Beast(56)

“There’s always a but.”

“You have to follow the rules. You must answer your phone at all times. You must check in with the Swanpoles across the street when you get home from school and before you go to bed. You must do all your homework and you must go to school. You can hitch a ride with all the kids from junior high, I already called the lady who runs the buses. They’ll pick up on the corner of Going and 77th.” She draws in a breath. “You must not make me regret leaving.”

“Got it.”

“You and I need a reboot,” she says. “We both need to order some room service and watch a movie. Come home and everything will be back to normal.”

“I think it’s a good idea.”

A real good idea. A Nobel Prize–worthy idea. Some time when I can sit and eat as much food as I want without anyone reminding me how much it costs and play Madden until my hands are raw. She fills me in on some basic details, and after I wolf down a snack of three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I’m upstairs in my room to call Jamie and tell her all about it.

She answers immediately. “Did you get your blood test? When do we find out Dylan the Giant has a posse?”

“Blood sucked out Friday, but I have news.”

“Tell me.”

“My mom’s going on a business trip to Pittsburgh.”

“This sounds promising.”

“Honestly, I’m just excited to have the house to myself,” I say. “She’s only gone for two days, one night, and I might as well wear an ankle monitoring bracelet, but it’s thirty-six hours without Mom. I’m psyched.”

“I’m so jealous.”

“Don’t be. It’s going to be me and about thirty of my closest pizza-shaped friends.”

“And maybe a little something else.”

My eyebrows raise. “Go on.”

“Let me ask you something, how fast can you grow a beard?”

“A full beard, or some scruff? I can do scruff in a day.”

“Good to know. How long for a full beard?”

“Like three days. Why?”

“When’s your mom going out of town?”

“Next Thursday.”

Jamie’s grin fires across the phone lines. “Start growing that beard on Monday.”





TWENTY-THREE


It’s Friday, and a sweeping breath of calm fills me as I pick good, clean clothes to wear to the hospital. White cotton button-down shirt. Clean jeans with the leg cut out for my cast. A navy blue sweater. I comb my hair, not that it does more than tickle a scalp full of stubby follicles. This is a baptism. Dear Dad, I start to dictate in my head. It’s time to learn the truth. We have the thing. That spark, that flare, that tumor that makes us (made, in your case, sorry) grow way too big. This is the day I take my first deliberate steps to getting to the bottom of whatever the hell is wrong with me. I’m on the road to my diagnosis and I can’t wait.

It’s an ungodly early appointment, but I don’t care. Mom’s saying things and they float around me, creating a bolstering cloud of security, because this is it. I’ve googled the snot out of acromegaly. I’m ready to join the parade. The blood test today will look for an overactive hormone and I’ve already checked nearly everything off the list. Enlarged hands and feet? Yup. Everything is enlarged, it all counts. Coarsened facial features? You bet. A deepened, husky voice? You’ve been listening in, haven’t you, you sly devil? There’s other stuff that doesn’t line up with the list from the Mayo Clinic, but there’s enough right there to say oh hell yeah, it’s gigantism. I’ve already signed up for the acromegaly mailing list. I’m ready to be the state of Oregon’s chapter president.

Someday, when I’m being interviewed for Nova or 60 Minutes because I’ll have cured cancer by then, they’ll ask me about my formative years and I’ll say what a shitstorm my life was until I got my diagnosis. And once I was a legit medical giant I was no longer ashamed to tower through the halls. I had a genetic ailment that no one could take away from me. My pituitary gland produced too much growth hormone; it’s not my fault. Perhaps there’s surgery on the horizon for some benign tumors causing trouble, but once they’re gone I am in the clear. I stop growing.

I fasted overnight. I haven’t had any breakfast. Let’s do this.

Mom and I get in the car. Back on the road again and we’re off to the hospital. It’s a different room in a wing on the right I’ve never been to. Everything is fresh and new. Even the magazines have better pictures of bikini-clad ladies over here. Doesn’t matter they’re illustrating some weight-loss bullshit; still counts. The lab tech calls me in for the blood draw.

“Why you smiling, baby?” she asks.

“Nothing.” Everything. “How much blood are you taking today?”

“Eight pints.”

“Really?”

“No, you’d be dead.” She laughs. Gotta love phlebotomist humor. “Couple vials, baby, and you’re on your way.”

The needle goes into my vein. Vials are filled. She releases the purple elastic around my bicep, presses a cotton ball against my arm, slaps some paper tape over it, and I’m free.





TWENTY-FOUR