On my last night in New York, Matt had accused me of pushing away my emotions. Well, he should see me now, I thought as I rolled over, trying to find a comfortable position. I’d ping-ponged wildly back and forth from exhilarated to devastated to enraged to terrified in the space of a few hours. I felt sorry for my sister for the first time in my life—and I was more jealous of her than ever. I hated Bradley, but I still loved him.
Emotional enough for you, Matt? I wondered, staring up at the ceiling. Because right about now, those sixteen-hour days at the ad agency looked pretty damn good.
I sighed and flipped over again. In a few hours we’d meet a neurosurgeon and we’d find out what the scans had revealed. Maybe it would all be a mistake. Maybe the technician was a religious whacko who blessed everyone who crossed his path. Maybe the doctor would say Alex had an eye infection or a pinched nerve. He’d probably hand her a prescription for a bottle of drops and tell her to scram so he could get to the patients who really needed his help.
I looked over at Alex, the curves of her face peaceful and relaxed in sleep.
I knew the neurosurgeon wouldn’t say any of those things.
The next morning I gulped three straight cups of black coffee, hoping to chase away the lingering haze from the eerie dreams that had plagued me during the hour or two I’d actually slept. I deliberately waited until my mouth was full before I mumbled an excuse to Mom and Dad about Alex and me going shopping together.
“Shopping?” A furrow appeared between Mom’s brows, and she stopped spooning Equal into her coffee. “Don’t you have to work?”
I probably should’ve come up with something more believable, like a tractor pull. Alex and I had never, ever gone shopping together.
“Actually, yes,” I said. “I have to, um, check out some ads in the mall to make sure they’re displayed correctly.”
“You’re going to the mall?” Dad asked, peering out from over the top of the sports page. “What I would do is take the Beltway. Normally you should avoid it at all costs—too many morons on the road—but at this time of day it should be safe.”
“Are all the morons at work?” Alex asked innocently.
She had almost pulled it off. Her jokes, the way she’d casually hoisted herself up to sit on the kitchen counter—to a casual observer, she seemed utterly carefree, a girl with nothing on her mind but finding the perfect sundress for summer.
Then she got down from the counter and walked over to Dad.
“I love you,” she said. She wrapped him in a giant hug that lingered a few beats too long. Then she hurried out of the kitchen, but not before I’d seen silent tears streaking down her face.
“Lindsey?” Mom called as I started to follow Alex.
I froze.
“I’m glad you girls are going shopping together,” Mom said. She hadn’t seen Alex’s face after all, I realized with a rush of relief. The frown was gone from Mom’s face. She believed my story. “It’s just so . . . nice.”
I left my parents like that—sharing the paper, refilling their coffee mugs from the fresh pot I’d brewed, kvetching over the forecast on the Weather Channel—glad that they could have one more ordinary day.
An hour later, we were sitting in the office of a neurosurgeon whose silvery hair and deep, authoritative voice seemed straight out of central casting. Even his name, Dr. Steven Grayson, seemed like it was created by a Hollywood agent with an eye for the marquee.
First we’d stopped at Alex’s so she could change clothes, then we’d swung by to pick up Bradley on the way to the hospital. I kept my eyes straight ahead when he got into the car and somehow managed to say hi in a normal-sounding voice. The three of us were ushered into the neurosurgeon’s office at exactly our appointed time. That made me nervous; weren’t doctors supposed to run late? Was it a bad sign that he hadn’t kept us waiting?
Alex had barely said a word since we’d left Mom and Dad’s, as if she’d used up all her energy trying to act normal at breakfast. Now she looked like a fearful flier listening to the captain of the plane announce that severe turbulence lay ahead. Her face was ashen, and her hands turned into claws as they gripped the armrests of her chair.
“There’s good news and bad news,” Dr. Grayson began.
“Just tell me quickly,” Alex said. I could see her chest rising and falling rapidly under her thin T-shirt.
“The scans show a tumor pressing on the optic nerve,” the doctor said. “That’s what’s causing problems with your peripheral vision.”
