by Rob Rufus
I refused to eat all day. I wouldn’t sleep at night. I sat straight-backed in my chair, just like I had before, ignoring any thoughts or sensations.
I wouldn’t speak. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth I would puke. Most of my communicating was done through annoyed nods—most of them meaning NO.
NO, I don’t want to lie down. NO lights. NO, I don’t want to talk/walk/eat/move.
YES, leave me alone.
I pursed my lips. I shut my eyes. The taste inside my mouth grew strong enough to smell. I’d forgotten how horrible this first dose of chemo could be. Thoughts bubbled up, breaking my concentration—images of recent meals: grade-D hamburger covered in melted Frosty, Big Gulps spilling over with cold pizza grease, chewed lettuce, refried beans, histories of compost now oozing together beneath radioactive microwaved rays.
Mom asked me if I was okay. I nodded curtly—YES.
Then I hacked gallons of green and pink toxic pukeshit all over my lap, feet, chair, trash can, floor, bed, and mom.
* * *
One day in, and I didn’t feel so new or strong anymore.
* * *
The treatments made me sicker than they ever had, even back in those first days at Columbus Children’s. I was too sick to take my pills—I puked them up before my stomach could process them into my bloodstream. With each hack and gag, the wounds from my surgery felt as if they were reopening, and the bed made my back hurt worse than ever. I tried to take my painkillers, but they wouldn’t stay down.
Two days into my treatment, Dr. Ranalli began to question his decision to restart the chemo so soon. He saw my severe reaction to the drugs, and worried that my body wasn’t as far along in the healing process as they had hoped.
But I assured him that I could take it. As much as I couldn’t stand the treatment, it wasn’t as bad as prolonging things even further. I told Dr. Ranalli that I was strong enough to tough it out.
I’m not sure that anyone was buying it. The chemo was already starting to break me down.
* * *
Sometime during the third day, I noticed hair on my blanket and hospital gown. I ran my hand over my head—more thin black hairs stuck to my fingers and palm. I blew on my hand and they wisped away.
I wanted to weep.
* * *
On the morning of the fourth day, noises woke me.
“Turnthatfuckin’ TV off,” I croaked.
My throat was dry from sleep. The shades were drawn; powerful rays of sunlight squeezed through the edges, but around me the room was still dark. I squinted and called out. No one answered me.
Morning was a confusing time—ever since my return to the hospital, I hadn’t been able to sleep without sedation. So at first, I thought maybe I was dreaming.
I groaned again and reached for my glasses. Mom came into focus. She stood at the edge of my bed. She was staring at the TV.
The Today show was on, but it didn’t seem like the real Today show. Off camera, people were screaming. Smoke was everywhere. There was no way that I was looking at the same bright morning.
Then, everywhere, everyone was screaming. A building was burning. A building was falling.
The world was ending. It was all just a dream.
2
That entire day was confusing. I tried to focus on the television. I asked Mom questions, which she had no clue how to answer. The more news that came across the screen, the more confused I got.
For the first time ever, all the TVs in the cancer ward were on, blaring together as one depressing chorus. Kids got their treatments while parents and visitors stood glued to the screens at the feet of their beds. The more thoughtful parents huddled around the portable TV at the nurses’ station.
The hospital staff—to their credit—was acting pretty normal. No one wanted to scare a building full of sick kids more than they already were. Nat ditched school and drove up as soon as the towers fell. He arrived sometime in the evening, before I’d finished my dose. He didn’t interrupt me, but I could hear him bickering (as was the new normal) with Mom in the hallway.
A nurse came in to check my IV. The last bag was almost empty.
“I’d ask if you’re okay,” she said, “but it seems a silly question on such a horrible day.”
She didn’t expect a response. She emptied my trash can and set it beside me. She shut the door gently and left me alone.
* * *
The strange week dragged on.
