An Illusion of Control

by Cecelia Earl

  "I didn't say I wasn't a fan."

  He gives me a pointed look. "You've never gone to the stadium. You're not a fan."

  "I suppose you think that I can't be a fan of crepes if I've never eaten one in France, then, huh?"

  "That has no relevance whatsoever."

  "It has— "

  "Let's see what other things you haven’t done that all normal teens who live in Wisconsin should have done . . . ." He's sitting up now, feet on the floor, tapping his lower lip as though he's considering the answer to a serious question—as opposed to the absurdity that's coming out of his mouth. And yet, I think I'm smiling through my exhaustion.

  "That's absurd," I mumble.

  He nods, lips pressed together. "Agreed. Completely in agreement with you there. You're absurd."

  "I'm absurd?"

  "Well, no. Sorry. Not you, but that you haven't . . . . Okay, have you gone ice skating?"

  "Yes, I told you we're hockey fans."

  "Okay. Seen a movie in a theater?"

  "Of course."

  "Gone bowling?"

  I could lie. I should lie. I sigh. "Nope."

  "Huh."

  "What? No comment?"

  He throws his hands in the air like he's thought of something monumental. "Jax."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Name. Yours?"

  I blink, lost in this conversation. "Oh. You're Jax. Thought you were asking if I'd ever played jacks, you know like with the bouncy ball." Now he looks like he has no idea what I'm talking about. "Forget it. Short for Jackson?"

  "No. Just Jax. Answer, please."

  "Laine. Short for Elaine, but if you want to be friends, never call me that."

  "Sure," he says.

  "Sure what?"

  "I accept."

  I'm going to lose my mind. "Accept. What? Do you need lessons in holding a sequential conversation?"

  "I accept your invitation to be friends. Kind of lonely in this place."

  "Understatement." I drop my forehead into my hands. Now I'm beginning to speak in fragments like him.

  He laughs, and I look up in time to really like how his face looks when he does that.

  14

  turn into lies

  "Oh, ouch." Something is pinching my neck, and my face is stuck to paper. Once I peel myself from my "pillow" and gently, oh so gently, turn my head, roll it a few times to be sure my neck isn't permanently damaged, I see a note on a sheet torn from a hospital pad, with crisp, dark letters.

  "Laine," the note begins. "Nice chatting w/you. Off to breakfast with my mom. The hospital will spring to life come morning light, so you won't be lonely anymore. Jax."

  The tails of the g's and y's drop down to a point and then whip back up into almost a triangular formation. After his name he drew two eyes, a nose, and a mouth with a tongue hanging out. The eyebrows on the "face" are raised. What a funny, interesting boy. However peculiar.

  I crease my math paper at the halfway point and slide my textbooks back into my bag. Mentally, I prepare for my day: get cleaned up and dressed, find coffee, eat (I can't believe I have an appetite in this situation, but my stomach is growling.), see Dad, finish homework, run a few miles? How can one plan a schedule when so much is unknown? I take a deep breath. After slipping my arms through my backpack straps, I fold Jax's note into fourths and carry it to the room by my family.

  They're all still talking quietly while sipping coffee, except Brady. He's absent. I grab my toiletry bag, towel, and day clothes.

  "Be right back." Mom looks over at me, slow and spacey-eyed. She nods and smiles, then looks back to Aunt Margie who’s discussing how she let someone go at work. She didn't miss a beat.

  I rinse my hair in the sink, towel-dry it as best as possible, and wash my face. With minty breath, and washcloth-washed armpits, I slip into jeans and a loose-fitting shirt. Jax's note is tucked inside a pocket of my jeans. After counting ten slow breaths in and out, I start the day.

  We all head up to see Dad. Two by two we enter past the intercom, waiting without conversation for a turn to whisper promises to Dad that, without luck, will turn into lies.

  We find out the transplant team won't be making their rounds for about an hour yet, so we're advised by Paul's daytime replacement, Sue, to go down and get something to eat. She doesn't smile like Paul—or at all—and she makes me feel unwelcome and in the way. I miss Paul.

