by Heidi Willis
"But?"
"But I think you want something else just as much."
"What could I want just as much as saving Ashley?"
She looks at me long, searching my eyes like she's debating whether or not to tell me what it is I want. And then she does.
"I think you want to believe God can save her."
Logan pulls in behind her and honks the horn. I'm frozen in place. I want to say the things I know I should say. The easy words. I do believe God can save her, I just don't know if he will save her. But even as I open my mouth, I know this ain't true. All this time that I've been fooling others, I've been fooling myself too.
"What are you wrestling with, Babs? Whether God is real, or whether he is good?" She reaches out and holds my hand again, the sadness in her eyes too hard to look at. "He doesn't need you to believe to heal her. He wants you to believe so he can heal you."
"I've tried." I am not going to cry. I am not. I am not.
She squeezes my hand. "I know. Maybe stop trying so hard. It'll come."
I want to tell her I've been trying for so long, I don't think it's going to happen for me.
Logan honks the horn and leans out the window. "She's gonna miss her plane, Mom. Just let her go already."
"Why did you come all the way here?"
She lets go of my hand again, like it is too hot to touch. She stares down at her own hands in her lap. "If God lets Ashley die. . ." Tears suddenly spring to her eyes, and she breathes in deep. "I don't want you to stop wanting to believe."
I want to ask why this is so important to her. Why am I so important to her? Why is it so important to her that I believe? But Logan honks again and the moment is broken. "I'm coming already!"
"I am going to miss my plane," she says, laughing out of nervousness, wiping her eyes. "Everything will be all right, Babs."
As she drives off I hold those words, though I know they're a lie. She don't know. But just hearing them, I feel a little better.
~~~~
Chapter Twenty-Nine
When we arrive at the hospital, there's a flurry of activity in the hall outside Ashley's room. Doctors and nurses are flying in and out of the room, rolling carts in and out, frantic but controlled. "What's wrong?" I grab a nurse's arm. "Is it Ashley? What's going on?"
"She's got pneumonia," she says shortly, brushing me off.
Logan and I dress quickly in the gown and gloves and mask. By the time we get in the door, it's just Dr. Van Der Campen and two attendants, and they are transferring her to one of those beds with wheels.
"Where are you taking her?"
"Down to x-ray."
He pushes past me. Ashley's lips are tinged blue and her eyes are dull. I grab her hands in my gloved one. "It's okay, baby. They're going to take you to get some pictures of your lungs. You'll be fine."
"I can't breathe," she says, struggling with every breath. I hold her hand as the attendants roll her out of the room, and then watch as she disappears around the corner.
"She's going to be okay, right?" I ask as Dr. Van Der Campen brushes by.
"This is the one complication we were most worried about," he says, with little feeling. "Even under the best circumstances, pneumonia can be dangerous. With Ashley. . ."
He don't finish, and I don't need him to. She's got no immune system. She's got no ability to fight off the terrible disease that is squeezing her lungs. Her body's an open invitation.
I'm suddenly sobbing. I sink to the floor, crying so hard I can't breathe. I'm making a fool of myself, but I can't help it. Since that first day in Children's Hospital, that day when the nurse told me Ashley would be fine and live a very normal life, I've known in my gut that this day was coming. Ashley is dying.
And from nowhere there are two hands lifting me up, and I'm in Travis's arms. "It's okay. I'm here." Like I am a child, he picks me up and carries me back into Ashley's room, untying the mask so I can breath and stroking my hair with his fingers. "It's going to be okay."
I cry harder, because I know he don't know this for certain, but I want so hard to believe it. Travis, who has always made everything right, can't control this.
He holds me until I stop crying, and then wipes the tears from my face.
"How did you get here?" I ask, punctuating the question with a hiccup.
"Dr. Van Der Campen called Dr. Benton last night, and Dr. Benton called me. He said he was afraid Ashley might be taking a turn for the worse, and he thought I should be here. I took the red-eye out."
