Mustaches for Maddie

by Chad Morris

  All the words were right, but I could see the worry in their eyes. I remembered what they said about losing me. Maybe they were just as scared as I was.

  I hoped I would be able to go home to take back that letter on my desk before they found it.

  And then the nurse started to push me past the stripe.

  Alone.

  I tried not to shake.

  It would be alright.

  “So, what’s your favorite color?” the nurse guy asked. He had lots of questions, like where I went to school and what movies I liked. I answered them all, but short and sweet. I was a little stressed-out.

  Okay, a lot stressed-out.

  It would be alright.

  He would have done a better job of distracting me if he had been wearing a mustache.

  The nurse rolled me right into the surgery room.

  It felt more dreamlike than coming to the hospital. This was where they were going to do the actual surgery. Everything would happen right here. The room had several machines, some on rolling stands, and a few people in hospital clothes. They even had masks and gloves on. I didn’t see Dr. Montoya. A nice lady in hospital scrubs helped me get on the table and rest my head on a cushion.

  “Hello, Maddie,” she said. “I’m an anesthesiologist.” Wow. Another huge word. It would be worth like seven thousand points in Scrabble. “I’m here to make sure you feel really comfortable. So comfortable that you’ll fall asleep and when you wake up everything will be done.”

  That sounded nice.

  “I’ll put this mask on you.” She showed me a simple mask with a tube attached to it. “You breathe for a little while, and you’ll rest through the whole surgery. Now what flavor of gas would you like?”

  There were flavors of gas? I had no idea. She read the list, and I chose root beer. I didn’t even hesitate. Root beer–flavored anything sounded like a good idea.

  She put the mask on my face. “Does that fit okay?”

  I nodded. It was weird, but I couldn’t imagine a mask ever really feeling natural.

  She flipped some switch, and the gas came on. “Now, relax and count to one hundred.”

  Okay. That wasn’t too hard.

  One. Two. Three. Four.

  What was that? Ugh.

  Root beer gas was not as delicious as I was hoping.

  Five. Six. Seven.

  I wondered what my parents were thinking.

  Eight. Nine. Ten.

  Seriously. Why did I choose root beer? Yummy soda. Decent ChapStick. Terrible gas.

  Eleven. Twelve.

  I let my eyes rest while I kept counting. I wondered how long . . .

  Yawn.

  Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen.

  I knew I was going out.

  Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen.

  And then they would send tubes up my mouth and under my nose to my brain.

  Nineteen. Twenty . . .

  I couldn’t fight it anymore. I was falling asleep hard.

  I just hoped I would wake up again.

  I was bound mummy-style and carried above the heads of chanting island natives. They were carrying me on a long staff with my hands and feet tied to it. They were chanting in a language I couldn’t understand. It kind of sounded like “Banana juice. Banana juice.” Which is a really weird thing to chant. Maybe they really liked bananas. But can you make bananas into juice?

  The natives set me down in a large open area, and then some lady who looked like a witch doctor with messy hair and a necklace with animal claws looked right at me. She got closer and closer. And then she shoved something up my nose. I couldn’t see it, but I was sure it was a bone going from one side of my nose to the other, just like in the movies.

  Then the ground shook.

  It wasn’t a huge shake, but I could feel it.

  Again.

  And again.

  Behind the witch doctor lady was something huge. It took a second for it to come into focus.

  A brontosaurus.

  Yep. A ginormous dinosaur.

  The natives chanted louder and louder.

  The dinosaur backed up, turning its neck to look behind it.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  Did brontosauruses beep? It was like a truck backing up.

  And then the dinosaur sat right on my head.

  Seriously.

  Have you ever had a brontosaurus sit on your head? I didn’t think so, but it did not feel good. The pressure was crazy. I thought my head would squish down like potatoes being mashed.

  And then another brontosaurus stepped up. I could barely see it, but I guess one of my eyes wasn’t covered by the other big dinosaur bum.

