by Alex Lyttle
For the first part of the morning Sammy and I sat on the bed playing cards while Mom set up the place as if we were moving in. The room was much the same as the one before: a hospital bed for Sammy, another bed pushed up against the window for Mom or Dad, a TV hanging on the wall and the now familiar tubes and wires and thingamabobbers all hospital rooms seemed to have. This room, however, had a third bed. A small cot was pushed right up against Sammy’s bed and I smiled because I knew it was for me. The walls were white and near the top was a line of blue wallpaper with different animals repeating themselves around the room. A half-opened doorway in the corner revealed a bathroom and through the window I could see the early morning sun bathing an empty playground outside.
On the sill by the window Mom put up old pictures from home. One was taken outside our house in London with me in horrendous yellow overalls pointing proudly at Mom and Dad while they held a brand new baby bundled in their arms. Another was from only the year before—Sammy and I kneeling with our arms around each other by the river behind our house with makeshift fishing rods of sticks and string in our hands and goofy grins on our faces. It was scary to see the contrast between Sammy from the picture and Sammy lying in the hospital bed. Had I not seen him every day in between, I don’t know if I would’ve recognized the two kids as the same. His skin was pink back then, not an off-shade of white, he was plump not skinny, and I realized that the dark circles under his eyes that I’d become so accustomed to hadn’t always been there.
While Mom continued decorating in hopes that we might forget where we were, a nurse in Minnie Mouse scrubs came in and began doing the usual things nurses do. She counted Sammy’s breathing, listened to his heartbeat, took his blood pressure (the black band around his arm—I was learning quickly), then told us she would be back with Sammy’s chemotherapy. I remembered Dr. Parker describing chemotherapy as toxic. So when she returned with a bag full of yellowish-brown liquid and hung it on a pole next to Sammy’s bed and attached it to the IV in his arm, a chill passed from the back of my neck down to my legs.
We sat playing cards on the bed but I kept getting distracted by the medicine dripping slowly from the bag into the tubing—drip, drip, drip. It was like when I sat in the bath and the tap kept dripping water even after the faucet was turned off—drip, drip, drip.
Sammy didn’t seem to notice. He was concentrating hard on getting his cards right and he probably hadn’t even heard when Dr. Parker said the medicines were toxic. Or more likely, he didn’t know what toxic meant. I was so distracted I didn’t even cheat or notice when Sammy won.
He looked up at me with a hesitant look on his face as he played his last card, waiting for the usual moment where I said something like, “Nope, you can’t play that because the five of diamonds can never be the last card,” then make him pick up five for “trying to cheat.”
This time I only smiled and told him good job. He was utterly shocked and looked over at Mom by the window to see if she’d witnessed his victory. She hadn’t, she was too busy reading Childhood Cancer—A Guide for Family, Friends and Caregivers.
“You want to play again?” I asked.
Sammy nodded but as we played the second game his face started to change. He looked tired all of a sudden and nearly as pale as the first day we’d come to the hospital after his seizure. He kept having weird twitches in his body and I thought he was hiccupping until one moment I was looking down at my cards and the next I was covered in vomit. Disgusting, slimy, yellow vomit. I looked up at Sammy and to be honest, my first reaction wasn’t, “Are you okay?” but, “What the heck did you do that for!” until I saw that he was crying and holding his stomach.
Mom rushed over, grabbed Sammy, and tried to take him into the bathroom except he was still attached to his IV and she had to figure out how to unplug the pole from the wall. By the time they made it to the bathroom Sammy had thrown up again on the floor. I heard him heave a third time followed by something splashing in the toilet.
I was still covered in vomit and the smell was awful so I joined them in the bathroom and began scraping the barf off my clothes with paper towel and running my arms under the tap.
“I’m sorry, Cal,” Sammy said, his head still in the toilet while Mom squatted next to him rubbing his back. “I’m really sorry.”
He kept apologizing over and over between gags and heaves.
The nurse came in and cleaned up the bed and the floor. She gave me a matching hospital gown to Sammy’s and said she could have my clothes washed. When Sammy came out of the bathroom he continued to apologize over and over, no matter how many times I said it was fine. I had to tell him to stop or I’d really be mad.
The rest of the morning I lay in my cot listening to Sammy rotate between retching and sleeping while I read Cuckoo Clock of Doom. I thought he’d eventually run out of stuff in his stomach and the God-awful noise of him puking would end, but even when there was nothing left the noises kept coming.
When I’d had enough of listening to Sammy puke I asked Mom if I could go to the games room. She didn’t answer because she was busy holding Sammy’s head up from the toilet so I took that as a yes and left.
CHAPTER 22
THE GAMES ROOM WAS ONLY TWO DOORS DOWN FROM OURS AND as I passed the one room in between I quickly glanced in. It was the same as ours only the kid who stayed there obviously had been there a lot longer. The whole room was covered with posters of hockey players, handwritten letters wishing someone named Oliver to get better and piles of toys beyond anything a normal kid should own. The bed was empty but by the window sat a woman dressed in a long black dress with white polka dots and a funny hat made of the same material. She looked like she was from some sort of old-fashioned movie and for some reason her outfit seemed vaguely familiar. She was rocking gently in a chair with her hands folded neatly in her lap staring out the window. She didn’t look at me but I could see her face from the side and it looked like the face of someone who’d just watched their dog get run over by a car. The word sad just didn’t seem to cut it.