I don't even ask what a red-eye is, I'm just so thankful he's here. Then I realize there were two pairs of hands picking me up, and I look around. "Was that Dr. Benton?"
"He came out too. He thought we might need the support and someone to talk to who understood the medical lingo."
I laugh through the tears, because I can't think of any other doctor who would care whether or not we understood. "Where did he go?"
"I think he went with Ashley," Logan says. "He walked that way, anyway."
I feel completely embarrassed now by my breakdown, but Logan just says, "Sheesh, Mom, you shouldn't bottle stuff up like that. When you explode, you really explode." He grins one of his big, goofy grins, and it makes me laugh.
"Can you go get us some Cokes?" Travis fishes around in his pocket. He finds a couple crumbled bills and hands them to Logan.
When he's gone, Travis sits on the bed next to me. "I'm sorry, Babs. About the baby thing. I didn't want to leave mad, and the whole time I was gone I just wished I could come back and make it right."
"You're right," I say, waving it off and then blowing my nose. "I'm so busy looking at the next step, I stop living in the moment we're in."
"This is gonna work. Dr. Benton says the stem cells are multiplying really well, and they look strong."
"I don't want to replace Ashley with another baby."
"I know that."
"And the baby wouldn't be just a donor. Watching them grow up . . . they're almost gone already. In a few months Logan'll be out of the house. Ashley's next. What will I do without babies around?"
He takes my face in his hands, his skin warm against mine. "We'll have each other."
It's such a cornball thing to say I almost laugh again, except Travis don't usually talk like this, and I think he's serious.
Dr. Benton knocks on the door. "Can I come in?"
Travis quickly drops his hands.
"Of course," I say, rubbing at the hollows below my eyes to clear off the mascara I'm sure is smeared.
"They have her in X-ray. She'll be back soon. It looks very mild. Dr. Van Der Campen was very much on top of it. He called a few days ago and was afraid it might be coming on. He upped the antibiotics in the drip."
"Is it clear now?" Logan says, peeking his head in, too.
"Where are the Cokes?"
"Oh." Logan looks surprised. "Did you actually want them? I thought you were just trying to get rid of me."
"I'm going back to x-ray to check on everything. The nurses will be in to disinfect in a minute and you--" he points at Travis, "need to find yourself some isolation clothes. No breathing around Ashley when she comes back."
We go together to find the Coke machine, and Logan runs into one of the boys from the hotel.
"Hey Caleb, what's up?"
"Becca's getting out tomorrow!" His round, pink face is glowing as he rolls his cold can between his palms. "They think she's in remission."
"Sweeeeet!" They bump hands in some macho new ritual, and Caleb takes off down the hall.
"Is she in this trial?" asks Travis.
"No. She has cancer." I think about how the nurse at Children's the first day said that it was better to have diabetes than cancer. One could live a fairly normal life with diabetes, she'd said. I look at us, clothed in scrubs, waiting to hear whether Ashley is going to live or not, and think this is some kind of warped normal.
When they wheel Ashley back in, she's inside a clear plastic tent with tubes up her nose. Her li
ps aren't blue anymore, but her eyelids are heavier than usual.
"Hey sweetheart," Travis says, holding her hand in his gloved one.
"You all look like aliens," she says, a coughing spasm following.
"You're the one in the plastic bubble," Logan says, poking at her through the blankets.
She reaches out and holds my hands too, so that we are all connected in some way. "I feel like I'm suffocating."
"You've got fluid on your lungs," Travis says, sounding all doctory.
"Are there any other complications I should know about?" Ashley asks. "I seem to get them all." She coughs again and we wait for it to subside. "Just when I think it can't get worse. . ."
"Oh, it can get worse," Logan says, and we all look at him in horror. He shrugs and pulls a folded paper out of his pocket. "Brian Lee emailed to ask if you'd go to the fall dance with him if you're home by then."
"How's that worse?" Travis demands.
"I don't think her hair will be grown in by then."
