From Ant to Eagle(33)


I felt like I was underwater. Like even though Dr. Parker was in the room, he was suddenly distant and hard to hear. I wanted to know what Sammy was thinking but when I looked at him he was just playing with a loose thread in his hospital sheets.

Nothing, Sammy wasn’t thinking anything. I would have to think for him.

Dad sat on the bed next to Mom trying to conceal his sobbing while she asked every question an anxious mother could think of. What was the treatment? When did it start? What were the side effects? When would we know if it was working? And on, and on, and on…

Dr. Parker answered each question patiently. It was hard to be hysterical around someone with such a gentle voice. He was honest, which meant he never reassured, but all the while something in his tone and the way he sat with his hands folded gently in his lap, leaning in so we could hear him clearly, pausing frequently to let us think, made me feel that it just might be okay.

I tried to remember everything Dr. Parker said so that if Sammy asked me about it later I could explain it to him; but even with the pauses I couldn’t keep up. Every other word seemed foreign and all the while I felt like I was in French class attempting to understand verb conjugations while someone sat under the table hammering a nail into my foot.

What I did manage to pick up went something like this: Mom: “Is it curable?”

Dr. Parker: “Without spreading to the brain, AML is curable in about 50% of children.” Pause. “With brain involvement, it is closer to 20%.” Pause. “We will do everything we can to make Sammy one of those 20%, but it will not be an easy road.”

Dad: Curses under his breath then apologizes.

Dr. Parker: “Don’t apologize. It’s how you should feel. I’ve been doing this job for over thirty years and I still feel that way every time I have to break bad news. I’d like to sit here and tell you it is going to be okay. That it’s an easy road. But it isn’t. The medicines Sammy will need are toxic to his body. He will be tired. He will be sick. His mouth will develop sores and his hair will fall out. He will need the support of his family more than ever. But we are going into this thinking Sammy will get better. If he responds to the treatment there is a possibility that he not only gets over this, but that he will be cured. Let’s believe that that will be the case.”

I heard what Dr. Parker was saying—be positive. Focus on the good. No point worrying about the worst-case scenario. And I wanted to. I wanted to think that someday Sammy would grow up to learn to read and climb and do all the other things six-year-olds don’t know how to do. But it was hard. Sammy was never lucky with anything.

I looked at my little brother—pale, tired, skinny. I couldn’t bear it like he seemed to. He’d spent months tired and bruised and sweating and losing weight and out of breath. He had endured it all and never once complained. Worse, he had endured it all while I had spent the summer avoiding him. Maybe if I’d been around I would have noticed. Maybe there would have been something I could have done. Maybe we could have caught the cancer before it had taken over his body. Maybe—just maybe.

“We will need to start treatment as soon as possible. You will be transferred to a room on the oncology floor and tomorrow we will start Sammy’s chemotherapy,” Dr. Parker said.

“And how long before we know if it’s working?” Mom asked.

“Twenty-seven days. We will repeat his bone marrow biopsy in twenty-seven days and if we don’t see any cancer cells in there it means we have induced remission. If we can induce remission the results are almost always favourable.”

“And if we can’t?” I heard the negative side of me say.

“If we can’t, well, let’s cross that bridge then.”

Dr. Parker’s face told me it was a bridge we didn’t want to cross—not in twenty-seven days, not ever.





CHAPTER 21

THE NEXT MORNING WE WERE TRANSFERRED TO THE ONCOLOGY floor. It was a weekend so I didn’t have school, which meant I could come early to the hospital with Dad.

I’d imagined the oncology floor differently; a place dedicated to children with cancer naturally conjures an image of gloom and fear and pity. I’d imagined a place of absent hair matching absent smiles, cries and moans haunting dark halls and darker rooms. To tell the truth, I was afraid of the oncology floor before I saw it, but when the doors opened and I saw the unit for the first time, my fears vanished.

If the rest of the hospital were a playground, the oncology floor was the giant slide in the middle. Paint splashed the walls and doorways in every variety. The wide hallways were well lit and voices—not cries—echoed from the nursing station in the middle. The unit, I would learn, was the shape of a bicycle wheel. Spokes of hallways spread from a central nursing station, each with rooms along them and a kitchen or a library or a games room at the end. We were directed to Room 18 halfway down one of those hallways. We were lucky—it was the hallway with the games room at the end.

For the first part of the morning Sammy and I sat on the bed playing cards while Mom set up the place as if we were moving in. The room was much the same as the one before: a hospital bed for Sammy, another bed pushed up against the window for Mom or Dad, a TV hanging on the wall and the now familiar tubes and wires and thingamabobbers all hospital rooms seemed to have. This room, however, had a third bed. A small cot was pushed right up against Sammy’s bed and I smiled because I knew it was for me. The walls were white and near the top was a line of blue wallpaper with different animals repeating themselves around the room. A half-opened doorway in the corner revealed a bathroom and through the window I could see the early morning sun bathing an empty playground outside.

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