I quickly hurried past, aware that I was being nosy, and entered the games room. At first it felt like I was dreaming. It was like someone had given me the key to Toys R Us and let me walk in alone. The walls were lined with shelves bowing under the weight of all the games and books and toys. There was an air hockey table, a foosball table and in the corner, a TV with every video game system I could name.
Now you’d think a room like that in a building full of children would be busier than a mall at Christmas but it was dead empty. There was only one other kid in the room and he sat in the chair by the TV with the top of his pale, bald head showing.
I walked around the room looking at the walls of board games and books, searching for any Goosebumps but finding none, before grabbing the air hockey puck and knocking it around the table a few times. I quickly realized that the room was going to be a lot more fun when I had Sammy with me. I thought about going back and seeing if he felt well enough to come but knew it would be a wasted trip so I instead kept wandering aimlessly around, lifting things off the shelves and putting them back again.
As I continued to look around I became aware that the boy by the TV had paused his game and was now looking over the chair at me. He was as skinny as a skeleton and as pale as snow. He reminded me of a birch tree with two tiny branches. His head was completely devoid of any hair and I’m not just talking about the top; eyebrows, eyelashes—everything was gone. His eyes were the palest blue I’d ever seen and he kept on staring at me without saying a word.
Finally, when I’d had enough of the awkwardness of being watched and couldn’t find any game worth playing alone, I started walking toward the door to leave.
“You’re the brother of the new kid, right?” the boy said with a funny accent I’d never heard before.
I stopped and turned toward him. “Yeah.”
“Sammy, right? Sammy Sinclair. I saw it on the board at the front. What’s your name?”
“C
al.”
He motioned me to come sit in the empty chair next to him by the TV and since I wasn’t really keen on going back to the barf room I went and sat.
“I’m Oliver,” he said, turning back around to his game and unpausing it. “You know how to play Super Mario?”
I nodded. I’d had a few friends back in London with Nintendos but I’d never really played enough to be any good. So when he handed me the second controller so that I could try to guide Mario’s sidekick, Luigi, over the giant crevasses in the ground it was a quick death.
Oliver didn’t seem to mind. He took his turn and easily beat the level, reaching the end and jumping on a flagpole in a dramatic fashion that set fireworks off overhead, signalling his victory. His face showed no excitement, he just turned to me and said it was my turn as if nothing had happened.
We sat like that for a while, rotating turns—me quickly dying, him quickly beating each level before he started up the conversation again.
“So what’s your brother’s diagnosis?” he asked during one of his turns, apparently not really needing much concentration to play.
“Diagnosis?” I asked.
“Yeah, like what kind of cancer does he have?”
“Oh. Umm…” I had to think for a second. I’d heard the letters more than a few times in the last twenty-four hours but they still weren’t sticking. “AM something,” I said.
“AML,” he said with a nod. “Not the best, but not the worst either. I’ve seen plenty of kids come through here with that.”
“You have?” I said, not able to hide my surprise.
“Oh, sure. When you’ve spent 657 days in a hospital you’ve seen it all.”
My mouth dropped. I wanted to think I’d misheard him but it had been so clear—657 days—and there was no hint of a smile or joke on his face. It was almost impossible to imagine.
Oliver noticed my surprise and smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said, “no one else has been here this long. Most kids are either cured or dead well before 657 days.”
I felt a ball rise up in my throat when he mentioned the word dead but I did my best to ignore it. “So what’s your…diagnosis?” I asked.
“My diagnosis? Failure to die.” He laughed but when he saw that I didn’t understand he continued. “They say I have ‘undifferentiated carcinoma of the liver’ but all that really means is that they have no idea. Some sort of cancer has made a home in my liver and no matter what kind of poisons the doctors tried to feed it, it didn’t go away.”
“So you’ve been getting chemotherapy for more than 600 days?”
“Oh, gosh no, are you kidding me? You think I’d let them do that to me? That’d be pure torture, man—pure torture. I’m well done with chemotherapy. Now I’m just waiting around for a miracle or death.”
Listening to Oliver talking so easily about dying was unnerving. I’d never heard anyone, anywhere, talk about death so easily—not even an adult. And this boy was probably only twelve or thirteen at most. I realized that despite my fascination with Goosebumps books I had a real aversion to the topic of death.
“I’ve actually been home a few times but I keep having to come back because I can’t eat without this,” he said, lifting up his shirt to reveal a plastic tube coming out of his stomach, “and this,” he said, pointing to the IV pole standing next to him. “Without any IV medications for my nausea I can’t keep anything down.”
I just sat there quietly taking my turns on the Nintendo because I didn’t really know what to say.
“So your brother started his chemo today?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Started to get the chucks then, I bet?”
“The chucks?”
“Yeah, you know, vomit, puke, hurl, whatever you want to call it. We call it the chucks around here—or at least I do.”
