Breathless

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “And it might mean he'll die a thousand miles from where he wants to be. How can we live with that?”

  “But you said you haven't agreed yet. You can stop him.” I can't let this go. If I can't change Travis's mind, maybe I can change Cooper's.

  “I don't like his plan either. I tried to talk him out of it more than once.”

  “Try again.”

  He opens the car door. “Go home, Emily.”

  “But—”

  He slams the car door behind him, and I watch him walk away into the night.

  Darla

  Emily's waiting for me by my car when school's out Monday afternoon. I'm nervous, because Emily doesn't usually seek me out. The last time, the only time, was when she wanted me to help her uncover Travis's plans. Now that I know his plans, I don't want to face her.

  “Let's go get coffee,” she says.

  My tummy flips. “But I'm supposed to be with Travis.”

  “Mom's going in late to work. I told her you had to help with the school play.”

  “But I'm not in the play.”

  “A white lie, so sue me.”

  There's no getting out of going with her. We drive to a coffee shop in a strip mall near the school. We order two syrupy flavored coffe drinks, find a small table by the window, and sit across from each other. Not enemies, but not friends either.

  “I know what Travis is planning to do.” She wastes no time getting to the point.

  “He told me you knew.”

  “And you aren't going to stop him? You're going to let him?”

  “How can I stop him?” I lean closer. “I don't want him to. I've asked him, begged him not to. It hasn't made a difference.”

  “So you agree with this idea?” Her eyes are blazing.

  “I agree that he has the right to decide what he wants to do with his life. People have choices, you know—about good and bad things to do.” I think of my mother. “I don't agree with a lot of choices people make, but it's still their choice.”

  “Even when the choice hurts other people?”

  “If the other people don't know, how can they be hurt?” I get that “other people” to Emily are her parents.

  “Don't you believe in right and wrong?”

  “If I blew up this coffee shop, that would be wrong because I'm hurting people who don't deserve it. But what Travis wants to do won't harm anyone who doesn't know the truth. That's our part—to keep others from finding out.”

  “But we know. And Cooper's going to help him. That's illegal.”

  I shrug, take a sip of the sickly sweet drink. “So is underage drinking and smoking weed. But people do it anyway.” I know Emily's kind of religious, but she's asked for my honest opinion, and I'm giving it to her. “I don't want to lose Travis,” I tell her. “If I could change things, I would. We all would.”

  Tears fill her eyes, and she slumps. “It's just because of the pain. He's not thinking clearly. If they could fix his pain …”

  My own eyes fill up. “Taking away pain won't change things for him. He wants to call the shots for his life. And right now, all I want is to love him. So that's what I'm doing.”

  She stares out the window for so long that I'm wondering if she's checked out. Finally I ask, “Will you tell? Or will you let him do what he wants?”

  COOPER

  Travis wants to go to the district diving competition. I think he's nuts, but I agree to take him. His mom shoots him up with morphine before we leave the house.

  “A legal high,” he says. “It's not what it's cracked up to be.”

  The bleachers are crowded on the spectator side of the pool, and flags in school colors are flapping in the breeze. I'm pushing him in a wheelchair, and he's covered up because chemo and sunlight don't mix. He hasn't worn his prosthesis in months, so he hangs a blanket across his lap to hide his empty pants leg. When we go onto the pool deck, the whole team erupts with hoots and hollers.

  “Good to have you with us,” Coach Davis says, patting Travis's shoulder. He doesn't say the same thing to me.

  “I wish it were me up there,” Travis says, looking at the springboard.

  Coach nods. “We all do.”

  Once the competition starts, Travis studies every dive the way a starving man stares at food. Lenny's the leader, the one to beat. Travis would be the one if he were up there. If only there were some kind of magic that could turn back time and erase what's happened to him. I clear my throat. The knot that's there never seems to go away.

  “How are you doing?” I ask him midway through the meet. Fine beads of sweat cover his face, but not from the heat. I'm guessing he's feeling pretty bad.

