by Will Searcy
The doctor’s job was complete, and mine was just beginning. I would nurse Sam back to health. If I did nothing else on this Earth, I would do that. I knew I would.
I had not read at work in over a month. It was my longest stretch to date, but I found sleeping too convenient. I did not even have to set an alarm. The bellowing horns of impatient ships were more than enough to wake me. Thanks to their kindness, I was able to get the most sleep I had had since Sam was born. My wife and I pulled him out of Day Care, because I would spend every waking moment with him. I would prepare him fresh organic food as part of a well-balanced diet. I would deliver his medications exactly on time. When his bones hurt, I would hold him and sing along to the Mumford and Sons’ “Sigh No More” album on our stereo. I think everything helped except my tone-A.D.D. voice. Sam was doing well. He seemed encouraged. He seemed healthy and happy, considering the circumstances.
On good days, I took Sam to the park. I encouraged him to play, but he was weak and unwilling. Sometimes I could coax him onto the swing set if I promised to push him and not too high. Mostly, Sam and I would sit by the pond and feed the ducks. We had named them all. There was Daffney, the matriarch of the bunch that could be seen playing follow-the-leader with her three ducklings - Donald, Darkwing, and Scrooge McDuck. Daffney liked to honk and flap her wings at all the other adult ducks when they misbehaved. Their most egregious offenses were eating Daffney’s food, getting too close to Sam or me, or being a living duck and in her general vicinity. Once, Daffney flapped and honked so aggressively after Quacktastic that she face-planted in the water. Sam actually laughed. No gift was greater in the world.
Most often, especially shortly after chemo, Sam was too tired to leave the house. He complained his tummy hurt; so I would try the natural remedies like ginger tea, rice, or applesauce. When that failed, I would concede and give him his nausea medicine, which stopped his bowel movements for about a week. It turned out he could trust gas to be only gas now.
He did not sleep much despite his suffering. His little doe eyes were always bloodshot and squinted. I encouraged him to rest, but he fought it like he fought his cancer. The pain would attack him in waves like a stormy sea crashing into a sea wall. He would curl and cringe but never cry out. Sam saw what happened when he cried. I turned to panic and shoved every bit of food or medicine at my disposal down his throat before calling the nurses and doctors and insisting I take him in for a visit. Sam feared Doctor Abaddon’s office, so he gritted his teeth and bore the pain.
My wife and I had become ships passing in the night. Thanks to the medical bills, she worked overtime as often as possible, which meant she arrived home when I left for work. It was convenient we could watch Sam in shifts, but it did little to mend our marriage. She never expressed in words how I had hurt her, and I never apologized. I felt regret, but I knew an apology included a desire to change the behavior. I did not wish to change. My son had cancer, and I wanted as much of his time left on this earth as possible. It was my right. I would not apologize for that or anything, although I regretted hurting my wife.
One morning, things changed. Sam’s tummy hurt, per the usual, but that morning he vomited. This had happened occasionally, so it was no cause for concern. Then, thirty-three minutes later, he vomited again. I cleaned it up, gave him some ginger ale, and grew concerned. Next, he passed gas, but it was not gas at all. His sheets were covered in bright red, and he had not eaten beets. In the center of the red-stained bed lay one hard lump of black dried blood. This was bad. It was so bad I did not panic. I could not. The overwhelming horror of the situation sucked the wind from my lungs and left me inert.
When I gathered my wits, I changed Sam into clothes suitable for leaving the house. Sam groaned and complained. He was feeling better, he said. He did not want to go, he said. The doctor made him feel bad, he said. All arbitrary complaints to the all-important task at hand. Sam would heal. We had made so much progress. He had to heal. I knew it. There was simply no way I could turn back now…
“The ultrasound showed another tumor on the liver.”
“What do we do?” I asked Doctor Abaddon, sitting in his transcendent white office next to my boy.
Doctor Abaddon sat back in his stool, as if a casual disposition was all I needed to assuage the devastation of this news.
“Unfortunately, the tumor is of a circumference so as to obstruct proper liver function,” the doctor said. “I’m afraid our only recourse would be a transplant.”