~~~~
The pneumonia is a set-back, to say the least. Everything slows down. They cut the drugs they're giving her for the stem cells and her immune system, and they ramp up the antibiotics and a few others drugs I can't name.
We're practically living at the hospital now, afraid to leave. She's lethargic and only half-conscious during those few times she opens her eyes. Every breath is a struggle, and sometimes when I look around at us camped in her room, it seems we're all just waiting around for her to die.
Finally today they come and take the oxygen off, and she eats a tiny bit of chicken broth, and we begin to resume our new normal. When I look around the room at our family, I think no one in their right mind would want to be us, and yet I wouldn't want to be anyone else, anywhere else. It's true that trials make you stronger.
Travis is on the phone with the insurance company, demanding they pay for the Medevac trip to Children's Hospital that first day of our new lives. He's strong and intelligent sounding, and when he looks up at me and winks, I blush. He looks ten years younger, he's dropped so much weight in the last few months. I can't help but think the diagnosis, while terrible for Ashley, hasn't done us much physical harm.
Logan is in the bathroom looking in the mirror and fingering the turquoise that tinges the ends of his Mohawk. I can't tell if he's admiring the recent change or deciding on a new color. He, too, seems more comfortable in his skin. When he glances over and sees me, he grins, and I find myself smiling back at him.
Ashley is asleep, like usual, in her hospital bed, her skin as pale as the sheets around her. Tubing runs out from the IV drip and disappears in her hand. Max the pump lays on top of the blankets and his tubing slithers under the covers and disappears beneath her nightgown. A blood pressure monitor is hooked up to her arm and makes a funny, whirring noise every few minutes as it squeezes her and then releases with a slight whoosh. Underneath all of this, Ashley barely moves. The briefest glimpse and you'd think she was dead.
And yet, here we are.
I remember Pastor Joel saying in a sermon once that spider silk was stronger than steel. I had leaned over and whispered in Travis's ear, "Then I must be Wonder Woman cause I'm brushing them off the porch railings every day."
He snickered, but at lunch Logan said, "That's true. I learned it in science. If you had spider silk and threads of steel the same width, spider silk is five times stronger. It's more elastic and harder to break than plastic."
"That so?" I couldn't tell if Travis was more surprised by the facts or that Logan was actually paying attention in class.
Now, I look at my family and think about that spider web. Alone, we look frail and easy to beat. But we've been steel. Against diabetes. Against the reporters and protesters. Against the school.
I thought for awhile I might lose it all. Ashley and Travis and Logan. But against all odds we're still here.
~~~~
Chapter Thirty
On the day they transplant the stem cells, we all arrive early. There are no reporters and only two protesters who half-heartedly wave their signs as we pass.
I wash Ashley's hair, what is left of it anyway, and dry it and put it back in a head band. Logan sits at the foot of the bed and paints her toenails, which is about the silliest thing I've seen in a long time and makes us all giggle.
A nurse comes in around eight and ups the saline drip. "The doctor will be in about noon to inject the cells," she says, looking around at our motley little group. "I'm not sure the fumes from the nail polish are good for her," she adds.
"They're toxic, not bacterial," Logan says, using a q-tip dipped in polish remover to clean up the edges. She scowls and leaves.
The plastic bubble is gone, but Ashley still has oxygen tubes in her nose and several IV's and machines hooked up to her, making it difficult for her to move around much. Not that she would, since she don't have energy to do much other than breathe, which we find good enough.
When Dr. Van Der Campen comes in at noon he has a large syringe. "Should we give a drum roll?" I ask. He's amused by this and waits while we all pat our hands furiously on the closest hard substance.
"Ready?"
We nod, and he sticks the needle into part of the tubing and pushes the plunger.
"That's it?"
"That's it. Were you expecting fireworks?"
"It's so--"
"Anti-climactic," Logan fills in for me.
