From Ant to Eagle(34)

On the sill by the window Mom put up old pictures from home. One was taken outside our house in London with me in horrendous yellow overalls pointing proudly at Mom and Dad while they held a brand new baby bundled in their arms. Another was from only the year before—Sammy and I kneeling with our arms around each other by the river behind our house with makeshift fishing rods of sticks and string in our hands and goofy grins on our faces. It was scary to see the contrast between Sammy from the picture and Sammy lying in the hospital bed. Had I not seen him every day in between, I don’t know if I would’ve recognized the two kids as the same. His skin was pink back then, not an off-shade of white, he was plump not skinny, and I realized that the dark circles under his eyes that I’d become so accustomed to hadn’t always been there.

While Mom continued decorating in hopes that we might forget where we were, a nurse in Minnie Mouse scrubs came in and began doing the usual things nurses do. She counted Sammy’s breathing, listened to his heartbeat, took his blood pressure (the black band around his arm—I was learning quickly), then told us she would be back with Sammy’s chemotherapy. I remembered Dr. Parker describing chemotherapy as toxic. So when she returned with a bag full of yellowish-brown liquid and hung it on a pole next to Sammy’s bed and attached it to the IV in his arm, a chill passed from the back of my neck down to my legs.

We sat playing cards on the bed but I kept getting distracted by the medicine dripping slowly from the bag into the tubing—drip, drip, drip. It was like when I sat in the bath and the tap kept dripping water even after the faucet was turned off—drip, drip, drip.

Sammy didn’t seem to notice. He was concentrating hard on getting his cards right and he probably hadn’t even heard when Dr. Parker said the medicines were toxic. Or more likely, he didn’t know what toxic meant. I was so distracted I didn’t even cheat or notice when Sammy won.

He looked up at me with a hesitant look on his face as he played his last card, waiting for the usual moment where I said something like, “Nope, you can’t play that because the five of diamonds can never be the last card,” then make him pick up five for “trying to cheat.”

This time I only smiled and told him good job. He was utterly shocked and looked over at Mom by the window to see if she’d witnessed his victory. She hadn’t, she was too busy reading Childhood Cancer—A Guide for Family, Friends and Caregivers.

“You want to play again?” I asked.

Sammy nodded but as we played the second game his face started to change. He looked tired all of a sudden and nearly as pale as the first day we’d come to the hospital after his seizure. He kept having weird twitches in his body and I thought he was hiccupping until one moment I was looking down at my cards and the next I was covered in vomit. Disgusting, slimy, yellow vomit. I looked up at Sammy and to be honest, my first reaction wasn’t, “Are you okay?” but, “What the heck did you do that for!” until I saw that he was crying and holding his stomach.

Mom rushed over, grabbed Sammy, and tried to take him into the bathroom except he was still attached to his IV and she had to figure out how to unplug the pole from the wall. By the time they made it to the bathroom Sammy had thrown up again on the floor. I heard him heave a third time followed by something splashing in the toilet.

I was still covered in vomit and the smell was awful so I joined them in the bathroom and began scraping the barf off my clothes with paper towel and running my arms under the tap.

“I’m sorry, Cal,” Sammy said, his head still in the toilet while Mom squatted next to him rubbing his back. “I’m really sorry.”

He kept apologizing over and over between gags and heaves.

The nurse came in and cleaned up the bed and the floor. She gave me a matching hospital gown to Sammy’s and said she could have my clothes washed. When Sammy came out of the bathroom he continued to apologize over and over, no matter how many times I said it was fine. I had to tell him to stop or I’d really be mad.

The rest of the morning I lay in my cot listening to Sammy rotate between retching and sleeping while I read Cuckoo Clock of Doom. I thought he’d eventually run out of stuff in his stomach and the God-awful noise of him puking would end, but even when there was nothing left the noises kept coming.

When I’d had enough of listening to Sammy puke I asked Mom if I could go to the games room. She didn’t answer because she was busy holding Sammy’s head up from the toilet so I took that as a yes and left.





CHAPTER 22

THE GAMES ROOM WAS ONLY TWO DOORS DOWN FROM OURS AND as I passed the one room in between I quickly glanced in. It was the same as ours only the kid who stayed there obviously had been there a lot longer. The whole room was covered with posters of hockey players, handwritten letters wishing someone named Oliver to get better and piles of toys beyond anything a normal kid should own. The bed was empty but by the window sat a woman dressed in a long black dress with white polka dots and a funny hat made of the same material. She looked like she was from some sort of old-fashioned movie and for some reason her outfit seemed vaguely familiar. She was rocking gently in a chair with her hands folded neatly in her lap staring out the window. She didn’t look at me but I could see her face from the side and it looked like the face of someone who’d just watched their dog get run over by a car. The word sad just didn’t seem to cut it.