Everything shrank down around those five letters. Tumor.
“We don’t think it’s malignant,” Dr. Grayson said. His voice was reassuring and calm, like he did this every day. He did do this every day, I realized with a jolt. How could someone do this every day? How could he deliver this kind of news again and again with the bland authority of a weather forecaster?
“The medical term is adenoma,” Dr. Grayson said. “It’s located under the optic nerve and pushing up against it, which is typically how these tumors present. That’s why you were having vision problems.”
“It’s not cancerous?” Alex asked.
“We won’t know for sure until we get in there,” Dr. Grayson said, steepling his fingers. “But I’m fairly certain it’s benign. Pituitary tumors usually are. Typically we like to access them through the nose. But because of the size of the mass and its location, we need to do a craniotomy.”
“A craniotomy,” I said. This was all happening so fast; my mind was churning to keep up. “You mean you’re going to have to open . . .” My voice trailed off.
“We’ll need to access the mass by opening the skull,” the doctor said.
It was as if by using impersonal language—“the mass” instead of “your tumor”—the doctor was trying to soften the news. But all it did was take it a second or two longer for the meaning to hit, like the brief delay between a foreign speaker’s words and his translator’s interpretation.
“When?” Alex whispered, like getting out that single word took everything she had.
“As soon as possible,” Dr. Grayson said. “We can schedule surgery for Thursday. You should know that there’s a chance I might not be able to get out the entire tumor. If it would risk damaging the optic nerve, I may have to leave a tiny bit behind, in which case, we may need to follow up surgery with a course of radiation. But I’m hopeful radiation won’t be required.”
“You want to operate in three days?” Bradley said. “That’s so soon.”
“Why so soon?” I asked, looking up from the blue spiral notebook I’d been using to frantically scribble down the unfamiliar terms. “You said it’s not fatal—an adenoma, right? So why do you have to operate in three days?”
“This type of tumor presents a lot of secondary complications when it presses against the optic chiasm,” the doctor said, looking directly at Alex. “Your vision may be permanently impaired if we wait. As the mass grows larger, your vision will get worse and worse, and it will be harder to salvage. Right now, the tumor is the size of a walnut. In another few weeks, things will become more . . . complicated.”
I saw Bradley reach for Alex’s hand, and I hated myself for noting it, for feeling a white-hot pang in the center of my chest. I averted my eyes and looked behind the doctor, to his wall of pride. University of Pennsylvania medical school. Yale for undergrad. Board certifications and professional awards and commendations. I took notes on all of it so I could check him out.
“Am I going to go blind?” Alex asked.
“It’s highly unlikely,” he said. “I can’t say for sure until we get in there and see what we’re dealing with. But most patients recover most of their sight, if not all.”
“But some go blind,” Alex said.
“Few,” the doctor acknowledged. “I don’t expect that to happen to you. Worst case, your vision may be compromised.”
“So what’s going to happen?” Alex said. “You’re going to take out the tumor and then everything will go back
to normal?”
“Eventually, yes, that’s the goal,” the doctor said. “As I said, you may need radiation following surgery. And I’m going to prescribe steroids to hold down inflammation.”
“Okay.” Alex exhaled loudly. She lifted her chin. “Let’s do it. Get this thing out of me. I want you to do it as soon as you can.”
“I’ll need some more scans and blood tests,” Dr. Grayson said. “I’ll want you to see an endocrinologist this week, too. And I want you to come to the hospital immediately if your vision worsens or if you have any other symptoms. Vomiting, loss of balance, that sort of thing.”
“Hey, can you tell that to the cop who wanted to test me for DUI?” Alex said. She was smiling, a big, happy trademark-Alex smile; how could she possibly be joking around now?
“Pituitary tumors are the next it thing in Hollywood,” Alex said in her TV voice. “Whenever Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan drives over some paparazzi or falls down in a nightclub, they can just pull out their MRI scans and they’ve got a get-out-of-jail-free card. Hey, I’m starting a trend.”
