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It seems to me, now that this is more than just a hypothetical, that a parent falls one of two ways when told a child has a fatal disease. Either you dissolve into a puddle, or you take the blow on the cheek and force yourself to lift your face again for more. In this, we probably look a lot like the patients.
Kate is semi-conscious on her bed, her central line tubes blooming like a fountain from her chest. The chemo has made her throw up thirty-two times, and has given her mouth sores and such bad mucositis that she sounds like a cystic fibrosis patient. She turns to me and tries to speak, but coughs up phlegm instead. "Drown," she chokes out.
Raising the suction tube she's clutching in her hands, I clear out her mouth and throat. "I'll do it while you rest," I promise, and that is how I come to breathe for her.
An oncology ward is a battlefield, and there are definite hierarchies of command. The patients, they're the ones doing the tour of duty. The doctors breeze in and out like conquering heroes, but they need to read your child's chart to remember where they've left off from the previous visit. It is the nurses who are the seasoned sergeants—the ones who are there when your baby is shaking with such a high fever she needs to be bathed in ice, the ones who can teach you how to flush a central venous catheter, or suggest which patient floor kitchens might still have Popsicles left to be stolen, or tell you which dry cleaners know how to remove the stains of blood and chemotherapies from clothing. The nurses know the name of your daughter’s stuffed walrus and show her how to make tissue paper flowers to twine around her IV stand. The doctors may be mapping out the war games, but it is the nurses who make the conflict bearable.
You get to know them as they know you, because they take the place of friends you once had in a previous life, the one before diagnosis. Do
One night during Kate’s induction, which I have been awake for so long that my body has forgotten how to segue into sleep, I turn on the TV while she sleeps. I mute it, so that the volume won’t disturb her. Robin Leach is walking through the palatial home of someone Rich and Famous. There are gold-plated bidets and hand-carved teak beds, a pool in the shape of a butterfly. There are ten-car garages and red clay te
Sort of like this one used to be.
I can't even really remember what it was like to hear a story about a mother with breast cancer or a baby born with congenital heart problems or any other medical burden, and to feel myself crack down the middle: half sympathetic, half grateful that my own family was safe. We have become that story, for everyone else.
I don't realize I'm crying until Do
I shake my head, embarrassed to have broken down, even more ashamed to be caught. "I'm fine," I insist.
"Yeah, and I'm Hillary Clinton," she says. She reaches for my hand and tugs me upright, drags me toward the door.
"Kate—"
"—will not even miss you," Do
In the small kitchenette where there is coffee brewing twenty-four hours a day, she fixes a cup for each of us. "I'm sorry," I say.
"For what? Not being made of granite?"
I shake my head. "It just doesn't end." Do
"It wasn't a waste," Do
My cheeks flame. "You ought to go. I'm sure you have somewhere else you'd much rather be."
But instead of leaving, Do
The door to the ambulatory operating suite yawns open into a small room packed with gleaming silver instruments—a mouth gilded with braces. The doctors and nurses she has met are masked and gowned, only recognizable by their eyes. A
I put my hands on her shoulders. "You don't have to do this if you don't want to, but I know that Kate is counting on you. And Daddy and me."
She nods once, then slips her hand into mine. "Don't let go," she tells me.
A nurse shepherds her in the right direction, onto the table. "Wait'll you see what we've got for you, A
The anesthesiologist wipes a red-tinged gauze pad around an oxygen mask. "Have you ever gone to sleep in a strawberry field?" They work their way down A
The anesthesiologist shows A
All this time, she doesn't let go of my hand. Finally, her grip slackens. She fights at the last minute, her body already asleep but straining forward at the shoulders. One nurse holds A
So I do, through my mask. I whisper a thank-you, too. I walk out of the swinging door and peel off my paper hat and booties. I watch through the postage-stamp window as A
Brian sticks his head into Kate's room. "Sara," he says, exhausted, "A
But I ca
"A
A
"Can you stay here?"
I shake my head. "Kate's sick. I'm going to have to go back."
A
Over her head, I glance at Brian. "What are they giving her for pain?"
"Very little. The nurse said they don't like to overmedicate kids."
"That's ridiculous." When I stand, A
I accost the first nurse I can find. Unlike the staff in oncology, these RNs are unfamiliar. "She was given Tylenol an hour ago," the woman explains. "I know she's a little uncomfortable—"
"Roxicet. Tylenol with codeine. Naproxen. And if it's not on the doctor's orders call and ask whether it can be put on there."
The nurse bristles. "With all due respect, Mrs. Fitzgerald, I do this every day, and—"
"So do I."
When I go back to A