If I Lose Her

by Greg Joseph Daily

  One photograph was of a wall of police shields splattered in orange and white paint. Another was of an ocean of student faces waving flags and signs. Another was of a slender woman and a police officer twice her size playing tug-of-war with the arms of a small boy.

  A single student on a bike pressed his front tire against an armored truck as it sprayed him in the face with a water canon. Then the police turned their canons on the crowd.

  I got a shot of a dog getting sprayed while a boy ducked behind a concrete barrier.

  I didn’t even have time to check the images on the back of my camera for the chaos that was ensuing. All I could do was keep pounding off frames and changing out memory cards whenever they filled up. The pocket on my left leg was full of empty memory cards. The pocket on my right was filling with used ones. I felt like a soldier in the army trying to keep track of my ammo.

  When the police started putting on gas masks I knew the climate of the rally was changing, and when they started shooting tear gas they made no distinction for age. Even though the air was getting sharp I kept photographing.

  Snap. A demonstrator dusted in white, with a tear-streaked face doubled over in the street, trying to spit out tear gas.

  Snap. A protestor with a bandana wrapped around his head throwing a gas canister back at the police.

  Snap. A tiny island of men with shields standing barely visible in a cloud of smoke.

  The tear gas wasn’t quelling the crowd but making it more violent. Protestors began throwing rocks and setting cars on fire, so the police drew their batons.

  I got a photograph of people throwing bricks on police from building windows, one of three riot police knocking a woman to the ground and another of protestors bashing a police vehicle with bars.

  The smoke was starting to burn my throat and make my vision go blurry so I decided to pull back to a side street and try to find some water. There were clusters of police around different corners blocking off traffic and arresting people. Then I heard someone holler from an alley. As I went down the alley I found three police punching and kicking someone who they had cornered. I started photographing. The police clearly didn’t know I was there and it took a minute, but when one of the police stepped aside I suddenly realized that the person being beaten was about twelve years old, and he looked unconscious. That’s when one of the police drew his baton and raised it over his head. “STOP!” I yelled.

  Through the lens of my camera I watched all three turn and look at me. I clicked off a few more frames and the officer with the baton yelled something to the other two who started running towards me. I didn’t have time to process what was happening, but I knew it was bad, so I just turned and ran. My second camera body was bouncing against my back so I lifted it and ran with one camera in each hand, and didn’t stop until I was within a few blocks of my hotel. Thankfully I was lighter than they were in all their gear, so I was able to lose them.

  I immediately wired the photos of the beating to Dan who put them on the newspapers website, and overnight the photos went viral. Within the next 48 hours the entire world was looking at the faces of three Colombian officers standing with baton raised over the bloody body of an unconscious boy who turned out to be thirteen years old. Either my photos or the rallies or a combination of the two were enough of a catalyst to spark a government referendum on student education. I didn’t care about all that. I was just thrilled that it was my shots that had broken the story wide open. Three days later I was on a flight back to the United States.

  In so many ways I was exhausted. Tired of running. Tired of being angry. Ready to have my life back. Ready to have Jo back. And, if she needed me to slow down then that’s what I was going to do.

  Thirty-Three

  I didn’t tell anyone I was coming home, I just landed at the airport, caught the AF bus back into Denver and went home. I was aching to see Jo, but it was late and I was still in a different time zone, so I just dropped all of my clothes in the middle of my apartment floor, scrubbed down in the shower and crashed face-first into my pillow. My pillow. My own perfectly amazing pillow. Then I was out.

  The next morning I woke with a bounce in my step both excited and nervous to see Jo after so many months, like it was our first date all over again. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. Do I look older? I felt older somehow. I shaved and ran some gel through my overgrown hair, then I looked around the apartment. Everything was right where I had left it three months ago. I had told Jo that she could use the place as much as she wanted, but it was obvious that she hadn’t been here in months. I took a neat pair of black slacks out of the closet and laid them on my bed. Then I saw I still had a clean white shirt in the closet so I put those together and got dressed. My white kitty with its sleek lines was in the parking lot right where I left it, and it was so nice to sink down into the drivers seat and hear the engine rumble. I took a turn through Lodo to pick up some flowers from my favorite shop, ‘My Dutch Flowers Market’, just off 17th and Champa. Then I got on I-25 and headed for Aurora.

  It was interesting to see the stark contrasts between Cartagena and Denver. Maybe everyone feels it when they travel, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how there is so much of the world out there that people in Denver will never know while there are so many more people in the world that will never know Denver. It’s almost like we are living in different worlds all on the same planet.

  As I turned down Jo’s street I started getting nervous, and for the first time in three months the thought struck me: Maybe she’s angry at me for leaving. Maybe she hates me for running away. No no. I wasn’t going to go into all of that now. I was only a block away, and I wasn’t about to turn around.

  I pulled up in front of her parent’s house with its sculpted bushes and American flag waving half-heartedly in the nearly nonexistent breeze. I looked at myself in the mirror then remembered I had forgotten something. I patted my pockets then snapped my fingers. Let’s see if there are any still in here, and I reached over and opened the glove box. Yep, a box of mints were tucked away underneath some papers, so I popped one in my mouth, grabbed the flowers and went to the door.

  I knocked, but there was no answer.

  I looked at my watch. It was just after ten in the morning.

  I looked around, hoping for some odd sign of life lurking in the house. I guess I can call her. No. I want it to be a surprise. I could drop by mom’s store and see… Then the door opened. It was Jo’s dad.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Hey, is Jo home?” I asked holding up the flowers.

  “Get the hell off my porch. What nerve do you think you have thinking you…”

  “Daddy, who is it?” a soft voice asked from the other side of the door.

  He turned as Jo stepped past him.

  She held her hand up over her eyes to block the sun, and I noticed a dark bruise on her arm. It took her a moment to realize it was me.

  “Alex?”

  “Hey you.”

  She just fell into my arms and started crying.

  “Oh my god Alex. I never thought I would see you again.”

  I pulled her close to me and buried my face in her neck. She started sobbing.

  “Hey hey. I told you in my letter that I was coming back. I just needed to get away for a while and clear my head,” I said as we went into the house and sat down on her couch.

  “No Alex, you don’t understand,” she said looking at me.

  This was the first chance I had to get a really good look at her. She looked so frail with dark bags underneath her eyes.

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Then she pulled the stocking cap off of her head I hadn’t even noticed she was wearing. All of her thick brown curls were gone. She was completely bald.

  She opened her eyes and tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “I’m dying.”

  “What?” I asked taking a deep breath.

  She just closed her eyes and touched my face.

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sp; My vision went blurry and the back of my throat began to burn.

  “What? But… I… you can’t… what do you mean? How… I mean how long have you… I don’t understand,” I said standing up.

  She just started crying again.

  She took a tissue out of the box on the coffee table and tried to compose herself.

  “Do you remember how sick I got the night of the art museum show?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well a couple of weeks earlier I had started throwing up so I went to the doctor, and they thought I had had some food poisoning or maybe an allergic reaction to something so they decided to do some tests. Well, the day after the museum showing we got the results back and it looked like there were some blood abnormalities, but they still didn’t know what it was. So they took some more blood samples and sent them to the Mayo clinic in Minnesota, and when the results came back they were positive that I had Osteosarcoma, which is essentially a tumor in my left leg.” She wiped her eyes. Then she pulled aside her robe to reveal a partially healed incision about two inches long in her leg.

  “As soon as they realized what it was I began chemotherapy treatments and went in for surgery. They removed the tumor and thought that they got it out of my leg, but the blood tests showed that there was still a problem,” she said starting to cry harder again.

  “It’s moved into my lung Alex and it’s getting worse. I wanted to tell you about the tests but they didn’t know what was going on and then when we found out it was cancer I was going to tell you, but I guess I just wanted to live life like normal for as long as I could. Then you proposed, and I didn’t know what to say. Of course I wanted to marry you Alex, but I couldn’t just say yes if you didn’t know what was going on and there we were in that fancy restaurant and I didn’t know what to do…”

  I walked back to her, laid my head in her lap and just started crying.

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you Alex.”

  “Oh no Jo, I’m sorry. What would have happened if I hadn’t come back in time? I’ve wasted the last three months. What have I done? Oh my god what have I done?”

  “Shh, shh. Please don’t think that Alex…whew. I don’t…” and she closed her eyes, put her hand on her forehead and leaned back against the couch.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked looking up at her through blurry eyes.

  “I…I need you to go now Alex, I don’t want…”

  “Let me help, what do you need me to…”

  “Just GO Alex, please,” and she convulsed and put a hand over her mouth to try and stop herself from vomiting. Then we both stood up, and I reached out for her, but she shook her head and waved me away as she rushed off to bathroom.

  Her mom followed after her from the kitchen and her dad walked over to me. “I think you should go now Alex.”

  “But I…”

  He just shook his head.

  I paused for a moment.

  They don’t need you. She doesn’t need you, I thought as I could hear coughing coming from the bathroom.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I did what I had done so many times before and made it easy on myself. But as I turned and walked to the door I saw, sitting on the bookcase by the door, a framed copy of the photograph I had taken of Jo and I at Buffalo Bill’s grave the day she met my mom. It was the one of her laughing as I lifted her off the ground and spun her through the air. It looked just like the photo of my mom and dad that I had grown up looking at hanging on my wall at home. You look so much like him, I remembered her saying.

  My life would have been different if my father had stayed the night my mother told him she was pregnant, but he didn’t, he ran. It’s time I stop running.

  I turned to Jo’s dad.

  “Listen Mike, I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I left three months ago, but I didn’t know Jo was sick. She needs me now and I need her, so unless you call the police, I’m not leaving.”

  We looked at each other for a few seconds, then he stepped aside.

  I went to the bathroom and saw that the door was cracked open. I could hear her convulsing and crying.

  I opened the door.

  Jo turned and looked at me, her eyes swollen and red. Her mom looked up at her dad. He just nodded, so she moved back.

  “I’m not leaving,” I told Jo. Then I wet a washcloth in the sink, knelt down beside her and handed it to her. I put my hand on her back as she kept throwing up.

  When everything was finally out of her system I picked her up and carried her up to the couch in the living room. She laid her legs across my lap and fell asleep.

  I sat there with her in my arms trying to wrap my mind around what she had told me; thinking about all of those things I had seen and done in South America while the most extraordinary person I had ever known was here dying. While I was photographing students she was getting blood tests. While I was drinking fruit smoothies she was having a part of her leg removed. While I was taking in the freshness of a tropical rain she was having her frail body bombarded with enough poison to kill the demon inside her. It was more than I could handle, and I began crying again. This time quietly; this time full of so much regret.

  After a while Jo’s mother came in and whispered: “Is she asleep?”

  I nodded. Then I cradled her in my arms and lifted her off the couch.

  “I’m going to put her in bed,” I whispered to them. Samantha nodded and gently touched the top of Jo’s smooth head.

  I climbed the steps and pushed open the door to her room with my foot. This wasn’t the room I had remembered my Jo growing up in. A medical bed lay in the center with various machines on either side. I laid her down and pulled the cover up to her chin. I touched the tissue thin skin on her sallow cheek with the back of my hand still trying to absorb what was happening. Then I gently closed the door and went down stairs.

  Her father sat nursing a cup of coffee as I entered the kitchen.

  “It’s so good you’re here,” Samantha said as I leaned against the kitchen wall. “She’s been asking if we had heard anything from you every single day. Every time we would go out to get the mail she wanted us to check if there was a letter. Every time we got home from a doctors visit she would refuse to lie down before checking and re-checking the answering machine to see if there was a message. Alex, where have you been?”

  I started crying again and ran my hand through my hair. Then I hugged Samantha. After a minute, I pulled myself together enough to answer her question.

  “I had no idea she was sick,” I said taking a tissue out of the box on the counter and wiping my face.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” Michael asked.

  “Yes please.” Then I told them about the story I was covering in Colombia and how I had proposed.

  The day wore on and they made me a sandwich while I told them about some of what I had experienced, while they got me up to date on more of the details of what Jo had gone through the three months I was gone.

  “There are good days and there are bad days,” Samantha said nursing her third cup of tea. “Unfortunately, there are far fewer good days than bad ones lately. Anymore we just do what we can to help her be in as little pain as possible. We try to distract her as much as possible, but it’s been more and more difficult. Oh, Alex it’s so good you’re back. You mean so much to her.”

  “I’ll be honest,” her dad continued. “It’s been really hard, but I know she’ll be glad that your back,” and then he started choking up, which made me have to reach for another tissue myself.

  I mustered the courage to ask the hardest question of all. “Do they have any idea how long she has?”

  They looked at each other.

  “There’s just no way to know for sure. In the beginning, when we found out it had spread, we weren’t sure if she would last three months, but she refused to think that she wouldn’t see you again. Now we just thank God every morning that we wake up and find that she is still breathing.” Then Samantha started crying again.
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br />   Now it was getting dark.

  The handle fiddled on the front door and it opened. It was Susan.

  “Hey,” I said with not much energy.

  She put down her bags, walked over and just hugged me.

  Susan was married now and living just fifteen minutes away, but most nights lately she was sleeping on the couch, trying to help her parents keep vigil.

  “Alex, it’s so good you’re here,” she told me.

  “Can I just stay with her tonight? I mean I don’t know how I’ll be able to go home…”

  “I’ll get you a blanket,” Samantha said putting her hand on my arm.

  I walked up to Jo’s room and carefully opened the door. Then I took off my shoes and sat down in the large chair next to Jo’s bed.

  “This should keep you warm,” Samantha whispered as she walked into the room. “In the beginning we had to wake her up in the middle of the night to give her medicine, which was so awful because of how much pain she was in, but now we just let her sleep.”

  “How much does she sleep?”

  “Fifteen, maybe eighteen hours a day.” Then she handed me the blanket. “You should try and get some sleep so you can be awake when she wakes up.”

  “But what if…”

  “Shh…” she said putting a finger to my lips. “We don’t ask that question. Otherwise we wouldn’t get the little sleep that we do. We just say good night and God bless and hope that tomorrow will be another day.”

  Samantha turned to Jo and leaned over her daughter’s face.

  “Goodnight my beautiful girl, the joy of my life. I pray to God almighty that you sleep well and rise with the morning.” Then I watched Samantha kiss Jo’s forehead as gently as the falling of a feather. A tear streaked down her cheek and fell from her chin onto Jo’s.

  “Good night Alex,” she whispered. Then she closed the door.

  Thirty-Four