I'm Not Her

by Janet Gurtler

  “Kristina,” I shout, but she doesn’t respond.

  I rush to her bed and put my hand on her forehead. She’s hotter than desert sand at high noon. “Did you give her Tylenol? What’s her temperature?”

  Mom’s face blanks and then she turns and runs for her bathroom, rattling around in the medicine cabinet.

  “Kristina?” I say. My heart beats triple time.

  She opens her eyes slowly, but they’re glassy and her pupils roll around as if her eyeballs might slide right out of the sockets.

  Mom returns holding a thermometer and sticks it under Kristina’s tongue. When it beeps, she pulls it out.

  “105,” she says.

  Kristina groans. “My mouth hurts,” she croaks. “It’s full of little lumps.”

  “It’s got to be neutropenia,” I say.

  Mom stares at me.

  “Low white blood cell count,” I tell her. “I read about it in the brochure the doctor gave us. A possible complication of chemo.”

  “Shit,” Mom says. “Why didn’t I read that? I’m a horrible mother.”

  I want to agree with her but refrain. I don’t point out she’s been too busy living in a pretend land where Kristina is fine, and her marriage is fine, and her life is still perfect to read about the cancer.

  “I looked it up on the Internet.” I don’t mention how much time I’ve been spending online. My new computer addiction will only add to her newly emerging bad parenting guilt.

  Mom stands and steps back from the bed. “We have to get her back to the hospital. I have no idea what else to do.”

  I nod my agreement. Kristina doesn’t say anything. Her eyes are closed and she looks like a deflating balloon losing all its air.

  “Help her up. I’ll go get my purse and keys,” Mom commands.

  I rush to Kristina’s closet and grab her fuzzy pink robe and run back to her side. I slide my arm under hers and help her to sit up as she groans about her headache.

  She weighs almost nothing, but it takes a moment before I can get her in a standing position.

  Mom rushes back and each of us takes an arm and we walk Kristina out to the car, tuck her in the back seat, and fasten her seat belt. I climb in beside her and Mom drives us to the hospital, taxi-style and in record time. On the way, she calls Kristina’s doctor and as soon as we walk into Emergency, one of the nurses from the oncology unit meets us and expedites Kristina’s re-entrance to the hospital.

  In what seems like one big flash, Kristina is back in a hospital room, wearing her gown and sleeping on the uncomfortable-looking bed with steel guards, but no one complains. Doctors and nurses run in and out of the room, sticking her with needles and stuffing her with meds. They’re fast to see her, and before we know it, she’s been seen by a specialty team and she’s hooked up to IVs. Mom and I do what we’re told. We leave the room and go to waiting rooms and to the cafeteria and back and forth, until hours later, they’ve got her stabilized and we’re all alone in the room with Kristina.

  She sleeps while Mom slumps over in a chair beside the bed, looking like she’s about to collapse. I close my eyes and lean back in my own hard chair, finally able to take a moment to breathe.

  “Jesus Christ,” a voice calls and my eyes pop open. Dad charges into the room, wearing his golf clothes—beige slacks and a white golf shirt. His eyes are bloodshot and frantic.

  Mom jumps to her feet, looking a little frightened, and then her features harden and she looks more frightening than afraid. “Glad you could join us,” she says, her voice edgy and raw.

  “Why the hell didn’t you call me?” he demands in a harsh whisper. “I got home from golf and no one was home.”

  “We were a little occupied. Kristina was suffering from neutropenia.”

  “For God’s sake, Lisa. I thought she was dead. I thought she was dead.” He rushes to Kristina’s side and picks up her limp hand. She murmurs and stirs but doesn’t wake.

  Mom sits down and slides her chair closer to Kristina, her lips pressed tight.

  I stare at both of them and then I can’t take it anymore. The stupid games they’ve been playing. Accusation ignites and burns inside me. “You thought she was dead? Try being the ones who have to haul her body out of bed when she is on the brink of it. She’s very, very sick.”

  His shoulders slump and his face crumples but it doesn’t stop me.