  “Hanging in.”

  I slip him a pain pill.

  Travis's presence inspires our team. They're always good, but today they're brilliant. The judges reward them with high scores and the district title. We stay through the medal ceremony, during which Lenny's given a gold medal for best individual performance. As the crowd breaks up and the team heads for the locker room, Lenny comes over. He holds out his hand and Travis shakes it. “Glad to see you, man. Thanks for coming.”

  “Didn't want to miss it.”

  Travis asks to see the medal and Lenny hands it over. “You want it?” Lenny asks.

  “I didn't earn it.”

  “You would have. You're better than me.”

  Travis grins. “I know.” He hands the medal back. “Where you going in the fall?”

  “University of Miami.”

  “Great aquatics program. Make us proud.”

  “That's my goal.”

  We watch Lenny walk away, his wet skin glistening in the sunlight. Travis stares into the deep end of the blue pool water. “I'm ready to leave,” he says.

  And I know he's talking about more than the ride home.

  I'm at his place on Saturday night, and it's late. I'm eating popcorn and drinking a beer. Travis is in the recliner sipping cola because it helps with nausea. He tells me that Darla knows everything, and I'm thinking Darla will be his backup plan, because the girl will do anything for him. He adds, “Emily knows too. She figured it out.”

  I tell him about her coming to see me and ask, “Is your secret safe?”

  “So far she's kept it to herself.”

  “I don't think she'll say anything.” I'm not as confident as I sound.

  “She told you not to help me, didn't she?”

  I stop midswallow.

  “Did she persuade you?”

  My hand tightens on the bottle. “I didn't commit either way.”

  “Are you thinking she'll hate you if you help? Maybe not right away, but eventually?”

  He's seen inside me, like he usually does, and hit the mark. Of course she'll hate me. “Why should it matter?”

  “Because you love her.”

  I feel my face get hot. “How long have you known?”

  “For years. You've never hid it real well.”

  “I never followed through on it either.”

  “Maybe you should have.”

  “It wouldn't work out.”

  “If you help me, probably not,” he says. “She'll never look at you the same way again. I'm sorry for putting you in this spot.”

  I make up my mind in an instant. “No use holding out for something I can't have. I'll take you to the lake,” I tell him. “You pick the day.”

  Emily

  I'm alone in my room. I spend a lot of time alone these days. Foreknowledge is a burden, a weight I can hardly bear. Maybe that's why God keeps the future hidden from us. If I knew I would have a terrible accident, would I live my life trying to avoid it? Would I lock myself inside a room being safe? Or would I go outside and live day to day?

  Do I blow the whistle on Travis's plans? What would Mom and Dad do—check him into a psych ward? Lock him up? Telling will add days to a life Travis no longer wants to live. Not telling will take him away so much sooner.

  I stare at the table beside my bed. There's a lamp. My
cell. My alarm clock. A glass of melted ice and cola, making water rings on the wood. These are real and solid. I can touch them, understand them. I see my Bible. It's a pointing finger into my heart. Kyrie eleison. Maybe that's all I have, all Travis has—God's mercy.

  He's my brother. I want to be with him, no matter what.

  I pick up the Bible and walk it to my closet, open the door and drag my desk chair over. I climb on the chair, stand on my tiptoes, and reach for the farthest, darkest corner. I place my Bible on the shelf, as far out of my sight and reach as possible.

  Travis

  How?” Emily comes into my room and sits in the chair beside my bed.

  I'm hooked up to a home dialysis unit, so I can't get away from her. Her question is obvious. No use pretending that I don't know what she's asking. It's been days since she discovered my plan, and she walks around like a ghost, hardly speaking, making Mom and Dad wonder what's wrong with her. She hasn't given me away, and she hasn't tried to talk me out of it again. A surprise.

