Some Kind of Normal (3 page)

Dr. Benton rests his hand on Ashley's head the way I
was doing before she threw up. "You're a pretty sick little girl,
aren't you?" He doesn't say it in the kind of condescending way
someone educated might talk to a twelve-year old, but in a
grown-up, compassionate way. He recovers the stool and holds it out
to me. He sits on the end of the bed and opens the clipboard Dr.
Park had with him. I like that he don't seem scared she will hurl
again.

"Ashley's got diabetes," he says to me. "Do you know
what that is?"

I nod, but I really don't. I've heard the commercials
for the blood test machines. It's on the news a lot lately too,
what with America being so fat now they say. I don't know what it
is for sure, but I know the people who get it are old, or have
behinds wide as a bus, and end up blind and amputated. It has
something to do with eating sugar, and I'm sure Ashley doesn't have
it.

"There are two types of diabetes. We used to call
them juvenile and adult-onset, but now we're seeing kids as young
as six and seven getting the adult-onset, and adults can get the
juvenile, so we differentiate now by calling them type 1 and type
2." He winks at me. "We in the medical profession pride ourselves
on our creativity."

"What's the difference, then, if age don't
matter?"

"Well, they're really two entirely different beasts.
Type 2 is an insulin resistance, where a person's body might make
enough insulin, even an excess, but not be able to use it. The body
resists it. But type 1, which is most likely what Ashley has, is an
autoimmune disease. Has she been sick recently with a cold?"

"She had the flu last week."

He nods, as though this explains it. "For most
people, a virus, or the flu, is just an illness their body can
fight off. In Ashley's case, though, the virus triggered her immune
system to attack the pancreas and destroy the part that makes the
insulin."

I don't know what insulin is, or what the pancreas
does, but I nod because I don't want to open my mouth and look
stupid. "So it's not because she's fat or eats bad?"

He laughs, and I like his laugh. It's honest and not
patronizing. Patronizing is a big fancy word that means you think
you know more than someone else. I learned it from one of Logan's
school books.

"No. Type 1 has nothing to do with weight, or with
what she eats. Even people with type 2 aren't always overweight,
although being overweight does increase your likelihood of being
insulin resistant. What Ashley has, the genetics have probably been
dormant in her since she was born. It just took this particular
virus, at this time, to set it off."

He looks past me at the door, and I turn to see
Travis standing there, pale as a Pilsner. At the same time, Ashley
begins to heave again, except nothing comes out. Dr. Benton jumps
up and grabs the bowl and sticks it under her chin, but Ashley
throws her arms out, knocking it to the floor. I scold her, but her
eyes, which are wide open now, are wild and foreign. She pulls at
the IVs, ripping the tape off her hand before Travis can get to her
and wrap his arms around her, tying them to her sides. She
struggles against it a moment before sinking back against his chest
and sighing deeply. Her eyes close again.

"What the hell?" I've never heard Travis swear
before.

"Is she in DAK?" I say to Dr. Benton, rushing to
Ashley's side to take her hand and shake it.

"It's DKA," says Dr. Park, the rude note-taking
doctor, who is now pushing me and Travis out of the way along with
the two others who have come with him, steering a stretcher like
the one from the ambulance. We are all crammed in this tiny room
like clowns in a circus car, but I am not about to be the one to
back out first.

"The Life Flight helicopter is here."

"Why the Sam Hill do we need a helicopter?" asks
Travis.

Dr. Park doesn't even bother to explain. He flings a
look my way that says it's my job to explain while it's his job to
save. "Ashley needs to go to the Children's Hospital in Austin,"
Dr. Benton says, moving aside so the stretcher can line flush with
the bed. "We just aren't equipped to help her the way she needs,
and you as well. This affects your entire family. They'll make sure
you get the best care, and that you are all ready to make the
changes that need to be made before Ashley comes home."

"Changes?" I can tell Travis is not excited about
that word. Lord a mercy, you'd have thought he'd had his arm cut
off when I stopped making gravy every morning. He's been sitting in
the same lazy chair since we've been married, driving the same
dilapidated Ford truck, listening to the same Willie Nelson tape
since I met him. Change is not his thing.

