Breathless

by Lurlene McDaniel

  Darla and Emily circle Travis. “I need to go home,” he tells the principal.

  “We'll take him,” Emily says.

  “All three of you?”

  “We'll be back before third period,” I say.

  She agrees, and we cut to the door.

  Outside, the sun is bright, the day cold for southern Alabama, and I feel like we've been let out of jail.

  “Did any of you know they were going to do that?” Travis asks. We shake our heads. “Because if I'd known, I'd never have come back.”

  “They wanted to honor you,” Emily says.

  “For what? I haven't done anything except survive and relearn how to walk. A three-year-old can do as much.”

  We pile into my car. “Where to?” I ask.

  “The lake,” Travis says. “I don't care if it's cold. I want to be near the water.”

  “What about coming back by third period?” Emily asks.

  “Get a grip, sis,” Travis says. “We're not coming back today.”

  “We'll do the drive-thru and get fries,” Darla says. “Warm us up.” She finds a blanket and tosses it over herself and Travis.

  I look over at Emily in my front passenger seat. Her face is beet red. I tell her, “I can bring you back if you want to come.”

  “I don't want to.”

  I'm betting she's never cut a class in her life. “Still playing by the rules, huh,” I tease her, and her face gets even redder.

  “I'm not a kid,” she growls. “Stop treating me like one.”

  If I treated her the way I want to, if I took her in my arms … I put the brakes on my train of thought and drive to the lake.

  Darla

  Life's been rocky at my house. Dad's temper is hair-trigger; he explodes over the smallest things. No need to burden Travis with my problems, so I keep mum, but this is how I'll remember my senior year—my dad yelling and slamming doors and my boyfriend sick with cancer.

  My father had a meltdown last night and actually slapped Mom. After it happened I raced upstairs and held my pillow over my head. I feel bad about retreating, but I wanted to stay out of his way.

  Later I find Mom in the kitchen, pressing an ice bag to her face. I'm sorry for her, but I'm angry too. I say, “You shouldn't let him get away with hitting you.”

  “You're right. He's not good at controlling himself. He didn't mean it. He said he was sorry.”

  “Don't defend him, Mom.”

  “He's had a bad month and he's frustrated.”

  “Well, if he ever does it again, you should take Kayla and leave. Or call someone to help you deal with it. You shouldn't let him get away with excuses.”

  She dismisses me with a hand wave. “Oh, Darla, I won't leave. You know that.”

  “But it's not right. It's against the law.”

  “This is our home.” She hardly listens to me. “I know he shouldn't have done it, and I know he's sorry. I love him. And he loves me. I know he does”

  I want to shake her. I know what love is, and it isn't about yelling and not at all about hitting. “I'm getting away from here right after high school, and you know that,” I tell Mom. “You and Kayla should come with me.”

  “Marriages have their ups and downs. One slap isn't right, but it also isn't grounds for leaving, Darla. You're young, and you don't understand how people can get angry at one another but still love each other. My life isn't yours.”

  She's right—I don't get it. Dad's losing control more often, and she acts blind, or worse, just lets it go. “Well, if he ever looks like he's going to hit you again when I'm in the room, I'm going to get in his face. I won't stand around while he smacks you. You should tell him to stop.”

  “It won't happen again,” she insists, trying to soothe me. She shifts the ice pack. “He truly loves me—all of us. He's just so very unhappy right now. He's suffering.”

  I don't say, “He's mean and rude and always has been,” like I want to. I tell her, “I think you should leave if it ever does happen again. Don't let him get away with that.”

  She studies me with eyes that look old. “And what about Travis? Will you walk just because he's sick and you're tired of watching him suffer?”

  “I'll never leave him.” I bristle at the idea. “Don't even compare these things. I love him.”

  “Then you understand perfectly how it is for me. So don't get all uppity and tell me what to do, Darla. I'm not leaving your father.”