"Climactic isn't all it's cracked up to be," he says, pulling the syringe out and capping it. He attaches two more bags of clear fluid to the IV lines and opens the valves so they can drip into Ashley as well. "These will help the stem cells multiply and do their job on the beta cells. And one will bind the toxins in the stem cell solution."
"There are toxins?" All I can think is more poison. Lord almighty, how much can one person take?
"She'll be fine, Mrs. Babcock. We're almost out of the woods now."
Out of the woods for what I'm not sure, seeing as how she still has diabetes and is still allergic to insulin. As far as I can see, she's in the Black Forest.
So Travis can spend time alone with Ashley, Logan and I have been getting lunch out all week, but today he insists the boys go. It is the first time in several days I've been alone with her, and the excitement of the transplant has her more alert than in several weeks.
"Do you think I'll be home in time for the fall dance?" She unconsciously smoothes her hair.
After all of this I can't believe the dance is the thing on her mind, but I'm glad it is. I'm glad she's looking forward to something other than transplants and sponge baths.
"If we do get home in time, we'll have to go dress shopping. I'll bet you've grown five inches in the last four months."
"Yeah. My other dresses would look like sacks on me now, too. I've lost weight, don't you think? I feel skinnier."
"Quite a bit."
She picks up the brush I left on the nightstand and absentmindedly begins to brush her hair. I watch long strands come out with each stroke, and I put my hand up to stop her. "It's real pretty already."
She reaches out and touches my mask. "Why do you have to wear that all the time?"
"So I don't breathe germs on you."
"Because your germs would make me more sick?" I nod, wondering why this is the first time she's asked this, and wonder if today she's more awake and aware of what is going on around her. She's been so groggy since we got here, living in a fog, accepting everything around her without question because questioning takes too much energy.
She fingers the IV line where it enters her hand. "Do you know anything about the other kids? The ones in the trial?" I shake my head. "I wonder if they got their transplants too. Do you think? Do you think they're well now? If they didn't get pneumonia they should be ahead of me."
"Maybe. We don't know that they didn't get sick, too, though."
"Do you think Dr. Jack would tell us? Could we ask if they are making their own insulin yet?"
"I thin
k that's private." She looks so devastated I add, "I can ask, though. Or, better yet, we can check the message board. We haven't even done that yet."
She brightens a bit. "When I get out, you know what I want?"
"To go to the dance with Brian Lee?"
She blushes. "Besides that. I want a steak. A really big one, with a baked potato on the side with sour cream and butter and bacon, just like they serve at the steakhouse."
"Not a cake?"
She squinches her nose. "No. I don't really feel like anything sweet."
"Okay. Steak it is."
She settles back, and I think for a moment she might be going to sleep, until she talks again. "What if I don't?"
"Get a steak?"
"Get out."
"Oh, Baby, I think you're getting out. They don't want you living here. They got other people they need to put in this bed. And I'm pretty sure they're tired of seeing my mug here." I smile my cheesy smile, but she don't bite.
"What happens if this doesn't work?"
I stop smiling. "You can't think like that. It will work."
"I've had dreams a lot lately."
"Oh yeah? What about?"
"About going to heaven. I drift off on a cloud and Jesus is there, and angels singing the most beautiful music you ever heard. And grandpa is there. And it doesn't hurt anymore. And I'm really, really happy."
"It's just a dream, Baby."
She stares out the window, complete peace on her face. "But I like it. That's the thing. I'm not scared anymore that I might die. Sometimes I dream I'm there, and it's so nice, and then I wake up and I'm here, and I can't breathe, and my head hurts all the time and my mouth feels like sandpaper. And I just wish I could go back to sleep and dream again."
My own mouth is parched suddenly. I don't know what to say. I take her hand in mine. Her skin feels dry and fragile, like onion paper, and I'm afraid I'll hurt her holding it. "It'll get better, Ash. This time next year you'll forget how bad all this was. You'll be back at school, playing in the band, fighting with Logan, eating anything you want, and this whole thing'll be a bad dream."