  There was more beeping, but this dinosaur wasn’t walking backward. It climbed on top of the other one. Now I had two dinosaurs on my head.

  More and more dinosaurs came until I had a tower of seven brontosauruses sitting on my head.

  One of the natives grabbed my hand and whispered. Apparently it had learned to speak English because it wasn’t asking for banana juice anymore. “Maddie. How are you feeling?”

  The chanting quieted down, but not the beeping.

  “They say you did a great job.”

  A great job at what? Letting dinosaurs sit on my face? Well, I didn’t want it. I wanted them to get up—now.

  Wait.

  Dinosaurs didn’t usually sit on top of one another. At least I didn’t think so. And they didn’t make beeping sounds. In fact, there shouldn’t be any beeping sounds in the jungle.

  Oh.

  I wasn’t awake. At least, not really.

  I opened my eyes just a crack and saw a bunch of blurry stuff.

  I felt someone else grab my other hand. “Hey, Maddie. You’re okay. You did a great job.” This one was a man. “It’s all done. And you rocked it.”

  Rocked it?

  My dad.

  I opened my eyes more.

  Blurry Dad.

  Blurry Mom.

  I wanted to cry. Double cry. Once because it felt like seven dinosaurs were sitting on my head, and twice because I was alive.

  Alive.

  I’d made it. I’d been in the monster’s gaping jaws and somehow survived.

  A hospital room.

  Beeping. Somewhere to my right.

  Nothing was chanting “Banana juice.” That was just a crazy dream.

  My eyes closed again, but I noticed it was hard to breathe. I tried again. I could do it, but it wasn’t easy. Probably because of the bone the witch doctor had put through my nose.

  “Rest as much as you want,” Mom said.

  I wanted to open my eyes again, but I was still so tired. “I can’t breathe very well,” I told her.

  “You have a bandage in your nose,” Dad said, “so you can’t breathe through your nose.”

  Not a bone. A bandage. I reached up and carefully touched the bandage. My face felt sore, but I couldn’t tell if that was because of the bandage itself or all of the swelling.

  Swelling would explain the head pain, the trouble breathing, and the overall ughs.

  “It’s called a mustache bandage,” my mother said. “We didn’t make that up. That’s what the doctors and nurses actually call it. You look like you have a mustache.”

  That was the first thing that even kind of made me want to smile. I ran my finger gently along the bandage. “Can I see it?”

  My mom appeared in front of me with a tiny pocket mirror. “It’s quite stylish.” She was grinning. At least I was pretty sure she was grinning. Her features were still blurry. I adjusted the mirror in her hand, pulling it closer, and saw that I had a large white strip stretched below my nose.

  A mustache bandage.

  I kind of wanted to smile again, but I was way too tired and achy.
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  “Hey, Maddie.” A new voice. I glanced to the side. Dr. Montoya. “The surgery went very well.” She put her hand on my hand. “Let me just check a few things. Can you look straight forward for me?” Dr. Montoya waved a tiny flashlight in my eyes.

  “Brownies,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, what?” She put the flashlight away.

  “I want mashed potatoes and brownies.”

  All of a sudden I was really hungry, and everyone had told me that after the surgery I could eat whatever I wanted.

  Dr. Montoya laughed. “We’ll talk about that in a minute.” She lifted my pajamas just enough to look at my stomach. Could she tell that I was hungry that way?

  She poked my stomach. “Does this hurt?”

  It wasn’t comfortable. Then again, when is somebody poking you in the stomach comfortable? I shrugged, but only a little. I still didn’t feel like moving a lot.

  “How is your scar?”

  I had a scar?

  She touched a part of my stomach that hurt. I yelped.

  “It will be a little tender for a while, but it’s healing properly.”

  That’s right. I had a scar on my stomach. It was where they pulled the fat tissue from. Suddenly the idea that there was tummy fat inside of my head almost made me lose my appetite for brownies.

