Chasing Charlie

by C. M. Newman

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: DR. CHARLES GLASSER

  “You gotta go get your medicine tomorrow, right, Daddy?” Charlie asked over a quiet dinner between the two of them that evening.

  “Yup, tomorrow’s the big day,” Vince said with a grin.

  “What kind of medicine do you get?”

  “Chemotherapy and radiation. Both of them help kill the bad…parts that are making me sick.”

  Charlie took a minute to process all of this. “What’s chem…chlema…the first one?”

  Vince chuckled. “Chemotherapy?”

  “Yeah. Is it like the medicine I have to take when I’m sick?”

  “Not quite. I don’t eat or drink it. It goes through a tube into my arm.”

  Charlie’s eyes widened. “Do you have to get a shot?”

  “It’s kind of like a shot, but don’t worry about me, big guy. It doesn’t hurt.” He hoped. He thought fleetingly of making an appointment to get a port installed after all.

  “How come Auntie Jen has to drive you?”

  Vince saw that Charlie was actually eating pork chops for a change and sliced off a few more pieces for him. “Well, sometimes when people get chemotherapy, they don’t feel so well afterwards.”

  “Like a tummy ache?”

  “Actually, yeah, like a tummy ache. Or they could just be very tired. So until we find out how my body reacts to the medicine, Auntie Jen will be driving me.”

  “Why do you wanna take medicine that gives you a tummy ache?” Charlie inquired.

  Vince knew that Charlie was far too young to understand how profound his innocent questions actually were. “Because even though they might make me feel not so good when I take them, it means I can live longer.”

  “Why won’t they give you more medicine?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How come you have to die if the medicine can make you better? Can’t they just give you more?”

  Vince took his time chewing the bite he had just taken. After six years of fatherhood, four of them being full of questions once Charlie had learned the word “why,” it never ceased to amaze him that such a little boy could ask the questions with the most difficult answers. “Sometimes, Charlie, when they know that somebody has cancer soon after they get sick, they can take the same medicine and get better. The cancer can go away, forever or for a while. But with me, my doctor didn’t know I had it until too long after I got it. So the medicine won’t work as well for me. I’m too sick. It won’t really make the cancer go away, it’ll just slow it down so it doesn’t spread so fast.”

  “Oh…” Charlie put down his fork and looked into his lap. “I don’t want you to feel bad, Daddy,” he mumbled, gazing up with a pout that immediately brought Vince to tears.

  “What do you mean, buddy?” Vince asked, almost choking on his words.

  “I don’t want you to get tummy aches if it’s not gonna make your cancer go away.”

  “Charlie, come here,” Vince said, his voice faltering. The feet of his chair squeaked against the hardwood floor as he scooted it away from the table to make room for his son, who climbed readily into his lap. He held Charlie so tightly that he was certain he would protest, but he put up with the affection. “Listen to me very carefully. I love you. More than anything in the whole wide world. Do you understand that?”

  Charlie nodded, slipping his little arms around his father’s waist and allowing himself to be pulled closer. “I want to take this medicine,” Vince continued. “Yeah, it might make me feel a little crummy, but there’s medicine to get rid of the tummy aches, too, and I already have some of that medicine and I can get more if I need it. So in general, the medicine won’t really affect me that much, okay?” Vince saved the hair-loss conversation for another day. Charlie nodded again, his small fingers clutching at Vince’s sweater. “I’m doing this because I want to be with you as much as I can. If there was anything I could do to stay even longer, I’d do it. You are the most important person in the world to me and I hate that I have to leave you. I really do. I hope you know that.”

  “Okay.”

  Vince feared he was growing too panicked and might be scaring Charlie, so he took a long pause for some deep, slow breathing before he said anything further. “I’m going to take as much of this medicine as I can so I can stay here for you as long as possible. All right?”

  “Okay, Daddy.” Vince’s worst fear of the moment was realized, as Charlie spoke in tiny squeaks.