  “It isn't the same at all!” I say. “Travis didn't ask for cancer.”

  But she isn't listening. She walks out of the kitchen, leaving me to sit alone in the dark feeling furious at the unfairness of life. Travis is good and kind and sick, and my father is healthy and mean and unworthy of my mother's love.

  Travis

  A diver understands statistics.

  Two summers, my junior and half of my senior years, since they took my leg.

  Five months of remission.

  One relapse.

  Second remissions are harder to achieve. Third remissions are almost impossible. I know the odds. I'm keeping score. Zero hope.

  This is how I think about my life: Before I got sick, endless possibilities. After? No possibilities.

  I started my senior year full of determination. Now I've stopped going to school altogether. The principal says that I can graduate if I finish my work at home. Fine. Suits me. It's hard hanging around the classroom when I feel rotten, even harder when I see kids horsing around and I haven't got enough energy to stand up. I miss diving. It's like an ache in my gut, the wanting to be up there on the board. Our team lost the district title my junior year. Everybody says we'd be state champs if I were still on the team. They'll get another shot at it in a couple of months, but I never will again. It's over for Travis Morrison.

  Everyone expects me to be strong and courageous. Mom and Dad see me as a fighter. Cooper thinks I'm invincible. Darla sees me as brave. Emily believes I'll triumph and get well.

  The other afternoon, when Darla was with me, I understood how cut off I am from my old life. She was happy, all excited, telling me all about her upcoming tryouts for the senior play and how she was going to win the lead from all comers.

  “Mrs. Paulson hasn't told us what the play will be. We're just supposed to show up in the auditorium, and that's when she'll give us the book for a cold reading. Can you imagine? So impromptu—wonder what play she's picked? Anyway I can't wait. I'm good at impromptu.”

  I used to be excited about the future too, pumped before every competition, eager to talk to every recruiter who called or wrote. Once, I was going to be a great diver. I saw myself as fearless, a champion, ready to take on the world. Once upon a time.

  Emily

  For a brief few months, Travis went into remission, and we thought he was on his way to full recovery. Hope was smashed five months later, just after the start of his senior year, when cancer was discovered in his lungs. He went back into chemo, and then into dialysis because his kidneys are failing due to the chemo. A vicious cycle.

  It's my sophomore year, and I'm put into honors classes. The work's harder; I spend lots of afternoons in the library studying. Sometimes instead of the library, I go to the church. The minister's daughter is a junior, and I hitch a ride with her. I'm not sixteen yet, so I only have my learner's permit, but once in a while, when he's feeling good, Travis lets me his drive his car and comes along for the ride. Those are good days.

  The church in the late afternoon is empty and quiet, and daylight hits the rose window high in the back and throws beautiful colored patterns across the stone walls. I walk the long carpeted aisle to the front, light small tea candles, and line them up on the altar rail. And I get on my knees and beg God to make Travis well. Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison….

  A tear splashes and a tea light sizzles. Kyrie … kyrie … eleison … eleison….

  I stop abruptly when I hear an unexpected noise behind me. I leap up, turn, and face Cooper standing in the middle of the aisle.
“Don't do that!” My voice bounces off the walls.

  “Do what?”

  “Sneak up on me.”

  He raises his hands, backs off. “Sorry.”

  My pounding heart slows. “Wait. I—I didn't mean … you just startled me, that's all. Why are you here?”

  “To take you home. Your dad's running late, and he called and asked if I could pick you up.” Dad usually comes for me after work at either the library or the church.

  “I can wait for Dad,” I say, feeling self-conscious and wondering how long Cooper's been watching my rituals.

  “Not an option. I can wait a little while for you, but I've got to go to work.”

  It's six o'clock. “Now?”

  “New shift at the warehouse. Time-and-a-half pay if I work till midnight.”

  “I'm ready,” I say, looking from the candles I've lit for Travis.

  “Do those candles help God see you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Did God speak to you?”

