“I guess it’s not just a cold, then?”
Eric shrugs. “Jem’s fragile.”
“Should I try to visit?”
Eric shakes his head, trying to be casual about it. “They’re trying to limit his exposure to people while he’s sick. And it’s not that bad. He’ll probably be home late today or maybe tomorrow.” That’s a lie; we don’t know when Jem is coming home. His condition still isn’t much improved, apart from the fever. He’s developed a cough and can barely speak, his voice is so hoarse.
“You’ll keep me posted?”
“Of course.” Eric gives Willa another awkward hug and holy crap, what is that mark on her hand? She leaves to go inside with her head down.
I round on Eric once she’s out of earshot. “Why did you say that? He won’t be home today,” I hiss. Eric doesn’t even look at me. He’s watching Willa’s back with an uncharacteristically thoughtful expression.
“I didn’t want to scare her, or for her to change her mind about him.”
“Willa wouldn’t do that.”
Eric just shrugs. He doesn’t trust Willa to stay, because he wouldn’t if he had any choice in the matter.
*
Eric drives me over to the hospital during lunch period. I want to visit Jem. I wanted to see him last night, but the staff didn’t think it was a good idea to let visitors in so late. Unfortunately, Mom and Dad agreed, and I’ve had to wait patiently for the past twelve hours. I do not cope well with patience.
Eric declines to join me.
“What’s he going to think if you don’t come?”
“I’ll see him later.”
“But—”
“Go on, Lise, you’re wasting lunch hour. I’ll wait in the parking lot.” When I persist he claims to have a test this afternoon that he needs to study for. He even has his Chemistry text with him as evidence. I quit busting his balls about it, even though I don’t believe him. Eric never studies—he’s one of those people who can do well without having to try too hard. This test, if there is indeed a test, is just a convenient excuse to avoid visiting Jem.
I sign in as a visitor and dutifully sanitize my hands and don a mask. Standard operating procedure. I actually kind of like the packaged smell of these masks, now.
As I head down the ward I see Mom in room 204, speaking quietly with another mother. The other woman is crying and Mom is holding her hand. Must be a new patient on the ward; a new family to commiserate with. If Mom is there it must mean that Jem’s sleeping, so I enter his room as quietly as possible.
I find Jem asleep, half on his side and breathing loudly. One of his feet pokes out from under the blanket. I cover it and pull a chair up beside him. It makes me feel better just being close to him. I can relax knowing that he’s relatively okay (read: breathing).
He doesn’t wake up when I set my notebook on the edge of his mattress and use it as a desk. I feel like writing, surrounded by the silence of this room—with the rain pounding on the window and my brother’s raspy breathing and the sounds of the equipment and noises of the hospital. Silence is relative.
Jem can sleep through anything. Always could. I tuck my hand into his curved one. He still feels unnaturally warm.
When I was little I had the sense that Jem somehow belonged to me. That he was mine to follow and observe and idolize. I followed him everywhere. I wanted to do what he did. I would practically fawn over him whether he paid me any attention or not. I was in my glory during the moments when my hero would allow me to be his sidekick, if only for an hour or two, and sometimes, when no one was watching, he would even condescend to play Barbies with me. I craved validation from my second brother like no one else. Even when he became a teenager and was too cool to hang out with his little sister, I wanted his attention. I should have minded that he blew me off over and over again like he was too cool for me, but I didn’t really. I wanted him to be that cool. I wanted other people to admire him the way I did. I would do anything to gain a moment of his notice, even when he was totally self-absorbed in what clothes he wore or the stupid things he did to impress girls who would never appreciate him properly.
As terrifying as his illness is, I don’t have to look hard to find the silver lining. Cancer allowed us to reconnect. He had time for me again, as long as I had patience for his moods, and I was pleased to find that we hadn’t grown so far apart. Everything I’d idolized about Jem as a kid is still true. He is thoughtful and tough as nails and in need of quiet reassurance—he just expresses himself differently now.