  “And where the hell were you? Golfing? Because God only knows how important those rounds of golf are.”

  “Tess,” my mom warns. She strokes Kristina’s bare head and closes her eyes. Her breathing is slow, steady, as if she doesn’t have energy for my dad and his brand of coping.

  “What? He has the nerve to yell at us because he doesn’t know where she is, but, meanwhile, he can’t be bothered to come home on time and find out? Get your ass home and start dealing with what is going on in our house. Mom is freaking out trying to cope with it, and all you’re doing is avoiding being around and avoiding that it’s happening to all of us.”

  He stares at me. My mom stares at me.

  Their eyes are mirrors of each other. Wide. Confused. They look like they’re waiting for me to tell them what to do.

  “I’m not going to make the Honor Society. I lost my best friend. I’m also only freaking fifteen years old, but somehow I’m the one dealing with Kristina?”

  Disgusted with both of them, I stomp past them out of the hospital room.

  I take the elevator downstairs, too mad to even cry, and stomp out on the main floor and almost collide with another body. Jeremy. His face changes from a polite look of apology to panic when he realizes it’s me.

  “What are you doing here? I thought Kristina was at home. Is everything okay? Is Kristina okay?” he asks.

  Tears spill down my face and, just like that, my anger vanishes. I shake my head, trying not to hyperventilate, trying to stay in control. I nod and then shake my head and then just stare at Jeremy, silently pleading for help. He grabs me by the shoulder. Hard.

  “What happened?” he demands.

  “No. No. She’s okay. She had neutropenia. She’s back in the hospital again. They got her stabilized. They said she’s going to be fine.”

  I snort out a laugh and a stream of snot escapes my nose. Horrified, I wipe it off with my hand, and start walking away from Jeremy, not sure where I’m heading but needing to escape. “Relatively speaking.”

  “Hey, Tess, wait up.”

  I keep my legs moving to get away but he catches up and walks beside me.

  “It’s okay to be upset,” he says. “Mad, afraid, whatever. I get it, you know. I’ve felt all those things about my mom too.”

  I glare at him. “Don’t you know boys are supposed to keep their feelings bottled up inside of them?”

  He gives me a dirty look but it quickly disappears, and then he shakes his head and laughs. “You really are funny.”

  It loosens up the knots in my stomach somehow. I slow down a little, stop racing to get away. My legs ache anyway. I’m still a wimp.

  “Cancer kind of has a way of stripping away pretenses,” he says.

  I glance sideways at him and ask the question I’ve been dying to ask him. “Is that why you and Kristina have become such good friends? No pretenses?”

  He shrugs his shoulders up and then they fall. “I don’t know, Tess. I really like her. Is it bothering you?”

  “Not really.” My jealousy is stupid. We walk in silence for a minute. Around us, people rush about.

  “I was terrified,” he says in a quiet voice. “I thought my mom was going to die when we found out about her cancer. But I was mad too, for her getting cancer. She smoked when she was younger; I thought maybe that’s why she got sick. I blamed her for her body getting sick.”

  I don’t respond.

  “Want to go outside for a walk?” he asks.

  I wonder if my parents will worry about where I’ve gone, but right then I don’t care, so I nod and he pushes the front door of the hospital op
en and we step outside into the crisp fall air. I shiver and wish I had brought my coat, but I’m not going to complain about the cold.

  “You like my sister, don’t you?” I say.

  His cheeks turn red.

  “No. It’s okay. I’m not calling you a stalker or anything. But you do, right?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “She needs you as a friend,” I tell him. “You’re the only person she can talk to.”

  He smiles and it changes his face. He looks more grown-up and mature and something else shines in his eyes. A secret, maybe. “I know.”

  “I’m glad you’re her friend,” I tell him.

  “Me too,” he says. “She’s a great person, you know. Cancer isn’t going to take that away from her. I think she just needs to find out who she is. She’s going to have to adjust to a new life. But she will, I think. She just doesn’t believe it yet.”

  My turn for my cheeks to warm. “I don’t think I’ve been a very good sister.”

