted nervously. “Listen, I bought her a stuffed animal, but I left it down in my car. Can I bring it over to your house later? Maybe you could bring it up to her, and she could have it in her room. Do you think that’ll be all right with the nurses?”

  Erin considered his plea. He’d bought Amy a gift, which was more than she had done. And maybe it would be a good idea to bring some of Amy’s familiar things from home so that when she woke up, she’d see them and not be scared. “How about tonight? I’ll be home after supper.”

  “I’ll see you later,” Travis said, and after he’d gone, she stared at the floor where he’d stood until her legs ached.

  Erin ate a quick supper in the hospital cafeteria and returned to the waiting room only to see her mother sitting alone in a corner and smoking a cigarette.

  “Are you relieving me, Mom?” she asked, feeling awkward.

  Mrs. Bennett casually snuffed out the cigarette and said, “Dont look so disapproving, Erin. It settles my nerves, and it’s better than taking tranquilizers.”

  “You don’t have to explain it to me.” The room was nearly deserted, and Erin assumed that the “regulars” were at supper and would be returning soon. “Travis came up today,” she said. “But he didn’t handle it too well.”

  “I’m not surprised. Dr. DuPree said he’ll have another CAT scan run tomorrow. There’s still a lot of intracranial pressure.” Mrs. Bennett took out another cigarette and lit it.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means that if her brain continues to swell, he’ll have to operate to relieve the pressure.”

  The word “operate” made Erin’s stomach lurch. “That sounds scary.”

  Mrs. Bennett tapped the ash off the end of her cigarette. “There’s something else you need to be aware of, Erin. It happened this afternoon and gave me a lot of false hope.”

  “What?”

  “Amy moved.”

  Erin gasped audibly. “You mean she might be coming out of the coma?”

  Mrs. Bennett shook her head impatiently. “No, that’s not it at all. I thought it was, but when I ran for the nurse, she explained to me that what I saw was simple spinal reflex. Nothing more. You know, like a knee jerking when it’s hit in the right spot. So if you see her hand move, or her eyelids flutter, that’s all it probably is.”

  Erin realized how much her mother’s hopes had been dashed by the medical explanation of Amy’s movement and wished she could take away her disappointment. “Thanks for warning me,” she said.

  Her mother blinked hard and crossed her arms. “I don’t want Amy to be a vegetable, Erin. I don’t want her hooked to machines for the rest of her life, unable to talk or smile ever again.”

  “That’s not going to happen to Amy,” Erin said fiercely. “The quality of Amy’s life is important,” Mrs. Bennett continued. “She’s too young to live the rest of her life in a nursing home.”

  “That’s not going—”

  “Stop it, Erin!” her mother interrupted. “Of course it can happen to Amy. That’s the bottom line when she comes out of her coma. If she comes out of it.”

  Erin wanted to clamp her hands over her ears. How could her mother be saying those things? How could she even suggest the hideous alternative to being kept alive by machines? She felt a growing pressure at the base of her skull and knew that a headache was coming on. “M-mom, please don’t give up on Amy.”

  Mrs. Bennett reached out and tucked Erin’s hair over her shoulder. “Is that what you think I’m doing? I’m not giving up. I’m just tired, and I feel so helpless whenever I go in there and see her lying so still.”

  “But she’s alive,” Erin said. “And that’s what counts.”

  Her mother ground out her cigarette and stood. “Go on home, Erin. Wake your father at ten so that he can come down here and stay with Amy and me. I’ll be home later.”

  Erin watched her mother head down to ICU, feeling as if her insides were being torn out. Why was this happening to their family? Why had she let Amy talk her into driving the car? If only she could turn back the hands of the clock.

  “Are you all right?” The voice caused Erin to jump, and she turned to face a girl her own age with dark hair and wide gray eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” the girl said. “I’m Beth Clark, and I saw you come in the other night.”

  Erin mumbled a self-conscious greeting and wished Beth would go away.

  “Why are you here?” Beth asked.

  Erin told her, then realized that it was only fair to ask, “And why are you here?”

  Beth stared off in the distance. “It’s my mother.” Her gaze found Erin’s again. “She’s dying, and her only hope is if somebody else dies before she does.”

  Chapter Ten

  “I don’t understand,” Erin said to Beth, taken aback by her extraordinary statement.

  “My moms had kidney disease for years. This past year she’s gotten worse, so they put her on dialysis three days a week. She was an outpatient, so I dropped her off for treatments on my way to school and picked her up on my way home from school.”

  “I’ve heard about dialysis,” Erin said slowly.