  “The lake,” I say. “I want the water to do the job.” She looks horrified, so I keep explaining, wanting to settle her down. “I've thought it out. Mom keeps my pain pills under lock and key. So no ‘accidental’ OD. I told Cooper and Darla how I can do it with insulin. Did you know insulin's untraceable in the bloodstream? I showed them my Web research, how it's been done that way before. But then I realized someone would have to buy the insulin for me, and Mom and Dad might figure it out since no one's a diabetic, and my helper would be outed. And prosecuted. And that's not what I want to have happen.”

  “Travis, listen to yourself. You sound like you're picking something off a menu! Pills, insulin, drowning—”

  I interrupt her. “I want a way that won't scream ‘suicide.’ I'm trying to protect my family. If you hadn't been so dog determined, you wouldn't have to know any of this.”

  She looks away, stares into space. The sound of the dialysis machine doing its job fills the silence. Finally she turns to me. “When?”

  “To be determined.”

  “When?”

  My answer doesn't deter her. “It has to be warm enough,” I explain. “So that going to the lake will make sense. No room for questions from Mom and Dad.”

  “Just you and Cooper.”

  “Yes.”

  Silence.

  “It would be better if we all went together.”

  Her words stun me. Did she really say that? “All of us?”

  “Darla, me, Cooper … like old times. It'll be more believable for Mom and Dad that way.”

  Suddenly I'm not sure. Maybe this is a trick. “Are you planning to have them jump out of the bushes and throw a net over me?”

  “I know you're going to do what you want to do even if they lock you in an empty room. I can't stop you.”

  True.

  She looks at her folded hands. A tear trickles down her cheek, and I almost fall apart.

  “Em, you don't have to be there.”

  “Yes, I do. I'm family. Someone from your family should be with you. You need to know that I love you. No matter what.”

  I'm reminded of when she was a little girl and I was confined to my room for doing something I shouldn't have done. I was in solitary—no TV, no video games. I was allowed out only to go to the bathroom and to go downstairs for meals. Emily sat in a chair outside my door for two days. Mom tried to get her to leave, told her that she wasn't being punished, that she was a good girl. Emily just looked up at her and said, “That's okay. I'll wait here.” And she did. She slid a drawing in bright red crayon under my door, of an eye and a heart and the letter “U” … “I love you.”

  Looking at her now, I know I want her to be there. I want Darla to be there too. I want to see them on the shore before I dive off the platform. I want them on the shore when Cooper returns. He'll need them.

  “Thanks, Em,” I say, and reach out my hand.

  She takes it, and we sit together like that for a very long time.

  COOPER

  I want to knock holes in walls with my bare fists.

  Travis had a seizure, a stroke that paralyzed him on one side, and now he's trapped in ICU, stuck with all the medical crap he was trying to avoid. Tubes seem to be coming out of every part of his body, and machines surround his bed like birds of prey He's alive—a machine breathes for him, another monitors his heart; another cleans his kidneys. He still has brain activity. I know that's true because his eyes follow me in the room if he's awake.

  This isn't what he wanted. All we needed was a few more days and he could have avoided this. We were going to the lake early on Saturday morning—all of us. And Travis would have slipped into the water from the platform and his life would have ended the way he wanted. His death would have been an accident.

  School's over for the year, and by some miracle, I graduated. Mom cleaned herself up to go to the ceremony, but I barely remember it. Travis was given a diploma and a standing ovation, but he wasn't there to receive either. I spend all my free time at the hospital with Darla and Emily in the ICU waiting area. Days drag by. Travis is allowed visitors for ten minutes once an hour. The rules say only family is admitted, but his mother has cleared the way for Darla and me to visit him twice a day each. I have to force myself to go into his cubicle, because I can't stand seeing him the way he is. But I can't stand not seeing him either.

  He turns eighteen while in ICU. Emily has words with her mother in the waiting area in front of me and Darla. “He wanted a DNR.”

  “No DNR,” her mother says. “That's final.”

