From Ant to Eagle

by Alex Lyttle

  There was a long, uncomfortable pause where no one said anything. Dr. Parker walked over to Sammy and patted him on the knee. “Any questions from you, young man?” he asked.

  Sammy looked over at me for a second then back to Dr. Parker.

  “Will Cal get cancer too?” he asked.

  “No,” Dr. Parker said. “It’s very unlikely.”

  “But we used the same spoon yesterday,” Sammy said, a guilty look on his face.

  Dr. Parker smiled. “You don’t have to worry about that. It’s not like a cold. You can’t give it to someone by using the same spoon.”

  Sammy laid his head back on the pillow, but I could tell he was still thinking this through. I knew I’d have to explain everything later because I could tell when he didn’t understand something. It was like when we’d be sitting in the tree fort reading a Goosebumps book and I’d read a word that he didn’t understand. He’d let me read on a little further, but I knew he was still thinking about it because he always got this scrunched up look on his face when he didn’t get something. Then a few sentences later he’d stop me and ask what “gruesome” meant, or whatever the word had been, and I’d have to stop and explain it to him.

  “Any other questions?” Dr. Parker asked.

  He looked first at Mom and Dad but their faces were still blank paper, then back to me.

  Of course I had questions—lots of them. But more than anything I just had to ask, “Is Sammy going to die?”

  The silence that overtook the room was terrifying. I saw Dad swallow hard and his eyes glaze over, Mom looked away as if I had just said the most awful thing imaginable. Dr. Parker’s smile faded briefly but returned again—like the sun dipping behind a cloud before popping out the other side.

  “Let’s take things one step at a time. Right now, you don’t have to worry about that. Once we do the bone marrow biopsy and have a better idea of what’s going on, we’ll know what medicines we can give Sammy to make him better. Sound like a plan?”

  Why couldn’t he have just said “no?” I’d wished so badly back then that he could have just said “no.” One word would have meant the world to me. But I know now that he couldn’t. He didn’t know the answer. No one knew.

  I spent the rest of that night thinking about the bone needle and whether Sammy was going to die while pretending to Sammy that I wasn’t thinking about the bone needle and whether he was going to die.

  After Dr. Parker had left, Mom and Dad stood up and said they needed to go grab something from the cafeteria. I could tell by the shakiness in their voices that they didn’t need to go to the cafeteria, they just needed to go somewhere else. So they both hugged Sammy for a really long time and told him everything would be okay, even though they didn’t know that everything would be okay, and just as Dad pulled away from Sammy he broke down and started to cry but instead pretended to be coughing, which only made it worse.

  So Sammy and I were left in the room alone together and I suggested Crazy Eights to pass the time. I needed something to do so I could avoid the questioning look he kept giving me. I knew he was waiting for me to explain everything. He expected me to just drop my cards and say: “Look, Sammy, here’s what’s wrong and here’s what’s going to happen and here’s what we’re going to do.” But I couldn’t. This wasn’t a question about a word in a book or how to make a fishing rod from sticks and string. It was over my head. And maybe I should have just told him that but I didn’t. I’d spent my whole life being Sammy’s know-it-all brother. Heck, I’d climbed the ranks to Eagle Level before he was even born. How could I just throw that all away? Instead, I just kept my head down and avoided Sammy’s eyes, while a hole opened up inside me and a hollow feeling filled me up as if a shadow had crawled through my belly button and eaten my insides.

  DAD AND I drove home later that night as the sky grew dark. The country had never felt so lonely.

  “Dad, do you think Sammy will be okay?” I asked at one point.

  There was a long void that followed where only the tiny hissing noise of the wind outside the car window could be heard, and in that void I knew that Dad didn’t think everything would be okay.

  “I think so,” he said, but his voice sounded funny, like he were talking through a fan.

  “If Sammy dies, will he go to the same place as Grandpa? Or is there a separate heaven for kids?”

  “He’d be with grandpa,” Dad said, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

  “Will Sammy be able to…”

  Dad cut me off with a hand on my knee. “Try not to worry, Cal. Just try not to worry, okay?”

