Day-Day

by Cronk, LN

  ~ ~ ~

  DR. SEDIVICK REFERRED us to an oncologist named Dr. Owens. He was very business-like and never smiled, but at least he spoke English and I understood everything that he said.

  “Since your uterus has been removed the chances that the cancer has metastasized is minimal. Your lungs look clear and that’s good . . . it often shows up there first if it’s spread. I’d like to schedule you for six weeks of chemo and after that you’ll report back for check-ups once every three months for the first year . . . every six months for two years after that . . . and then once a year for two more years. Do you have any questions?”

  Laci shook her head.

  “I do,” I said. “We’re going back to Mexico after her treatments are over. Do we need to come back here for her follow-up appointments? I mean, if we do that’s fine . . . I was just wondering.”

  “What part of Mexico?”

  “Mexico City . . .”

  “I think I can make arrangements for you to have most of the follow-ups there. I have a colleague here who’s fluent in Spanish . . . he can be a go-between for us and that way I can still be your primary physician and talk to you whenever you have questions if you’d like.”

  I nodded.

  “When do we start?” Laci asked.

  “You’re healing well, but let’s wait a few days to give your body a little rest.” He jotted something down on a piece of paper. “Take this to the front desk and they’ll schedule your first treatment.”

  The night before her first chemo appointment, I was lying in bed, trying unsuccessfully to get to sleep. Laci had her head on my chest and I could tell by the way she was breathing that she wasn’t asleep either.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, kissing the top of her head.

  I felt her shrug.

  “What’s wrong, Laci? Are you scared?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, hugging her tight.

  “I don’t want to lose my hair,” she said and I could feel her tears on my chest. “I know I shouldn’t care about that . . . but I do. I don’t want to lose my hair.”

  “Laci,” I said, surprised. “You’re not going to lose your hair!”

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  “Honestly,” I said. “Don’t you ever go online?”

  She turned on the light and looked at me.

  After we’d gotten home from Dr. Owens’ office I’d looked at our copy of the chemo orders and had typed in the names of each of the drugs that she was going to be given.

  Some tiredness . . . general weakness . . . nausea.

  Not a picnic, but nowhere near what it could have been.

  “Are you serious?” she asked. “I’m not going to lose my hair?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  She grinned at me.

  “I can’t believe you were worried about that, anyway,” I said. “It wouldn’t matter if you lost your hair.”

  “You love my hair,” she argued.

  “No,” I said. “I love you.”

  Chemo was a snap (well, at least it was for me – and Laci kept insisting that it wasn’t too bad so I decided to believe her). About four weeks into her treatments I caught her tugging on her hair. She smiled at me when she saw me looking at her in the mirror.

  “I told you so,” I said.

  ~ ~ ~

  CHRISTMAS CAME – OUR third one together. Our last Christmas had not been a particularly happy time for us – Laci had just had her first miscarriage. This Christmas the mood was so much better.

  I had absolutely no idea what to get Laci though and finally I had to just ask her.

  “What are we going to get each other for Christmas?”

  “I don’t know,” she shrugged. “I already got you something.”

  Great.

  “Come on, Laci. You’re so impossible.”

  “I liked what you did the last two years,” she said, smiling.

  “If I could I’d do it again,” I said, “but I can’t so you’re going to have to give me some ideas.”

  “Why can’t you do it again?”

  “Hello?!” I said, waving my hand in front of her face. “Have you looked outside lately? The ground is covered with snow. We’re not in Mexico anymore, Toto.”

  “You could still do it,” she laughed.

  “You want me to buy a hundred and twenty gifts and mail them down there before Christmas?”

  “No, silly. Just have Aaron do it and pay him back.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked her. “That would make you happy even if you couldn’t be there to hand them out?”

  “That would make me very happy,” she said.

  I could tell she was serious so I told her okay and then I called Aaron and asked him if he would do it. I also went online and figured out something to buy for Laci so that she would actually have something to unwrap on Christmas morning. Finally I made one last purchase online and called Aaron a second time. I told him to please watch for an express mail package from the United States.

  For our Christmas present my parents threw a Christmas Eve party for us and everybody was there. It was pretty much everyone who’d been at our rehearsal dinner . . . everybody that we loved.

  Even Mike was there and Natalie was home for the holidays.

  “That ‘in sickness and in health’ thing kinda hit you guys fast, didn’t it?” Tanner asked me.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Mike says she’s pretty much in the clear though?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “She’s going to be fine. She can’t wait to get back to Mexico and start adopting kids.”

  “When are you going back?”

  “Well, she’s got one more week of treatments and then we want to be here for her one-month follow-up appointment, but we’ll probably go back right after that.”

  “So you’re going to be here for at least another month?”

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re about to hit me up for a favor?”

  “Who? Me?”

