Saving Meghan

by D. J. Palmer

  Nobody but me could feel what was happening inside my body when my arms and legs went tingly while kicking around a soccer ball. My dad wasn’t looking out of my eyes when I saw sunshine one second, blackness the next. But he could judge me based on those damn numbers, those stupid test results. He thought I was trying to get attention, or make my mom happy, or whatever. That’s the vibe I got from him. That’s the look he gave me. It wasn’t disappointment. It was a look of disbelief. He thought my biggest secret was that I was faking it. But we both knew that wasn’t true.

  My biggest secret was that I knew his.

  CHAPTER 5

  BECKY

  Two days after she brought Meghan home from the hospital, Becky was back in her tidy office that could have been a bedroom for another child if only Carl had gotten his wish. He had been open and honest about his desire to have more children, never fully accepting Becky’s insistence that Meghan would be the only one.

  More children meant more chances of something going wrong, because when you lose a child, no matter the circumstances, every day comes with potential new dangers. Playgrounds cause tetanus. Toys are choking hazards. Pets carry disease. A cough portends the flu. A stomachache signals salmonella. Becky feared life’s mishaps and disasters like a child afraid of the dark.

  Nobody in Becky’s current orbit knew of Sammy. She never talked of him to her friends. They had moved to Concord when Meghan was still an infant. They bought a quaint colonial, intentionally not sharing their forwarding address or new contact information with former friends and neighbors.

  Carl had even changed the name of his business from Gerard Construction to C. G. Home Remodeling to make it more difficult to track them down. Some friends of Carl’s remained in the picture, but for Becky, being a transplant from California had made it easy to create an entirely new life for herself.

  The years had gone by in a blur, the small colonial regularly upgraded to bigger, better homes as fortunes improved, but time and distance could not erase the dark and painful memory.

  Becky had her therapist and her Xanax, but mostly she had her quiet desperation, a gnawing fear that any day could be the day tragedy visited her again. Becky had tried to continue her real estate venture after Meghan was born, but separation anxiety made it impossible to do the job. She felt silent judgment from other stay-at-home moms who had more kids to juggle, but chances were they’d never set foot inside an eerily quiet nursery or experienced that dreadful knowing.

  Becky heard a knock at the door. She spun around in her chair to see Holly in the doorway, a thick file folder of papers in her hand. Holly was petite and fit with straight, dark hair like her twin girls, Addy and Danielle. Becky had never been particularly close to Holly until they’d found common ground in the world of difficult-to-diagnose disease. She’d often complained how it had taken more than a year for doctors to figure out that Addy had Lyme, but at least she got a diagnosis.

  “Carl saw me coming up the driveway,” Holly said, “so he let me in. I only have a minute, but I wanted to drop off the folder in person.”

  The two women exchanged a quick hug before Becky took Holly’s research on Lyme. She thumbed through the contents cursorily.

  “Thank you so much,” Becky said. “I’ll go through this more carefully later.”

  Pressed up against a wall near Becky’s desk stood two large metal file cabinets filled with research on various diseases. Eventually, Holly’s folder would find a home in one of those drawers.

  “Do you want some wine?” Becky asked.

  She probably should have been embarrassed that the bottle was in her office and not the kitchen, but she’d long moved past the give-a-crap stage.

  “No, thank you,” Holly said. “I can’t stay. I’ve got to take Sarah to soccer.”

  Sarah was Holly’s eldest of her three. She and Meghan used to be good friends as well, but less so since Meghan got sick.

  “Any chance Meghan will play next season?” Holly said pleadingly. “The team just isn’t the same without her. They only won a handful of games.”

  “No. Definitely no more soccer, at least not until we figure out what’s going on with her,” Becky said a bit more forcefully than intended. “We can’t risk it.”

  “Have the doctors come up with anything?” Holly sounded exasperated for her.

  “We still don’t know,” Becky said with a sigh.