  He was really telling me to stop talking, so I sat the rest of the way home quietly watching the dark, empty fields passing by and the occasional dark, empty farmhouse scattered between.

  That night when I crawled into my bunk bed alone I couldn’t fall asleep. I just lay with my eyes open watching the moonlight through the window cast wavy shadows like spiderwebs on the ceiling as it passed through Sakura and Big Tree outside. I had taken the quilt off the window; I wanted to be awake early. I closed my eyes to fall asleep but every time I did a new image formed behind my eyelids, forcing me to open them again. Sometimes it was Sammy playing basketball alone in the driveway, other times it was Sammy kneeling in the driveway with a jar in his hands, and other times it was Mom and Dad, their chastising glares, their sad head shakes, and worst of all, their paper faces fighting to hide their tears in the hospital.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE NEXT DAY MOM CALLED TO SAY SAMMY’S BONE NEEDLE wouldn’t be happening until the afternoon, so I should go to school for the morning but Dad would pick me up after lunch.

  Tom wasn’t in class, I figured he’d been suspended or something. At least I didn’t have to deal with him, but the other kids at recess continued to stare so Aleta and I found a quiet corner behind the grade four portable and sat down. It was nice—no one but us. No looks, no questions, which I suppose was fine with Aleta since she had been avoiding all the girls that kept asking her to join them and all the boys that had been ogling her from afar.

  “So what did the doctors say?” Aleta asked when we sat down.

  I debated how to answer. Should I tell her about Dr. Parker? Should I tell her what he’d said about Sammy maybe having cancer? It wasn’t official until after the bone needle but it was still eating me up inside. Aleta was the only person I felt comfortable talking to, so I figured I might as well see what she thought.

  “They think Sammy might have cancer,” I said, choking a bit on the last word.

  I didn’t look to see Aleta’s expression but I felt her back stiffen against the portable. “What?” she whispered. “Cancer? They think Sammy has cancer?”

  I nodded. “That’s what they said.” I felt strangely distant from what I was saying. “We find out today when Sammy gets a needle into his bone to see if there’s any cancer there.”

  Aleta didn’t say anything for a really, really long time and we went back to the familiar silence we’d spent so many hours in over the summer.

  “Well, maybe they’re wrong?” she finally said. “If they’re doing another test then they obviously don’t have an answer. So maybe they’re wrong about the cancer.”

  “Dr. Parker said he was pretty sure it was cancer.”

  “Pretty sure doesn’t mean for sure,” she said, “and besides they’re always such downers there. They’re all miserable and eager to give bad news. I’m sure they try to err on the side of caution just in case it is cancer.”

  “Huh?” I said, turning to Aleta. “What do you know about the hospital and what they’re like?”

  Aleta suddenly recoiled as if I’d caught her stealing one of Sammy’s cookies off the cookie sheet. She looked away quickly. “Nothing,” she said, but her hand instinctively went to her arm the way it often did when she was thinking about what made her sad. I could see the faint lines as she rubbed them.

  “You were in the hospital, weren’t you?”

  She didn’t say
anything. I thought about pressing but I didn’t. It was instinctive now. As soon as Aleta started rubbing her arm or she got the look on her face that told me I was treading close to the subject she didn’t want to talk about, I backed off.

  So we sat there for a while longer until the bell rang and it was time to go. I felt a sudden wave of fear rise up in me as we walked across the playground. I could see Dad’s car waiting in the parking lot. I realized how nervous I was about Sammy’s bone needle—and I wasn’t even the one getting the needle.

  “I wish you could come with me to the hospital,” I said.

  Aleta nodded but the rest of her body language said she wasn’t keen on the idea. I thought about how much calmer I felt when she was around—how she’d helped me calm down when I was ready to punch Tom and Joey. It would be nice to have her there.

  “If Sammy ends up staying over the weekend maybe you could ask your sister to drop you off for a visit.”

  Aleta stopped walking and looked at me. Her eyes looked pained and I wasn’t sure if it was for Sammy or for something else. “I…I don’t think I could ever go back there.”

  So she had been there.

  I was going to ask her more but I saw Dad standing in the parking lot waving so I hurried across to meet him.