The three of us watched TV every morning. Speeches and threats were given as facts and speculations slowly emerged. Rescue workers toiled in rubble. Photos of the missing covered chain-link fences.
The morning news was my window. The world beyond looked like one big unmarked grave.
* * *
While I got chemo during the day, Nat roamed around Columbus alone. The attack had shaken something in him, even if he was too much of a rock star now to admit it.
In the evenings, he always found his way back to the hospital. He and Mom greeted each other wordlessly; she was angry that he’d ditched school, she was angry about his neck tattoo, she was just angry with him, period. But they remained cordial as long as they were around me.
I still felt horrible, but for once I accepted I had no right to bitch. The nausea, the nerve damage, and the pain paled in comparison to what was happening outside my hospital walls.
So I tried not to whine about my back. I tried not to lash out when I was at my lowest. I tried not to get depressed about the black hairs I kept finding on my pillow and blanket and shoulders.
I tried to be tough—or, more accurately, I tried to only be a pussy on my own time.
* * *
Dr. Ranalli delivered my discharge papers himself. The cancer markers in my blood were the lowest they’d ever been, which he said was amazing. My hearing was worse by another seven percent. My breathing, by his new numbers, was down as well—to forty percent capacity, the exact cutoff number listed in our new insurance mandate.
“I sent a copy of these results, along with a personal letter, to your insurance agency earlier today,” he told Mom. “Hopefully now you have one less thing to worry about.”
Mom jumped up and hugged him. I gave a relieved smile—I was happy to give up my pulmonary numbers if it meant an end to our battles with the insurance company. What’s a couple of short breaths versus millions of dollars?
Dr. Ranalli prescribed me a breathing steroid, which he hoped would help my lung function. Once I could stomach taking pills again, I needed to add it to my daily regimen. I smiled at this news too, imagining how a steroid might help with my workout routine.
Dr. Ranalli nodded at Nat’s neck tattoo.
“At least you won’t get drafted with that thing,” he said.
“No way,” Mom said. “He isn’t going to get off that easy.”
* * *
I told Mom that she could go ahead and leave, and that I would just catch a ride home with Nat. She looked slightly hurt but didn’t protest. She hugged us both and left, promising to get my prescriptions filled on her way home.
I changed into my people clothes. Black hairs fell around me as I pulled the neck of my T-shirt over my head. I avoided the mirror.
I got nauseous as soon as we pulled into German Village traffic. I yelled for Nat to pull over, but we were stuck at a light. I opened the car door and barfed all over the BMW beside us. The light turned green and Nat sped off, laughing.
Once we got out of the city, I felt better. The afternoon sunlight was almost gone, save for a thin orange sliver stretching over the fields like a crack in a door. We drove past one of the farmers’ markets that lay in the empty nowhere between Circleville and Chillicothe.
One by one, we passed hand-painted road signs advertising pumpkins, raisin pie, and homemade fudge. But the last signs of the row were different—they
had been painted in a hurry, and their words were smeared and uneven. Nat read them out loud as we passed. . . .
UNITED WE STAND!
GOD BLESS AMERICA!
SUPPORT R PREZ!
“That’s kinda nice,” I said. Nat laughed again.
“Shiiiiiiiiit,” he said, “it’s scary is what it is. Welcome to the new world order, man. Just you wait and see.”
3
Those first days home, I didn’t venture farther from my bed than the bathroom. I puked and slept as the post-terror world took shape.
New York became a beacon of brotherly love and combined sacrifice. Memorials and fund-raisers were held all over the world. The Who even got back together. America had taken one collective breath and sent millions of prayers out into the ether to accompany all the lost souls toward their respective gods.
But in our small town beside that big river, it was definitely not the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. As the days went on, and I became well enough to leave my house, I could sense a new paranoia spreading over Huntington.
I don’t think that anyone was actually worried terrorists might crash a plane into the flea market or anything—the attacks that our citizens fretted over were more symbolic; not an attack on American soil, but an attack on “American values.” This meant that anything, or anyone, considered outside the norm was suspect—including punks.
My first week home, Doyle was expelled from Ashland High because he wore an all-black outfit to school. His algebra teacher told the principal she was afraid he was part of the Trench Coat Mafia. Police even escorted him from school property.
A few days later, police arrived at my house. Paul and I were drinking iced tea on the front porch when two cruisers pulled up on the curb. They walked up the yard with their hands on their service revolvers. They questioned us for twenty minutes before they said that two of my neighbors had called them—they’d reported that Nazi skinheads were dealing drugs off my front porch. I told them that I had cancer, but I think they thought I was bullshitting.
The week after, Nat told me that YWCA management announced that, for the time being, they wouldn’t be renting their hall for any political meetings, rock concerts, or other possibly subversive events. So, basically—no more shows.
The tie between teenagers playing music and terrorism was never fully addressed.
* * *
With all concerts canceled and nothing to do, the one bright side I saw was the chance to see more of my brother at home, but unfortunately, it wasn’t the case.
I knew that things were tense between him and Mom, so I wasn’t shocked that he spent a lot of time away. But I started to feel like he was blowing me off too—I worried it was because of that argument with Brody, the one on the day of the photo shoot, but I hadn’t had the balls to bring it up to him yet.
Nat seemed to spend all his time with girls. Not Ashley, or anyone whom I even knew; random girls, who seemed to come out of nowhere. He said he’d met them all through the band. Who knows, maybe they’d been coming around for a while now and I simply hadn’t noticed.
He always made them wait outside.
Jessica, Tristan, Jenny, Heather, I can’t remember all their names. I watched them from the porch, listening to their shoes crunch over red and gold leaves as they rushed up the yard to meet my twin.
All the girls were prettier than Ashley, but none of the girls would talk to me. I was lucky if they even said hi.
At least Ashley is quiet because she’s shy, I thought to myself, not because she’s a bitch.
Paul was convinced that the girls copped attitude because they were jealous—as long as Nat had a sick brother around, they would never be his number one priority.
I told Paul he was crazy. Shit, those chicks probably didn’t even know we were brothers—by that second week home, we already looked like strangers again.
That breathing steroid Dr. Ranalli prescribed had the opposite results of what I’d hoped for. I couldn’t breathe any better, and I didn’t feel stronger—I just felt antsy. Worse—the steroid made me gain an insane amount of weight, in an incredibly short amount of time.
I couldn’t believe it—I was fat again.
Not even in my most pessimistic fantasies could I have imagined that I’d be a fat cancer patient. And not just fat. I was puffy. The medication made my entire body swell up; I looked like I’d walked into a hornets’ nest.
The last of my dyed-black hair had blown away. Even my eyebrows were gone. The more I puffed up, the fewer defining features remained. I was just a white, hairless glob of shit. I was an ugly marshmallow. I stood in the bathroom, cursing my puffed cheeks and fat neck, disgusted by the way my bloated crotch overtook the most impotent cock in teenage history. My scar looked pathetic now; my tits flopped lazily over it, their nipples pink and swollen.
Every single day, mirrors broke my heart.
And my brother, with his girls. That was a different kind of mirror—reflecting his high, thick hair and his healthy body, highlighting the newfound confidence on his almost handsome face. Every time I looked at him, or saw his arm around a girl, I felt like I was peering at an image of myself—that could have been. That might have been. That was not.
4
“Why the hell would you even ask me about college?”
I was lying on the floor of my bedroom with the phone receiver perched on my stomach. I twisted the cord around my fingers, annoyed.
“I don’t know,” Ali said. “It’s coming up soon, is all. Tyson and Jamie already got into OU, and all my friends are done sending out applications. I just figured, like, maybe we should too.”
“We—uh-huh, right. You mean you should.”
I could hear her sigh over the line. “I meant both of us, Rob. I don’t know why you have to be like this.”
