From Ant to Eagle(35)

I quickly hurried past, aware that I was being nosy, and entered the games room. At first it felt like I was dreaming. It was like someone had given me the key to Toys R Us and let me walk in alone. The walls were lined with shelves bowing under the weight of all the games and books and toys. There was an air hockey table, a foosball table and in the corner, a TV with every video game system I could name.

Now you’d think a room like that in a building full of children would be busier than a mall at Christmas but it was dead empty. There was only one other kid in the room and he sat in the chair by the TV with the top of his pale, bald head showing.

I walked around the room looking at the walls of board games and books, searching for any Goosebumps but finding none, before grabbing the air hockey puck and knocking it around the table a few times. I quickly realized that the room was going to be a lot more fun when I had Sammy with me. I thought about going back and seeing if he felt well enough to come but knew it would be a wasted trip so I instead kept wandering aimlessly around, lifting things off the shelves and putting them back again.

As I continued to look around I became aware that the boy by the TV had paused his game and was now looking over the chair at me. He was as skinny as a skeleton and as pale as snow. He reminded me of a birch tree with two tiny branches. His head was completely devoid of any hair and I’m not just talking about the top; eyebrows, eyelashes—everything was gone. His eyes were the palest blue I’d ever seen and he kept on staring at me without saying a word.

Finally, when I’d had enough of the awkwardness of being watched and couldn’t find any game worth playing alone, I started walking toward the door to leave.

“You’re the brother of the new kid, right?” the boy said with a funny accent I’d never heard before.

I stopped and turned toward him. “Yeah.”

“Sammy, right? Sammy Sinclair. I saw it on the board at the front. What’s your name?”

“Cal.”

He motioned me to come sit in the empty chair next to him by the TV and since I wasn’t really keen on going back to the barf room I went and sat.

“I’m Oliver,” he said, turning back around to his game and unpausing it. “You know how to play Super Mario?”

I nodded. I’d had a few friends back in London with Nintendos but I’d never really played enough to be any good. So when he handed me the second controller so that I could try to guide Mario’s sidekick, Luigi, over the giant crevasses in the ground it was a quick death.

Oliver didn’t seem to mind. He took his turn and easily beat the level, reaching the end and jumping on a flagpole in a dramatic fashion that set fireworks off overhead, signalling his victory. His face showed no excitement, he just turned to me and said it was my turn as if nothing had happened.

We sat like that for a while, rotating turns—me quickly dying, him quickly beating each level before he started up the conversation again.

“So what’s your brother’s diagnosis?” he asked during one of his turns, apparently not really needing much concentration to play.

“Diagnosis?” I asked.

“Yeah, like what kind of cancer does he have?”

“Oh. Umm…” I had to think for a second. I’d heard the letters more than a few times in the last twenty-four hours but they still weren’t sticking. “AM something,” I said.

“AML,” he said with a nod. “Not the best, but not the worst either. I’ve seen plenty of kids come through here with that.”

“You have?” I said, not able to hide my surprise.

“Oh, sure. When you’ve spent 657 days in a hospital you’ve seen it all.”

My mouth dropped. I wanted to think I’d misheard him but it had been so clear—657 days—and there was no hint of a smile or joke on his face. It was almost impossible to imagine.

Oliver noticed my surprise and smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said, “no one else has been here this long. Most kids are either cured or dead well before 657 days.”

I felt a ball rise up in my throat when he mentioned the word dead but I did my best to ignore it. “So what’s your…diagnosis?” I asked.

“My diagnosis? Failure to die.” He laughed but when he saw that I didn’t understand he continued. “They say I have ‘undifferentiated carcinoma of the liver’ but all that really means is that they have no idea. Some sort of cancer has made a home in my liver and no matter what kind of poisons the doctors tried to feed it, it didn’t go away.”

“So you’ve been getting chemotherapy for more than 600 days?”

“Oh, gosh no, are you kidding me? You think I’d let them do that to me? That’d be pure torture, man—pure torture. I’m well done with chemotherapy. Now I’m just waiting around for a miracle or death.”

Listening to Oliver talking so easily about dying was unnerving. I’d never heard anyone, anywhere, talk about death so easily—not even an adult. And this boy was probably only twelve or thirteen at most. I realized that despite my fascination with Goosebumps books I had a real aversion to the topic of death.

“I’ve actually been home a few times but I keep having to come back because I can’t eat without this,” he said, lifting up his shirt to reveal a plastic tube coming out of his stomach, “and this,” he said, pointing to the IV pole standing next to him. “Without any IV medications for my nausea I can’t keep anything down.”