  “Whatdya want?”

  “If Jordan doesn’t get a letter from his math teacher in February saying that he’s making at least a “C”, he’s not going to get to try out for baseball.”

  “I’d love to help Jordan in math,” I said, smiling.

  “That’s what I figured.”

  For Christmas Laci gave me an envelope. I was impressed when I read what was inside for two reasons. First of all, it indicated that she had reserved a room for us at the same ski lodge our youth group had gone to in the seventh grade. I’d loved that place and had always wanted to go back. Secondly, she’d made the reservations online . . . I was looking at the printout from the computer.

  “Who helped you do this?” I asked suspiciously.

  “I did it all by myself,” she insisted. “It’s not that hard really.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling you all along,” I said, throwing my hands up in the air.

  Then I slid four packages toward her and she looked worried.

  “You still did the thing at the orphanage, right?” she asked.

  “Yes, I still did the thing at the orphanage.”

  “Okay, good!” she smiled, taking the presents.

  The big one was a manger and the little ones were Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus.

  “They’re made by Fontanini,” I told her. “They make a whole line of these . . . you can keep adding things every year . . . shepherds and wise men and stuff.”

  “Oh,” she said. “That’ll be great!”

  “You don’t have a clue why I gave you this, do you?”

  She looked at me blankly.

  “They’re unbreakable . . .” I said, picking up Joseph and whacking him a few times on the coffee table.

  “Don’t do that to Jesus’ father!” Laci cried.

  “Joseph isn’t His father.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said, snatching him from me. “You don’t need to beat him on the t
able.”

  “Don’t you get it, Laci? I bought them so our kids can set up the manger every year and look at it and touch it and stuff and we won’t need to worry about it getting broken.”

  When I was little my mom and dad had always yelled at me to leave our manger alone and you could see the line around Mary’s neck where my mom had glued her head back on.

  “Oh,” Laci said. She looked really happy now. “That was a great idea. I love it!”

  “I have another surprise for you, too.”

  “Another one?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “What?”

  “Estoy aprendiendo hablar español.”

  Her eyes got really wide and her mouth dropped open.

  “Did I say that right?”

  “You’re learning to speak Spanish?” she asked slowly.

  “Yup! I mean si Señora.”

  “¿Cuando empezó hablar español?”

  I think she asked me when I’d started learning it.

  Ever since I thought Dorito had been kidnapped from McDonald’s.

  “Hacen unos cuantos meses,” I answered.

  A couple of months ago.

  Her eyes got wide again and she smiled.

  “No puedo creer que estas aprendiendo español. ¡Esto es tan fantástico! ¿Como lo has estado aprendiendo? ¿Has estado escuchando las cintas que te di? ¿Están buenos? ¿Cuanto sabes?”

  “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” I said. “Too much! Too much! Todavía no soy tan bueno con el español.”

  I’m not very good at Spanish yet.

  “Lo serás,” she said, smiling broadly.

  You will be.

  “Uncle Dave . . . Aunt Laci?” Cassidy yelled from the top of the stairs.

  “What?”

  “Are you guys coming up here? Mommy says we can’t open anything until you come up here.”

  “Ahora vamos,” Laci called back, laughing.

  “What?” Cassidy asked.

  “She said we’ll be right there!” I hollered. Then I looked at her uncertainly. “Right?”

  Laci nodded at me and laughed again. “Cierto.”

  We went upstairs and watched Cassidy and C.J. tear into their presents and when Jessica pulled caramel rolls out of the oven we all tore into those.

  After we were done, Laci called the orphanage.

  “Inez, es Laci. ¿Han abierto los regalos los niños?”

  I think she asked if the kids had opened their presents yet.

  She babbled on in Spanish for a little while and I could tell enough from the words I understood and by the look on her face that the kids had opened their presents and liked everything. After a few minutes she held the phone out to me.

  “Merry Christmas, Inez!” I said.

  “Day-Day!”

  “Oh! Dorito!” I said and Laci smiled at me. I smiled back. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m a good boy.”

  “I know you are,” I said. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m doing good.”

  “Well, good!” I said. “Merry Christmas!”

  “Merry Christmas, Day-Day! Guess what?”

  “What?”

  “Santa gave me The Count!”

  “Are you serious?” I asked, trying to sound very, very surprised.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I wonder how he knew that you liked The Count?”

  “I don’t know,” Dorito said and I could hear the awe in his voice.

  “I can’t wait to see him!”

  “Where are you?” Dorito asked.

  “I’m in Cavendish . . . remember all those pictures in my office that I showed you with the snow?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “That’s where I am. I’m with the snow.”

  “Are you coming back?”

  “Of course I am!”

  “When?”

  “Laci hasn’t been feeling very good and as soon as she gets all better we’ll come home, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I miss you.”