  I push the elevator button with my elbow. Germs. This place is laden with them. I can practically see them with my eyes. White and climbing on top of each other, over each other. Mounds of them covering every surface. Aunt Margie talks the whole way down in the elevator, unaware that she should lower her voice when strangers are riding with us. When we exit, I find a hand sanitizer contraption hanging on the wall before the entrance to the dining area. I take a squirt and rub it in between my fingers, over my hands, right on up to my elbows. Blech.

  To the right of the seating area is a huge buffet-type food option. Straight ahead is a separate room with the words Cafe Luna hung over the doorway. Mom heads right. There's a salad bar, a nacho bar, juice and soda stations, and servers in blue dishing out omelets, pancakes, and breakfast casseroles. We opt for omelets and toast. After paying, we sit at a rectangular table next to a wall of windows. It's surreal to see the sun shining brightly outside, the tree branches swaying in a breeze, when it should be gray and stagnant, like my life.

  Brady texts: Where u at?

  LL. Cafeteria: I text back.

  B right there.

  Once my omelet is mostly gone, and what's left has been moved around my plate by my fork several times, I sit back and scroll through missed texts on my phone.

  May sent updates on Muffy and the homework she was able to grab for me.

  Thanks, May. Miss you.

  Chase asked about my dad, and also whether I'd be able to come for training Saturday or Sunday night at the restaurant.

  I have to think about what day it is. Was it only yesterday that I returned home after my interview to find Dad totally out of it? Is it really only Thursday? We haven't even been here twenty-four hours yet, and already I hate it here and am exhausted by it.

  Everything is up in the air. I'll let you know by the end of the day.

  I hope his mom is okay with that. Way to start a new job, Laine, I think, chiding myself.

  He texts back immediately: Not a problem. I've got you covered at Mocha Monkey.

  Thanks. You're a lifesaver.

  I prefer gumdrops.

  :)

  I can't decide whether or not to read Marc's texts. I look at the faces around me. Aunt Margie is talking Mom's ear off. Mom's pushing food around on her plate. Aunt Linda is talking quietly with Brady who's smiling nicely, drinking an orange juice she handed him. With nothing else to do, I chance it. There are four messages.

  What's going on? Text or call ASAP.

  I miss you so much. Please. Call me.

  If I don't hear from you, I'm driving down there. I swear.

  Laine, are you okay?

  Without pausing—I do not have that mushy, girl-in-distress feeling going on today—I text: We don't know how he's doing yet. Don't come down. We don't even have a place to stay. He can't have visitors. I'll update you when we know more. Thanks.

  That ought to hold him for a while.

  We wait for Brady to get something to eat. There's a group of staff members in red eating together in a booth to our left, and a group in purple walking through. What do the different colored scrubs indicate? Food servers, emergency staff, nurses? That's one thing to figure out while we wait and wait and wait. As much as my aunt gets on my nerves, it'll be still and scary when it's just me and my staring mother.

  Mom's antsy and ignoring her sister who looks irritated, creased forehead, audible huffs, and all.

  "I'm going back by Rick," Mom says, cutting off my aunt.

  She takes off with the rest of us scrambling to get our things to the disposal conveyor belt so she doesn't end
up in the elevator alone. Brady handles the elevator buttons. My aunts and grandma decide to get off on the first floor to wait in the family center. Once they're out and we're heading up to the fifth floor without them, the air seems easier to breathe.

  "They're driving me nuts," Mom mumbles.

  I smile and Brady laughs. Mom even cracks a smile.

  "I swear," she says, "if I have to hear Margie talk about her lifetime accomplishments or gripe about her employees or second husband one more time . . . ." She shakes her head.

  As soon as the elevator dings, however, and we step out onto the floor that houses my dad, her face resumes its stony, pale appearance. I think it lost a shade of pink just exiting the elevator.

  The nurse behind the reception desk who lets us through smiles. A team in white coats is floating through. I nudge Mom. That must be them. The transplant team of doctors.