  “It’s being hooked up to a machine that does the work of the kidneys.” Beth explained. “The machine cleans the blood, and each exchange takes about six hours.”

  Another machine doing the work of a human organ, Erin thought. “Let’s hear it for technology,” she said without sarcasm.

  Beth sank into an upholstered chair, and Erin took the chair next to her. “Anyway, dialysis helps, but it’s no way to spend the rest of your life. I’ve got a brother and two sisters, and we’d like to have Mom well.”

  “So what now?”

  “She needs a kidney transplant. We’ve been waiting for a donor for months.”

  “Is that why she’s here?”

  “Not really. She got sick, so they checked her into the hospital, but she’s getting bet
ter.”

  Erin found herself keenly interested. She’d read about kidney and heart transplants, and now here was a real-live person who needed one. “How will they find a donor?”

  Beth toyed with a silver necklace. “Oh, she’s been programmed into a computer bank. That way if someone dies and donates his organs, doctors can check for compatibility. You know, a good match of tissues so her body won’t reject the new kidney. At home we’re always on call. Everytime the phone rings, it could be the hospital saying they’ve found a donor. If that happens, we drop everything and go for the transplant.”

  “And if they don’t find one?”

  “They’ll send her home again without one. This time they’re putting a portable dialysis machine in our house, and she’ll be almost one hundred percent bedridden. Our lives would be so much easier if they could find a kidney for her.”

  Erin saw sadness in Beth’s eyes, and she felt sorry for her. But she saw the unfairness of the situation too. Finding Beth’s mother a kidney meant that someone, someplace, had to die. The idea made her shudder. She didn’t quite know what to say, so she changed the subject and asked about Beth’s school.

  It turned out that she was a junior at a huge public high school. She had a boyfriend—“the tall guy with red hair who sits in the corner with me during the evenings.” Erin remembered seeing him.

  Beth asked, “Was that boy who was here earlier your boyfriend? I saw you hugging him.”

  Erin reddened. “No, Travis is my sister’s boyfriend. I was having a bad dream, and he woke me up, and I just grabbed him.”

  “He’s cute.”

  “Yeah, well, he and Amy have been hot and heavy since before Christmas.”

  “Is that your sister’s name? Amy?”

  Erin nodded but found herself reluctant to discuss her sister’s situation. She quickly looked up at the clock and said, “Gee, Beth, I’ve got to be going. Travis is stopping by my house sometime tonight, and I don’t want him to wake my dad. Were all taking shifts, and it’s Dad’s turn to spend the night.”

  “No problem. I wanted to say hi to you sooner, but you kind of looked like you wanted to be left alone.”

  “I didn’t mean to be antisocial, but it’s been a tough few days. Some of the other people in here have tried to get a conversation going, but I just didn’t feel up to it.”

  “Hey, that’s okay, I understand. It’s crazy. You spend night and day with these strangers, and the only thing you have in common is that somebody is really sick, maybe dying, and you sort of band together for support. When they leave, you never see them again, but while you’re here, together in this room, they’re the best friends you have.”

  “You sound like the voice of experience.”

  Beth gave a wry smile. “Five times in the past fourteen months I’ve camped in this place. I sure hope they find a kidney for my mom soon. I feel like a hospital groupie.”

  Erin laughed and gathered her things. She promised Beth she’d see her the next day and headed for the elevator. Erin was halfway down before she realized that it was the first time she’d laughed in the past three days, it had felt good.

  Erin let herself into her house and shivered. The silence was eerie. No lamps were lit, and the rooms were dark and chilly. She found a note from her dad saying he couldn’t sleep and had gone to the library, and that he’d be home by ten to get ready to go to the hospital.

  Erin deposited her things in her room, took a hot shower, washed her hair, and began to blow-dry it. She’d never felt so drained and sapped in her life, not even after a grueling dance performance. She stared at the mirror thoughtfully. She hadn’t thought about dancing in days. There’d been a time when that was all she thought about. Funny how the focus of your life can shift so drastically.

  Her fine blond hair danced about her head as the dryer worked. Terpsicord, Ms. Thornton, and Wolf-trap seemed light-years away. She’d never even told Amy about Wolftrap. She’d been upset with her and had perversely held back the news. Yet Erin knew that if she had said something, Amy’s response would have been totally excited and encouraging.

  A lump rose in Erin’s throat. There were so many things she wanted to say to her sister, so many times she’d growled at her or teased her that she wanted to take back. If only Amy would wake up, Erin swore she’d never be mean to her again.

