by Larry Center
A text alarm went off on Cheryl’s phone, but she ignored it. Leaning forward, Cheryl listened as Whitaker repeated what he’d told me, her eyebrows knitted together.
“We’ve started him on a low dose of Dilantin and we’re monitoring his blood levels. We’ll do a follow-up MRI at a later date as well.”
Dilantin. Another drug. Great.
“He was hit on the head at school about two months ago,” I mentioned. “He got in a little fight. Would that have caused it?”
“It’s hard to say. It’s a possibility, though,” Dr. Whitaker said, rubbing his hands together. He looked away as if he were thinking of something.
“A possibility?” Cheryl pursed her lips. “Wait and see? You can’t be more precise than that?”
The next thing I knew, Cheryl was covering her face with her hands and her shoulders were heaving. I felt myself disintegrate right there on the spot as well. When does God turn off the pain spigot that He, in all His wisdom, showers down on us?
When?
“That Martin boy, remember he was in Tommy’s class last year?” Cheryl turned to me, wiping her face with her hands, the silver bracelets on her wrists jangling, echoing the state of my nerves. “He had seizures and had to wear a helmet. It was awful. I-I can’t believe it. I can’t take it. I just can’t—”
“I’m sorry,” Whitaker said delicately. He cleared his throat. “But all in all, let me reassure you, I really don’t think this will be a debilitating factor for him once we get things under control. As I was explaining to Mr. Crutcher, children with neurological disorders are at a greater risk than—”
“Doctor?” A blue-eyed nurse poked her head through the door. “It’s the Crutcher boy. We need you now.”
I was the first one out the door, my heart pummeling against my chest like a wild animal trying to ram its way out of my ribcage. I raced toward Tommy’s room, which was far down the hall on the same floor. I heard cries, and then an inhuman squeal that pounded my eardrums.
“Eeeeee . . . iiiiiuuuuu . . .Eeeee . . . ”
Two nurses stood next to my son as he twisted, bucked, and jerked. His mouth foamed. It was as if some demon from another world had taken hold of him. His hands curled into tight fists at his sides, and his back arched wildly, completely out of control.
“Eeeee . . .. uuuuuu . . .”
It took me a minute to realize that Cheryl was standing next to me, her hand on my arm and squeezing for dear life. I gasped, feeling breathless, heart knocking.
“Ouuuu . . . Eeeee . . . Mamamamameee . . . Dadadadadadeeee . . .”
Whitaker stood next to the bed, monitoring him, still maintaining his calm. I desperately wanted to help, to make it stop, to fix this problem with some sort of restorative wrench I could pull from my fatherly toolbox. But what could I do?
Spittle flung from Tommy’s mouth. He stiffened and then violently jerked. Stiffened and jerked. Then his body fell limp for a moment, but only to mildly jerk again, back arching, hands clenched into fists. For a long moment, his entire body shook, quivered, lay silent, then shook again. Head twisting side to side, his face turned white.
God, make it stop. Please make it stop!
My head buzzed. Large dots floated in front of my eyes.
What seemed like light years later, Tommy’s breathing finally slowed, the trembling subsided, and the seizure mercifully ended. I felt like I’d been through a boxing match. I thought I might pass out. I looked around for a chair to sit in, but there wasn’t one. I leaned against a wall, clenching my teeth and fists. Fear landed inside me and beat its wings in my chest.
When Tommy drifted off to sleep, a nurse wiped the drool from his lips and the sweat from his forehead. The sight of Cheryl’s pale face and the way she wrung her hands . . . My own fogginess and fear . . . It was as if we were worn-out survivors on an utterly fragile boat, two parents completely lost at sea.
Cheryl and I both stepped toward the bed and took turns kissing our sleeping son on the cheek. My heart broke just standing over him. He looked peaceful. Quiet. I stroked his face. Cheryl felt his forehead as if she were trying to read his temperature; parental habit. We murmured soothing words he couldn’t hear.
A few minutes later, we were standing in the hallway outside Tommy’s room with Dr. Whitaker.
“I thought you had it under control,” I said, unable to hide the disappointment in my voice.
