Breathless

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “And if it has?” He's trying not to scare me, but I stare him down.

  “One thing at a time,” he says.

  “We'll fight it,” Mom says.

  “It's not your leg,” I tell her.

  “We'll get through this,” Dad says quietly.

  I hear their use of “we,” but this is happening to me. To my body. To my life. To my future.

  Cooper knows because Emily's told him. He looks ready to explode when he comes to visit.

  “I keep looking at my leg, trying to imagine it gone,” I tell him.

  “How did you get cancer?”

  “Don't know. I just did.” I close my eyes. “I don't want them to cut off my leg.”

  Cooper shoves his fist into the mattress of my hospital bed. The blow is strong enough for me to feel vibrations. “It sucks.”

  I can't get my mind around never walking on my own two legs again. “You should have let me drown.”

  “Don't talk that way.”

  I take a deep breath. “Guess it'll be Lenny Feldman's time to shine.” Feldman has been my main competition, chasing after the same medals as me. He's a good diver, but I've beaten him out for top honors at every meet. I tell Coop, “I'd been looking forward to kicking his butt at state. Guess he'll laugh his head off over this turn of events.”

  “No one will be laughing,” Cooper says. “You made him a better diver by competing against him. Now he'll just be ordinary.”

  My throat clogs up when I think about not looking down on pool water again with judges and teammates watching. I want to feel the cool water on my skin so bad I can taste it. I want to plunge beneath shimmering water into the quiet world of blue silence. I feel my eyes get wet. I turn my head so Cooper won't see my weakness.

  “You can still dive,” he says. “You'll figure it out. I know you. You don't give up.”

  I search for a spark of determination inside me. I come up empty.

  Seeing Darla, telling her, is hardest of all. My beautiful girlfriend. Blue eyes crying. I put my arms around her, knowing what I have to do. “It's okay, babe.”

  “But cancer,” she says. “That's so awful. My grandma had cancer.”

  “That's what this is for.” I hold up my arm with the IV line leading to the bag of chemicals on the stand next to the bed. I'm already feeling a little sick—they said I might—but the cancer diagnosis doesn't affect me like the leg amputation does.

  Darla pulls away, fumbles for a tissue. “My nose is dripping.”

  “You're still pretty.”

  She laughs a little. “I love you.”

  “Yes. About that.”

  “What about it?”

  “I'll understand if you … if you …” I can't get the words out.

  “If I what?” She squints. “Are you dumping me?”

  My arm burns where the chemo is going into my vein. “I'm telling you that you can move on. I'll understand.”

  She's perched on the bed and jumps off. “Is that what you want?”

  “No. I—I just think you need to review your options.”

  “My options? Do you think I have a Plan B because you're sick?”

  Nothing's coming out the way I thought it would. “A lot of guys will be interested in you if I'm not in the picture. If you want to—”

  “Want to what?” she interrupts me. “Get a new boyfriend? One who doesn't have cancer?” She's looking angry.

  “It's the leg too, Darla. No more of a lot of things we used to do together. You should have a choice.”

  She's glaring at me now. “I'm making my choice. The leg thing doesn't bother me. So you'll have one leg. Big deal.”

  I get angry. “Well, it's big deal to me! No more diving. I'll have a piece of equipment strapped to my stump.” I say the word with all the hatred for it that I feel. “I'm losing part of my body, Darla. They're cutting off my leg. Don't you know what that means?”

  She drills me with her pretty eyes, leans forward, so close to my face I can see her pores. “Yes. I know what it means. It means you'll weigh less.”

  Her answer is swift, and it strikes me as funny. Not just funny, but hysterically funny. I laugh. I laugh until I ache, and she laughs with me. We laugh until we're crying. I pull her against me, and in that moment, I've never loved her more.

  Emily

  Travis's situation goes onto the prayer chain at church—that's when names are passed along to every person in our congregation for specific prayer. The pastor prays for him during regular Sunday service. The youth pastor prays for him during group time. My Sunday school class prays for him before starting lessons. I hear the words “I'm sorry” a hundred times from about as many people. Everybody's sorry about what's happening to Travis. I don't know what to say back. “I'm sorry too”? The words hardly fit because it's all so unfair.

