by Rob Rufus
Everything felt smaller, tense and tight.
5
I decided to try and push through this funk, salvaging what was left of my time at home. Control what I could control. If I could get stronger, then I could play drums, and if I was playing drums, Nat would have a reason to come home.
I convinced myself that if I exercised, as soon as I got off the breathing steroid the pounds and puffiness would melt away, only to reveal the hard, chiseled body of a pale Greek god beneath (I knew that realistically the chances were slim, but it was all that I could do to get outta bed).
To further motivate myself to get off my ass, I decided to make a game of my workouts.
Dad’s old record collection was tucked away beneath the mantel on our living room wall. His dusty turntable sat on top of the VCR. Every day, I took a new record off the shelf—this would be my official workout music of the day, meaning I wasn’t allowed to stop exercising until the record ended. I could force myself to keep going, while having something to focus on other than how crappy I felt.
Most of the LPs were shit.
It’s hard to do curls listening to Leo Sayer, and no Mary Chapin Carpenter record has ever inspired someone to fight for a few extra push-ups. But some of the albums, I had to admit, kinda fucking ruled.
It didn’t matter what results these workouts actually produced—they became a necessity to me. Exercise felt more important than all my medications combined. It felt more useful than prayer.
I couldn’t control my illness. I knew that by now. I couldn’t diagnose, prescribe, or wish away my problems—but I alone could control my body.
Anyone seeing me then—hunched over in my living room with my parents’ stereo cranked up to the max, gasping for breath while my trembling arms struggled to lift dumbbells to the blasting sounds of Springsteen or CCR—likely would have been disturbed. But it was all I could do to feel like I was a participant in the fight for my life.
* * *
“Mom!” I screamed as I ran into my parents’ bedroom.
It was six in the morning. The news was on. Mom was dressing for work. Dad was drinking coffee.
“What? What is it?” she asked, confused.
“My fucking arm!”
I held up my right arm—it was so swollen it wouldn’t even bend at the elbow. Her eyes grew wider.
“Did you do anything to hurt it?”
I shook my head. My heart was racing.
“Have you overworked it?” she asked.
“I don’t know, Mom. I don’t think so. I just woke up and it was like this.”
She sighed.
“Well, get dressed, honey. I need to call my office and tell them I can’t come in. I have to take you back to the hospital.”
* * *
It was a blood clot. Doctors and nurses had warned me about them, but I never really expected to get one.
The ER doctor was pretty freaked when he saw my arm. He started me on anticoagulation medications, and Mom got him in touch with Stacey at Columbus Children’s. The drugs made my head throb.
The ER doctor came in after he’d spoken with Stacey. He told us that I needed to go to Columbus Children’s Hospital immediately, so they could scan for other clots and better monitor my treatment.
“Columbus,” I said to Mom. “He’s kidding, right? I still have a week before my next chemo—I don’t wanna spend it there!” I looked at the doctor pleadingly. “Can’t you just give me some of this medicine to take at home? I’m fine.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Blood clots can’t be taken lightly—especially with a patient in your condition.”
“It can’t be that big of a deal,” I said.
“Robert, let me make this clear—the clot in your veins could stop that heart of yours before the cancer even gets warmed up. You got me?”
I got him.
Mom and I rushed home to pack our bags.
* * *
Four days.
Another four fucking days I spent in the hospital. And not even on the cancer ward—I was stuck in some gen-pop room, beside a little kid in a body cast. They strapped leg massagers on me to circulate my blood, and the nurses only let me up to piss or get ultrasounds.
Otherwise, I was literally stuck in bed, wide-awake and frustrated as hell, listening to my cell mate moan incoherently through the curtain between us. I wondered if I had done this to myself—had I pushed my body too hard? Had I screwed up this bad, forced myself back into the damn hospital?
No one visited. No one called. Four days I lay there, thinking these thoughts, until they finally let me go. They sent us home with two new medications and five packs of heparin-filled syringes that I had to inject into my stomach once a day. I didn’t really mind the pain anymore.
* * *
Back home, the distance among my family had spread. Dad went in to work earlier and stayed out later. Mom seemed perpetually stressed and overwhelmed. My brother didn’t come home at all. The high school called, because he was never in class.
“Do you know what he has the house number saved as in his cell phone?” Mom asked one night at dinner. She was glaring at Nat’s empty chair.
I sighed. “What?”
“Hell!” she said. “He thinks this is hell.”
Her tone broke into words meant for only her ears.
“I try so hard to keep all this together,” she mumbled. “God, I am a terrible mother.”
“Jesus, Terri,” Dad said. He stood up from the table. He tossed his plate into the sink. Food scraps and silverware bounced off the counter. “You’ve got to get a grip!”
He stormed up the stairs. I heard their bedroom door slam. Mom sat at the table and cried.
Late that night, when my parents were in bed, I heard Nat coming in through the basement window. I found him down there, throwing clothes into a backpack.
“Yo, dude,” I said.
He looked surprised to see me.