“We’ll have to increase his dosage.” Whitaker’s still-calm eyes bore through me. “There’s a certain degree of trial and error to these kinds of—”
“Can’t you get it right?” Cheryl snarled. “What do you mean trial and error? He’s not some kind of a goddamn science experiment.”
“Cheryl." I took hold of her arm. “Calm down now. The doctor’s doing everything he—”
“Calm down?” She yanked her arm away. “You fucking calm down! I want answers.”
“These things take time,” Dr. Whitaker said. “I’m sorry. But I assure you, we’ll get things under control.”
Cheryl glared at the doctor with vampire eyes—as if she were about to take a bite out of his neck.
“Dr. Whitaker, are they . . . ” I hated to say the word. “Are the seizures painful for him?”
“Not physically,” Dr. Whitaker replied. “Although there can be some pre-seizure head pain and other warning signs such as dizziness or nausea. The body actually goes numb. Sometimes there’s an electric-shock feeling when it happens and patients can experience a metallic taste in their mouth and grow disoriented. But there’s no real physical pain, if that's what you're asking.”
So, it was the parents who felt the pain. And that was fine with me.
Dr. Whitaker relegated us to an empty waiting room down the hall next to the nurses’ station. Cheryl and I sat on opposite ends of a putrid-green couch. I sipped bad coffee made worse by the taste of Styrofoam. Cheryl drank herbal tea. She was a take-charge woman, and God knows, the mother of an autistic child has to be, but now all she could do was mindlessly thumb through a dog-eared People magazine. I actually felt sorry for her. I alternated between standing up and sitting down, feeling confined and jittery. I was living on thin emotional oxygen and I had no idea we’d be thrust together again, so soon.
There wasn’t much to say. No, there was too much to say. Cheryl flipped the magazine’s pages while I stared into the netherworld of empty space.
Silence. The dreaded language of our lives.
“Why’d you go off on the doctor like that?” I asked finally.
“Are you kidding me? Why not?” Cheryl placed the magazine on a table and put her face in her hands. She rubbed her eyes, then leaned back and gazed up at the tiled ceiling. “Okay, I was wrong. I don’t know. I just got set off. I’ve got a lot on my mind right now.” She turned to me and looked me up and down. “More than you know.”
A tear zigzagged down her cheek, a single drop of emotion reflective of the way we lived raising Tommy, always zigging and zagging, day in, day out. We lived in an emotional maze. Cheryl pulled out a tissue from her purse with trembling hands like a rabbit from a hat, white, soft, and fluttery.
“Look, Chris. What if Tommy’d had a seizure when he was out playing with your chimps?”
“Life’s full of risks, Cher.” I gave an explanatory wave of my hand. “You have to weigh the benefits against the risks. You know he’s totally supervised. But you do have a point. We really don’t know about these seizures yet. If he starts having them all the time, it’s going to be a totally different lifestyle. But I don’t think that’ll be the case. God, I hope not.”
“Yeah, well.” She took a long breath and toyed with her bracelets. “I just hope this isn’t the beginning of some kind of regression.” Cheryl stood and paced around the room, then sat back down with a huff. We’d seen regressions before. Just when we thought he was making progress with some kind of therapy, all the things he’d learned would be forgotten and, even worse, he would sink to an even lower level of withdrawn
dysfunction. It was heartbreaking. Cheryl turned to me and studied my face. “Did you remember to give him his Wellbutrin?”
“Sure did.”
“And his omegas and his probiotic?”
“Absolutely. I even took a probiotic myself.” I smiled, trying to lighten things up. Anger would solve nothing. That was clear.
“Good for you.” Cheryl sniffed. “Well, we’ll have to see if it’s safe to take the Wellbutrin along with the Dilantin.”
“I still think he’s doing better on that than on the Buspar,” I said.
“Maybe.” A hand went to her neck, rubbing it. “Yes. Thank God, he’s off that Klonopin. It made him way too lethargic.”
“I agree.”
We were always chasing a variety of medications, hoping for something that would actually keep the peace in his mind.
I gulped my coffee, which went down lukewarm. Cheryl picked up the magazine from the table and returned her attention to it, flipping pages.
“By the way, Dr. McCain gave me Tommy’s latest report on the Briggs Language test,” she said a minute later.
McCain was Tommy’s school psychologist and the Briggs was just one more attempt to try to assess Tommy’s developmental progress so that we could decide on goals and objectives.