I stick my elbow hard into his ribs and glare at him.
He shushes up. I glance at Dr. Benton, who is holding Ashley's head
as they transfer her to the stretcher.

They are now pushing against us again, wheeling her
out through the door and down the deserted hallway. "I'm going with
her," I call over their shoulders.

"You get scared on a step ladder," Travis says, which
I think is plain rude to say in front of everybody.

"I'll be fine. You need to pick up Logan and grab us
some clothes and some sandwich stuff from the house in case there's
no food places near the hospital. I'm not eating hospital food for
supper. And call the church and let them know I can't come to the
church today to help with the rally. And ask Janise if she will
feed the goldfish until we get back. And call the flute teacher. I
don't think we'll be home in time for lessons today."

I stop to think if there is anything else he needs to
do when he says, "If there's that much on your list, why don't I go
and you pick up Logan?"

"I'm sorry," Dr. Benton says, looking for all the
world like he really is. "There's not enough room for you. Only
Ashley and the emergency personnel are allowed. You can both drive
and meet them there."

"We'll drive separate cars, then," I decide. "I'll go
from here, you go get Logan."

"Why don't we all go together?"

"Because someone should be at the hospital when she
gets there."

"You're not going to beat a helicopter, Babs."

I cannot believe we're standing in some hick hospital
arguing over who's going to drive.

We're still following Ashley, though nobody now seems
to notice us. Doors to a landing pad slide open, and we're greeted
with a whoosh of air and the thwapping of the helicopter blades.
"Make sure we got the paddles ready," one of them yells over the
noise to the woman who is helping lift the stretcher and my baby
in. "We may need them on this trip."

I am not educated. I do not know what DKA means and
what a pancreas does, but I do watch ER and I know what paddles
are. They are for people who die.

I whip back to Travis, whose slowly returning color
has just drained again. "I'm driving myself –
right now
– because I drive
faster than Jehu, and I'll get there before that dad-burned
helicopter."

