The Symptoms of My Insanity (27 page)

I just stare back at her, feeling my nose start to tighten.

“You’re not dying, Izzy. You’re not sick. You’re fine.”

“I know,” I manage to get out.

“I’m so sick of you being sick.”

“Okay, Allissa. I heard you the first time.”

“
Mom’s
the one who’s sick,
Mom’s
the one who’s dying.”

“Shut up!”

“Well, she is.”

I furiously shake my head. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re—”

“I may not do all your psycho research and know all your medical lingo crap, but I know about PMP. I’ve read about it too, Izzy. I’m not as big an idiot as you think I am.”

“I never said you were! I never—”

“Most people,
most
people at Mom’s stage live for like two or maybe four years after their first major surgery, and that’s not counting if it like … morphs or whatever.”

“Just stop talking, Allissa. I don’t … I don’t feel well.”

“What? What’s wrong with you now? I thought you
liked
talking about this stuff.” Allissa is practically baring her teeth at me.

“Nothing, I just—” I stop, trying to take a deep breath in. “My chest hurts, it feels like—”

“You’re fine! Stop making everything about you. God, I can’t handle it anymore. You shouldn’t be worried about your chest or salmonella or your thyroid or … You should be worried about what’s going to happen after, when Mom’s gone and we’re alone.”

“I said stop talking!”

“Like where are you going to live? Probably with Grandma Iris. Or with Dad and Jessica! You’re probably going to have to move, and switch schools, and I’m going to have to drop out of college unless Grandma Iris pays for it, which she won’t because she’ll probably be in debt from Mom’s medical bills by that point anyway—”

“STOP TALKING!” I bolt up fast, so fast that I knock into the table and my entire tray clatters to the floor. Suddenly I feel the weight of everyone’s eyes on me, every pale-faced patient, worried-looking family member, table of residents. I feel like they’re all looking at me and my upside-down tray of undercooked chicken on the floor.

Which I probably should pick up already, but I don’t. Instead, I tell Allissa to “have fun cleaning that up,” and walk away.

As soon as I walk out of the elevator, I feel my phone vibrate. I stop, guessing I should probably take advantage of the fact that I’m standing in a magical spot that actually gets reception. I take a deep breath and open my phone quickly, like I’m ripping off a bandage.
Please don’t be another picture message.
It’s not. It’s a text from Blake that reads Pls cal me! I’ll xplain.

Okay, seriously? That’s what he writes? He’ll “xplain”? I can’t believe after what he did to me that he can’t even take the time to write out whole words!

I stuff my phone into my pocket and head back to Mom’s room, but the door is still closed. So instead I trudge over to the waiting area, and collapse into my same chair. No thanks, Blake. I don’t need you to “xplain” anything.

“Hey Izzy.” Pam meanders over from the vending machine. “I think I’ve changed my mind—I’m going to head down to the cafeteria after all. Doctor’s still in there and these pretzels aren’t getting the job done.” She throws me the bag. “Anything good down there?”

I shake my head.

“Okay, well, I’ll be right back.” She gives my shoulders a squeeze.

I put the half-eaten bag of pretzels down on the chair next to me, my hands and my head still feeling clammy. I need to do something. I look down at the carpeting, which is this pattern of all these interconnecting shapes. I try to trace the pattern with my eyes and find the starting point, but after about thirty seconds I feel woozy and give up. Then I try again, and again, until I’m even more nauseated than I was in the cafeteria. I take a break and eat a stale pretzel and then try again. I’m in the middle of doing another pattern-trace when I’m interrupted by Allissa’s heels.

She plops down next to me, practically covering her face with her
Soap Opera Digest
.

“You dropped these.”

I turn toward the voice of the pale-faced man sitting across from us. He’s interrupted the game of solitaire he was playing on the empty chair next to him, to lean forward and pick up my bag of pretzels from the carpet.

“Thank you.” I take the pretzels from him and throw them in my backpack. I see the man still leaning forward and looking at me.

“Hello,” he says. He’s about Mom’s age, maybe a little younger, and wearing one of those shiny neon tracksuits. It makes a loud swishing sound when he moves.

“Hi,” I say back. “Um … how are you?”

“Oh, I’m okay, for the moment,” he says with a sigh. “And how are you tonight?”

“I’m okay … for the moment too.”

“Well, good. Moment to moment’s as far as we can go, right?”

“Right.” I nod.

“Got someone in there?” he asks, gesturing to the halls.

I nod again.

“My wife’s in there,” he says, and points to one of the hallways to our left [swish]. “I’m waiting for them to bring her out so we can take a walk.”

“That’s good,” I say.