“Okay, fine,” I agreed. “Let’s do the transplant. When can we schedule it?”
He snorted a faint snicker at me under his breath. I had not read in so long that my intelligence waned. I was a stupid bridge operator and a bad father. Still, the doctor could have served the news with less melodrama. A liver transplant was inevitable. I was almost relieved it would occur sooner rather than later.
“The issue is …” the doctor said. He sighed and adjusted himself in the stool so he was erect. Then, he looked me in the eye. “… The cancer had already metastasized to the lungs. It had already spread from outside the confines of the liver and then recurred despite aggressive chemotherapy treatment.”
He stared at me in the hope I would understand. His well-deep eyes pleaded with me. They pleaded for a nod or a tear, anything that would prevent his lips from expressing what he must.
“Livers don’t exactly grow on trees,” Doctor Abaddon blurted, quickly correcting himself. “I mean, quite simply, they are in short supply, even shorter supply for a young child. Most liver transplants are afforded to children with curable illnesses and the best chance to survive both the illness and the procedure. In Sam’s case, we just can’t …”
He stopped.
I sat still. If I sat still enough, maybe I would become invisible and that was one step away from not existing. Inexistence was preferable to this.
The doctor sighed again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ll start him on radiation. At this point … I just … I’m not sure he’ll ever get a new liver.”
Suddenly, I was tired again. Sleep depravation was not my issue, but I was tired. I had performed nursing care for my son for months, and the strain was endless. Sleep would be great - invisible sleep where the world and everyone in it melted away. That was what I wanted.
No tears filled my eyes when I looked over at Sam. He was calm. His little hands were folded over his lap, and his ankles were crossed and hanging from the exam table. My guess was he was too preoccupied with illness to worry about implications. He seemed sick and irritated. Sam knew that Doctor Abaddon’s office prolonged his misery. He did not like it, and he told me so.
My wife never made it to Sam’s radiation treatments. Radiation was expensive, and she was busy making more money than me. After every session, Sam and I would sit in the exam room, waiting to be discharged, and Sam would give me the slightest glare. He hated the radiation. He hated it even more than the chemotherapy. That did not stop me from taking him.
When I woke up on the morning of his final radiation treatment, he was missing. Missing was too drastic a term. After checking the bathroom and the kitchen, I found him hiding under his bed. When I shone my flashlight, I saw his two emerald eyes twinkling at me. I giggled.
“What are you doing under there, buddy?” I asked.
He did not answer; just scooted closer to the wall.
“Come on out. We have to get dressed.”
He refused. I took a deep breath and reached an arm under the bed until I got hold of his ankle. I pulled him gently back to me, but he resisted.
“I don’t want to go,” Sam said.
“I know you don’t like it, but this is the last one and it’ll make you better,” I assured.
“I don’t want to be better.”
It caught me off guard. I knew he wanted to get better. I knew he wanted to live. Maybe he was tired like me. Maybe he was losing will po
wer. Maybe the radiation drained him of more than cancer.
“You have to get better,” I said.
“Why?” Sam asked.
He was such a smart boy.
“You said Grandma got sick and went to live in Heaven because no one’s sick there,” Sam said as innocent as a lamb. “I want to go there, too.”
I recognized this was one of the cute things children say. Most parents cooed or giggled when their children made such precious comments. Most parents did not have children dying of cancer.
“That’s not happening,” I snapped, before yanking his leg harder than I should have.
When I pulled him out from under the bed, I saw that his eyes had clouded, and I knew he had made his last protest. Somehow, even when he looked at me, it was as if I was not there. Maybe the part of me he loved had indeed gone, and all that was left was this drill sergeant barking orders, forbidding him to die. The thought almost made me sad, but I was tired again and had a long day ahead.
The Cancer Center was located in a wing attached to the hospital. It was a pleasant enough building in appearance, and its staff was fantastic. There were so many inspirational messages posted in the center. Words like “hope”, “believe”, and “faith” in various iterations painted the walls with encouragement. I was always uplifted. It felt like the