Eric is unchanging, and I like that about him, maybe because we’re nothing alike. He’s steady; he likes to stay the course he’s chosen. Jem is frustratingly fluid, overly sensitive and has a bad habit of overreacting. He doesn’t make it easy to justify my favoritism.
Hurry up and wait
For a sign that will be
Missed.
Watch the line, the
Numbers, the
Beat
Of the meaningless pattern
That means everything.
“Read it to me?” he rasps. I look up to find Jem awake. I can only tell he’s conscious because of his breathing. He can’t open his eyes because they’re crusted shut.
I set my pencil down and go get a warm cloth to wipe his eyes clean. Jem murmurs ‘thanks’ as I soak his lids and brush away the gunk. When he opens his eyes they’re bloodshot and glazed.
Jem reaches for my notebook to read my scribblings. I usually don’t let anyone read my poems, not even Mom, but Jem is a special case and he knows it.
“I’ll read it.” I set aside the cloth and recite the poem. It bothers him. He thinks he’s making me worry, like watching his heart monitor could become an unhealthy obsession. Eric and I call it ‘hospital TV.’
“How come you never write about Eric?”
I shrug. “Eric isn’t subtle. You’re a pattern. Like music. I can make poetry out of that.” I tear the page out of my notebook and leave it on the side table for him.
“What else have you written lately?”
I offer to write something about Willa. It’s a diversion I know will pique his interest, because I don’t want to give my brother an honest answer. The truth is that I haven’t written very much of anything in weeks that isn’t about Kipp. It would bother Jem if he knew. He doesn’t like Kipp—or maybe he just doesn’t like it that I’ve found another boy to adore; like I’ve outgrown my need for my hero.
The orderly comes by with a meal tray for Jem. He doesn’t have much appetite, but I help him eat the fruit cup and juice box. He leaves the chicken and peas untouched, not that I blame him. It looks like a frozen TV dinner.
“I’m cold,” he complains quietly. I offer to get him another blanket, but he asks for a hug instead. I scoot my chair as close to the bed as I can and he shifts his weight to the edge of the mattress. His forehead comes to rest against my neck and his thin arm wraps around me. I hold him as best I can, rubbing his back to warm him up. Maybe he wasn’t talking about physical warmth when he said he was cold….
“I hate being here,” he whispers.
“You’ll be home soon.” That doesn’t cheer him up much. I hold him and rub his back and tell him little things about my day. He never would have listened to me ramble like this before he got sick, but now my normalcy is comforting.
“Your favorite nurse is making rounds,” I offer. Jem doesn’t react. He’s too busy having a blue moment. Not long after we’re joined by said nurse—a petite ball of energy with Snow White scrubs and Cheshire Cat stickers on her shoes.
“Hey Kim.”
“Is he awake?” She nods at Jem.
“Yeah. Bad day.”
“I’m right here,” he mutters into my neck.
“Still coughing?” Kim makes Jem roll over so she can listen to his breathing. He’s not in a friendly mood today, but I know he likes Kim best. Jem doesn’t click with many people (surprise), but she’s the only nurse that he doesn’t complain about. The others a
ll either smell funny, talk too much, have cold hands, are too rough, or don’t have enough enthusiasm.
“Nice scrubs.” He sounds sarcastic, but she takes it in stride.
“Are you Sneezy?”
“No. Coughy.”
“I’d say Grumpy.” She places her stethoscope and makes him cough. “Like you mean it.” He hacks away for a few minutes. Jem sounds like a chain smoker. It’s like something is trying to crawl back up his throat as noisily as possible.
“You’re sounding better,” she says cheerfully. Really? That’s better? “How’s your appetite?”
“Fine.”
“He ate a fruit cup,” I volunteer. Jem lazily smacks my arm for presuming to speak for him.
“Can I go home yet?”
“Soon, probably. Your fever is coming down steadily. I’ll come check you again later.” She squeezes his shoulder with a reassuring smile and turns to go, on to the next patient. My time here is up as well. Dad comes in as I go out. He’s on his lunch break too.
“What’s the news?” Jem asks him.