  I turn my head left to see if Jax is in the hallway, but for nursing staff, the hall is empty, and the room's curtain he stood outside of is pulled closed.

  Nurse Sue assures us we haven't missed the transplant team, and that we most likely won't talk to the entire team today. She's all flat-voiced and talking at us about how there's a boatload (my words, not hers) of tests that will need to be done. The first person who will speak to us will be about insurance and post-transplant care. Post-transplant care? He's not even been approved for the transplant, and we're going to be prepped about what happens afterward? Then the team psychiatrist will meet with us because the patient's approval depends not only on his or her health, but on the ability of the family to support the patient.

  Brady raises his eyebrows at me and looks at Mom. She's hovering over Dad with shaky hands and a face that looks ill, like she may puke at any second.

  Well, if you ask me, everything is going to be just fine. As usual.

  15

  for the first time

  A woman in a white coat comes in and asks Mom about their insurance. She tells us how much transplant surgery costs (a lot) and how much prescription meds will cost monthly forever afterward (holy moly, even more than a lot). If Mom is freaking out about this, she doesn't show it. I know she and Dad have met with kidney doctors twice in the past four months to start discussing the transplant option, so maybe this isn't new information for her. I think Brady's listening, even though he's pretending to do stuff on his phone.

  I'm thinking how important it is to keep my jobs, so now I'm stressing about missing my second day of work tomorrow night. Maybe I can leave for home late in the afternoon, get to work, shower, sleep with Muffy, be back in time to see Dad and the transplant team by seven in the morning. Doable.

  "We're taking Richard for an MRI."

  I look up and there's a tall man with bulging eyes and a sparse beard talking to Mom.

  "It's Rick, not Richard," she says. He doesn't look like he cares. He just wants to take Dad for his test. "And he had an MRI last night before he got on the helicopter." As if he walked onto it and sat down of his own free will.

  "We like to run all our own tests," he tells her.

  Mom lifts her hands from Dad and steps back. "How long will it take?"

  "Are you staying in the family center?"

  "Yes."

  "We'll call you when he's done. About an hour."

  Mom purses her lips but leads us out of the room and down the hallway. Straight ahead I see the woman Jax was with yesterday. I'm assuming it's his mom. She's on the phone, hand on her forehead. I don't see Jax. I hope whoever he's here to be with is okay.

  We're hardly in our room in the family center before another woman with a white coat is walking through the door introducing herself as Tammy. She turns a chair to face us and takes a seat. She asks about Dad's symptoms, history, how long he's been unhealthy, what we've been doing about it, what lifestyle changes we've made so far, what we're prepared to change when he comes home.

  "Will he be able to come home without a transplant? Or will he need to stay until that happens?" I ask, scared to ask, but more scared not knowing.

  "The hope is that, for now, he's here for a tune-up and then with healthy lifestyle changes, he'll be able to live somewhat normally, with dialysis, until an organ comes in. Preferably, he would have benefited from a transplant before needing dialysis, but that's no longer the case.

  "What we're working on now, the tests we're doing, are to determine his overall health and to continue to weigh the benefit to the risk of transplant. I'm here to monitor his mental health and support system—you all—and to find whether or not he'd be able to manage the lifestyle changes required to maintain a kidney after transplant." She looks at a chart on her lap. "Since you first started seeing a nephrologist last November, and he advised listing Rick on the national waiting list due to his low GFR, he's been on the list for six months now, increasing his chance of transplant from a deceased donor." She looks at us. "With the weather warming up for spring, the chances of a donor coming in has increased." She pauses. "You realize what this means?"

  Mom nods. I look from Brady to Mom to the doctor.

  Tammy notices my confusion. "Your father's chance of survival increases with the chance that someone else dies, usually in a road-related accident. Unfortunately."

  Blood drains from my face, tongue, fingers. I suck in a breath and consider dropping my head into my lap so I don't pass out. I can't imagine she'd think someone weak would be a viable support for Dad. I hadn't even reconciled the fact that Mom and Dad have been discussing the transplant option for six months when I'd only known for four that there was a problem at all, and now I realize what hoping for a transplant means for some other family.