  I'm sad, but I'm angry too. God could fix this if he wanted. That's what God does—answers prayers and fixes people. I've been taught this all my life. Didn't we all pray for the Williams baby, born prematurely? And didn't the baby get better and come home, and isn't she healthy now? Does God love the baby more than Travis? And if he does, why? What did Travis do to make God mad at him?

  Mom tells me, “Disease happens. It's random sometimes.”

  Dad says, “We need to keep our faith strong.”

  Travis asks, “Where's God when I need him?”

  I'm confused and sick inside my heart.

  I sit in church. I say, “Kyrie eleison.” Lord have mercy. The plea to the Divine sounds more serious in Latin. Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison. I repeat the words over and over.

  I promise God I'll be good forever if he'll just make my brother well.

  Darla

  I sit alone in the dark theater after midnight. My favorite place to sit and think. A few of the films in the cineplex are still running; I hear sounds through the walls, the car chases, the final screams of a horror movie. But in this theater it smells like stale popcorn, and the screen is dark and silent. I remember my first date with Travis. We came to the movies. We held hands. That's all. My hand in his. No “accidental” brushing against me. No groping my leg or my boobs in the dark. Just his hand holding mine. Respect. I think that was the night I began to fall in love with him.

  My friends couldn't believe he was Mr. Nice Guy. They'd expected him to be conceited and out for himself. I admit I expected him to be that way too when he first asked me out. But I was wrong. After Travis and I had been dating for a couple of months, Dad came out of his den long enough to look him over. Travis was polite, Dad suspicious. Later, at the dinner table, I decided to ask Dad what he thought of Travis. Dad said, “Guys are just out for what they can get off you.”

  “Travis hasn't asked me for anything.”

  “Like you're an expert? I was a teenage guy. I know what he wants. Just wait. He'll pounce.”

  “Ken, give her a break,” Mom, the quiet one, broke in.

  “Shut your mouth,” Dad told her.

  Mom looked down, pulled the napkin in her lap.

  I was sickened by him, as usual, because he didn't need to yell at her. He broke her spirit long ago. I don't know why she stays.

  He turned on me. “You'll end up like your sister.”

  I pushed away from the table. “Celia's plan was to get out of here,” I told him.

  “Some plan!” he fired back. “Now she's got a kid and a good-for-nothing freeloader living with her.”

  “I guess you know all about freeloading.”

  He jumped up and I was sure he'd take a swing at me, but I bolted up the stairs and locked myself in my room—Celia's old room—and I cried. I miss my sister. What happened to her won't happen to me. I'm smarter than that. And Travis isn't Fred.

  The side door opens and the manager sticks his head inside the dimly lit theater. “That you, Darla?”

  Mr. Cain. “I'm just sweeping up the place.” After the concession stand closes, we're expected to clean the ten smaller theaters.
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  “You look like you're just loafing in the dark.”

  “Taking a breather.”

  “Could you hurry it up? Your shift ended almost an hour ago. I'm not paying overtime.”

  I stand. “Yes … sure. Someone stuck gum on the back of this seat.”

  He swears. “No respect for property anymore. What's the matter with you kids?”

  He bangs out the door and I start scraping the gum off the chair. I used to look at movie screens and imagine myself on them. Darla Gibson, movie star. See me, Daddy? Do you see what I've become? A star! I pull off a wad of sticky gum and drop it into a plastic bag I use for cleanup duty. It all seems so silly now, this wanting to rub my father's nose in my success. Travis has cancer and is losing his leg. No star power can fix that.

  He'll get a replacement leg. He's showed me pictures. It's made of titanium with a jointed knee and ankle and a beige shell-covering like that color in a box of crayons. And the leg has a naked mechanical foot that can wear any shoe—“matchy shoes,” Travis says sarcastically. “How nice.”

