Till it Stops Beating

by Hannah R. Goodman

“Yeah,” I say climbing on the bed and sitting cross-legged.

  “Scared myself, too.” She closes her magazine. I can faintly hear Peter and Larry in the bedroom down the hall.

  “But I realize something tonight.” She touches my hand. “Sitting with you all at dinner, flirting with Mr. Uncle Tony, watching you moon over Justin, I’d rather have three great months, weeks, or days left than three horrible, sick years.”

  I’m not sure what she means, so I just wait for more.

  “The chemo is not easy.” Is that an ironic smile across her face? “I’ve managed because of medical marijuana. I actually have been using that prescription, which goes against everything in my being. But I know that there are so many more months of chemo. Joyce tried to get an herbal regimen together that could replace the pot, but it didn’t cut the debilitating nausea, the itching, or the metal taste in my mouth.” She looks away. “I didn’t want to tell you and your mom and Barb how bad the side effects were…They were really bad just before your graduation. In fact, just two days before is when I—” she chuckles, “smoked my first joint for the first time in years. I needed to get relief fast. The doctors were worried about how much weight I had lost from not being able to eat much. I could barely function at work. But you know, as soon as the drugs hit my system, no more nausea.” She plays with the fringe of the Indian blanket that’s across her lap. “But that feeling scared me. I’ve been sober a long time, but it’s not something I take for granted.”

  I take in each of these revelations bite by bite and then put together the entire elephant...

  I can’t even find the words to say what’s in my head. “Does this mean…?”

  “I’m not sure what it means. Tomorrow is chemo and that’s what I do right after.” She laughs wryly. “Light up. Sometimes even as the poison is finishing up hitting my bloodstream. There’s a bunch of cancer people hooked up to IVs getting high.”

  “I’ll tell you…if I don’t die from colon cancer, I might die from lung cancer.” She wrinkles her nose.

  “What about just eating it, in like a brownie or something?”

  “And what do you know about pot brownies?”

  “Saw something about them on a reality show.” I give her a gentle push. “Bubbie, you really think I would smoke a joint?”

  “Everyone experiments.”

  “True.”

  “The problem with the pills or brownies is the relief isn’t as strong or immediate…I don’t know. But I just feel like I might want to try alternatives to chemo and smoking weed.” The look she throws my way reminds me so much of my mother that I feel another stab of guilt for not calling her.

  And because my mother can actually channel her guilt through phone lines, guilt is so strong, my phone buzzes in my pocket and it’s her, I know this before I even look at it.

  I press the call button. Bubbie watches me.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Madeline, I’ve been calling you.”

  “I know—”

  “Your father and I—”

  “Hi, sweetie!”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Listen, we were a little worried.”

  “A little? I was about to call the police! And Bubbie didn’t answer her cell either.”

  I choose each word carefully. “We had a busy day…and yesterday I was kind of wiped out from the drive. Things are good.”

  “Good! Is the weather nice?”

  I put my hand to my forehead. “Yeah, Dad, the weather is good.”

  “Is that car holding up? Not sure about those convertibles on long drives.” My father knows nothing about cars, and it’s Mom who always gets the oil changed or the tires rotated.

  “How’s Bubbie?” At this point Bubbie and I are almost ear-to-ear with the phone between us. Her scarf brushes my cheek.

  “She’s—” Bubbie shakes her head and I continue, “She’s good, Mom.”

  “I mean how does she seem? Are her spirits up? Because I noticed at graduation—”

  My mother used to be the queen of denial and excuses and then my sister happened and now she can smell what you feel even thousands of miles away.

  That’s when Bubbie takes the phone, “Hi, honey. I’m doing fine. Really. Maddie is taking me to chemo tomorrow.”

  I am?

  She nods at me.

  I guess…I am.

  I listen to Bubbie carefully reassure my mother some more without totally out and out lying.

  Before I kiss her good night, Bubbie says to me, “Tomorrow, be ready at eight. Chemo and then off to my office to turn in my final grades for the summer session. I’m going to need you because I will be pretty tired and nauseous.” She smiles and strokes my hair. “I’m going to try this, as Joyce says, ‘balls out’ No pot after.”

  I cover my hand with my mouth. Cancer has made my Bubbie have a toilet mouth…and I kind of like it.

  Chapter Nine

  Balls Out

  I open the car door with my free hand. The other one is holding Bubbie’s elbow.

  “Ugh…” She closes her eyes as I guide her into the front seat. While I pull the seat belt across her lap, she moans more. Her small knit cap is slightly crooked. I reach out to adjust it.

  “Do you need the bag?” As in vomit bag. They give you free ones, like a lollypop after the doctor, on your way out of chemo.

  She shakes her head.

  I click the belt in and pause, “Bubbie, are you sure that you don’t want to smoke a little bit?”

  She shakes her head with her hand over her mouth.