  WHEN WE ARRIVED at the hospital Mom was sitting in the chair next to Sammy’s bed while he slept. She put her finger in front of her mouth to shush us as we came in. The TV was on and Dark-wing Duck was playing mutely in the background.

  Next to Sammy’s bed there was a plastic tray on the table and I lifted the cover to find a soggy piece of pizza next to a carton of milk.

  “You can have that if you want,” I heard Sammy say from the bed.

  I looked up to find Sammy watching me. “No, thanks,” I said, covering it back up and trying my best to hide the disgusted look on my face.

  Dad walked over and sat on the end of his bed. “How are you feeling, sport?” he asked.

  “Okay,” Sammy replied, but he didn’t look up at Dad. His lips were held tightly together and creases were splayed across his forehead.

  “You’re worried about the bone needle, huh?” Dad asked.

  Sammy nodded.

  If I were in his shoes I would have already bolted from the hospital but despite this I tried to reassure him.

  “It’ll be all right, Sammy. You’re going to be asleep so it won’t hurt.”

  “But what if I wake up?” he asked.

  “You won’t. Don’t worry about that,” Dad said, grabbing Sammy’s foot and giving it a squeeze. “I’ve been put to sleep before, it was actually kind of fun.”

  “Fun?” Sammy and I replied in unison.

  “Yeah, they tell you to count back from ten and say that you’ll be asleep before you get to one. I don’t even think I made it to eight,” Dad chuckled. “Next thing I knew I was awake in the recovery room with all the ice cream I could eat.”

  “That doesn’t sound too bad at all,” I said, forcing a smile.

  Sammy wasn’t so easily convinced.

  When Mom and Dad left to get coffee I took my chance to execute a plan I’d come up with while I’d lay awake the night before. If eating worms and walking through rose bushes were deserving of Levels, having a needle stuck into your bone sure as heck was too. I’d brought the journal with me to school in my backpack.

  “I was going to give this to you after you’d finished,” I said, pulling the journal out, “but I guess I could give it to you now. Sammy, I award you the Level of Tiger—for bravery.”

  Sammy’s eyes lit up the way they had so many times before. That simple leather-bound book with poorly illustrated animals could make my brother happier than anything.

  “Tiger?! You mean it?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  For the rest of the afternoon I sat reading R.L. Stine’s classic Say Cheese and Die! out loud to Sammy but I didn’t use my scary voice. I was done trying to scare Sammy. There were real things to worry about now.

  Later, two nurses came and said it was time. They unhitched Sammy’s bed wheels and began manoeuvering him out of the room. I’d expected him to cry, or to protest, but instead he just lifted his hands beside his face, bent his fingers, and said, “Rawr,” with a stubborn smile on his face.

  CHAPTER 20

  I SAT IN THE ROOM THE FOLLOWING DAY WATCHING DR. PARKER’S white moustache move up and down as his lips formed words that passed through my head like a breeze through an open window.

  I guess I’d already known. But when he’d said he was pretty sure that Sammy had cancer the day before, a part of me had pretended it was like when I told my parents I was pretty sure I’d done my homework.

  Acute Myeloid Leukemia, AML for short, is a form of blood cancer. It is caused by one cell, one tiny, insignificant cell saying, “I don’t want to be like the rest.” Then that one cell starts dividing and building an army. That army attacks the rest of the body and slowly takes over. It moves from the blood to the lungs to the liver and sometimes, it moves to the brain. Cancer has no boundaries. It doesn’t care about anyone else, it just moves right on in and says, “Get out.” Cancer is selfish.

  At least, that’s how Dr. Parker explained it.

  The bone marrow biopsy had confirmed any parent’s, brother’s, sister’s, grandparent’s, or friend’s worst nightmare—Sammy had cancer. And worse, Dr. Parker suspected that given the seizure it had already spread to his brain.

  I felt like I was underwater. Like even though Dr. Parker was in the room, he was suddenly distant and hard to hear. I wanted to know what Sammy was thinking but when I looked at him he was just playing with a loose thread in his hospital sheets.

