Chasing Orion

by Kathryn Lasky

  And where was I in all this? Not merely sidelined, but forgotten in a distant galaxy. Colorless, not even a pinpick of light. So much for my theory of being included. I had decided to go home. I didn’t belong with them. They barely noticed when I left.

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to a family wedding! Or you have to babysit your sister!” I said as soon as Evelyn picked up the phone.

  “No, my great-aunt died. Have to go to the funeral. It’s down in Bloomington.”

  “Polio?” My heart skipped a beat.

  “No, myocardial infarction.”

  “Huh?”

  “It happens when the blood supply to the heart is interrupted, usually by something called vulnerable plaque.”

  “Like teeth plaque?” Good grief ! I thought. How do you brush your heart?

  “Well, I suppose you could think of it that way. It usually occurs in the anterior wall of the heart —”

  “OK, OK.” I cut her off. “But guess what?”

  “What?”

  “They’re going to try and wean Phyllis, this morning.” I was whispering in the phone because I wasn’t supposed to know this, but I had heard Emmett telling Mom about it.

  “Are they going to do the rocking bed thing?”

  “Yes, a van came last evening with it. And all these specialists are coming today.”

  “Are you going over?”

  “I wasn’t exactly invited.”

  “Is Emmett?”

  “Yes. But if you came, I thought maybe I might get up the nerve to, you know . . .”

  “Spy?”

  “Yes, they’ve put in some more bushes over on that side of the house where we were. Right near the sun porch. That’s where they’ll be doing it.”

  “You should go anyhow.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look, there’s no sense in two of us missing this just because of my great-aunt’s infarction.”

  Somehow an infarction didn’t sound exactly like death. Actually, it sounded more like a gas problem — a little fart in the heart.

  “OK, I’ll think about it.”

  “You probably know more about that rocking bed than your brother.” Evelyn was right, of course, and what I did know was that people who had been in an iron lung as long as Phylllis had were not very successful with the rocking bed. What they called pulmonary atrophy had set in too long before.

  “All right,” I said. “Maybe.”

  Earlier that morning, I had been upstairs sitting on the top step while my parents had been in the living room talking with Emmett. This was how I heard about the experiment. I crept halfway down and listened to the whole conversation about how they had tried once before, earlier in the spring, but it hadn’t worked. But this time they were going to try a new way. There were drugs to make her relax and they would immediately put her on a rocking bed that would tilt her up and down and let gravity help force air in and out of her lungs. The Kellers, especially Phyllis, wanted Emmett to be there. Not me. But I felt that I deserved to be there. But I knew there was no way I could ask or push this. I even knew the drug they would use to relax her. It was an antianxiety drug. Lex-something or other.

  Emmett had already gone over by the time I got hold of Evelyn. The Kellers wanted him there before the team of doctors and specialists arrived.

  I was eating a grape Popsicle and standing in our backyard with the hose, watering one of our stupid little trees, when I heard cars rolling into the Kellers’ gravel driveway. I jammed the last bit of the Popsicle into my mouth and, using both hands, twisted the nozzle on the hose to stop the water. Right then I decided I was going. I knew that there was this huge new bush by the window of the sunroom. No one would see me if I just crouched down beneath the windowsill. Yes, it was sneaky. Yes, it was spying. But I was a good spy, I rationalized. After all, I was Saint Georgie. I remembered the sermon the minister at our church preached about being a witness. To witness was a Christian act of belief and faith. So I wasn’t a spy at all. I wasn’t a communist. I was a Christian witness, except, of course, for the small matter of my calling God a jerk.

  There were four men. Two looked older and wore shirts and ties. But the other two were younger and more casually dressed. In addition to them, there were two nurses, Sally and another one I had never seen before. Dr. Keller was there, but not Mrs. Keller, and then there was Emmett. Dr. Keller had a pretty loud voice, so I heard him introducing Emmett to all of them. I couldn’t catch all their names, but I did hear him say something about how so-and-so and so-and-so were “respiratory therapists.” There was the rocking bed set up, and I saw Dr. Keller go over and show Emmett something about it. He tipped it so it rocked back and forth.