  I nod for the remainder of her questions and information about how transplant and post-transplant works. As soon as she leaves, I excuse myself and head for the bathroom to change into running clothes. I need to move. I need to really move.

  Once again, there's a rap on the door before I'm finished. This time, however, I'm hopeful, not frustrated. And I'm not disappointed. Jax is looking down at me, smiling when I open the door.

  "Thanks for the note," I say.

  His smile widens.

  "How's today?"

  His smile falters. He says, "I need to get out of here for a bit." He notes my running clothes. "Wait for me a minute?"

  I nod and get out of his way.

  Minutes later, he exits the bathroom and asks, "Where are you headed?"

  "Out. For a run."

  He holds up a gym bag. "Join me at the Y? There's one not too far. I'll drive."

  I consider. "It looks like a really nice day outside." I could use fresh air as much as I need to run my legs.

  "There are showers."

  "You win. Let me grab my bag." I speed walk to the room to grab my cell and toiletry items. I stuff them in a bag with my final change of clothes. "Going out for a run, Mom. I'll have my cell on me." She's on the phone so she barely glances at me to nod. I consider jotting her a note in case she gets off the phone without having heard me but take off without. I'll text Brady on the way to let him know what I'm doing."

  The walk from the hospital to the parking ramp is spirit lifting.

  "Air," I say. "I miss you, air."

  "Breathe it in." He laughs. "I promise the shower will be even better."

  "I feel disgusting. The shower will be glorious."

  Almost as glorious as it feels to be sitting shotgun in a car with this beautiful guy. For the first time, I wonder who he is outside the hospital. Does he have a girlfriend? Play sports? Hope to go to college? I've always been a planner, never living in the moment, always looking ahead. It's so hard now that I'm trapped in a hospital with my whole life hanging on threads, out of my control.

  While I'm running on the treadmill, and Jax is lapping me on the track encircling the workout machines, I pretend with every step that I'm gaining control. I used to feel that way, that if I ran enough, worked enough, studied enough, I'd be able to control every part of my life. I believe
d it.

  For the first time, I'm scared I was kidding myself the whole time.

  How in control can someone be of their own life? How much control lies in other factors? Other cars, other people being careless, other people keeping a business open, other people's subjective grades . . . .

  For the first time, I wonder if everything I've held true might be a lie.

  16

  illusion of control

  Clean feels good. My euphoria at hygienic happiness doesn't last long, however. Jax is leaning against a corner, inside the doors that lead to the parking lot. His nervous, bouncy energy is radiating from every unclogged pore.

  "Sorry, did I take too long?" The last thing I want is for him to regret bringing me along.

  He shakes his head. "No. Let's get going, though."

  His right knee is bouncing high enough to hit the steering wheel and his left thumb is keeping time with it. My heartbeat is starting to rapidly speed up to meet the rhythm of nervousness he's got thrumming through the car. He notices me staring.

  "Sorry. It always feels good to leave the hospital, but then, after a certain amount of time, I panic and feel an urgency to get back. To my dad."

  I breathe and nod.

  He's clenching and unclenching his jaw, and my hand tingles with wanting to run fingers along it, to ease the tension. I want to reach across him and still his frantic knee. I wish I could do something to make everything better for him, but I can't even make anything better for me.

  So instead of doing kindness or speaking softness, I stare out the window, memorizing the route, the streets, the shops. I allow facts of the cityscape to flood my brain. Soaking up any form of information is soothing, adding to the illusion of control. My plan is to see Dad and finish my homework, ready to grab more Sunday when I go home. I need to talk to Mom about it, but I'm thinking if I get home Sunday for work, I'll stay for school Monday, grab all make-up work for the week, and commute back and forth for work and to turn final papers in, take final exams. An hour and a half isn't much to drive back and forth, and so far, I haven't amounted to much good here. Maybe Brady and I can work out a system of switching off so one of us is always here. I have my mental to-do list ready and raring by the time we're parked.