“And?” I raised an eyebrow.
“It basically showed minimal progress. After all the training we’ve done with him. Minimal progress,” Cheryl hissed. “Can you believe it?”
“Well, you know what I think?” I leaned back in my chair and stretched out my legs. “Big deal. We’re raising a child, not a test score. Who cares about those scores anyway?”
A hint of a smile broke on her face. “You know, you’re right. He’s not graphs and numbers on paper, not at all, and once he gets to Acorn, we should start seeing some real improvement.” She touched my hand for a moment before pulling it away. She spoke softly. “Look, Chris. It’s all for Tommy. You have to know that. I really believe Acorn’s the best plan right now. We have to help him as much as we can. I’m sorry.”
“I know, Cher,” I said, feeling sorry too, feeling like I should just give up and let her have her way, tired of fighting. I touched her hand back. “I know.”
* * *
Tommy’s cloudy eyes and pale face set me on edge. I stood next to his bedside, leaning over him. He had a small, private room just off ICU. The curtains were closed around us, forming a kind of room cocoon. The humming whir of the AC kicked on. A water glass with a bent straw in it rested on a table next to his bed.
“Daddeee.” He turned his head my way, but refused to give me eye contact, his eyes dodging my own and a lump of sadness lodged in my throat. Wetness filled my eyes, my vision blurring. The world itself seemed to suddenly melt down.
“I'm here, son, right here.” I took his hand and held it, kissed the top of it. I knew he’d feel I was invading his space, but I did it anyway. I couldn’t help it. His hand felt so fragile, so impossibly tender, smooth skin. I recalled his baby hands, marvelous and perfect, his baby smile, free and wide. He pulled his hand away.
“Does your head hurt? Does your—”
“Where.” He didn’t ask it as a question. Propped up in the bed, he looked at the tube running from his arm, then gave me direct eye contact. “Where.”
“You’re in the hospital, Tom-Tom. It’s where doctors take care of you. But don’t worry, you’re going to be fine.” I forced a fragile smile. “You had a time-out. You needed a rest, that’s all. You had what they call a seizure. A bit of a break time.” I smiled again, and this time my smile didn’t feel so tight. “Nothing to worry about, okay? When we see Max, we’ll tell him all about it.”
“Max,” Tommy said. “Max.” His eyes met mine, but just for a moment. “Hosp. ‘K.”
Cheryl entered the room, her face contorted in an explosion of worry. She rushed toward Tommy like the motherly freight train of affection she was. I thought: a force of nurture. I moved back and stood against the wall, watching her, feeling like a second-class parent. Since the divorce, so many times I felt as if she and Tommy were the sun, and I was the orbiting planet. I had no idea whether I was a close Mercury or a distant Neptune.
"Tommy, my darling. My sweet boy. Feel better?” Her tender Mommy voice was perfect and reassuring, hitting just the right notes.
Tommy’s words fell on my ears. His face was impassive, rigid. “Mommy, Daddy.” He drew his tongue around his lips, north, east, south, west.
“Ah! You’re up.” A red-haired nurse, all smiles, bounced into the room. She checked Tommy’s IV, then took out a blood-pressure cuff. “I’m going to wrap this around your arm, okay? It won’t hurt. I promise.”
“No, no, no, no touch.” Tommy pulled away when she tried to wrap the cuff around his arm.
“It’s all right,” I said. “She’s just trying—”
“Nooooooo.” Tommy drooled and shook his head, closing his eyes. He sucked in his breath and tightened up his body as if he could somehow hide from her.
“Oh, Tommy,” Cheryl said. “Don’t worry. The nurse just wants to find out how you’re doing. It’s okay, baby doll.”
“Ouuuuu . . .” He shut his eyes, balled his hands up in tight fists, and held his body rigid while the nurse proceeded to inflate the cuff. She was aware he had autism. Everyone on the floor knew.
“That’s a good boy,” I said once the procedure was done. “Are you hungry?”
Tommy didn’t answer.
“No problem,” the nurse said. “B.P.’s fine. We'll get a tray up here pronto. What does he like?”
“Peanut butter and jelly?” Cheryl asked. “And no crusts. And if they can cut it into squares, that would be great. Squares and circles, actually.”