  The pamphlet reads, “A technological marvel. Looks real to the eye.” It doesn't look real. And it isn't flesh and blood. It isn't human. He's told me that he hates it.

  Tears sting my eyes. I wish I'd yelled at Mr. Cain and told him that all kids aren't disrespectful and mindless of others' property. Some kids are great. They're nice, kind, thoughtful, talented, gifted, wonderful. And through no fault of their own, they still get cancer.

  Travis

  So now it's over and the surgeons have taken off. Funny way to think about it. “Taken off” has a double meaning: the cutters have gone, my leg is gone. Taken off. Get it? I sit in the hospital bed and stare down at my bandage-wrapped thigh. All that's left. A stump. “No,” Mom insisted when I first used the word. “It's a residual limb.”

  “It's a stump,” I say. “Call it what it is.”

  “It had a tumor,” she says. “It was diseased and it would have killed you.”

  My stump hurts. I'm wigged out on morphine again because of the pain. Crazy, but I can still feel my toes. They said this would happen. Phantom pains. Mystery feelings in a leg no longer attached. My brain hasn't bridged the disconnect yet. No leg. No toes. No tumor. Be happy.

  Where did they put it? What do they do with sawed-off legs? Did they bury it? Burn it? Give it to a medical school for doctors-in-training to cut and dissect? I guess it doesn't matter. Gone is gone.

  I hear someone moving in my room. It's not a nurse, because one has already come and checked me and gone. A big shape materializes beside my bed. “Coop?”

  “Yeah, man, it's me.”

  I'm groggy, not sleepy. “I thought you were the grim reaper.”

  “That's not funny.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Midnight.”

  “I guess you heard.”

  “Emily and Darla both called me. I was working.”

  The pathology report came back this afternoon. The cancer was found in three lymph nodes—a bad sign.

  “Now what?”

  “More chemo. Radiation. Mom's got specialists lined up in Birmingham.”

  “I'm sorry, man.” His voice is thick.

  He straightens. I grab his wrist. “I don't want them to keep cutting me up. I won't give up any more body parts.”

  “You're going to beat this thing. Whatever it takes.”

  I know he's right, but at the moment, I have no fight left in me. I know he needs to get home and catch some sleep, but I don't want to be alone. “Can you hang awhile?”

  He eases down into a chair. “As long as you want.”

  Emily

  Dad's outfitted the house to make life easier for Travis. The den downstairs is now a temporary bedroom until he gets strong enough to climb the stairs. The bathroom shower stall has grab bars. Dad's ripped out carpeting and put down new flooring, and there are no more little rugs around the house. Nothing slippery. Everything's about Travis now.

  His car is parked on the grass beside the driveway. I've kept it washed and cleaned, and I start the engine every day to make sure it runs. Dad's fixed up our front sidewalk because a crack in cement can cause Travis to have a bad fall. I've taken over lawn duty while my brother's recovering and learning to walk on his new leg.

  The day Travis comes home, I hang a “Welcome Home” banner across the front door and string balloons over the door to the den. Cooper and Darla are waiting with me. She's baked cupcakes—kind of pathetic-looking little lumps smeared with frosting that's oozing off the top and down the sides in the heat, but I don't think anyone notices except me.

  When Dad pulls into the driveway, he and Mom hop out and slide open the side van door. “Phil, get the wheelchair.”

  “No,” Travis says. He picks up crutches from beside him on the seat.

  “Please, honey. Let's be safe.”

  He gives Mom a wilting look. “I want to walk into the house.”

  Dad offers his arm for support, but Travis ignores him.

  Cooper, Darla, and I stand on the porch and watch Travis slowly maneuver up the walk. My brother's lost a ton of weight and his skin is sallow-looking from the chemo. His empty pants leg is pinned up so that he won't trip on it. Darla grips my elbow, and Cooper slides his arm around my shoulders. We all hold our breath.

  At the bottom of the porch steps, Travis looks up at us and asks, “How would you score me?”

  It takes a second for his question to sink in.

  “Ten,” I say. “A perfect ten.”