  Of course he can't even sign his name on the paperwork, so his parents still rule his life.

  Emily keeps us updated. “They're inserting a feeding tube,” she tells us. “For better nutrition. I told Mom he'd hate it, but she won't listen to me. It seems that the cancer is in check for a while too. And his heart's still strong.”

  Any other time this would be good news.

  Emily adds, “They're moving him into a private room, so we'll be able to visit him more often.”

  “Will he still be on all those machines?” Darla asks.

  “Yes, but we can talk to him. Doctors say that hearing is really good for patients like Travis. We can read to him too.”

  Her face is so childlike and trusting that I have to look away.

  “We're in this together, aren't we?” she asks.

  “Like how?” I ask.

  “Working to make things better for him. Just like we've done before.” She holds out her fist.

  I consider our circle—bound by our loyalty to Travis, willing to help him die, now caught in the web of medical science keeping him alive. It's a roller-coaster ride of hoping he'll beat all odds and fear that he won't. Of knowing what we were willing to do for him, and now what we can't do at all.

  “I'm in,” Darla says, tapping Emily's fist.

  They look to me. I hold out my fist and we seal our pact again.

  One afternoon, Darla comes to the cafeteria looking for Emily and me. Her skin is ashen.

  “What's wrong?” I ask.

  “I think he's in pain,” she says. “His body keeps jerking and they tied down his arms so he won't pull out any of the tubes.”

  My best friend, tied to a bed.

  “What's the worst that can happen?” I ask Emily.

  Days later, Emily tells us. “His doctors want to cut off his other leg to help his circulation. And they want to sew his eyelids shut because he can't blink on his own and his corneas are drying out.”

  His doctors never get to follow through with their plans, though, because the next night, the twenty-fifth of June, Travis's heart stops beating and he can't be revived.

  Emily

  My brother dies in the early morning, when the world is at its darkest, when no one's around him except IVs, tubes, and machines. Mom is beside herself because she wasn't at Travis's side. Dad tries to console her. “Jackie, we couldn't be there twenty-four seven and still function. We did all
we could do.”

  I cry, but I can't say I'm sorry, because I know how he felt about his life.

  We bury Travis in the town's oldest cemetery on a hot June afternoon in a private ceremony. The high school holds a memorial service for him in the football stadium, and half the town shows up. The aquatics team wears black armbands.

  Darla comes with her mother and kid sister but not her father. Cooper shows up with his mother. She looks small and neat in a skirt and blouse, with her black hair pulled back in a bun and fastened with ornamental ivory sticks at her neck. She hugs my mother and father and me. If she remembers me from that night in the spring, she doesn't show it. We all sit together and listen to people say inspiring things about my brother. And we cry.

  Days later, Cooper and Darla and I meet at the lake for our own private memorial service. I drive Travis's car. He gave me the keys for my birthday. “Now you won't have to sneak it,” he said.

  The lake air smells like summer, like coconut sunscreen and Alabama earth and mown grass. Boats zip past far out in the water, their motors sounding like droning bees. I think of other summers when we came, just the four of us, for swimming, and island picnics, and waterskiing. Now we are three.

  We hold hands at the shoreline, tell stories of our best memories of my brother, watch kids dive off the floating wooden platform. The ache inside me throbs. I miss my brother. I wish he could have gotten well—it happens for lots of people who get cancer, just not for Travis. When we're through, we stand shoulder to shoulder, awkward and silent, missing the glue of my brother's life that held us together.

  I ask, “So what are everyone's plans?”

  “The army,” Cooper says. “I'm headed to boot camp in a week.”

  My knees go weak. He's leaving.

  He turns to Darla. “How about you?”

  “Birmingham,” Darla says. “I'm going to live with my sister and her little boy. She had a boyfriend, but he moved out.” She motions toward her car. “I'm packed and loaded. No reason to stay here now. I'm going to get a job, maybe help out in a community theater. I've always wanted to be an actress.”