  The thing that struck me is that no one was paying much attention to Phyllis. They had removed most of the mirror from the sides of the iron lung, but there was still one left on the ceiling so she could watch everything. And I had a pretty clear view of her face, but thank goodness she couldn’t see me. She didn’t look at all nervous. In fact, she looked completely calm and there was almost an expression of happy anticipation.

  “OK,” Dr. Keller said cheerfully. “I think we all know the drill. Places, everyone!” What was this, I thought, a play? I really did not like Dr. Keller at all.

  Emmett was at the foot of the machine. He was turning some dials. He didn’t even look at Phyllis. Didn’t say a word!

  “Sally, I believe you’re first,” Dr. Keller said.

  Sally came up with a hypodermic needle and reached through one of the ports. I looked at Phyllis’s face in the mirror. She didn’t even flinch. One doctor stood by the rocking bed. The other doctor stood near Phyllis’s head. He was at least speaking to her. One of the respiratory therapists was stationed near the midpoint of the iron lung. On a table was a box and I could see the words cardio resuscitator on its side. The other nurse was fiddling with it while Sally, finished with the shot, went over to another table where there was always this tall box with a panel of dials and displays that monitored Phyllis’s vital signs.

  I suddenly saw Phyllis’s mouth move. I tried to hear what she was saying. Then Dr. Keller said in a loud voice, “Your heart is not going to stop, Phyllis, and you are not going to be brain-dead.”

  And Phyllis replied in a surprisingly strong voice, “But if I am, you know . . .” Then I couldn’t hear the rest of what she said, but I saw Dr. Keller’s face turn white. I felt something squirm inside me. Like maybe I really shouldn’t be here, and what would Mom and Dad say if they knew? Then I heard Dr. Keller say, “None of that nonsense, Phyllis. It’s not going to stop.” But Phyllis’s eyes had closed. It looked as if she were sleeping.

  “Ready for the intubation, Dr. Samuelson?” Dr. Keller said.

  I noticed now that the doctor named Samuelson, who was standing at Phyllis’s head, was wearing rubber gloves. With the help of one of the respiratory guys, he opened her mouth, and I saw them stick a long, thin tube in. The tube connected to an oxygen tank.

  “All right, Emmett. You ready?”

  It looked to me as if Emmett’s hands were shaking as he turned a dial. Suddenly the whooshings decreased to barely a whisper. “Real slow,” Dr. Samuelson was saying. “We’ll let her get used to that for a couple of minutes, and then you can adjust the rate.”

  Sally, monitoring the vital signs panel, gave a report: “Pulse steady. Heart rate good.”

  “All right, Emmett, you can start decreasing the rate now,” Dr. Samuelson said.

  Now there was a real change in the sound of the beast. The horrible rhythm of the whooshings dissolved into a new beat. Very slow, very menacing.

  “Pressure decrease, go down two-tenths,” Dr. Samuelson said. Another change in the beast: the breaths were shallower, the whooshing even quieter. Within another two minutes, a strange hush enveloped the room. The throbbing, panting machine was almost completely silent as it operated at a minimum level.

  Now I watched as the two respiratory therapists began to unlock the
hinges. For the first time, I would see all of Phyllis. They slid her out. I gasped. Her body was shriveled to the size of a tiny kid. The skin draped on her bones like a transparent fabric. Around her right thigh was a belt with a sensor. So this was how she moved the mirror! This was Ralph. The contact for the sensor had been disconnected.

  When the therapist picked her up from the bed of the iron lung, she was completely limp. She didn’t look unconscious exactly, nor did she look dead. Her weeny little legs flopped over his arms, and her body was plastered against the therapist’s chest like a wet leaf. There was nothing human about her. It was deeply disturbing, but I could not look away. The therapist quickly moved her to the rocking bed. They had barely gotten her into the rocking bed when the first spasm came. I watched, horrified, as her legs began to jerk. Her back arched in a terrible contortion, and her face was pulled into a ghoulish mask. This was not television news. This was not a picture in a newspaper. Despite all my research, this was far worse than I could have ever imagined. The articles never told you about this kind of stuff. I wanted to stop looking. I really did. It was disgusting. But I was disgusted with myself for staying there and looking at this. I wanted someone to come and take me away. I felt ashamed. In the back of my throat, an icky sweetness surged, and then the overwhelming smell of grape. I vomited and then stared in disbelief. There were purple-colored scrambled eggs on my sneakers. The odor was so strong, I was sure they smelled it inside, but I didn’t wait to find out.