  Listlessly Erin finished dressing and wandered to the living room. She put on a cassette of Amy’s favorite rock group and pulled out the stack of family photo albums. Her mother had kept them up-to-date, and Erin started with the one that featured Amy’s birth. She’d just gotten past the photos of an infant Amy in the hospital nursery when the doorbell rang. Travis stood on the doorstep. She brought him into the living room and plopped onto the floor.

  “I was just going through some old pictures,” she explained.

  He tossed the stuffed bear he was carrying onto the sofa and sat down beside her. “Amy?” he asked, pointing to a dark-haired toddler, holding two fistfuls of birthday cake.

  “She was a terror,” Erin said with a wistful smile.

  “Is this you?” He indicated one of a six-year-old Erin dressed in a tutu with her arms poised over her head.

  She made a face at her roly-poly image. “That was taken before my very first recital. Look at all that baby fat.”

  “There’s no baby fat on you now,” Travis said, and his observation made her stomach feel fluttery. He was sitting so close that she caught his fresh, clean scent.

  They flipped through the albums and watched the years parade past in a collection of color photos. Amy in her playpen. Erin on her first tricycle. Amy with her front teeth missing and clutching her school lunch box. Erin wearing a crown as May Day queen in the fifth grade.

  “When was this one taken?” Travis asked.

  Erin gazed at a blowup of one of her fathers favorite photographs. Erin and Amy were running barefoot through a grassy field full of dandelions, their long hair streaming behind them, their mouths wide with laughter.

  “I still remember that day,” Erin said. “I was five and Amy had just turned four. I thought that field was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, that it was a place where a fairy princess lived. And all Amy wanted to do was run around and make the seeds fly off the weeds. I started to cry and asked Dad to make Amy stop, but of course she didn’t, and I eventually got into the game too. We chased those seeds for over an hour. I can still see them floating away in the sky.”

  They stared at the photo in silence until a wave of melancholia engulfed her and she was afraid she might start crying. She looked at Travis, and his expression was blank. She wondered what he was thinking, and then she saw the cuddly stuffed bear on the sofa. “Is that for Amy?”

  Travis followed her line of vision. “Yeah. She saw it at the mall and made a big fuss about how cute it was. So I bought it for her.”

  “I asked the nurses if it was all right to bring some of her things from home for her room, and they said I could. Why don’t you just bring the bear up to her tomorrow?”

  Travis studied the bear for a long moment before speaking. “I’m not going back up there, Erin.”

  “What?”

  “Not until Amy’s sitting up in her bed and talking.”

  “But it may help her subconsciously knowing that you’re in the room with her.”

  He looked at Erin as if she were crazy. “Erin, she doesn’t know when anyone’s in the room with her.”

  Erin snapped, “How do you know? What makes you an authority?”

  “Take it easy,” Travis said with a placating tone. “I’ll keep calling for reports, and you can call me too. But I can’t go back inside that room when she’s so—you know—so out of it.”

  “She’s unconscious. She’ll wake up.”

  “She’s in a coma. It’s different.”

  By now they were both on their feet amid the jumble of photo albums. “It’s just a deep sleep, that’s all. It’s a way for her brain to recover fro
m being so banged around.”

  “Erin, face reality. She can’t even breathe by herself.”

  Erin wanted to scream at him, but just then her father came home. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  Erin stood facing Travis, her heart pounding, her fists balled. “Travis was just leaving,” she said tersely.

  Travis mumbled apologetic words to Erin and her dad and retreated out the door. She longed to slam it hard against his back.

  “What was that all about?” Mr. Bennett asked when she bent and started piling the albums.

  “Nothing. He’s just so negative about Amy’s condition, and I got mad. He says he’s not even going up to see her again until she comes out of the coma.”

  Mr. Bennett knelt down next to her and held her by the shoulders. “Don’t be so upset about it, honey.”

  Erin felt tears well up in her eyes. “But she likes him so much, and he acts like he doesn’t even care!”

  “You can’t expect everyone to handle this thing in the same way, Erin. Grief doesn’t affect us all alike.”

  “Grief?” She said the word incredulously. “Grief is when you cry. Travis isn’t crying. I guess he’s too macho for tears.”

  “In other words, real men don’t cry?”

  She held her spine stiff and put a chill in her voice. “Real men stick by the people they say they care about. They don’t have to bawl and blubber, but they do have to keep their promises. And Travis Sinclair told me he really liked Amy. Now he’s not even going to go see her in the hospital.”

  She thought of all the fantasies she’d had about him, of how much she’d longed to have him as a boyfriend, and felt even more betrayed. “He’s acting like a creep, Daddy. A genuine creep!”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Dont judge him too harshly,” Mr. Bennett said. “There’s more to grieving than crying. And there’s more to caring than hovering over someone’s bedside.”