  I sigh. “Joyce is meeting us at the house with some kind of magic potion.”

  Bubbie tries to laugh. Her eyes still closed and her hand still over her mouth.

  I place a vomit bag the color of vomit onto her lap then get in and turn the car on.

  . . . . .

  When I get her home, I put her to bed with a bucket by her side. Larry and Peter ask me if they can help, but there’s nothing any of us can do. They’re going to take the trip to Golden Gate park and stay overnight at a hotel, but only after I reassure them that I won’t sit here by myself, and yes, I will call Justin back (he called while we were at the hospital, but it felt really wrong to answer the phone while my grandmother was barfing).

  Before I leave the room, she grabs my hand and says, “Thank you, sweetie, for taking me today and for holding my hair when I vomited.”

  I squeeze her hand and swallow the urge to ask her once again if she wants to take some of the marijuana pills. She made me throw it out, but all I did was put it in my suitcase, just in case.

  . . . . .

  Justin and I have been playing phone tag all evening. He’s at work until eleven. The urge to walk down to the wharf is strong, but Joyce called and asked if she could come by.

  Bubbie is still sleeping when Joyce gently taps on the door at five. When I open the door, she looks about as good as my grandmother. I invite her in with the ulterior motive of getting her in on my campaign to get Bubbie high.

  . . . . .

  We sit together on the couch in the living room with mugs of cinnamon apple tea.

  “So.” We both say.

  She smiles at me. “Go ahead, honey.”

  “No, you,” I don’t know how to begin this.

  She fluffs her curly hair but not in a primping way. She folds her hands in her lap. “There’s something I want to discuss with you.”

  Great minds think alike.

  “Actually, there’s something I need to discuss with y
ou too, but you go first. Maybe it’s the same thing.”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”

  I feel my face do a free fall. I put my mug on the coffee table.

  “There’s this place, up in Sausalito—”

  “A place?”

  “Yes, sweetie. The ACT.”

  “The ACT?”

  “Alternative Cancer Therapy center of Sausalito.”

  “Alternative…?”

  “They offer all kinds of different treatments for cancer.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a pamphlet. It has pictures of people all ages and races on the beach, smiling like it’s summer camp. She hands it to me. “Look, I wasn’t thrilled about all this when Helen brought it up to me.”

  “Brought it up to you?” Apparently, all I can do is parrot things back now.

  “Yes, she brought it up to me a few weeks ago. And I want you to know I told her it was crazy and that we didn’t exactly have time on our side time to dilly-dally with mishegas. We needed to kill this thing…balls out!” She’s smiling at me.

  I don’t smile back.

  “I admit I was the one to say let’s investigate some other ways to deal with the side effects, but I never ever once told her she should stop the chemo or stop the marijuana. That was all her. I want her to do everything, all at the same time. Because,” her voice catches. “I can’t lose my best friend, my sister, my partner.”

  I hand her the box of tissues and take one for myself.

  We cry separately for a moment.

  “The deal is that your grandmother has been preparing for this, and she wants to do it now.”

  “How do you know? She hasn’t mentioned anything to me.”

  “She signed the paper work this week, just on Monday.” Joyce takes another tissue and dabs the corner of eyes, which have little streaks of eyeliner bleed down. “And they told her about a week until they could take her.”

  “I don’t understand. Last night she told me ‘balls out’ let’s go ahead and do this chemo. She just didn’t want to smoke the weed after.” I snatch a tissue even though I’m not crying any more.

  “My guess is that she did that for you, honey, so you could see how bad the chemo was how awful it made her feel so that maybe you would understand.”

  “I don’t understand shit!” I grip the tissue in my fist. “She would be fine with the chemo if she would just get over it and smoke the weed!”

  Joyce cringes.

  “All I know is that my Bubbie, my so-called honest, truth-telling, AA-touting Bubbie has been lying to me about a bunch of stuff with this cancer, and I can’t figure out why she won’t just tell me the friggin’ truth, herself?” I yell and throw my hands up, the balled-up tissue flying out.

  Joyce doesn’t say anything. She just sits and looks at me without a crack of a smile or a whiff of sympathy.

  “Helen was definitely going to tell you, Maddie. I just beat her to the punch.” Joyce sips her tea but keeps her eyes on me. “How much do you know about your grandmother’s addictions?”

  “She’s an alcoholic, a recovering alcoholic.” It’s a textbook answer and one that I say in a normal voice.

  “Yes. But she’s also a drug addict.”

  Bubbie was a hippy in the sixties, and I know she smoked “grass” as she called it back then. But drug addict?

  “After she was clean for twenty years, she had a relapse, but it wasn’t with alcohol. Pills. Then marijuana. Then both.”

  I did the math quickly in my head. Her relapse was only three years ago…just before my sister’s wedding. Just before she and my mom mended their very broken fences.