  “I think both of you maybe have let other people decide who you are. She’s struggling, Tess, but you can help. She’ll come up with new goals and dreams; she’s just mourning her old ones. You know? She has to. It’s normal. Anyhow, she said you’re handling her cancer better than your parents.”

  “Really?” I ask. Because I don’t feel like I’m doing a good job either.

  “Really,” he says.

  I hide a smile with my hand and then tell Jeremy I’m cold, and we turn to go back inside.

  Dad isn’t in the hospital room when I get back. Mom doesn’t explain but tells me we’re leaving. We drive home and when we return, Dad is already there. They tiptoe around each other as if they’re strangers. I head straight for my room.

  We all sleep for a few hours and then pile back in the car and return to the hospital in the morning. I don’t even ask about going to school.

  Kristina is awake when we get to her room.

  “We have a meeting with the doctor tomorrow at ten thirty,” Mom says, and smoothes her hand across Kristina’s bald head.

  “I want Tess here,” Kristina says.

  I nod, but all I can think about is that I’ll be missing an important lecture in science. Our midterm exam is going to be based on the lecture. There goes my GPA.

  She wins hands down, but a part of me longs for the right to mourn my own losses too.

  No matter how insignificant they are compared to cancer.

  ***

  The next day, I skip another class to get to the hospital on time. Dad is supposed to pick me up on his way from the university, but at the last minute he calls to say he’s still rushing around and asks me to hop a cab to the hospital and he’ll pay me back.

  I hang up on him without saying good-bye.

  I end up making it to the hospital before both of them and sit in the room with my sister, not really knowing what to say. Minutes after Mom and Dad rush into the room, clearly angry with each other, the doctor from the clinic walks in. Dr. Turner. She looks different in the hospital setting. More formal somehow. She has a file folder tucked under her arm. She greets us all by name and then clears her throat. The expression on her face drains all the blood out of my body. I look at Kristina who is sitting up on the bed, hugging her knees.

  “I’m afraid the tumor didn’t respond to the chemo treatment,” the doctor says.

  My head starts spinning in dizzy circles. The room is moving; everyone is completely still. “Actually, the tumor enlarged during the initial treatment.” She opens the file and consults her notes but doesn’t look up at any of us. “At this point, limb-saving surgery is impossible. We’ll have to do above-knee amputation.”

  I hear shuffling feet from the hallway behind us. There’s a low mumbling of voices, people going on with their lives, but the words are indistinguishable. The doctor keeps talking. I hear words but don’t register what she’s saying. I stare at my feet. My two feet. Two legs and two feet, both planted firmly on the floor. I can’t look at my sister’s face. I can’t bear to see her expression.

  The doctor is still speaking and when I hear her say Tuesday, I tune in. “The surgery will be this Tuesday.”

  Today is Thursday. My mind slowly does the math as if I’m in first grade and have to count by ticking off the days on my fingers.

  Five days.

  In five days they’ll chop off Kristina’s leg.

  Kristina moans and it’s not a sound I’ve heard before. The anguish in her vocal cords crushes me. My mom goes to her and squeezes her tight, but she’s crying too and their noises meld together in stereo.

  Dad is in the corner. Expressionless. He isn’t looking at Kristina.

  I can’t bear to think. I don’t want to make myself imagine what her leg will look like when the operation is done.

  It’s worst-case scenario. I swallow and imagine a revving chain saw coming down on her knee. Bone flying in the air. The stump that she’ll have instead of a calf and a foot. But then it gets even worse.

  “It’s unfortunate there wasn’t time for a fertility treatment to save some of your eggs. It would have safeguarded your chances of having children in the future.”

  I’d like to hand her an award for bad timing, but I guess she’s emotionally distanced herself and is doing her job, covering all the bases. Kristina and Mom cling to each other as Dr. Turner mumbles more meaningless words about the surgery, but I’m too stunned to speak and from the looks of it the rest of my family is shell-shocked as well. After a moment the doctor stands. She hands Kristina a brochure about the operation and Kristina grips it in her hand, crumples it.

  The doctor walks to the door and then turns, staring at us, her hand on the door.