“I don’t see why not.” She raised an eyebrow as she smiled.
When the nurse swept out of the room, Cheryl put out her arms toward Tommy. “Hug?”
Tommy’s expression grew smug. “Okay. Hug okay.”
I stood back as Cheryl gave Tommy his version of a hug, a quick body-to-body press, practically over before it started. He sniffled and she quickly wiped his nose with a tissue from her purse. Mothers and their ever-ready tissues, a universal relationship: Wherever there was a mom and a child, tissues were not far behind. She sat down with him on the bed. I just realized that I’d rushed out of the house so fast, I’d forgotten Mister Backpack and suddenly felt like I was missing an appendage. I was that used to having the thing around.
“There you go, Tom-Tom. There you go,” she said softly. “It’s all going to be all right.”
“Mommy.”
“Yes, I’m here, darling. Mommy’s here.”
Cheryl beckoned me to come closer, pulling me into their orbit. I joined them next to the bed and gave Tommy a quick hug as well. We were now, the three of us, only inches apart—physically anyway. Our family, reuniting. It felt incredible.
“You’re such a good boy,” Cheryl whispered. “Yes, you are. Such a good, good boy. Isn’t he, Chris?”
“He’s the best.” I said brightly. I did my best SpongeBob imitation. “Totally, the best kid in the whole pineapple. They’re always talking about Tom-Tom at the Krusty Krab, you know.”
“Daddeeee,” Tommy said, dropping a brick-word on my heart. He licked his lips again and drooled, his face forming an impassive expression. “Dadddeeee.”
“Hey, there, Mister Tommy,” I said as SpongeBob SquarePants. “You doing better now? Everybody at Bikini Bottom’s rootin’ for you.”
But I couldn’t get him to laugh. Cheryl gave me a smile, though, and then wiped at her misty eyes. A throaty, nervous laughter came out of me. I couldn’t help it.
“Guess what we’re going to do as soon as we get out of here?” Cheryl said.
“Wanna go,” Tommy said. “Go.” He gave Cheryl his Tommy-smile, fixed and unnatural, covering his teeth with his lips.
“As soon as the doctors say it’s all right to leave,” Cheryl said. “We’ll go home and watch S
tar Wars. You know, the one with the clone battle? And how about some cookie dough ice cream to eat while we watch the movie?” Cheryl gave Tommy a grandmotherly smile, pasting an all’s-right-with-the-world expression on her face. “How’s that sound, Tommy?”
I frowned. I wanted him to come home with me. It was still the weekend, Sunday afternoon, and officially, he was still in my custody. But I didn’t say anything. Why cause a ruckus at this point?
Tommy dittoed my silence. That was his answer, the best he could do. Who knew what he was really thinking? My shoulders sagged. I felt so frustrated.
“’K,” he said finally. He shrugged. “’K.”
I found myself moving closer to Cheryl without even realizing it. And then, suddenly, Cheryl and I came together and hugged, so unexpectedly, and yet, it seemed, so inevitably. After seeing our son writhe the way he had, our emotions were burned raw, and it was as if all our defenses came down at once. At that moment, we needed each other. That was all there was to it. I soaked up the feel of her body, lingering against me for comfort. The smell of her, the memories.
“God, Chris,” Cheryl whispered. “Seizures now. One more problem to deal with.”
“We’ll work through it,” I said, trying to maintain a steadfast outlook, though inside, I didn’t feel that way at all.
Her sudden closeness took me back to the warmth of when she was mine, those once upon a time days and nights. Now, we were just existing parent to parent. We would always be connected in that sense. Still, all that had lived between us for so many years washed over me as we continued clinging to each other, the in-and-out-tides of what we’d shared, what we’d lost. I felt somehow wounded yet slightly healed by her nearness simultaneously. Losing a marriage is like losing a child that you never get to see grow up, you never get to witness its full maturation and there’s always a hole inside you as a result—no matter what you tell yourself. As our embrace ended, remorse and hurt and sorrow slivered through me, one after the other. Tommy started to drone to himself, turning inward, oblivious to the turbulence around him, to what was going on.
“Oh, Chris,” Cheryl whispered. “Let’s not be angry. It isn’t worth it.” She clutched my shoulders.