  Vince was about to shush Charlie, to tell him that he didn’t need to cry, but then he remembered that Charlie was Charlie, not his father. Charlie was six, not forty-six. And he was losing the person he loved most in his tiny little world. So Vince let him cry, rocking them both to and fro so softly that he didn’t even realize he was moving at all. “You can cry as much as you need to if it makes you feel better. Daddy’s right here.”

  Charlie held fast to his silently weeping father until he was done crying. “Is it scary?” Charlie asked.

  “Is what scary?” Vince was so congested that he wondered how it was that his words were even intelligible.

  “Getting your medicine.”

  “No, I’m not scared about getting my medicine. It’s a good thing.”

  “Okay. You should take Chip just in case you do get scared, though.”

  “I think that’s a good idea. He’s on top of my dresser. Can you go grab him for me? We’ll put him on the table by the door so I don’t forget him.”

  Charlie hopped down and scampered back to his father’s bedroom, giving Vince a moment to walk to the sink and splash some cold water on his face. His hands trembled as they searched for a clean kitchen towel, but he found none. Even the paper towel holder was empty. He lifted his sweater to his face, the wool only smearing the water and scratching his skin. In a brief fury he yanked it from his body, tossed it to the floor, and used his t-shirt instead.

  “Did you get too hot, Daddy?” Charlie asked when he returned to the kitchen to find Vince with a splotchy t-shirt and his sweater pooled on the tile floor.

  “Just a little itchy, that’s all.” Vince squatted down and smilingly accepted the stuffed dog from Charlie. “Thanks, buddy. You know, maybe you should be a doctor someday. Dr. Charles Glasser. I think that sounds pretty cool, don’t you?”

  Charlie’s eyes were still a little puffy and red, but his smile still managed to light them up. “Yeah,” he said with a raspy giggle. “Can I be a cancer doctor?”

  “You can be anything you want to be, as long as you go to school, study, and work hard. You could be a doctor, you could be in the FBI like me, you could work at home like Auntie Jen, be a teacher like your mommy was…which reminds me—did you finish your homework at Auntie Jen’s?”

  “Yup.”

  “Good. Go get your backpack and show it to me, all right?”

  Charlie obeyed and Vince cleared the table of their abandoned dinner. Charlie laid out his homework. “I drew you a picture, too, I forgot.” Charlie pulled out a crude crayon drawing, presumably of himself and his father, the taller one with a bandage on his forehead.

  “Wow, that looks pretty good. You and me, right?” Vince asked, holding the drawing up.

  “Yup. Can we put it on the fridge?”

  “I was just about to ask you the same thing. Let me take a look at your homework.”

  “Can I watch cartoons after?”

  “For a little bit.” Vince turned through the pages of Charlie’s homework, checking his work. “Looks good. Nice job,” Vince said, bending over to give Charlie a kiss on the top of his head. “You can go ahead and turn on a cartoon.”

  Vince didn’t take the bright yellow note out of Charlie’s backpack until Charlie was settled in on the couch and occupied by the television. As he took a moment to read the note, Vince mentally kicked himself for not having thought of this.

  “Are you gonna watch with me?” Charlie asked hopefully when Vince sat down next to him.

  “Sure, I can do that. We need to pause it for a
minute, though.”

  Vince didn’t even know which remote to use, but Charlie had it paused in an instant. “How come we have to pause?” Charlie asked when Vince didn’t launch into a conversation.

  “Charlie, there was a note from Miss Quaid in your backpack. It says you’ve told her about what’s going on here.”

  Charlie hung his head but nodded. “Sorry.”

  “No, no,” Vince said soothingly. “It’s okay. It isn’t a secret. She just wants me to come in and chat with her in the morning, so we’re going to leave a little early so I can talk to her.”

  “What about going to get your medicine?”

  Vince hoped that rescheduling his appointment for his second opinion wouldn’t push it back too far. “I should have just enough time. Don’t worry.”

  —

  Vince picked Jenna up and drove them both to the hospital, where she was to take his car home and return for him at the end of his session. “Charlie’s teacher left a note in his backpack yesterday,” Vince said.