  Once we get Travis settled in, I corner Darla and Cooper before they can leave. “We need to help him.”

  “How?” Cooper asks.

  “He shouldn't spend too much time alone. His shrink says he's depressed.”

  “Go figure.”

  “I'll do anything to help,” Darla says.

  “What do you have in mind?” Cooper wants to know.

  “Make sure he has plenty to do all summer. Games, DVDs—just hanging out with him between chemo and physical therapy. If we're around him, if he's not alone thinking about what's gone, it'll make him feel better. That's what Mom says. Positive attitude, you know.”

  Without a second's hesitation, Darla says, “I can be here most days. Until I have to go to work.”

  “I'm good for the night shift,” Cooper says.

  “And I live here,” I say. “I'm available anytime.”

  This makes Cooper laugh and I blush. Why do I feel like a little kid whenever I'm around him? “Okay, then. We have a plan,” I say, sounding like a social director. Awkwardly I hold out my fist the way I've seen Travis and Cooper do. Guy code. The three of us tap our fists together, sealing our pact.

  COOPER

  The last time I cried, I was eleven. Watching my best friend struggle up his front porch with a missing leg is one of the hardest things I've ever done. I want to seize him around the middle and haul him up. But of course, I can't.

  Once we are all inside the house, he drops the crutches, leans on me, and hops to the sofa. “Crutches bite,” he says. He's sweating from the exertion.

  Darla scoops up her plate of cupcakes and presents them to Travis. “Hope you like chocolate and white icing.”

  “You bake these, babe?”

  “In my Easy-Bake Oven,” she jokes.

  He pops one into his mouth. “Yummy.”

  She blushes, and I get that they're not talking about cupcakes.

  Travis looks around. “My new digs?”

  “Just until you can get up the stairs,” Mr. Morrison says.

  “Yeah, just until I get your room repainted bubble-gum pink,” Emily says.

  He pokes at her with his crutch. “Watch it, Em. My arms are five feet long these days.”

  “Just until you get situated,” his mom says.

  Darla snuggles next to Travis on the sofa. They look cozy, like they always look together. The crutches could be a prop if you don't notice the gap on the floor where Travis's foot
ought to be. And no one's even mentioning the elephant in the room—the cancer that's still inside him. I say, “I need to split. I'll be back tomorrow after my shift ends.”

  Back home, I pound on my punching bag until my arms ache. And I cry like a girl.

  Travis

  Mom picks me up from outpatient, where I've had chemo dripped through the shunt in my chest for an hour. I go to chemo twice a week and get hooked up to IV bags, and the port in my chest takes the poison slowly into my body, where it hunts for cancer cells to destroy. Trouble is, it's destroying other cells too. The chemicals they're giving me are so strong that if they leak onto my skin, I'll need plastic surgery to repair the damage. The poison sucks my energy. In mirrors I look wasted, like a meth addict, but chemo is no recreational drug.

  I hunch down in the car, pick up a plastic bowl, and hold it under my chin.

  Mom glances at me sideways. “Do you feel sick?”

  “A little.” The stuff they give me includes anti-nausea meds. Sometimes they help. Sometimes they don't. Today they don't.

  “How's the other going?”

  I'm working with a physiotherapist on parallel bars. I've been practicing just standing up and putting weight on what's left of my leg. Pain shoots through me until I see stars. The stump of my thigh has to toughen up. My therapist tells me it sometimes takes months to master walking, but I'm determined to do it a whole lot quicker. The first time I held the leg, I couldn't believe it would hold me up. It's hinged to do the work of a leg, with a silicone liner that has to be turned inside out and washed every day. I wear a tubelike sock over my stump, and it has to be kept clean too or I'll develop nasty sores. Care and maintenance is lifelong. I'm bionic boy now.

  “The skin's sore. Walking's harder than I thought it would be.” I answer Mom's question.

  “When you were a baby, you didn't crawl,” she says. “You just pulled yourself up on the coffee table and started to walk. Couldn't be bothered with that intermediate process of crawling.”