  Almost.

  “Mashed potatoes and brownies,” I repeated.

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Montoya said. “No solid foods until the mustache bandage comes out.”

  What? No one said anything about that before. That was just mean. How could they deny mashed potatoes and a brownie to a kid who just got cut open, put back together, and had dinosaurs stacked on her head?

  “Do you want some juice?” Dad asked. “Apple? Grape? Orange?”

  Dr. Montoya whispered to Mom and left.

  This all seemed familiar. “Was I awake before?” I asked.

  “Yes,” my mom said. “Don’t worry. It’s tough to remember.”

  “And did you offer me juice?”

  My dad nodded. Maybe my parents offering me juice was why the natives were chanting. But what was the deal with banana juice? I finally agreed to grape juice and gave it a few sips.

  “Did they get the tumor out?” I asked. Dr. Montoya said the surgery had gone great.

  “Most of it,” my dad said. “Like ninety percent.”

  “They left a part of it attached to your hypothalamus because they didn’t want to damage your brain,” Mom said, putting away the mirror.

  “Good,” I said, not sure if that really was good or not. All I knew was that it didn’t sound like they’d damaged my brain and I wanted to be asleep.

  I was so glad they got most of the tumor.

  But they didn’t get it all, and I wasn’t really sure what that meant.

  I was floating right up out of my chair. I looked down and saw my hospital room. Mom and Dad were there. My dad was sleeping on the couch, and my mom was resting next to my bed in a chair.

  But I didn’t have any control.

  “Mom, why am I flying?”

  “What did you say?” She rubbed her eyes.

  “Mom, I don’t want to fly.” I was going to float right up through the ceiling and then out of the hospital. Was I dying?

  My mom jolted up and grabbed my hand. “You’re okay, Maddie.”

  “No. I’m not. I’m flying away.”

  “You’re not flying. You’re right here, safe in your hospital bed.”

  “No. I’m not.” I could imagine just about anything, but this wasn’t my imagination.

  “Yes, you are,” my mom said. “What you’re seeing isn’t real. You haven’t slept for almost four days, and the doctors say that might be causing you to hallucinate. I need you to calm down and relax.”

  Calm down? I was floating, maybe dying. But my mom said I was okay, and I trust her.

  I trust her.

  I’m okay.

  Four days without sleep. I could remember it now. I know that sounds crazy, but I just couldn’t sleep. Between the doctors and nurses popping in, the pain, the light and noise of the busy hospital, having to go to physical therapy, and how slowly I walked and ate and moved, I’d hardly closed my eyes. Plus, there was the worry. I’d had a crazy surgery, but they didn’t get all the tumor. They didn’t know what would happen next. Maybe the rest of the tumor would die. But maybe it would grow back. Maybe I would have to do this all again. And if I did, it would be more dangerous the second time.

  “The doctor said that sometimes patients in the Intensive Care Unit have trouble sleeping,” Mom said. “Your body has just been through something really hard and is still under a lot of the stress that comes with recovering. And without that important rest, you can start to see things that aren’t there.”

  I tried to close my eyes and relax. I’d definitely add this to my list—the things-that-super-stink-about-my-life-right-now list:

  1. My head still felt like dinosaurs were sitting on it. Maybe they were smaller dinosaurs now, but they were still dinos. Medicine helped, but I could only have it every few hours.

  2. Hormone problems. Hormone is a weird word, but everybody has lots of hormones, and they control lots of different stuff in your body, like your mood, your ability to deal with stress, and even some balance between stuff like water and salt. And apparently my hormones were all whacked out. The doctors and nurses needed to give me medicine every so often so that my body wouldn’t shake uncontrollably and hurt itself.

  3. My eyes were still blurry. The doctors said they didn’t know if that would get better or not. Boo on that. I wanted to see my mom and dad clearly. I wanted to go back to school and see my friends. Not just blurry images of what I thought might be them.