Dr. Grayson and I just gaped at her. Was Alex making fun of this? I didn’t know what to do. But Bradley did.
“Alex.” He stood up and reached for her, and she collapsed into his arms. Bradley stroked her back and whispered something into her ear, something only she could hear, as Alex wrapped her slim arms around his neck and sobbed.
Twenty-four
“LINDSEY?”
“Mmm?”
“Remember my Magic Eight Ball?” Alex asked.
I smiled. Alex had gotten the ball for her twelfth birthday, and that little black sphere had ruled her life like a squatty, enigmatic dictator.
“Should I wear my Gloria Vanderbilt jeans today?” Alex would ask earnestly, shaking the ball. “All signs say yes,” the Magic 8 Ball would decree, and Alex would breathe a huge sigh of relief and slip them on.
“You realize that means nothing,” I used to admonish her. By then, I was already dismissive of things like Ouiji boards and the fortune-teller who had come to a friend’s birthday party and treated everyone to palm readings. Underneath the fortune-teller’s gray wig I’d spotted brown hair, and her breath smelled like McDonald’s. I’d known instantly she was a fraud; a real fortune-teller drank bubbling potions and brews, not McFlurries.
“Look, there are only a few answers,” I told Alex one day, ripping it out of her hand after she’d agonized over whether or not some stupid guy liked her.
“I’ll ask it the same question twice and it’ll give me two different answers,” I said, shaking the ball. “Will I pass my spelling test today?”
“Cannot predict now,” Magic 8 announced.
“Will I pass the spelling test today?” I shook up the ball and held it up triumphantly: “Cannot predict now.”
“Stupid ball,” I said. “I’ll shake it up again and it’ll come up with a different answer.”
“Don’t!” Alex yelled, snatching it out of my hand. “Sharon Derrigan’s cousin’s sister did that and the ball got mad at her for not trusting it and it put a hex on her!”
“That’s silly,” I said as I stared at the ball out of the corner of my eye. The murky blue-black fluid inside did look a little witchlike.
“Anyway, I’ve got to run,” I said, hurrying toward the door. “I have a spelling test.”
It was pure coincidence that my teacher lost all the spelling tests that day. I’d never told Alex about it, but from then on I couldn’t sleep unless the Magic 8 Ball was tucked safely in a drawer, where it couldn’t stare at me with its unblinking blue-black eyeball.
“What made you think of that?” I asked now as I turned out the light and climbed into bed beside Alex. She hadn’t wanted to sleep alone tonight. I couldn’t blame her.
“That ball had all the answers,” she said. “Anything I wanted to know. I never had to wonder about anything. I wish I still had it.”
We were quiet for a moment.
“You’re going to wake up tomorrow after surgery and the doctor’s going to tell you the operation was a perfect success,” I said firmly.
I sounded good. Believable. Thank God the bedroom was dark and Alex couldn’t see my face. Then she’d know what I knew: That even if the surgery went perfectly, her life wouldn’t be the same afterward.
“I just wish tomorrow afternoon was here,” Alex said. “I want this over.”
“I know you’re scared,” I said. “I wish I could do something.”
Actually, I had done something, but Alex didn’t know about it. During the past few days, Alex had disappeared for long hours with Bradley. He must’ve taken the week off work, like I had. Sometimes he picked her up outside my parents’ house, and sometimes she disappeared after the phone rang. I knew he was trying to protect my feelings by not coming into the house so I wouldn’t see him with Alex, but I wasn’t fooled for a second. I recognized his tricks. They were the same ones I’d used to keep Alex and Bradley apart back in high school.
“Bradley?” Mom had said once after answering the phone. “How are you, honey? Good, good. Yes, she’s right— I’m sorry, did you say Alex?”
And Mom had handed over the phone to Alex and looked at me with a question in her eyes. I know Mom had always secretly hoped Bradley and I would end up together. Or not so secretly, given that once, in a bakery, she’d loudly pointed out that the plastic bride and groom on top of a wedding cake looked exactly like Bradley and me.
“It’s okay,” I’d said. I’d looked at Mom and mustered up all the conviction I could. “I’m happy for Alex and Bradley.”
At any other time, that would’ve unleashed a barrage of questions. But Mom and Dad were already reeling from the news Alex had laid on them—the tumor, her broken engagement—so all Mom did was nod with a kind of exhausted resignation. I don’t think she could’ve taken another intense conversation. I know I couldn’t have.
Every time Alex left, I launched into a cleaning frenzy, organizing the kitchen cabinets and sorting the piles of papers in Dad’s office into neat, color-tabbed files. And while I scrubbed the bathroom, if a few tears splashed into the tub along with the running water, no one was around to see. By the time Alex came home from being with Bradley, my smile was back in place and Visine had banished the redness from my eyes. I’d chat with Alex while I studied her face, wondering if this was the day Bradley had decided to tell her everything. But the moment I feared never came, and gradually I realized it never would. Bradley was keeping it a secret, saving me that crushing embarrassment. Somehow, knowing him, I wasn’t surprised.
I only wished it didn’t make me love him more.
“It’s strange,” Alex said now. She rolled over in bed to face me. “I kept telling myself I needed to change my prescription for my contacts,” she said. “But I think I knew it was more than that. I just couldn’t face it.”
“You were probably scared,” I said. “Anyone would have been.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, then I heard the sound of her start to quietly weep.
“I’m still scared,” she said, her voice choked. “I’ve never been so scared. They’re going to cut open my brain. What if something happens? What if I don’t wake up?”
“Oh, Alex,” I said. I reached over and grabbed her hand. I held it as tightly as I could.
“I don’t want to be kept alive as a vegetable,” Alex said fiercely. “Don’t let them do that to me, okay? You’ve got to take charge, Lindsey. Mom and Dad won’t be able to. I need you to promise me.”
“It’s not going to happen,” I said. “You’re going to wake up. I promise you.”
“What if I don’t?” she said.
I opened my mouth to speak, to reassure her, but suddenly a wave of regret and sadness washed over me, taking my breath away. Alex had tried since I’d come home—the invitation to lunch, the phone calls I hadn’t returned, the way she’d flipped the conversation back to me that night in the bar—but it was me who’d pushed her
away. I’d told myself that she hadn’t changed, but she had. I was the one who hadn’t.
My jealousy had kept us apart. What if Alex didn’t wake up? What if I never got a chance to know my sister?
“Alex, I promise you it’s going to be okay,” I said. I wanted to believe it so fiercely I felt like I could make it happen by sheer willpower alone.
“In a way that dumb accident saved me,” Alex said, her voice thick with tears. “What if I’d waited until my vision was really bad? What if it was too late?”
“I think it’s normal to be in denial,” I said. “I would’ve been.”
“You?” Alex said. “Uh-uh. You take things head-on. You always have.”
“About that,” I said. Suddenly I knew how I could distract Alex from her fear, if I had the courage.
“Are you finally going to tell me about the guy in New York?” Alex asked. Her voice was still shaky, but she’d stopped crying. She reached for a tissue on the nightstand and blew her nose. “You’ve been saving it because you knew I’d need a distraction the night before the operation. Very Florence Nightingale of you.”
I swallowed hard.
“I was fired.”
The words hung there a moment, as boldly as the blazing sun on a cloudless summer afternoon.
“Shut up,” Alex said after a pause.
“Swear to God,” I said.
“What happened?” Alex asked.
“I didn’t get a promotion and I kind of freaked out,” I said. “I did some stuff—messed up a little—and everyone agreed it would be better if I left.”
“You were fired,” Alex said.
“Let’s not dwell on it,” I suggested.
“Fired,” Alex said. “You.”
“Or we could dwell on it.”
“What happened?” Alex asked.
“I already told you,” I said.
“Right, right,” she said. “It’s just . . . it’s so . . . unlike you.”
The Opposite of Me Page 26