  She reaches into her pocket and hands me a card. I presume it’s because I’m standing closest to her.

  “This is the card for the American Cancer Society,” she says. She turns to Kristina. “If any questions come up, call me.”

  She walks out, treading softly; her white sneakers make hardly any noise on the floor. The door clicks behind her.

  Kristina sobs louder. Her eyes are frantic, not seeing anything. Kristina pushes my Mom away but Mom holds on tighter. Kristina whines and cries and fights her off, but Mom holds on, wrapping her arms around her. Eventually Kristina falls against her, her face buried in Mom’s shirt.

  Mom’s tears pour down her cheeks, dripping onto Kristina’s back. Dad stands next to them. His eyes are glazed. My mom continues to cover Kristina’s body with her own. They rock back and forth, not saying a word. Just moving. Crying. I watch my parents, feeling detached, as if I’m watching a bad after-school movie special plagued with overacting.

  I want to leave the room, run, but can’t make myself move. I want to sneak out, slip outside unseen. I remember being a kid and staring at people who were different until Mom whispered that it was rude. I remember seeing a woman at the swimming pool as Kristina was trying to teach me to dive. Kristina would do a perfect dive, time after time, trying to get me to follow her lead.

  The woman had a stump for an arm. I’d stared and stared at the stump, horrified and fascinated, until Mom told me to stop staring and start diving. I kept sneaking peeks though, wondering how it felt to have no arm. How she could swim and what she thought about when she looked at people with two arms.

  Did she miss the one that was gone?

  chapter thirteen

  Dad’s still home when I’m getting ready for school, and he waits, telling me he’ll drive me. I don’t think anyone in the house slept a wink and my body is so tired it hurts to move, so I take him up on his offer. I hope that Kristina slept all right at the hospital and that for once, the exhaustion of cancer and medication offer some relief for her.

  Dad is home but Mom’s packed up and gone before I even get up. I guess now that dreams about Kristina’s Olympic volleyball team future are spent, Mom is finally ready to stop pretending everything is okay. She can’t even daydream about the perfect grandkids Kristina will give
her one day. All she has a chance for now are my second-rate ones. If that ever happens. It seems pretty unlikely at this point in my life.

  On the car ride to school we’re mostly silent, but as we approach the street where he’ll drop me off, he glances sideways at me.

  “How are you doing, sweetie?” he asks. I can’t remember the last time he used that term for me. Since I was a little girl.

  I lift a shoulder and stare out the window. Cars pass by us, people going on with their lives, unaware that my sister’s entire future has been crushed.

  He clears his throat and I glance back to him. His face is contorted; he’s holding in tears. It twists my insides like the word games we used to play when we were younger would do to my tongue. He spurts and brings up a fist to his mouth, coughing, his other hand tight on the wheel.

  “I’m sorry,” he sputters.

  I reach out and touch his hand, but he takes it from his mouth and re-grips the steering wheel.

  “For what, Daddy?” I ask. Now it’s my turn to use pet names long discarded.

  “For not being stronger. For not handling this better. I want to do better. It’s just…” He clears his throat. “It’s difficult,” he says and his voice hardens, almost angry.

  I nod. He pulls up to the curb then, and stares out the window. I wait for a moment, hoping he’ll say more but he doesn’t, so I open the door.

  “I love you, Tess,” he says, still focused on something outside the front window. “You and Kristina both.”

  “I know,” I say softly. “Bye, Dad.” I close the door and watch as he pulls away, driving quickly as if he can’t wait to leave me behind.

  Inside the school, I head toward my locker and some people stare at me with wide, curious eyes, but lots smile and say hi. The popular ones are confident enough to walk right up and ask me straight out how Kristina is doing. I mumble and keep going. All this attention is overwhelming and draining, but I force myself to keep it together, smiling and pretending to make sure no one forgets how much they like her. Kristina. Not her stupid infected leg. Maybe I’m more like my mom than I thought, because faking a personality isn’t nearly as hard as I’d imagined. It surprises me how I manage small talk and it makes me wonder if it was in me all along.