“None. Just came to see how you are.” Dad always gets tense around Jem when he’s in the hospital—Dad’s hospital, where he spends about eighty percent of his waking hours and should feel right at home.
“I’m sick,” Jem says, in the spirit of pointing out the obvious. There’s an awkward moment while Dad fishes around for something to say. I see him eyeing the half-eaten meal tray like he’s going to comment on it, and I know Jem’s short temper won’t bear that right now.
“I’m gonna head out, Dad.”
“Oh?”
I nod and give him a hug goodbye. He grabs my hand as I let go of the hug and says, “I’ll walk you out.”
A minute and a half is usually how long his visits with Jem last before one of them gets upset.
*
I spend the evening getting things ready for when Jem is discharged. The spare bedroom is closest to Mom’s office, where she could keep an eye on him while she works. I think about making up that room for him, but then he wouldn’t have a private bathroom, and he really needs that.
I pull the sheets off his bed and wash them, and then set about sterilizing the bathroom surfaces. Eric comes in while I’m elbow-deep in bleach and feels the need to remark on the smell. I tell him to take the sheets out of the dryer.
I have little rituals that keep me sane whenever Jem is really sick. After I make the bed and stock the fridge with Jell-O, I take his black photo album into my room. Eric originally took these pictures for Jem’s benefit, but I’ve gotten something out of them, too.
Jem keeps facedown the pictures he can neither bear to look at nor get rid of. Some of these are my favorites. One is of Mom asleep across four waiting room chairs. She looks uncomfortable and completely exhausted. I can see why that shot bothers Jem; he’s very sensitive to others’ pain, and wouldn’t want Mom to suffer unnecessarily on his account.
My favorite picture isn’t even properly arranged in the book. It’s taped facedown to the flyleaf at the back cover. Eric wrote the date on the white tab of the Polaroid. This one was taken twelve days after I went into the hospital to be a donor.
The day of the harvest procedure couldn’t have come fast enough for my liking. I went through testing with Eric to find out if either of us were a match, and when my results came back positive I would have let them harvest that day, if they could. But there was waiting to do; I had to have surplus stem cells in my blood, and Jem had to be in a temporary state of remission for this thing to work, so on came the radiation and chemo.
To prepare my body for the harvest, I had a series of injections over several days so that the stem cells could be sifted directly from my blood. A few needles is nothing, and I foolishly went into it feeling cocky and self-righteously proud of what I was doing for my brother. I have thoroughly learned my lesson on the subject of pride, because instead of being a walk in the park, I had the week from hell. My body didn’t react so well to the injections. It was like having the flu—my muscles and bones ached. I could barely eat without my stomach getting upset. When I did manage to fall asleep, I woke up drenched in sweat.
I didn’t complain, though, because that would have been totally selfish and wimpy. Jem was in the middle of much harsher treatments, and had been feeling a lot worse than me for months. I could stand a little discomfort without making a fuss. I don’t think I fooled anybody, though. The whole family knew I was miserable.
The cells were collected over four sessions. I was told I’d just have to sit there for a few hours while a machine did the blood filtering. What I wasn’t told was that my small veins—what isn’t small about me?—weren’t sturdy enough for the procedure. I had to have a catheter inserted into a larger vein at my neck, which was about as pleasant as you can imagine.
I didn’t complain, but I was secretly counting down the hours during that last apheresis treatment. I smiled for the Polaroid shots that Eric was taking to keep Jem informed. He was bored that day and I was agitated, so we played with that camera for a long time, taking crack photos for fun. We accidentally got a snapshot of the exact moment my chest started hurting and I couldn’t get a breath. My left lung collapsed—yet another complication in a parade of total crap. The pain and shortness of breath made me lose consciousness, which I think was a good thing, because when I woke up I had a chest tube hanging out of my side. And up till that point, I’d thought the hardware in my neck was gross. This was just plain creepy, and on top of that, it hurt like hell.
I couldn’t leave the hospital, and the boredom nearly drove me insane. I couldn’t even get out of bed with that awful tube sticking out of me. The only thing I could do was lie there and wait for the hellish dressing changes. I might have complained, just a little.