“Oh, hey. Didn’t know you were back. How are you feeling?”
“All right. Totally dumb that they kept me in the hospital that long.”
He nodded. “I was gonna come up and visit, but like every day Dad would say they were about to let you leave.”
“No worries,” I said, “it was all a clusterfuck.”
He held out his arm. “Check this out, though.”
He had a new tattoo—a bomb on his opposite forearm, with the words Skate and Destroy around it.
“Sweet,” I said, trying to remember the last time I’d seen him on a skateboard. “When did you get that?”
“The other night. Jason hooked me up for pretty much nothin’.”
I nodded at his backpack on the floor.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve been crashing over at Jessica’s . . . remember, the blonde? She has an apartment near the old post office.”
“Are you dating her now?”
“I wouldn’t say dating,” he said.
“So Ashley split?”
He ignored the question and pulled the cushions off the love seat, grabbing the change beneath them. Then he continued packing his bag. He took a pair of Converse from the corner and stuffed them in last.
“When’d you get a pair of Chucks?”
“Ah” he mumbled, “actually, they’re yours.”
“Mine?”
“Yeah, well, you hadn’t really been wearing them much lately. So I figured I could borrow them.”
“Wait. You mean my FUCK CANCER shoes?”
“Yeah. I mean, I marked over the words in Wite-Out, so they didn’t look as crazy.”
“Why the hell would you do that, man?”
“Chill out,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d care. You’re pretty much cured, right? I figured that’s why you weren’t wearing them. I did
n’t think it was a big deal.”
I didn’t know quite what to say. Neither did he. He stood there awkwardly for a moment, and then he moved past me without another word.
He propped himself up to the open window.
“Hey,” I said behind him. “You maybe wanna go to the movies tomorrow or something?”
“Sorry, dude. I can’t.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Nat tossed his bag out the window. He lifted himself with a grunt, struggling to wiggle through the tiny frame.
Before I walked upstairs, he ducked his head back inside.
“Rob?” he whispered. I walked over.
“Don’t tell anyone where I’m at, okay? Don’t tell Mom that I came by.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “I won’t let anyone know.”
“Thanks,” he said.
Then he was gone.
I walked slowly up the stairs. I switched off the basement light. I caught my breath in the dark, then made my way to my bedroom. I kept the basement window open, in case my brother found the way back home.
TWENTY-FOUR
The Imprints of Angels
1
Mom got a phone call from her supervisor on the evening before we left for Columbus—due to the increased terror level, the federal government was imposing new security mandates for all oil refineries. A mandatory staff meeting was scheduled so they could work through the transitions and getting the refinery up to code. The meeting was to be held in two days.
It was one of life’s little ironies, the way the timing worked out. My mom was called in to work, just as she had been on the day of my diagnosis. Now, for the first time since, it was my dad who needed to take me to the hospital.
* * *
I didn’t get a chance to see my brother before I left. Not that I especially needed to see him, but it seemed important, nonetheless. I’d waited up for him on Sunday, but he never came home. I tried his cell—it was off. I didn’t bother leaving a message.
Now, Dad and I traveled in silence. I couldn’t help thinking back to that bad day, but I secretly feared mentioning it could jinx our entire trip. I stared out the window of the car, watching bare branches twitch like claws in a flip book. Dad turned the volume on the radio down.
“So, how’s Natty doing?” he asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine. I barely see him lately.”
Dad nodded. “This year has been really hard on him. He’s trying his best to be a good brother to you.”
“I know,” I mumbled.
“And you aren’t the easiest guy to be around sometimes.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know that too. What about Mom? How is she?”
Dad sighed. “She’s really trying to be strong—you know she’s done a damn good job of staying strong for you. She just hasn’t bounced back from your surgery the way you have. The world weighs heavier on some people, is all.”
“I can tell.”
“But she’s trying. You know how your mother is. She doesn’t like anyone to see her seem vulnerable, especially you.”
“I know.”
Dad stared straight out the windshield.
“Did you know that she’s been going to counseling twice a week?”
“Really?” I asked. “Since when?”
“Since after your surgery. She goes to a support group sometimes too—down at the hospital.”
“Damn.”
“She’s never mentioned it?”
“Not to me.”
“Well—exactly my point. She doesn’t want you to know how much effort it takes her to deal with this shit. I think this week will give her a lot of closure, finishing treatment and all. We can move through it, just like we have been—we just gotta keep rolling forward.”
I nodded and looked through the windshield too. The road ahead was wide open.
* * *
It was the first day of the last time.
I was anxious. Not about the chemotherapy. I felt anxious in a confused sort of way, like how a convict might be anxious when he learns his parole has finally been granted. I was afraid that the acknowledgment of finishing treatment—of beating cancer—could somehow open me up to seriously bad juju.
I could imagine the scene: doctors rushing into my room, telling me that there was a mistake, that I wasn’t actually better, that the cancer had spread, and that I wasn’t going anywhere.