“You don’t? Really? Because for a minute, I thought maybe you were sober enough to understand that I have way too much shit going on to care about college applications!”
I covered the receiver so she couldn’t tell I was out of breath.
“You don’t have to be a dick about it. I just thought it might be something you would want to start planning for.”
“My only plan . . . is no plans,” I snapped. “When I am in remission, I’ll make plans. But right now it’s a waste of time. If you want to start applying and try to make a break for it, go ahead. I can’t blame you.”
“Of course I want to go to college,” she said. “God, how many nights did you use to encourage me to do it. Maybe I can stay here and go to Marshall if I get enough financial aid . . . but I couldn’t go out of state, even if I wanted to. I’m not trying to run away from anything.”
“I’m not a fucking idiot. Chemo mighta fried my brain, but I’m not fucking stupid—all you want to do is run away! Run to stupid football keggers with your friends. Run to those gross frat houses. Run to go—”
“Stop it!” Ali cried. “I can’t take any more of this! I’m sorry, for whatever I did to make you so upset. I’m sorry that you feel so bad, but Jesus, you are turning into the most miserable person I’ve ever met. Whatever you think is twisting you up like this—listen to me, babe, you are doing it to yourself.”
Whatever, I thought once we hung up. Why the fuck would she ask me about college? Like I care. Mom and Dad don’t even give a shit about it.
Which was true—my parents never brought up college, not since the day I got sick. They humored my plans of becoming a rock star, like it was as reasonable and clear-cut as deciding to be a podiatrist.
They figured that my dreams gave me hope. What was the harm in them? They didn’t want me to plan to enter school in the fall, because they knew there was a chance I might still be sick. They did my schoolwork for me and had me sign my name. They dealt with pretty much everything for me so I could focus on my rock ’n’ roll fantasies.
I
t was easier on me—and them—if I continued dreaming up my own path, one with no plans, no viable future.
And, really, what could be more punk rock than that?
* * *
Nocomply11: I don’t know. I think maybe I’ve spread her 2 thin. All her friends hate me, and I can’t blame them, really. Lately whenever she parties with them I get on her case.
CynamnGirl84: why?
Nocomply11: I guess cause I am spread thin too? Frustrated. Just every time I look at her now, I see some kinda guilt—and it makes me feel worse. Like she has no reason 2 b guilty for just wanting to b normal. U know?
I was logging on to America Online a lot more. I didn’t have anything else to do. I talked with Babs almost every day, sometimes in the CancerKidz chat, sometimes privately.
Talking with her helped my mood. It wasn’t like talking to Nat or Ali, not that they had much time to talk lately, anyway. I could vent to Babs, and I could try to get ahold of my feelings for once. And she could listen openly, without the weight of context to soil her vision.
So we talked. Every day. Ali was at school, Mom was at work, Dad was gone, Nat was gone, and I was shut away in another room, staring at a screen and talking to an invisible girl.
CynamnGirl84: U don’t have anything to feel guilty about, rob.
Nocomply11: Yeah rite! I know u can’t see how fukt everything is here—when I first got sick, everything was good, better even. But after my surgery, it all just got too heavy. Like I am the weight around everyone’s neck. Everyone’s fighting, or not speaking, everyone’s always pissed.
CynamnGirl84: That isn’t your fault. The anger and stuff is probably just a symptom of depression, or stress.
Nocomply11: Yeah, maybe. But the stress and depression are symptoms of me.
I typed blindly, without forethought or pause. Sometimes I revealed thoughts that I would never have considered out loud. I guess I couldn’t really understand the way I felt, until I typed it out. But once I had, it could not be unwritten.
I couldn’t unsay those words, and I couldn’t unfeel those feelings. I couldn’t just push it out of my mind. After I turned off the computer and walked away from those raw conversations, I found that I observed my natural world with a new, bleak clarity.