Jem needed Mom, so by default I had Dad spending time with me in that stuffy hospital room. I always thought Jem was being too hard on Dad whenever he went into ‘doctor mode,’ but I began to see what my brother was talking about. Dad is insufferable when he’s talking about drainage and oxygen saturation, and touching my shoulder like I’m a stranger.
Dad couldn’t be with me all the time, though. He still had shifts to work, so Eric stayed with me when neither of our parents could be there. Eric was there when things started getting weird. I felt like I was dreaming and regular events were happening out of order. Things Eric said made no sense and every time a nurse came to my bed I couldn’t understand what she was doing, even though they were basic tasks I’d seen done before.
Bacteria had gotten in around that thing in my neck. I’d developed sepsis, and the early symptoms looked like a regular response to the pain in my chest, so they didn’t catch it right away. I was pretty disoriented by the time treatment began, so in essence I missed the whole thing. They sedated me and put a tube down my throat to supply oxygen. A lot of liquids got pushed through that thing, until my lungs filled up with fluid and it was hard to breathe. In Eric’s photos I look totally swollen and red, like a pig with a blotchy sunburn.
But like I said, I missed all that. The following week I left the hospital with IV antibiotics, and I got over it with very few lasting scars. The little marks on my chest and neck are nothing; it’s the scars in my head that annoy me. Sepsis caused capillary leakage in my brain, which in turn caused seizures. I’ve only had two more since leaving the hospital, but every time I seize I have to restart the waiting period to get my driver’s license back.
I’m at peace with the whole thing now, because it was all worth it for Jem’s survival, but at the time I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. As I was leaving the hospital in my borrowed wheelchair, Mom took me by the ICU to see Jem. We couldn’t go in, of course, but there are windows around all of the isolation rooms. Jem had been in one of these for weeks because he had no immune system left.
It didn’t occur to me until later that Mom and the nurses must have arranged this in advance. Jem was sitting near the window, waiting for me. The nurse, all gowne
d up in sterile gear to protect my brother, stood behind him like a sentinel the whole time with her hands resting on the handles of the wheelchair she’d used to move him.
It was sort of like communicating with a prison inmate, but without the phone. We both pressed a hand to the glass, lining our fingers up. He mouthed, ‘Are you okay?’ to me and I nodded before asking him the same question. ‘Yes,’ he mouthed. ‘Thank you.’
He didn’t look okay. His eyes were slightly glassy; he was pale and when his mouth moved I could see angry red blisters on the inside of his lips. The skin on his hands and arms had a strange rash. It seemed that in an attempt to make him healthy, both of us had become sicker.
‘I’m okay. Healing.’ I pulled back my collar to show him the tidy dressing on my neck, and then I uncovered the one on my side where the tube had been. Jem looked at me with worry and pressed both hands up against the glass, like he was trying to reach me.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m okay.’
He kept repeating it: ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…’ He started to cry and the nurse’s hands closed around his upper arms. She pulled him back into his seat and began to wheel him away.
My reaction was purely impulsive. I slammed both fists against the glass and shouted, ‘Hey!’ at her. Mom grabbed my wrists to keep me from doing it twice. ‘We’re in a hospital,’ she reminded me sternly. I tried to stand up, to get a better look at my brother—he was arguing with the nurse—and Mom sat me right back down. ‘Neither of you should be overexcited right now.’
‘Let me talk to him.’
‘He’s upset, we need to let him rest.’
I pressed my hands and face up against the glass, too stubborn to let Mom take me away until we absolutely had to leave. Whatever Jem said to the nurse worked, and she let him come back to the window. We must have looked like quite the pair, sick as dogs with our hands and faces pressed close to the glass in this strange approximation of a hug. He cried and I wheezed, and when Eric came up from the parking garage to see what was taking Mom and I so long, he snapped a Polaroid. Much later Mom said it was one of the nicest things she’d ever seen, the way Jem and I cared for each other like that.
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