  Nothing, Sammy wasn’t thinking anything. I would have to think for him.

  Dad sat on the bed next to Mom trying to conceal his sobbing while she asked every question an anxious mother could think of. What was the treatment? When did it start? What were the side effects? When would we know if it was working? And on, and on, and on…

  Dr. Parker answered each question patiently. It was hard to be hysterical around someone with such a gentle voice. He was honest, which meant he never reassured, but all the while something in his tone and the way he sat with his hands folded gently in his lap, leaning in so we could hear him clearly, pausing frequently to let us think, made me feel that it just might be okay.

  I tried to remember everything Dr. Parker said so that if Sammy asked me about it later I could explain it to him; but even with the pauses I couldn’t keep up. Every other word seemed foreign and all the while I felt like I was in French class attempting to understand verb conjugations while someone sat under the table hammering a nail into my foot.

  What I did manage to pick up went something like this:

  Mom: “Is it curable?”

  Dr. Parker: “Without spreading to the brain, AML is curable in about 50% of children.” Pause. “With brain involvement, it is closer to 20%.” Pause. “We will do everything we can to make Sammy one of those 20%, but it will not be an easy road.”

  Dad: Curses under his breath then apologizes.

  Dr. Parker: “Don’t apologize. It’s how you should feel. I’ve been doing this job for over thirty years and I still feel that way every time I have to break bad news. I’d like to sit here and tell you it is going to be okay. That it’s an easy road. But it isn’t. The medicines Sammy will need are toxic to his body. He will be tired. He will be sick. His mouth will develop sores and his hair will fall out. He will need the support of his family more than ever. But we are going into this thinking Sammy will get better. If he responds to the treatment there is a possibility that he not only gets over this, but that he will be cured. Let’s believe that that will be the case.”

  I heard what Dr. Parker was saying—be positive. Focus on the good. No point worrying about the worst-case scenario. And I wanted to. I wanted to think that someday Sammy would grow up to learn to read and climb and do all the other things six-year-olds don’t know
how to do. But it was hard. Sammy was never lucky with anything.

  I looked at my little brother—pale, tired, skinny. I couldn’t bear it like he seemed to. He’d spent months tired and bruised and sweating and losing weight and out of breath. He had endured it all and never once complained. Worse, he had endured it all while I had spent the summer avoiding him. Maybe if I’d been around I would have noticed. Maybe there would have been something I could have done. Maybe we could have caught the cancer before it had taken over his body. Maybe—just maybe.

  “We will need to start treatment as soon as possible. You will be transferred to a room on the oncology floor and tomorrow we will start Sammy’s chemotherapy,” Dr. Parker said.

  “And how long before we know if it’s working?” Mom asked.

  “Twenty-seven days. We will repeat his bone marrow biopsy in twenty-seven days and if we don’t see any cancer cells in there it means we have induced remission. If we can induce remission the results are almost always favourable.”

  “And if we can’t?” I heard the negative side of me say.

  “If we can’t, well, let’s cross that bridge then.”

  Dr. Parker’s face told me it was a bridge we didn’t want to cross—not in twenty-seven days, not ever.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE NEXT MORNING WE WERE TRANSFERRED TO THE ONCOLOGY floor. It was a weekend so I didn’t have school, which meant I could come early to the hospital with Dad.

  I’d imagined the oncology floor differently; a place dedicated to children with cancer naturally conjures an image of gloom and fear and pity. I’d imagined a place of absent hair matching absent smiles, cries and moans haunting dark halls and darker rooms. To tell the truth, I was afraid of the oncology floor before I saw it, but when the doors opened and I saw the unit for the first time, my fears vanished.

  If the rest of the hospital were a playground, the oncology floor was the giant slide in the middle. Paint splashed the walls and doorways in every variety. The wide hallways were well lit and voices—not cries—echoed from the nursing station in the middle. The unit, I would learn, was the shape of a bicycle wheel. Spokes of hallways spread from a central nursing station, each with rooms along them and a kitchen or a library or a games room at the end. We were directed to Room 18 halfway down one of those hallways. We were lucky—it was the hallway with the games room at the end.