From Ant to Eagle(55)

“You’re right—I don’t know. But if you weren’t so selfish maybe you’d see that you’re not the only one affected by your cancer. Maybe your brothers and sisters would like to spend some time with you before you’re gone. Maybe they’re sitting at home thinking about you right now. Maybe they have a secret spot tucked away in the trees that they really want to show you. Or maybe they’d like to go on a bike ride, or play a game of tag, or just sit and read. I may not know what it’s like to have cancer, but I know what it’s like to be the sibling.”

I seemed to hit a sensitive spot because his demeanour changed. His defensive wall crumbled and he slumped down in his chair. For a moment I just glared at him. My breathing was heavy and fast.

“It’s not that easy,” he said.

“What’s not so easy? You tell the nurses you want to go home and you do. Seems pretty easy to me.”

“I can’t leave, I, I…there’s…”

“There’s what? Tell me!”

His eyes narrowed and he looked straight at me. “You’re right. I don’t leave here because I’m scared. Every moment of every day I’m afraid that I’ll go to sleep and won’t wake up again. I’m scared shitless of dying. There’s the truth; you happy now?”

I stepped back in disbelief. I hadn’t for a moment believed myself when I’d accused him of being scared. I was just angry. “Afraid of dying?” I said. “Then why do you walk around pretending like it’s no big deal? What about your ‘everyone is dying’ speech? I thought the worst part about cancer wasn’t dying, I thought the worst part was the day-to-day symptoms.”

“I say a lot of things, Cal.” His voice was suddenly quiet. “The symptoms suck and are by far the worst part of cancer, but dying isn’t as easy as I pretend it is. The truth is I’m scared of dying because I know when I’m gone I’ll miss everything. Spring planting, fall harvests, riding horses, playing hide-and-go-seek with my brothers and sisters, my parents, the colony—it’ll all be gone.”

“So why stay here? If you’re worried about missing the colony and your family then why not spend as much time with them as you can?”

“Because the less time I spend out there, the less there will be to miss.”

The anger was quickly leaving. Instead a large hole began to open in my chest but that too was filling quickly. It was like a hole dug in the sand on a beach, out of nowhere water was rising from the bottom—the sadness was beginning to seep in. I felt suddenly exhausted and flopped down in the chair next to him.

For a while we just sat in silence until another thought came to me.

“What about your heaven? What about the idea of becoming clouds and trees and a part of everything again?”

Oliver nodded slowly. “Yeah, it’s a nice thought, huh?”

I closed my eyes and put my head back on the seat.

“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

I cried quietly in the chair next to Oliver. Normally I hated crying in front of anyone, but for some reason I just didn’t care. I felt the tears running down my cheeks, wetting the neck of my shirt. I thought about Sammy and Oliver and all the other kids who had cancer. It wasn’t fair. Then again, I guess I’d known right from the start that cancer wasn’t fair, and Sammy was just never lucky with anything.

I was pulled from my miserable daydreaming by the sound of my mother’s voice.

“Are you okay, Calvin?” she asked.

I looked up at her. She was standing in the doorway of the games room and looked anything but okay herself.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Do you want to come back now?”

“Is Sammy awake?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Okay.”

I stood up and walked to the door but Oliver’s voice stopped me.

“Cal,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry about Sammy.”





CHAPTER 34

THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN DYING IS LIVING WITHOUT HOPE.

I kept Oliver’s words with me after Day 27. Sometimes it was hard—very hard—but I saw it as my job to make sure Sammy didn’t give up. Probably because I wasn’t ready to give up.

“There are other options and we will try them all if we have to,” Dr. Parker explained.

“What other options?” Dad asked.

“There are different chemotherapies, higher doses—we’ll come up with a plan but as I said, things will be more difficult now that induction therapy has failed. The cancer is spreading and Sammy is weaker—still, we won’t give up hope.”

“What about transplant?” Mom asked.

Dr. Parker shook his head. “In order to transplant we’d have to get rid of the cancer first. You have to wipe everything out in order to plant new seeds. We need to try to induce remission, otherwise, even transplant isn’t an option.”

So we tried.

But no matter how many different or stronger or longer chemotherapies they threw at it, Sammy’s cancer didn’t seem to get any better. His body only shrivelled further and his symptoms only worsened.

We stopped counting the days. There was no more mystical Day 27 where things would be better. Instead we stuck to our routine, hoping for a miracle. For me that consisted of school followed by the hospital, school followed by the hospital, over and over and over again.