  “I know. I saw,” Jenna said, smiling vaguely.

  “You didn’t say anything.”

  “I knew you’d see it. You always give him a hundred percent when you’re home. Lately it’s been more like three hundred percent. Even on your bad days, you still always checked his backpack. Anyway, is everything okay at school?”

  “Yeah,” Vince sighed, grateful for Jenna’s faith in him. “I went and saw his teacher this morning before I came and got you. He told her about me yesterday, but gave her the very abridged version, so she wanted to know what was going on in a little more detail. She also suggested I start looking into therapy for Charlie, and to have him start now, not after I’m gone, and I agree. They have a counselor at the school but I’d rather have him see the therapist he saw when Kate passed away, even if he doesn’t remember her.”

  “That sounds like a good plan. Do you have radiation today, too?”

  “No, that’s tomorrow. I’ll have to put this all on a calendar. Even I don’t know what my schedule is for the next couple of weeks.”

  “I can put it in the computer and print out some copies to have around,” Jenna offered.

  “It’s all right, I will. I have the time. Ugh, I still can’t believe I didn’t think to tell his teacher.”

  “I know I’ve treated you like the world’s worst father more times than I can count, but you’re doing great with him, Vince. Give yourself a little credit.”

  Vince shook his head minutely. “I didn’t even meet his teacher until today. His teacher. He spends more hours with her every day than he does with either one of us, especially me.”

  “Vince, whatever happened happened. It’s in the past. Yes, this is a very terrible way for you to have realized that Charlie needs more of you than you’d been giving him, but…you can’t do anything about the past. And Charlie isn’t thinking about the past. He’s a kid. He’s in the here and now for the most part. He wants his dad, and that’s what you’re giving him. You gave up everything without a thought, and you’re undergoing all these treatments that we both know are only going to draw everything out and make it harder on you, all so you can be with him for just a couple extra months. Like I said, I know I’ve rarely been your advocate, but you need one right now. You’re being way too hard on yourself.”

  Vince focused on the traffic for a while, mulling over what Jenna had said. “Can you answer a question for me completely honestly?”

  “Of course.”

  “Last night, Charlie was asking about my treatments, and I was explaining some of the side effects. It really bothered him that I would go through something that was supposed to help me if it was just going to make me feel worse in other ways. And I know that if I didn’t have anyone to stick around for, I’d just…let this cancer run its course. But I don’t know of any other way to handle this with him. I can’t fathom not fighting this with everything I’ve got. But am I being selfish, do you think? However much extra time I get, the end will be long and drawn out, like you said. The chemo will probably make me tired and nauseous. I won’t be able to go outside and play with him eventually. I still want nothing more than to squeeze every last second out of this that I can. But do you think that extra time I get is going to be more miserable for him than it would be if I just…didn’t fight?” When Vince ended his spiel, he glanced over at Jenna, who was dabbing at her eyes.

  “It’ll be hard for him to see you suffer, but as long as he knows why you’re doing it, then in the long run, I think it’s the right thing to do. When he looks back on all of this when he’s older and remembers how much you sacrificed just so you could be here for him longer, he’s going to feel so loved. And as long as you keep reminding him that you’re doing this because you love him and can’t stand to leave him any earlier than you have to, then I think maybe he won’t see the suffering as such a bad thing. And then there’s the fact that even if you’re sick as a dog, you’ll never admit it, so he won’t ever really know just how bad it is for you. So if you’re asking me whether you should still go to chemo, then my answer is yes.”

  Vince nodded. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For answering honestly.”

  “I know we both forget this sometimes, with us both being so focused on damage control, but you and I are family, too. Even though we don’t always agree, we do this time, and I do love you, and I will miss you.”

  Vince smiled distantly. “I love you, too. And thank you for happening to agree with me,” he said with a touch of dry humor. “I needed that going in, I think. He really got me wondering whether I was doing this for the wrong reasons.”

  “You’re showing him love, Vince. That’s the most important thing I think he’ll take away from this.”