“Oh. Yeah, he’s been throwing up all morning,” I said.
He nodded knowingly. “Don’t worry, he’ll feel fine tonight. The first cycle isn’t so bad.”
I felt a little relieved.
“It gets progressively worse with each cycle. Just wait for the next two.”
That was it. I’d had enough. I stood up quickly. “Sammy is probably wondering where I am,” I said.
He seemed disappointed. “Okay, I’m sure I’ll see you around. Come to Bingo night tomorrow—it’s the best night around this place. And make sure you bring your brother—don’t let him tell you he’s too tired.”
I nodded and started to leave, only stopping quickly at one of the shelves on my way out to grab a book.
I walked back down the hall to our room but stopped outside the door when I heard Mom and Sammy talking—Sammy sounded upset.
“But I know he is with her, Mom! I know he is!”
“Sammy, I promise you he’s not with Aleta, he’s just down the hall in the games room. If you let me run next door I can grab him and show you.”
“Nooo,” he cried, “don’t leave too.”
“Okay, okay, but I’m telling you, he’ll be back soon. Don’t worry.”
There was a long silence and I gathered myself to make my entrance when Sammy continued.
“Mom, do you think Cal still likes me?”
“Why would you ask something like that? Of course I do.”
There was no answer.
“Oh, Sammy, don’t worry. Your brother loves you very, very much. He’s just…well, he made a new friend this summer. That’s all. But that doesn’t change how he feels about you.”
“But he doesn’t want me around anymore. He only wants Aleta. Aleta is better at riding bikes, that’s why. We went for a bike ride but I was too slow. And then he didn’t want me around anymore.”
I heard the bed creak and peeked in to see Mom hugging Sammy. He was crying into her shoulder.
I leaned back, my head resting on the wall, and closed my eyes.
Oh no, I thought, what have I done?
Sammy was right. I had completely ditched him over the summer for Aleta. Even the day before I’d been asking Aleta to come to the hospital with me. How could I have been so stupid and selfish? If I hadn’t spent every minute of every day thinking about Aleta I would’ve noticed how sick Sammy was. It was like Aleta had cast some sort of spell over me and taken over my brain. I’d completely forgotten about my brother when I was with her and now look at him—he was sick with cancer and didn’t even know if I liked him. Well, I was going to change that. Right then and there I resolved to change that. I was going to be a better brother. I was going to stop thinking about Aleta and start thinking about Sammy.
I walked into the room and Sammy’s face lit up. I went and sat beside him on the bed.
“Sorry, Sammy,” I said, “I should have told you I was going to the games room.” Mom looked at me crossly but I gave a knowing nod that I understood. “When you’re feeling better we’ll go to the games room together, okay? There are literally walls of toys and games and books and there’s an air hockey table and a TV and video games and—”
Sammy heaved into the cardboard bowl the nurse had given him as a barf bucket. He definitely wasn’t well enough for the games room.
“Maybe tomorrow we can go,” I said.
“Okay,” he said back, wiping his face and smiling.
I remembered the book in my hand that I’d grabbed from the games room—The Secret Garden. I’d had to read it in school and it was horrifically boring but I knew for certain it had no scary parts and wouldn’t give Sammy nightmares.
“You want me to read this to you?” I asked, showing him the cover.
“What book is that?” he asked, his nose scrunching up as he tried to read the words.
“It’s called The Secret Garden.”
“Is it about monsters in a secret garden?”
“Nope.”
“Vampires?”
“Nope.”
Sammy paused, thinking. “Then what’s it about?”
“A garden.”
“Just a garden?”
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“Yep.”
He thought for a minute. “Is it good?”
“Not bad,” I lied.
“Why can’t we read Cuckoo Clock of Doom?” he asked, pointing to the book under my cot.
“I just thought it would be nice to read something different for a change.”
Sammy looked really perplexed.
“But we always read Goosebumps books,” he pressed.
“Yeah, I know. Which is why it might be good to try something new.”
I opened the front cover and started to read, not giving him a chance to keep arguing.
He sat listening to me read the first few pages before his eyes began to flutter, then close. He was fast asleep before I’d even finished the first chapter.
I closed the book and put it under my bed then grabbed the copy of Cuckoo Clock of Doom and started reading. At least if Sammy had nightmares it wouldn’t be because of me. It was my way of protecting him, or protecting myself, one of the two. It was my start to being a better brother.
CHAPTER 23
TRYING TO SLEEP IN A HOSPITAL IS LIKE TRYING TO FIND A FOUR-leaf clover with your eyes closed, which is ironic because Dad always said sleep was the best medicine. Needless to say, when Day Two rolled around, I was anything but keen to jump out of bed.
The sun lit our hospital room like it was hanging from the ceiling; I covered my head with my pillow. There was no quilt to block the morning sun. I was still half asleep when I heard Dr. Parker’s voice.
“Good morning, boys. You awake in here? I’ve got something I want to show you.”
Here’s a little fact I learned in the hospital: doctors and nurses don’t sleep. I pulled my head from under the pillow and looked at the clock—eight am.