So I decided to say goodbye quietly.
I dreamt my goodbyes, sending farewell thoughts to every nurse, every doctor, every tech, every orderly. Good-lucks went out to every stranger and patient. I summoned short, silent prayers for each person who passed through this cancer ward. I asked God to credit any remaining luck I had left toward the patients around me—I wouldn’t need it anymore.
* * *
I woke up one morning to the sound of a trash bag getting stuffed into the wastebasket. The janitor was back. I hadn’t seen him in months. I sat up in bed and watched as he struggled to get the bag around the rim.
“Hey, man,” I said sleepily.
The janitor turned around, confused. It wasn’t my janitor, after all—this was some young guy, pale, with cropped red hair. It was just another stranger.
“Sorry if I woke you,” he said.
“What happened to the other guy?”
“Who?”
“Uh, the other guy, you know, the old janitor. The black dude.”
The new janitor glanced around nervously, like he wasn’t sure if company policy allowed interaction with the sick kids.
“I couldn’t tell ya,” he said. “I just started last week. I heard a few of the older guys were retiring, but I didn’t meet most of ’em. Sorry.”
“Black guy. Older,” I continued. “He was in the army—in Germany.”
The new janitor shrugged.
“Sorry,” he said again. He took the used trash bag out into the hall.
“I wonder if he went back to Germany,” I said to the empty room. I imagined him in Hamburg, beautifully out of place, walking the streets with a G-string girl under each arm. I had to smile. “Yeah, I bet he did. Fuck fucking yeah, he did.”
It was the last thought I had before I drifted back to sleep.
* * *
Stacey and Dr. Ranalli said their goodbyes early, on the morning before my last injection. They were both disappointed that they weren’t able to say goodbye to my mom too.
“This isn’t technically goodbye,” Stacey said, “which is good for me, because I’m selfish and I’ll miss you! Ha-ha. But you’ll only have to put up with me once a month now, when you come back to get your scans.”
“I think I can handle that,” I said.
She smiled and then turned to Dad. “Like we’ve discussed, from now on he’ll be able to get his weekly blood work locally. They’ll send the samples back here for examination. But he’ll still need to come get his scans once a month.”
Dad searched his pocket for a pen to write all of this down. Stacey touched his arm.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve already spoken to Terri about it on the phone.”
Dad laughed. “Whew, good. She’s been calling me twice a day for status reports.”
“Well, tell her the status is his blood work looks great—this is one lucky dude!” Dr. Ranalli said, grinning.
The two of them came to my bed and hugged me gently, sidestepping the tubes and cords and machines. They lingered for only a moment, and then they were gone—off to save other kids, off to other kids who still needed saving.
I sat there calm, unusually content. I waited for the nurse to come and inject me with my last hit of poison. I shut my eyes and dreamed one final, silent goodbye.
2
“So how does it feel?” Dad asked.
We were on the outskirts of
Wheelersburg—almost home. I squinted my eyes shut, trying to control my stomach. My head was still spinning from the drugs.
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “It doesn’t really feel like anything. Anticlimactic, I guess is the word.”
Dad nodded. “I know what you mean. That’s just life, son—all the mountains you climb, all these dreams you obsess over—once you achieve them, it always leaves you at a loss.”
“I feel—”
“Numb to it all? Yeah, I get that. . . .”
“No,” I snapped. “Fuck, I . . . I feel like I’m . . . gonna puke . . . fuck . . .”
Dad pulled off to the side of the highway. He slammed on his brakes, engulfing the car in a cloud of road dust. I opened the door, unfastened my seat belt, leaned over, and barfed all over the shoulder.
* * *
When I was finished, I wiped off my lips and sat back in the seat. I looked to my left—Dad was gone. I hadn’t noticed him get out of the car. For a minute, I almost panicked, but then I saw him, standing on the other side of the road, waving me over.
I stepped over the puke puddle and carefully made my way across the blacktop.
Dad stood in front of a used-car lot. The lot was empty except for six cars, a trailer, and a sign that read JJ’S CLASSIC AUTOS.
These cars were fucking classics—JJ wasn’t kidding. Their bright paint jobs were dull now, transformed into colors only time can create. Their beauty floored me; I thought cars like this only existed in the movies.
“I had one just like her,” Dad said. He nodded toward a long sedan with a blue/purple tint.
“What is it?”
He ran his hand across the hood. “A ’66 Merc Comet. Mine was cream, though, beautiful. V-8 engine. Damn, I loved that car.”
“It is really cool . . . but man, look at that! That is the car!” I said.
All of a sudden, I forgot about my nausea. My breath shortened as I walked toward it.
The car was a slice of apple pie. Red—not dull, but bright red, the color of hard candy. It had a black convertible top. The grille was capped with two fog lights, which glared at the road like omnipotent eyes. The two back tires were raised like those of a stock car, and the word AVENGER wrapped boldly around them. The trunk was blunt, like a sawed-off shotgun. Between the taillights, shiny metal letters spelled out:
