I had lain in my chamber, twitching and sweaty, restless yet fatigued. It was startling how much time I spent in this bland room. In fact, on occasion, I still return to my chamber, just to remember. The walls are a faded beige and the white trim is yellowed from age. Even the ceiling paint has begun to chip off, and some dangles loosely as if suspended in time. If I think really hard, I can see pictures on the ceiling. Most are really dark, like a tombstone and the puma with blood dripping from its fangs. Some are about what I miss; snowmen, television, video games – but none are of MTV. In fact, I don’t miss MTV at all.
My family moved to my hospital location and even though I still don’t remember exactly where the hospital is, I know it’s near Ruskin, where I grew up. It snows a lot during the winters, reminding me that I missed Christmas with my family when I was away. They tried to have Christmas at the hospital one year, but Aaron refused to come. I convinced them to stay home with Aaron, Christmas here would be too gloomy. Angel still promised me that she would kick Aaron’s ass when they got home; she’s such a good kid.
The real reason why I didn’t have Christmas with my family was because it was lost for me. Once you miss one, you really don’t feel like doing it ever again. Or maybe it’s because I had no hope left and Christmas wouldn’t do a thing to help me regain it.
Speaking of my family, I’ve never really talked much about my dad. Maybe it’s because I assume you know he’s there. He would visit me, not as often as mom, but close. One visit from him stands out in particular. In fact, he came just after my brawl with Menoza, as if he knew I would need him to console me.
I was asleep when he came, dreaming of the black like I usually did. Not that I really missed those gruesome picturesque dreams any. They were filled with some kind of ghastly reality unlike any other dream I’ve ever had. I think that the main purpose of those dreams was to predict what was going to happen in my life. No, I’m not psychic, but for some reason I had those dreams – the operating table, the people dying – for the purpose of telling me what was going to come. Sometimes they call that foreshadowing.
I’m not sure how long my father had been watching me rest, but when I awoke he still looked content and alert. I was very pleased that my father had decided to venture here alone. What I mean by that is: without my mom. Don’t get me wrong, I love her to bits, but she seemed to be helping people cope with seeing me this condition. It was like the whole world had pulled an Aaron and mom was there to tell them, "It’s okay, mommy’s here."
Something in my dad’s smile told me he had been planning for a very time to see me on his very own, but could not resist mom’s protective, vulture-like grip. He had not come bearing gifts like he most often did, but I was, by now, ill to the bone because of all the family sympathy cards. For the first time in a while I sat in my to read the fan mail I received from people who were smart enough to figure out which hospital I was in. They were so much more touching and encouraging than "Get Well Soon" or "I hope you’re feeling better." Fuck you cards, I’ll never get well or feel better. This cancer not the common cold! Still, I think the sympathy cards were the worst. They were the least sincere of all. How much effort does it take to pick a good card with a little poem inside? Almost none.
The letters I received were just wonderful. Everyday I read them until I couldn’t stand the pain in my eyes. My mother was worried all to bits, but my dad kept feeding me with the ones that were sent directly to the house. One girl described cancer as, "A walk through the secret garden of hell," in her letter and I couldn’t agree more. Someone else kept getting the cancer back, but still tried for recuperation and eventually bounced back. "That’s how it’s going to happen for you," he said in his letter, "but all you need is hope." These letters gave me lots of hope.
I tried to respond to all of your letters, really, but my fingers stopped working even on painkillers and a nice new laptop. The doctor keeps on feeding me painkillers and I’m afraid I’ll get addicted to them. He tells me not to worry, he’s a professional, but sometimes I wonder.
Speaking of my addiction (well not really) I did go into therapy like Brian wanted me to. I also survived the withdrawl, but not without drooling on all of my shirts and screaming like a maniac. Even my mother refused to visit me on days like that. Luckily, I was the only one in the small clinic at the time and I didn’t bother anyone else with my shrieking.
Back to my dad again. When I saw him sitting there with his arms folded I noticed his changes as well. He seemed to get a little bit older every time I saw him and that scared me. I wasn’t going to say anything because my changes weren’t any better either, they were worse.
"No, mom’s not here," was the first thing he said to me. I was a little embarrassed. I hadn’t noticed that my own eyes were training around the room, searching for her.
Blushing, I struggled to an upright position, grunting and groaning the whole way up. My dad helped me awkwardly, but I ended up doing most of the work. I grabbed my knees and hugged them tight, waiting for the screaming, gut-wrenching pain in my stomach to subside. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my dad gawk at my skinny arms, legs, and body. I guess when mom was around she protected everyone from the sight. I didn’t mind him looking at me, after all I am his son.
Tears appeared out of nowhere in his eyes took me and held me in his arms as best he could with the cables in the way. I did not cry; though I rested my cheek on the space under his neck and waited for him to stop sniffling. His hands found their way to my head and stroked the spot where hair had once been. Chemotherapy was becoming more and more intense and the pain more and more intolerable. My lungs and liver stopped functioning during bouts with treatment and during times of stress. Once, my heart beat started to slow for no apparent reason and I fell into what I call a "short coma." The "short coma" lasted three weeks and when I awoke, I found myself attached to the Goddamn feeding tube. Basically the doctors jam it down my throat and into my stomach so that my body get the proper nutrients when I am unable to feed it. I hate to say it, but I detested the tube so much I cried over and over, begging my mom to please make the doctors take it off. But she refused me, even when I began to claw at my throat, because the doctors told her that I would gain weight faster on the tube. They all knew how much I hated people feeding me, but I hated the tube even more. It feels like you got your hand caught in your throat but you can still breathe. If you can’t breathe with the tube, which is sometimes the case for me, they more tubes up your nose or hook you up to the respirator. The respirator is not as bad as the feeding tube, in fact I like it because it saved my life so many times. Every time I was hooked to it, I called it my "respirator rescue" and hoped to God that they wouldn’t give sinful little me the feeding tube.
The wires that were attached to me right then were the little heart moderator wires taped to my chest and the nose respirator. I had a little problem during chemotherapy that morning when I when into cardiac arrest for the third time because I’d stopped breathing. The doctors told me afterward that I had a heart attack because when it was happening I thought it was just more chemo pain, when in fact it was not. So much for my healthy heart, huh?
Normally I wouldn’t let anyone touch me for as long as my dad was, not even my mother, whom I scolded for looking at me for too long or for holding my hand the wrong way. You could say I was being sensitive, but I feel that it will take more time to fill the infinate loneliness in my heart and to return human spirit to my soul. I have made sure that my mother understands that.
It felt good to be in someone’s arms again - even though I was almost twenty-two and it was my dad holding me instead of my wife. Somehow that didn’t matter to me, it just felt good that someone would defy my demands (or my outcries for help, whichever way you prefer to see it) and touch me longer than just a pat on the shoulder.
A little choked up and still holding me closely, but not tightly, my dad asked, "Do you want to see the kids today?" I mumbled my reply into his neck, unsure whether or not he heard me. Then, unexpectantly, he hoisted me into his arms and onto my wheelchair. I winced and grasped my stomach in pain, breathing heavily into the respirator. Dad covered me with blankets, certainly unaware that I was having problems breathing. The special non-addictive pain killers I was taking kicked in and suddenly the gagging, numbing pain was gone.
He pushed at the handle of the wheelchair very carefully, so that I wouldn’t be jolted into another lapse of pain. The wheel squeaked loudly and I moaned and grabbed at my feverish head. He was fully aware of my pain this time and would not leave until the wheelchair was fixed. At first he wanted to carry me to my destination, but I refused him with a flat-out "No!" Even though I was weak, I didn’t want to show weakness. It doesn’t make much sense to an outsider, but it sure does to me.
Out the door we went. White, white, white - how I loathe the color white. I hate every shade of it, every single one. If only things were all white and no black, or even just black and white. But no, there must be those annoying shades of grey. I am a shade of grey I think. No longer am I good and perfect in your eyes, but I am a person and a person is not perfect. Therefore, I think, we are all shades of grey. Even church-goers like Brian, or priests for that matter are not as white as they’d like to be. In that way, we are all equal as shades of grey. I still hate the shades of grey though; they are much to complicated for me to figure out. Some have more white than others, some more black and others are right in the middle. I think that all children start off white, then move slowly toward the black end of the scale when they age. That has to be how it works.
The corridors in this hospitals are very long and boring. My dad is walking slowly and the trip is taking longer than it should. He must have been thinking about something, but now it’s much too late to ask. I concentrated my sight on my unmoving legs and the irony that even so they were still, the ground beneath them was still flashing by.
Before we got to the children’s little playground, my peripheral vision caught a glimpse of something important and I told my dad to stop. In a white bedroom identical to mine, I saw a young boy I recognized and wondered what he was doing a hospital for the terminally ill.
Chapter 54
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