  My face goes hot because he's taunting me. “Please don't make fun of God.”

  “I'm not.”

  “Or of me and what I believe.”

  “I'd never make fun of you, Emily. God, maybe. Never you.”

  This doesn't reassure me. “Then what's your problem?”

  “I don't get how you can keep asking God for something that isn't happening. Is he deaf? Why doesn't he answer?”

  Haven't I asked the same question? Why doesn't God answer? I don't want Cooper to see my confusion, so I sling my book bag over my shoulder and head outside into the parking lot to his old tank of a car.

  We drive in silence, until Cooper says, “There is no answer, is there? Travis has cancer and your God's pulling the strings and he doesn't have to explain himself, right?”

  “Maybe he has another plan,” I say in God's defense.

  “Then what good is he? To have the power and not use it to help people? God's a fraud.”

  “Don't say those things!”

  “Why not? If he's real, if he's listening, maybe he'll get mad and turn his attention away from Travis and onto me.”

  His words splash cold water on my anger. When he pulls up in front of my house, he says, “Tell Travis I'll catch him later.”

  I feel his eyes on me as I leave the car, as his offer to substitute himself for Travis follows me through the front door and into the light.

  At the dinner table on Sunday night, Travis asks, “Mom, would you put a DNR on my chart?”

  She looks startled. “Where did you hear about a DNR?”

  “In the drip unit.” That's what he calls chemo. “From a woman with cancer.”

  “Is this an inquiry or a request?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes, it matters.” Mom puts down her fork. “Do you know what one is?”

  “It means they won't revive me if I die.”

  My stomach seizes. I glance at Dad, then back at Mom and Travis.

  “I won't do that,” Mom says.

  “But I've been thinking about it, and it's what I want.”

  “Now, you hear me, son. So long as you're alive, we'll never sign a DNR on you.”

  “But if I won't get better—”

  “As long as there's brain activity, people are kept alive. That's medical protocol. We don't kill people who have the hope of recovery.”

  “What kind of hope have I got? I'm not getting well, and I don't want to be hooked up to a bunch of machines that tie me to a bed for the rest of my life.”

  “Ventilators help a struggling body breathe. They're wonderful machines.”

  “And feeding tubes? Are they wonderful too?”

  “If it's necessary. A person has to have food and water.”

  “Why? Why hang on if I'm never going to get better?”

  Mom throws down her napkin. “You don't know that. New treatments come along every day.”

  “But don't I get a say-so?”

  “This isn't up for discussion,” she insists.

  Travis reins himself in. “I don't want to go on life support.”

  “If you're alive, there's hope. I will never give up hope. And neither should you. Do you hear me?”

  They stare each other down.

  Dad steps into the fray. “It was only curiosity, Jackie. Wasn't it, Travis?”

  Seconds tick away before Travis says, “Sure.”

  More seconds pass, the only sounds coming from silverware clicking on plates. I've lost my appetite, and I'm pretty sure everyone else has too.

  COOPER

  The first time Travis tells me what he wants me to help him do, my brain goes numb. He tells me again, and it's like I'm watching those airplanes hit the Twin Towers on TV reruns of 9/11. Like this can't be happening. “What did you say?”

  He repeats the words patiently and I know this is no drill. This is real. This is my best friend asking me to help him die.

  “That's crazy talk.”

  “Not crazy.” He's holding a pillow against his chest, and every few minutes he buries his face in it, muffling a bad cough. “The cancer's spreading.”

  This news hits me hard. I want to heave. First the amputation and cancer. Then remission and relapse. Then the spread to his lungs. Now more. I've watched him endure every bit of it. “But all that chemo they gave you. It was supposed to help. Why didn't it help?”

  “Luck of the draw, I guess.”

  “Your mom will find other doctors. She's a bulldog.”

  He presses the pillow to his face and coughs hard. When the spasm's over, he says, “I don't want to fight anymore. Contest is over. I lose. Help me go out.”