  Becky was grateful for Holly’s help, but now that she had the file folder, there was not much more to say. She had little in common with friends in town anymore—the women with whom she’d once shared chaperone duties, planned birthday parties, attended soccer games, jewelry parties, movie nights, and a host of other experiences that had bound her to them. Their kids were healthy; even Addy had been cured of Lyme. Those kids still played soccer, or did whatever, and Becky often felt the only thing she had in common with her former cohorts was a zip code.

  Meghan’s illness had dramatically altered the current of their lives. She could no longer care about who made what team, who got how much playing time, what teacher was being unfair, which kid was smoking weed, who was dating whom, or what colleges were on someone’s radar.

  None of that mattered to Becky anymore. As she had drifted away from those concerns, her local friends had drifted away from her. It had been different in year one of Meghan’s still-undetermined illness. Back then, there’d been a flurry of activity surrounding Becky when her daughter became strangely fatigued, started missing school, showed signs of declining skills on the soccer field. The symptoms were insidious and pervasive: muscle weakness followed by an inexplicable decline in motor skills, persistent headaches, exhaustion that weighed her down like an anchor, transforming Meghan from a vibrant kid into one with hardly any vitality at all.

  Becky had gone into power mode at home, researching cures for various diseases from mainstream approaches to alternative medicine with a frenzy. Meanwhile, in Becky’s eyes, Meghan’s symptoms had worsened, shape-shifted, but stayed vague enough to make it impossible for doctors to pin down. She reached out to friends as each new crisis arose, and they responded with care and concern, along with meals, but the illness dragged on. There comes a time when a person can no longer devote such energy to another’s plight. Like her mother’s longtime battle with cancer, there comes a time when you just want the pain to be over and done with.

  At first, Becky was hurt when the phone calls, pop-over visits, thoughtful notes, and check-ins slowed down before stopping almost entirely. But that resentment did not consume her. Becky could not climb aboard the self-pity train when she had so much to do for Meghan.

  Becky’s cell phone rang. She glanced at the number and grimaced. It was her sister, Sabrina, calling from California, probably with news of their mother. Becky wondered if her mother had died, if the cancer had at long last run its full course.

  She wondered how much she’d care if it had.

  CHAPTER 6

  Holly departed with a wave goodbye and a pantomimed promise to call. Becky pressed the talk button on her cell phone after swallowing down a generous, get-up-for-it gulp of wine.

  “Hi, Sabrina,” Becky said. “Is it Mom? Is she gone?” Becky dug her fingers into her leg, awaiting news.

  “She’s hanging on,” Sabrina said.

  Becky’s tension released. She could put off her conflicted feelings for at least another day.

  “The hospice nurse thinks it could be a few weeks, may be longer” continued Sabrina, “but the doctor is giving her a lot less time. It’s hard to tell. Her heart rate is elevated, which means her body is working extra hard to keep her alive.”

  For what? Becky thought. Her mother’s life had been a tortured one. Their father had died young, leaving Cora to raise two daughters on a minimum wage job. Their home was dirty—squalid being a more apt description. Becky was that girl, the gorgeous blond who’d come from nothing, the one that some sharp-eyed talent scout might have picked out from behind the diner counter if only
she’d been so fortunate.

  “Are you coming home?”

  Home. Becky wanted to laugh.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Can’t, or won’t?” Sabrina asked.

  “It’s Meghan. She’s not well.”

  Silence, and then, “How’s your newfound fame?”

  Of course, Sabrina was referring to the airplane incident. She knew better than to question her about Meghan. That conversation had not gone well the last time she’d tried.

  “You don’t even get fifteen minutes in this day and age,” Becky said, sounding a grateful note. “How long do you think she has?”

  “I can’t help you there, Becky.” The way Sabrina said it made Becky think she was talking about a lot more than just their mother.

  “I feel torn, you know—Meghan.”

  “Yeah, Meghan. Always Meghan. We all have choices to make,” said Sabrina.