  “Helen’s fear about becoming addicted to pot is real. I dismissed it at first, but she’s serious. The fact that she went to chemo without using anything shows me she is intent on not doing the medical marijuana.”

  I can’t think of any reply to this that would make anything different.

  “I don’t understand why she wouldn’t want to chemo though.” I swallow more tears to prepare for the next part of what I am saying. “Without it she will die and with it she will possibly live.”

  “Not if the side effects kill her.” Joyce’s eyes flash at me. “You see her. This is what it will be like every day she has chemo and the plan is to increase it to every day for the last three weeks of treatment.”

  “But the anti-nausea pills—”

  “Don’t work for her—”

  “What about a feeding tube when she can’t eat?” I cross my arms.

  “Maddie.”

  I look up at the staircase. Bubbie.

  “How are you feeling, Helen?” Joyce stands up and tries to make her face calm.

  “Horrendous.” Her head is uncovered, and she looks smaller and younger. She takes a step holding the railing, stops and then just sits down and puts her head in her hand for a minute. Now I stand up and make my way to her, but she looks over at me and says, “Honey, it’s okay. I just need to try and eat something, but I came down to tell you that I’m done and I tried it and maybe it doesn’t look like I’m trying hard enough. But this is my life, my body, and my choice. I don’t like what chemo does to me because other than another tumor pressing into my stomach, I feel fine. I don’t feel sick. I won’t do any more chemicals to this body.” She puts her hand to her mouth like she’s going to throw up.

  Joyce is at her side faster than I thought she was capable of moving. I watch her help Bubbie stand up and walk her back to her room. I just stay where I am.

  . . . . .

  Joyce comes down about a half hour later. I’ve been sitting holding my cell phone, debating calling Justin or my mother.

  “They can take her now.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  I scratch my forearm, which doesn’t itch. Then I cross and uncross my legs. “For how long?”

  Joyce sits next to me her voice is calm and soft. “They’d like to keep her for a while, and if she seems to be improving, she will come back home and just go for treatments as a day patient.”

  “Joyce.” I take an impatient breath. “For how long?”

  “I don’t know,” she says quietly. “Probably a week and then outpatient treatment.”

  I don’t want her to go. I just got here. I want her to smoke the weed and do the chemo. That’s what the doctors say will work. This other shit. This hocus-pocus.

  But all I can actually say to Joyce is, “Who’s paying for this? Not health insurance.” Although my knowledge of health insurance is similar to my knowledge about alternatives to cancer treatment: nil.

  Joyce looks away, then down at the rings on her finger, and then looks at me with red eyes and a tired face. “Don’t worry about that. She’s figured that out.”

  I sigh and look out the window. The trees in the front of the house sway.

  Joyce reaches out and takes my hand in hers, but I keep mine limp. “Maddie, you have to accept her decision.”

  . . . . .

  11:15. I’m still on the couch, now with a reading lamp on and an unopened copy of Writer’s & Poets on my lap. My hand has a pen in it, and my journal is open, but nothing is written.

  I haven’t written a thing since I finished the book for school.

  Of course, writer’s block pales in comparison to Cancer.

  You can’t die from Writer’s Block…I don’t think. Or maybe that will bring the cancer on for me. I’ve also spent some of the last few hours online researching alternatives for cancer treatment, and there’s several real, well-known, non-hocus pocus docto
rs that attribute cancer to stress. And cell phones. But that’s another anxiety to panic over at another time.

  I’m, once again, in pure Maddie Hickman fashion, steeped in self-pity.

  And that one, I do write down in my journal. Hooray. I close it up and tuck the pen in the side of it, my potential cancer is cured.

  My phone buzzes next to me on the coffee table, and Justin’s name is illuminated in the semi darkness.

  Before he can get his hello out, I tell him everything.

  “She should talk to my uncle. You know he beat prostate cancer. Think it was stage three or something. It was pretty bad. He did chemo and radiation, I’m pretty sure. Maybe she needs to talk to someone outside of the family or the situation, you know?”

  I want to reach into the phone and kiss him, but we technically haven’t even been on a date yet.

  “I want to see you,” I blurt out.

  “Me too. I want to see you, now. Right now.”

  “Have you left work yet?”

  “Leaving now. I can just stop by.”

  “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  “I work until five.”

  “Come over for dinner,” I close my eyes and pray he says yes.

  “Yes,” I open my eyes and my cheeks hurt from smiling

  “I’ll bring pizza.”

  We sit in silence and it’s comfortable like when we were dating we would sit in silence on the phone and watch TV.

  “But can’t I come see you now?”

  I catch myself in the reflection of the window and see my hair piled in tangles on my head, and I know my eyes and nose are puffy.

  “No, I mean I want you to, but you won’t be able to stay long.”

  “So, what?”

  “I’m all puffy from crying—”

  “And that matters because I’m taking you to prom?”

  My nose is really puffy. I touch my hair. A mess.

  “You’re right. It doesn’t matter.”