  When Emmett came home, I was still in the backyard hosing down my sneakers. His shoulders were hunched and his hands jammed in his pockets. His face was absolutely white. I thought he would just rush right by me. But he didn’t. I kept looking down. I prayed that he would not be able to tell from any look on my face that I had seen it all. Maybe I didn’t see it all, I thought with sudden alarm. Maybe Phyllis had died. He stopped right in front of me, then grabbed me tight and hugged me. And all he said was, “Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn.”

  I was really scared, but I looked up. “Did she die?”

  “No, that would have been too easy.”

  He let me go, went upstairs to his bedroom, and slammed the door. I was scared. Scared for everyone — for Phyllis, for Emmett, for me. But really I think I felt most scared, in a funny way, for Emmett. I had never seen Emmett like this, ever.

  To me it was sort of eerie the way “life” seemed to continue. I mean life for Phyllis and for Emmett. He kept going over there. Not quite as much since the preseason basketball practice schedule had been stepped up. It always did in the few weeks before school began. I had preseason nothing. So there was no excuse for me not to go over to Phyllis’s, but I just couldn’t, not after what I had seen. Nobody had found out about my spying, which I supposed was good, but I felt somehow different. I didn’t feel as if I were quite the same person anymore and felt that somehow people might sense this. It was as if telltale shreds of those awful minutes clung to me, maybe even a smell of grape vomit. I knew for one thing that I would never ever again eat a grape Popsicle. The worst part of all was that I had actually gone over there thinking that I was doing some dumb Christian thing. I wasn’t spying; I was witnessing! I thought witnessing it would make me more compassionate, not nauseous. I thought that through my compassion, I could understand Phyllis better, therefore help her more. But this just didn’t happen. I only felt shame, disgust, and fear.

  It was as if during those few minutes crouching under the windowsill, all my illusions had vanished. I felt old — terribly, freakishly old. Yes, I’d become a freak.

  “Georgie! Georgie! Earth to Georgie!” I looked up. Mom had been standing practically in front of me, and I hadn’t even noticed her, I was so lost in my thoughts. I looked up at her. Mom sighed. “Are you reading about polio again, Georgie? You’ve got to stop.”

  “No, no.” I had the newspaper in front of me but was not really reading it. Just staring at it. She turned her head a fraction to one side and looked at me out of the corner of her eye. This was her suspicious look. “So,” she said with a kind of chirpiness that signaled she wasn’t going to question me too closely, “you want to go get some new clothes for school?”

  “Uh.” I hesitated and looked at her, wondering if she noticed a difference in me. Did I still look like the same Georgie to her? Or was that old person inside me who had replaced the kid that was Georgie peeking out? Did she catch a glimpse of that old person? Or maybe she saw only the empty space where the child had been. I felt this deep anguish inside of me, this grieving for some part of me that I knew was gone.

  Going school shopping didn’t help. Usually I loved buying new clothes for school. I couldn’t wait for the weather to turn cold so I could wear my new fall outfits. But all afternoon in the department stores, I stood in front of mirrors in plaid skirts and denim jumpers and felt as if I were looking at a ghost of myself. “Honestly, Georgie,” Mom finally said, “you’ve been so quiet all afternoon. Are you feeling all right?”

  “Not exactly,” I said slowly.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m not quite feeling myself.” The truth of this seemingly casual answer nearly knocked me over. That icky grape smell rose up inside me again. “Mom, I think I might throw up.”

  “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”

  She rushed me off to the ladies’ room. I went into the stall by myself. I retched, but nothing came out. I started crying, not loudly, but certainly wetly.

