From Ant to Eagle(39)

Oliver must have noticed me staring around the room because he leaned in close, careful to speak quietly enough so that our moms couldn’t hear.

“You looking at the little girl with Down Syndrome?” he asked.

I didn’t know what Down Syndrome was but I had been staring at a little girl two tables over with small, oval shaped eyes and a tongue that didn’t seem to fit in her mouth. She was already dabbing away at her Bingo card despite her mother trying to explain that she had to wait. It didn’t seem to matter to her how the game was played—she was content just dabbing.

“Her name’s Gracie. She’s three years old and has ALL.”

“ALL?” I asked.

“The nicer cousin of your brother’s AML. 95% cure rate—the best odds of any cancer.”

“Oh,” I said, thinking this through in my head. Why couldn’t Sammy have had that cancer? “And what about that girl in the wheelchair?” I said, pointing at another girl sitting across the room with a disinterested look on her face. She was the oldest in the room—well into her teens—and it seemed like she’d been dragged to Bingo night rather than come willingly. Like everyone else, she was bald and skinny with prominent bones sticking out of her cheeks and below her neck. Unlike the rest, she wore regular clothes instead of a faded blue hospital gown. I imagined she would have been pretty before she’d gotten sick.

“Jessica Walter, seventeen years old, osteosarcoma,” Oliver said, without a hint of hesitation pronouncing the last word. “She used to be a big-time ballet dancer before she had her leg amputated.”

“Amputated?” I said, lifting my bum off the seat a bit so I could get a better look. Sure enough, just like Oliver had said, she had one leg on the footrest of her wheelchair and where the other one should have been there was nothing.

“Yep, amputated. One day she came home from dance with a pain in her thigh but her mother told her it was a muscle cramp. So she went for massage therapy and saw a chiropractor and all the while kept dancing because that’s what her mother wanted her to do. She told me that she never even liked to dance, she just kept doing it because she couldn’t tell her mom she hated it.

“Well, finally, the pain got so bad she had to pull out of some big dance competition and her mom took her to the doctor. The X-ray showed that the cancer had literally eaten away most of her leg bone.” Oliver made a horrendous chomping noise for effect. “Next thing, her leg was gone, she was getting chemotherapy and now has a ten percent chance of still being alive in five years.”

I noticed the girl had a woman sitting next to her—most of the kids had their moms with them—and I couldn’t help but feel like her mom had a remorseful look on her face. Probably it was just Oliver’s story affecting me, but still, the distance between the daughter and mother was perceivable from across the room.

Bingo night was filling up quickly and there were only a few spots left at the tables. At the front, the volunteers looked to be getting ready to start but held off as the last few stragglers wandered in.

The last group was a man followed by a woman with a beautiful long dress. They had brown skin and the lady had one of those funny red dots between her eyes. Behind them came two boys holding hands. The older boy was guiding the smaller one into the room and it was obvious who the sick one was—the smaller boy had a shuffled gait and a yellow tube running from his face into his nose. They were both smiling and when they sat down at a table the older boy helped the younger one with his Bingo dabber. They reminded me of Sammy and me when we were younger.

Once again, Oliver followed my eyes across the room. “Hassan and his twin brother, Amir,” Oliver said. “Hassan has metastatic neuroblastoma. At most, he’ll live a few more months.”

“Twins?” I replied.

Oliver nodded. “Proof that cancer kids don’t grow like normal kids. Look at me, I’m sixteen and I look like I’m thirteen,” Oliver said.

I was shocked but pretended not to be. I’d definitely thought he was twelve or thirteen.

While we sat and waited for the game to start Oliver continued to list off the various diagnoses around the room as if he were reading a shopping list. He seemed to know everything about cancer and everyone with cancer. I guess when you’ve lived in a hospital for as long as he had, you just sort of picked things up.

The game finally started and Marribeth croaked out number after number. The room hushed as everyone concentrated on their sheets to be sure they didn’t miss a possible dab but Oliver didn’t once look down at his Bingo card. As he continued talking I remembered back to his room full of toys and realized he’d been to more than a few Bingo nights. I guessed he no longer came for the prizes; it was more for the company. And I was quite happy to have the company too. Not because I lacked people to talk to, but I lacked knowledge. From Oliver I would get the answers to all the questions Sammy had. It would let me be what my brother expected—a guide.

“Bingo!” the first winner shouted. She was a little girl sitting sandwiched between her mother and father at the same table as the girl in the wheelchair. ALL, I recalled Oliver saying, she would probably be fine. Her face had instantaneously gone from a concentrated gloom to a full-faced smile. Even the wheelchair girl next to her was smiling.

Marribeth walked over and checked her card and after it was verified, the girl walked to the front of the room where a huge caravan covered with an assortment of plastic-wrapped toys and plush stuffed animals sat. She chose a green frog stuffy and hugged it close to her chest as she walked back to her mom and dad.