And that is the end of that.

~~~~

Ashley was born screaming. I think she came out with
her mouth open, her eyes scrunched into tearless cries, which no
amount of bundling could soften until the nurses put her on my
chest and I said, "Hi there, baby girl." And just like that, she
stopped crying. She looked up at me with wide blue eyes, not even
blinking, like she knew my voice from all those months inside me.
The moment they took her away, she cried again until they brought
her back.

We've been tight like that ever since. People told me
when she grew up we'd fight like rattlesnakes. This is the nature
of preteen daughter/ mother relationships, friends say. But this
isn't so with Ashley. We are salt and pepper, sweet and sour, sun
and moon. She is the blond to my brunette, the quiet to my loud. We
are the opposites that attract. We need each other the way a bee
needs the flower and the flower needs the bee.

I think about her first day of kindergarten, when we
held each other's hand so tight it was hard to tell who was the
most scared of letting go. I think about her birthday parties when
I would invite her friends in and get the games started and be
elbow-up with glue and paints and tissue paper crafts, and realize
Ashley wasn't around. I'd find her in her room, reading a book, too
shy to be the center of attention. I think of our fights in the
grocery store over Doritos or Salt and Vinegar Chips. I think about
her crying when she didn't make all-state choir and me baking her
oatmeal cookies thinking that was all she needed to get over
it.

I think about all this as I'm driving route 79 toward
Austin. I wonder if she's crying now, needing me the way I need
her. I want her to be. If she's crying, then she's alive, and God
knows how I need her to be alive.

My cell keeps ringing, a dancing little Martina
ditty, but I don't want to talk. They are all people from the
church, and I know the news about Ashley is spreading like poison
oak all over town. I don't know what to say because I don't know
anything, so I finally turn it off and pray Travis won't need to
call me.

Then I try to pray about Ashley, only I can't think
what to pray except, "Lord keep her alive." I finally decide this
is about all I have to say anyways, so I fish for one of Ashley's
favorite CDs and pop it in.

I press the pedal hard until I'm riding the tail of a
muddy foreign car. She drifts over on the shoulder so I can pass,
and I wave friendly-like even though I'm thinking she shouldn't be
on the road at all if she can't keep up with the speed limits.

I turn up the music to drown out the fear. It's the
David Crowder Band, a group Ashley learned about from friends at
church. Once, when I came to the church to put up Christmas
decorations, I saw her with them in the basement. They were sitting
on the floor in the midst of other junior high kids, singing these
songs along with the youth minister, strumming on his guitar. Red
and green twinkle lights bounced off her hair and lit up her face
in a warm glow that seemed to go right through her. Her voice rose
above the others, high and sweet. I'm not the crying type, but I
teared a bit and knew her life was taking a turn I might not be
invited to travel.

I linger in the music before I turn it off again,
preferring the company of the silence.

It takes a little over half an hour to get to Austin
and longer than that to cross the city to the Children's Hospital.
There are long moments when I'm stopped in traffic on the feeder
roads, and I scan the sky for helicopters that might be heading the
same direction. The skies are quiet today, blue and clear as a
song. I hope she's there already.

In my mind, I planned to arrive, park, and be in the
hospital before the helicopter can land. In reality, I can't find
the visitor parking lot or where I should enter. The building is
huge, and the parking spreads out forever, and I start to panic. I
think I see three or four doors, and I break into a sweat trying to
figure out which one is the one I need. This is an emergency so I
should go in there, except the sign says ambulance only, and the
front says visitors but I'm not a visitor. I am the mom. I park. I
move. I park again. Shoot.

I decide on the front doors 'cause I figure no
helicopter is getting in those ER doors, and I don't see no landing
pad in the parking lot. By the time I get in the lobby, I'm soaked
with perspiration from the humidity and heat. Honestly, even though
I'm here for my daughter and can barely think about anything but
those helo folks zapping her with those charging paddles, the lobby
takes my breath away. The AC is blasting, for one, which is a
godsend, but nearly sends my system into shock. The entire inside
is made of stone, and the ceiling is so high it might reach heaven.
It's bright and light and filled with mosaics and art and glass
displays. The waiting area's bigger than the entire maternity ward
back home, and the chairs are the good kind, with the padded seats
and backs and armrests, instead of those metal and plastic ones in
ours. A few people are sitting in them, reading newspapers or
writing on clipboards, and at first it seems so calm it's
freaky.

Then a man comes blasting through the door behind me,
fairly knocking me over, a gauze bandage wrapped around his head
and fresh blood oozing through it. He brushes past me to the circle
desk and begins making a scene that echoes against the rock walls.
He's yelling about his kid and an ambulance and some people look
up, but most ignore him. Soon the lady at the desk points him
towards a hallway and he disappears down it.

He reminds me of the Mad Hatter in Alice in
Wonderland, which fits because suddenly I feel I've been dropped
down a rabbit hole.

"Can I help you?" The lady at the desk is calling
across the room to me. Embarrassed, I dart across the hall before
more eyes start looking up.

"I'm looking for my daughter. Her name is Ashley
Babcock. They were going to fly her in by helicopter." The words
rush out before I can collect myself. Now, I'm just a blabbering
idiot.

She gives me a clipboard with a stack of papers and a
pen. "We'll need you to fill these out," she says to me, her
enormous bosom catching the sweat that is dripping down her neck,
even though it's cold as the arctic in here. "You have insurance,
right?"

I nod and bite my tongue because my tongue has a way
of getting me in trouble in situations like this. I wonder if I
didn't have insurance, if Ashley would be left in the hallway to
die. I think about the fund-raising table for Saint Jude's in the
mall that I always cross sides to avoid. I vow to donate the next
time I go.

I hunt through my purse to find the plastic card. I
can't remember the last time I used it, so I hope it's here. She
shoos me away from the desk saying, "Just bring it when you finish
the forms, honey."