  “You all right, honey?” Mom called into the stall.

  “Yeah! Yeah! I’ll be fine. Just a minute.”

  When I came out, she clapped her hand on my forehead. “You don’t feel feverish,” she whispered with a trace of relief, then added, “No stiff neck?”

  “No, Mom. I don’t have polio!”

  “Must have been something you ate. You’ll feel a lot better if you can bring it up.”

  This was my parents’ standard response to vomiting. I hated throwing up more than anything in the world. Usually I would rather not feel better than to have to go through the hideousness of having that tsunami of vomit rush out of my mouth. But this time I thought that my mother had a point. Now I wished I could have thrown up that whole experience. I wished that I could throw up that creepy older person who had invaded me when I watched Phyllis being weaned. But nothing came up. Nothing at all.

  “Feel better?” Mom asked.

  “Sort of.”

  When we got home, I carefully unpacked all my new clothes from the tissue paper and hung them in my closet. The plaid skirt had a cardigan sweater that went with it that was trimmed in the same plaid. It was really a cute outfit. A perfect first-day-of-school outfit, if the darned temperature would go below ninety.

  I hadn’t been over to Phyllis’s for a week. Not since the weaning attempt. Supposedly nothing had changed. She was back in the iron lung, for good, I guess. But I felt I had changed, and for me, Phyllis had changed as well. It scared me. It’s not exactly accurate to say until that horrible day I had only thought of Phyllis as a head sticking out of a machine because I hadn’t seen her whole body. I suppose I had just imagined that the rest of her body was normal-looking even though she had told me that time that her spine was all tangled. I still thought of the polio as most damaging to her ability to breathe. I could never have imagined that her body would look so weird. I kept thinking that if I went over there, all I would think about was this beautiful head attached to a deformed body. So in a sense on that day we had both become freaks of sorts. But Phyllis had called and asked me to come over that afternoon with another small world after Emmett left for basketball practice. I told her about the Orion one and how it wasn’t done. She didn’t mind. She just said how great it would be to see a work in progress. It was still pretty movable. I would just bring the first level, the sea one. I hadn’t attached the waves Orion would walk on to the land.

  On my way over, Emmett came jogging out of the grove, almost bumping into me, with the weirdest look on his
face. He was sort of laughing to himself and looked quite pleased, but his face was the usual bright red it got when he was embarrassed. Needless to say, I was very curious, but he was in too much of a hurry. As I was about to come into the sunroom, where Phyllis was, I heard Sally talking.

  “That’s what you call flirting? Whatcha trying to do with that boy, gal?”

  I stopped to listen, thinking that might explain why he was blushing like crazy. I once said that there should be a lipstick color called Emmett’s Embarrassment Red, or maybe Emmett’s Shame. He didn’t think blushing was funny, and Dad tried not to laugh when I said this, but Mom and I were howling. So when I heard Sally say this thing about flirting, it didn’t take me long to put two and two together. The romance must have made some progress. Maybe a little beyond first base, like an inch. But I, of course, pretended I hadn’t heard them and just set down my diorama.

  “Just having fun,” Phyllis replied to Sally. I was standing in a hallway off the sunroom, and though she couldn’t see me, I could see Phyllis’s face in a big wall mirror. She looked deadly serious. In fact, she looked so serious it almost scared me. She had narrowed her eyes until they were just these little blue slits. I couldn’t help but wonder what Sally had seen Phyllis and Emmett doing.

  “Did you have him wear the rubber gloves in the port?” Sally asked.

  “Sure,” Phyllis said.

  “I didn’t see any when he left, and he sure did skedaddle out of here.”

  “Maybe he wore them home.” Phyllis laughed harshly. “A souvenir of good times.”

  “Don’t go talking slutty now.”

  I coughed slightly to announce my arrival.

  “Well, Saint Georgie.” Phyllis sounded sweet as pie now, and her eyes were no longer those little blue slits. “What do you have there? Another diorama?”

  “Yep. It’s a myth.”

  “Which one?”

  “Orion, but it’s just the first level.”