Love from A to Z(39)

I went back to closing my eyes. Dad.

Why am I still so reluctant to involve him?

“If it’s suitable. You would just need a space for the nurse to come and set up the IV apparatus and for Adam to be comfortable.”

“We have a large apartment, Doctor. I could take tomorrow off from work to be at home with Adam. And then it’s the weekend. You said two more days of treatment, right?” She stopped rubbing my hand but continued holding it, and I felt strangely happy she did.

It made me feel like someone was going to take over now.

I wasn’t on my own with this. For the first time.

I let the tears fall, surprised at the intensity of the relief washing over me.

It wasn’t just my problem to figure out.

For the first time since the attack started, I had something other than pain to concentrate on.

I was also relieved, tentatively, for another reason: Did Ms. Raymond mean that I could get the treatments at her place?

Did she know somehow that I didn’t want to involve Dad?





MARVEL: STUBBORNNESS OR, MAYBE, TENACITY


I think I’ve called it tenacity in my journal elsewhere. The not-letting-go of something you believe in.

I’m pretty good with that. Once I believe something is worth not letting go, I can hold on for years. Maybe even forever.

But it can also be seen as stubbornness, the unwillingness to see things in a different way from what you believe.

Is my refusal to involve Dad in my illness tenacity or stubbornness?

I like to think it’s tenacity, because I have a strong reason for not telling him.

He’s still having trouble dealing with Mom’s death.

It will send him spiraling if he finds out about this.

I’ve seen that happen once before. When Hanna got a high fever when she was three and was lethargic and couldn’t hold up her head, and the doctors said they couldn’t rule out meningitis.

Dad went almost comatose. He wouldn’t leave her side at the hospital. He took a two-week leave from work, but that was just to sit by her hospital cot, watching Hanna almost sleeplessly.

I, at eleven years old, kept things running at home until I couldn’t anymore, and Marta, who’d come twice a week to clean since we’d moved to Doha, began checking in on me every day.

I don’t even know if Dad realized that Marta had done that for me.

He can’t handle more grief. Why would I tell him something that’ll shatter him further?

My reason is ironclad, something to believe in, to not involve Dad in my MS for now.

But there’s a part of me that knows I have a stubborn streak.

That once I make up my mind about something, I refuse to budge, even if it makes sense to do so.

Is it right that Ms. Raymond is being my guardian instead?

Is it right that Dad will be hurt when he finds out what I’ve kept from him? That I didn’t want him to care about me?

I don’t know, but I do know this is me.

? ? ?

Ms. Raymond agreed to drive me to Connor’s house.

Before I left the hospital, I texted Dad that I would be staying over at Connor’s, that he was having the guys over.

Then I told Connor the truth.

The long version of it.

He listened surprisingly well before saying, “Yeah, you’re chilling here.”

? ? ?

When we got to the car in the parking lot, with Ms. Raymond pushing me in the wheelchair the hospital had lent, she broke the comfortable and safe silence she’d granted me before.

“I need to know something, Adam. Before I drive you.” She opened the front passenger door.

I reached for the edge of it, to get myself up. My legs were almost back to normal, back to how I knew them, but my vision continued to be blurry.

Easing myself into the seat, I waited as Ms. Raymond folded up the wheelchair and hoisted it into the trunk.

It was obvious she was going to ask about Dad, so I had to brace myself.

Then I remembered something. Two memories that I’d always tried to push away.

Two memories that merged into one.

But now I needed them, so I let them flood my brain.

I let them collide.

? ? ?

Memory one:

We were at our house in Ottawa. We’d come back for the summer when I was eight, would be going back to Doha at the end of it.

At our house in Ottawa, there was a door to go outdoors, and when you went through it, it was . . . the outside. There were no concrete compound walls that you had to further cross to get to the outside outside, like at our apartment in Doha.

Here, the rest of the world was waiting right there when we stepped out of our house.

That, to me, was freedom. And what made me feel great about being back home when I was a kid.

My grandparents lived in our house, Mom’s parents. They kept our home and garden and backyard waiting for us. They kept it the same, except for the guest bedroom, permanently theirs, and the basement—where Grandpa had built the best workroom, large, clean, and organized, with the biggest table in the world (in the eyes of eight-year-old me) taking over the center, ready for any projects I wanted to do with him.

On the day of my memory, I’d been working on making a castle while Grandpa had been making something with bars on it.

“What’s that, Grandpa?” I put the gray Lego roof piece in my hand down.