  “Not all of us,” Becky answered, her anger rising. “Not me, or you, for that matter. Cora didn’t give us much of a choice, did she?”

  “I understand your feelings, but that was a long time ago. I’ve moved on. You should do the same.”

  “It’s not that easy for me.”

  Becky hated Sabrina’s uncanny ability to make her feel like the little sister again.

  “Some regrets last a lifetime. Our mother is going to die, and if you don’t fly out here, you’ll never get the chance to say what you want to say.”

  Damn. Why did she tell Sabrina of her intention to make “I forgive you, please forgive me” the final words she’d speak to their mother?

  “Now just isn’t a good time,” Becky said. “We have follow-up appointments with the cardiologist and neurologist this week.”

  There was a heavy sigh from Sabrina’s end, a loud “I don’t want to walk this road again” kind of sound.

  “There’s always a follow-up appointment,” Sabrina said.

  “This time it’s different,” Becky said, knowing in her gut that it was not different at all.

  “Look, I’ve got to go,” said Sabrina. “I’ll keep you posted on Mom. Let me know your plans when you make them.”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  Becky heard only the click.

  Her sister’s call had soured her already dismal mood. To feel better, Becky did what she did most every afternoon around this time: she went online.

  She had started her Facebook group, Help for Meghan, out of desperation, back when her daughter’s illness went from being a bit player in the family to the only performer in the troupe.

  Unwittingly, Becky had created an online oasis of sorts—a place where like-minded people who had taken an inexplicable interest in Meghan’s health, or had health troubles of their own, or just wanted a hand in solving a mystery, could gather to share, emote, and hunt for answers.

  Becky took great pride in the group. Selfishly, she liked being in the center of things. As the online group broadened, so did its focus. Deep discussions spawned from posts on everything from fibromyalgia to autoimmune disorders. The number of difficult-to-diagnose diseases never seemed to end. Meghan, who was the initial focus of the group, had morphed into a new persona, coming to represent the struggles of many people who sought labels for a whole host of strange and unusual symptoms.

  In no time at all, the online group Becky had founded grew from a handful of participants to hundreds. Most of the newcomers had read up on Meghan’s struggles, then expressed sympathy and offered advice before pivoting the conversation to personal concerns. Becky found herself researching topics far removed from Meghan’s issues so that she could share informed opinions with these strangers who had over time replaced her real friends.

  In one of her prouder moments, Becky had helped a woman from Boulder self-diagnose interstitial cystitis that her doctors had initially believed to be a bladder infection. There were other success stories attributed to Help for Meghan, which Becky had since converted from a public group to a private one. It was strangers helping strangers, a collection of people who no longer cared about life’s pedestrian dramas, living online with the hope that groupthink could help keep them living in real life, too.

  The group shared personal dramas as well as medical ones, which was how Becky knew that certain spouses, some so-called friends, and even a few bosses believed to differing degrees that her group perpetuated sickness. These doubters accused group members of uncovering new symptoms out of fear they’d lose the ties that held them together should they or a loved one become well again. Becky encouraged her virtual friends to stay strong and ignore the naysayers—without revealing that her husband was one of them.

  Picking up the glass of wine parked beside her, Becky took a long drink before she began contacting Meghan’s teachers. Sophomore year had been considerably less demanding, and she anticipated gathering a daunting amount of makeup work her daughter would need for what appeared to be another missed week of school. Or maybe it would stretch into two. Since returning from the hospital, Meghan hadn’t had the energy to do much more than shower and get dressed, and even those simple tasks proved overly taxing. Her daughter risked repeating the eleventh grade if she missed much more school.

  Becky took another sip of wine, letting the fruity taste linger before swallowing it down. She moved from corresponding with Meghan’s teachers to trading Facebook messages with Veronica Del Mar, a friend from St. Petersburg, Florida, whom she’d never met in person. Veronica had a daughter near Meghan’s age who was still awaiting a diagnosis for her chronic gastrointestinal issues. Becky recapped the latest episode with Meghan for Veronica’s benefit, typing out in Facebook’s Messenger application her terrifying ordeal at the airport and Carl’s mounting frustrations with her, Meghan, and the whole damn situation.