  I blink, swallow a knot of emotion. “No, I can't.”

  He catches my arm. “I want a say-so in how this all ends. I want to decide. I don't want the cancer deciding for me. My body. My choice.”

  “But you might get better—”

  “I'm not getting better.” He coughs and curses. “Mom's giving me shots and pills round the clock. Oxycontin, vicodin, morphine—none of it stops the pain.”

  I shake my head. “I can't do it, bro.”

  “Yes, you can. And I won't ask you to do anything that makes people think you helped me. I'll do the deed. I just need your help to do it.”

  I'm dog tired from all day at school and working a full shift. I've come over late because I know he's awake and alone and in pain. Tonight I wish I hadn't come. “Killing yourself is wrong.”

  “Why? It's not like I don't have a good reason.” He sits up. “I've researched it all on the Web. There are sites that support a person's right to choose to die. Doctors do it for terminal patients every day. It just isn't talked about.”

  “I'm not your doctor.”

  “Mom wouldn't let him do it anyway. She's already said as much.”

  I'm reeling. “Why ask me?”

  “Because you're the one person I can count on.”

  “I don't kill people.”

  His eyes never leave my face and his voice goes quiet. “If you ran over a dog and it was still alive and suffering, would you help end its suffering?”

  “You're not a dog. You're my friend.”

  “Then be a friend. Help me. If you don't, I'll find someone who will.”

  I'm cold all over. Really shivering. I know he isn't bluffing. He means it. “It's the pain. If they can control your pain—”

  “They can't. I won't die on cancer's timetable.” He's getting upset. “I'm going to die. Don't you get that? All I want is to control the timing. Me in the driver's seat. Me going out my way.”

  My chest feels like it's being crushed with a ten-ton weight. I think about his parents, about Emily, about how they'll feel if he does this. “What about your family?”

  “They'll bury me either way. And don't worry, I'll do it in a way so they won't know I did it. I have a plan.”

  “And what way is that?”

  He coughs hard into his pillow, looks over my shoulder, turns pale. />
  I turn and see Emily standing in the doorway wrapped in a pink bathrobe. “What's going on?” she asks. “It's one-thirty in the morning. What are you two so worked up about?”

  Emily

  I march into the living room, not one bit self-conscious about being in my robe and pajamas, because the looks on their faces tell me I've interrupted something important.

  Travis shakes his head. “Nothing. Guy talk.”

  Cooper won't look me in the eye. He studies his hands.

  “I don't believe you,” I say.

  “Believe what you want,” Travis says. “Why are you up?”

  “I heard voices.” Not true. I'm having trouble sleeping. I have bad dreams and wake up feeling scared to death.

  He coughs into the pillow. “You should be in bed,” I say.

  “You're not the boss of me.”

  An attempt at humor—that's what I used to say to him when we were kids and he told me what to do. “Want me to get Mom?” I ask softly when his coughing fit's over.

  He shakes his head. I feel helpless and useless.

  Cooper stands. “I'll take off.”

  “No, don't leave,” Travis says. “Just crash here.”

  Cooper glances at me, but I don't encourage him. I don't think he should hang around. Travis is all agitated, and Cooper has something to do with it. “Emily's right. You should be in bed, not out here talking to me.”

  Travis doesn't like the idea. “Why does everyone think they know what's best for me? Don't I get a say-so? I want Coop to stay.”

  “Later,” Cooper says. “I'm fried right now.”

  Once he's gone, I say to Travis, “I heard you say ‘die.’ I don't want you to die.”

  “The whole family would be better off.”

  “That's not true.”

  “Yes. It is.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Now don't be a snitch and run and tell Mom and Dad.”

  “I'm not a snitch. But you need to adjust your thinking.”

  He ignores my lecture, grabs my shoulder. “I want to go to my old room for something. Help me up the stairs.”