  “Bye, Day-Day.”

  “Bye, Dorito.”

  Inez came back on the phone.

  “Merry Christmas, Señor David,” she said in her thick accent.

  “Merry Christmas, Inez. He sounds good. He hasn’t forgotten any of his English!”

  “No, no Señor David. We practice everyday.”

  “How are his legs?”

  “They’re good, but someone called and said he needs new braces again on his legs. They said you already had an appointment made for him next week but I don’t know anything about it . . .”

  “Oh . . . I did. I forgot all about it. He’s got an appointment on the second. Can you make sure he goes to it?”

  “I don’t know, Señor David . . .”

  “Please, Inez? They’ve got all my billing information and everything . . . he’s just going to need this one last set . . .”

  She hesitated for a moment but then finally said she’d make sure he got there.

  “Thanks, Inez,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief.

  “Merry Christmas, Señor David.”

  “Merry Christmas.”

  ~ ~ ~

  JORDAN CAME OVER the day after Christmas so I could start tutoring him.

  “Hi, Jordan,” Jessica greeted him as she opened the door (Jessica used to babysit him and his middle brother Chase when they were little).

  “Hi, Jess,” he said as I came out of the kitchen with a brownie. “Hi David.”

  “Hi, Jordan. You want a brownie?”

  “Okay.”

  I went back into the kitchen and put one on a napkin for him and grabbed another one for myself for good measure.

  “Come on,” I said, opening the door to the basement. “It’ll be quieter down here.”

  We sat down at my work table.

  “Where’s your textbook?” I asked him.

  “We had to turn them in at the end of the semester,” he explained. “We’re on block schedule.”

  “So you just finished a math class?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What was it?”

  “Pre-algebra.”

  “Okay, great. What are you taking this next semester?”

  “Pre-algebra,” he said quietly.

  “You flunked it?”

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “I always flunk math.”

  “Not anymore.”

  He looked at me doubtfully.

  “Look,” I whispered. “I got Laci through math. If I can get Laci through math I can get anybody through math. Okay?”

  He smiled at me. “Okay.”

  Laci had her last round of chemo just before New Year’s and we went skiing right after that. She was kind of down and out on the second and third day from her treatments, but we were there for five days.

  “You think you’re going to hit the slopes today?” I asked her on the fourth day.

  “Maybe this afternoon,” she said. “I’m ruining our vacation, aren’t I?”

  “No you’re not,” I said. “I just wish you weren’t feeling so bad.”

  “I’m not feeling that bad. I’m just really tired.”

  “You always say that.”

  “You should have brought Jordan up here instead. You guys could’ve worked on math all day.”

  I smiled at her. For the last week, Jordan had been coming over to the house every day and working with me for at least two hours each time.

  “What’s he going to do when we go back to Mexico?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t know. I’m kind of worried about him.”

  “Is he doing that bad?”

  “I guess not . . . he just had a really bad year when their dad left and he got so far behind in math that he hasn’t been able to catch up.”

  “Are you gonna be able to get him caught up before we fly home?”

  “I’m gonna try.”

  ~ ~ ~

  WHEN WE GOT back, Laci kept busy by going ou
t with Jessica during the week and Ashlyn on the weekends. Natalie drove in one more time from Colorado and I thought it seemed that Laci was finally happy; enjoying things and relaxing.

  She had an appointment scheduled with Dr. Owens for the end of January to make sure that everything was okay, but we already both knew that it was. I bought plane tickets for the first Wednesday in February.

  Fifteen days before we were to leave, a feeling began gnawing at me that we shouldn’t leave Cavendish. I kept wondering if Laci was feeling the same thing too, but if she was, she didn’t say anything about it.

  Then, ten days before we were supposed to leave, God decided it was time to give me another try.

  Call them.

  What had happened before had scared me enough that I didn’t want to mess around. I called them first and then I told Laci.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “Pretty sure,” I replied.

  “Pretty sure?”

  “Pretty sure,” I nodded.

  She looked exasperated.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Why would He want us to call them when we’re getting ready to go back to the orphanage in Mexico? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I already called them,” I said.

  “You did?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They said: ‘Hello? Adoption Alternatives. This is Janet. How may I help you?’”

  “This isn’t funny, David.”

  “We have an appointment to go down there tomorrow morning.”

  Chemo might have been a snap, but the whole cancer-thing had scared Laci, too.

  “Okay,” she sighed. “We’ll go see them tomorrow.”

  The next day we drove to Adoption Alternatives. It was located in an old house in the restored part of town. We parked behind a car that had a little Christian fish on the bumper. The fish had sprouted feet and the word ‘Darwin’ was written inside of it.

  Janet ushered us into an old bedroom that was set up to look like an office and told us that the adoption counselor, Starr, would be with us soon.