  VERONICA: They’re always frustrated. They don’t get us. It’s not in their DNA.

  BECKY: I’d like to think other fathers wouldn’t give up so quickly on their daughters.

  VERONICA: Two years is hardly quick.

  BECKY: True.

  VERONICA: Are you in couple’s therapy?? Might need it. I didn’t do it and regret it (sort of) … It’s actually been easier since Don moved out. At least he’s not questioning everything I do for Ashley.

  Becky knew Don only from Veronica’s Facebook pictures. When Don stopped appearing in her albums, Becky got an inkling something was up. Sure enough, Veronica soon posted a status announcing the end of her decades-long marriage. What people did not understand (but those like Becky and Veronica knew all too well) was that chronic diseases spread viruslike to other members of the family, leading to a different sort of sickness.

  BECKY: Any new news for Ashley?

  VERONICA: No. Treatment options turning into a friggin’ “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. “If you want to try neural stem cell transplantation, go to page 61. If you want to opt for another course of intensive antibiotics, turn to page 81.” Nobody knows, and Ashley is bad as ever.

  BECKY: I’m so so sorry.

  She tagged her message with a series of sad-face emojis and prayer hands that seemed a bit tacky given the gravity of Ashley’s illness, but to this crowd, it represented a proper expression of her feelings. A ding sounded Veronica’s reply, but Becky’s attention had drifted to the door of her office, where Carl had appeared holding a tumbler of whiskey in his hand. An avid athlete and all-around thrill seeker, Carl seldom took to drinking, but Becky had noticed a subtle shift as the occasional cocktail became a nightly nightcap, then two.

  “Hey, babe. Whatcha doing?” He knew exactly what she was doing, but for some reason, tonight, he did not seem irritated.

  “I’m chatting with Veronica.”

  Carl had come to know Becky’s virtual friends with a familiarity usually reserved for people he’d run into at the supermarket.

  “Any news for Ashley?” Carl knew the kids’ names, too.

  “No, nothing,” Becky said, resisting the urge to glance at Veronica’s last message. Carl had
not shown her much attention lately, and it was so surprising and refreshing to receive even a little bit that she did not want to break the spell.

  Despite all their recent struggles, the ups and downs typical of any marriage compounded by two volcanic upheavals in their lives, Becky still found her husband to be incredibly attractive. He had on a faded T-shirt that showed off muscles honed on the mountain bike, not in the gym. His jeans had a small hole in the knee, but they remained his favorite pair, comfy like well-worn pajamas. He was barefoot. His wavy hair may have lost some of its body but, unlike Becky, Carl did not bother trying to hide the gray. Carl’s jawline was once cut like a piece of polished granite, but had eroded with the years. Even though his smoldering dark eyes had grown lines like hers, and his abs no longer drew glances at the beach, Becky had no trouble seeing the younger man who had captured her heart.

  He strode over to her desk and put a hand on Becky’s shoulder. His touch sent a shiver through her body. They had sex with the frequency of an eclipse, and fumbled through intimacy as though it were a forgotten college course, but there was tenderness in Carl’s touch; she did not just imagine it.

  “Listen, babe; I owe you an apology.”

  Carl knelt beside Becky, evoking a memory of the last time he’d been down on one knee, a diamond in a jewel box and hope in his eyes. She was new to her real estate venture back then; lucky to have one of Carl’s homes as her first listing.

  “I’m sorry,” Carl said.

  The apology took Becky by surprise. Usually those were her words, not his. I’m sorry not to give you the attention you crave, or cook for you, or clean, or make love, or be any fun at all, or do any of the things I used to do. I’m sorry I’m not any of that anymore.