  4. Finger pricks. The doctors had to check my blood all the time. That meant finger pricks. I hate finger pricks. A nurse would wipe my tender, beautiful fingertips with a cold alcohol swab then jab them with a needle. That was bad enough, but then they would squeeze my finger to try to make the blood come out. Sometimes they had to squeeze and squeeze, over and over, to get enough blood. After a few pricks on the same finger, it hurt to touch things. It was awful. And every few hours the nurses were back to poke me again. All day and all night. That also kept me from sleeping.

  5. I finally got my mashed potatoes and brownie. I know it doesn’t seem like it should be on my list of bad stuff, but it was. Because when I saw that potato, all mashed and buttery, and that brownie, all chocolaty with a thick frosting and a thin layer of mint underneath, I got excited. Finally something good was going to happen. But then I took my first bite. Guess what? It tasted like nothing. I could have been eating broccoli and it would have tasted the same.

  I cried.

  I know it sounds silly after going through neurosurgery and having huge headaches and getting pricked all the time, but I had really been looking forward to those potatoes and that brownie. The doctors said my sense of taste should come back in a couple of days, but what if they were wrong?

  Back to the list.

  Where was I? Oh, yeah. Number six.

  6. I still had some of the tumor in my head. I know I talked about it before, but it’s on the list again. It’s also numbers 7 through 28. Boo on the tumor. It was like the monster could come back even though I’d beaten it. Sure it was smaller, but was it dead? Its eyes weren’t roaring fires anymore, but lit match heads. Its spikey spine was bumpy like the small teeth of a zipper. It wasn’t nearly as threatening, but would it grow back? Bigger? Stronger? Apparently monsters could do that.

  29. My friends might not even think any of this was real. They might think I only wanted attention, and they either aren’t thinking about me now or are super mad at me.

  30. I didn’t know if I would be better in time to be Juliet in the play.

  31. I was seeing things t
hat weren’t there. That actually would explain why I thought my dad was pushing me in a wheelchair to his friend’s house where we saw horses but then ended up in physical therapy on the third floor. I hadn’t really wondered about the horses until now.

  The good list was shorter:

  1. I was alive. I like being alive.

  2. The doctors took out most of the tumor. That was definitely good.

  3. I was getting the use of my arm and leg back. Yep. Maybe I’d be able to catch someone if we played Poison Dragon Death Claw again. That was, if my friends let me play.

  4. My brain seemed like it was okay. No damage the doctors could see.

  5. Maybe I’d be able to taste mashed potatoes and a brownie soon.

  My dad was snoring on the couch. Why couldn’t I sleep like him?

  “I’m going to insist they get you stronger medicine to sleep,” my mom said, “but first I want to show you something.”

  “What?” I asked.

  My mom opened her laptop and booted it up. I tried to blink away the blurriness in my eyes, and it helped a little. She typed in a few things and waited. “Can you see my screen?”

  I nodded.

  “You really need to see it,” she said. “Scoot over.” She motioned with her hand, and I slowly moved over. Mom laid down right in my hospital bed with me. I really liked that. It was like she was a patient with me. “Check this out,” she said. “Your friend Yasmin sent me some pictures.”

  Yasmin? At first I was relieved, but then I wondered if these were good pictures or pictures of her sticking her tongue out at me with a sign saying she didn’t want to be friends anymore.

  Mom typed in a few more things on her email account, and then there was a picture of Yasmin wearing the mustache I gave her.

  She sent that.

  She thought of me.

  I wanted to smile again. I also kind of wanted to cry. I missed her.

  “And that’s not all,” my mom said. She scrolled down.

  Lexi, wearing a red mustache. Her thumbs were up.

  Lexi had done it too. I loved Lexi, and her purple mustache was awesome.

  “Yasmin must have talked to others at school, and her parents, and some adults got involved. And . . .”