“Yeah, it’s real good [swish], her walking now. Been rough [swish]. Came out of her second debulking a couple weeks ago …”

He continues. “The first one, ’bout two years back, went a lot better. She was walking sooner, not as many complications, but [swish] she’s walking a little now, so that’s good [swish]. That’s real good.”

I nod back at him and smile, pushing my lips together tightly, like the harder I smile-push, the better I’ll feel.

“Was that your mom?” the man asks, and I realize he’s talking about Pam.

“Oh, no, my mom’s … she’s a patient of Dr. Madson’s, so—” I cut myself off, hearing my voice jump an octave and crack a little.

“Okay,” he says, “well then, I’ll keep her in my prayers.”

“Thank you.” And I really mean it because honestly,
that’s the best thing I’ve heard anybody say all day. He gives me a smile and goes back to his game of solitaire.

A young-looking, frail woman in a hospital gown and bright pink slippers shuffles her way closer to us a couple minutes later, helped by two nurses. She’s hunched over a bit, gripping her pole on wheels with both hands. She looks, at most, ninety pounds. Her shoulders are sharp, and her skin looks colorless, like she’s wearing one of those Halloween masks where the face is all one shade. She’s got three or four different tubes coming from her middle, all emptying liquids into different bags clipped to the bottom of her pole.

She steps closer to us and her lips curve upward when she sees the man in the tracksuit. I guess she’s happy to see him, but it’s hard to tell because her eyes are kind of glazed over. The man gets up with a swish. He stands next to her and gently puts his arm out for her to grab. She puts her hand on his forearm and leans into him a little bit. “Thata girl,” he says.

He nods a good-bye to me and I almost lose it as I watch them inch by, thinking about how if it’s true, if it is morphing or has already morphed … I open my eyes really wide hoping to dry them out. Then I shut them tight, trapping my tears inside.

I glance over at Allissa, who’s acting like she’s still reading her magazine, even though her face is wet and she’s yet to flip the page.

“I’m going … I’m gonna go for a walk,” she barely gets out before briskly walking away.

I focus for the next five minutes or so on keeping my eyes dry by opening them really wide and going back to tracing the carpet pattern. Then I hear, “All set in there. You can go back now,” as Becky passes me by with a smile, pushing Mom’s vitals cart.

I use my palms to wipe away any residual signs of worry from my face and then head back to Mom in 5112. When I get there, I can tell right away that something is really, really wrong.

At first it looks like Mom’s just staring out into space, but when I get closer to the bed I see that her eyes are actually very focused, and angry. She’s sitting up a little more now too. Actually, she looks like she’s about to disconnect herself from everything and literally jump out of the bed.

“Mom, you okay? What’s wrong?”

She turns her head toward me fast, and then flashes me a big smile. It’s as if someone just pushed an “Izzy’s here” button on her face.

“Nothing wrong, sweetie. I’m fine.”

“Mom, what’s going on?”

“Nothing, I’m just frustrated, but it’s fine.”

“
What’s
fine?” I’m trying to keep the tone of my voice calm.

“It’s just Dr. Madson. He’s … he’s being so … He just told me that I’m not going to be able to eat for a while, and I have to go on TPN,” she says, shaking her head.

“Oh. Wow.” TPN is a big deal. It’s this liquid nutrition that goes into your blood that people get when they can’t
eat. You have to hook yourself up to it with a port or an IV.

“No, no, I’ll be okay without it. I can still nibble on stuff without getting too sick. I don’t know why he has to make things so difficult for me.”

“I don’t think he’s trying to make things difficult. He’s—”

“I don’t want to be connected to … I don’t want to carry that bag of stuff with me everywhere I go. I don’t need the whole wide world knowing I’m sick.”

“I know, but, Mom—”

“It’s just not necessary.”

“Mom, you
have
to do TPN if that’s what Dr. Madson tells you to do,” I say, my voice rising in both pitch and volume.

“Izzy, please, I’m fine. Let’s not—”

“You’re not fine. You’re—you’re sick.”

“Izzy!” Mom says this in the tone of voice she uses when I’ve said a swear word too loud in public. “Please. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“You’re sorry you brought it up?” I repeat, but more to myself. Then I look at her. “You’re sorry you brought this up?” I say again, louder.

“Yes, enough!”

“But—”

“Enough, enough, enough!” Mom shouts, punctuating each “enough” with a sharp head shake. My mom doesn’t have a “1980s aerobics class” cry like Allissa, or an “I’m going to stay so still, you won’t even know I’m crying” cry like Jenna, and she doesn’t have an “I’m going to try and
trap my tears inside my eyelids for as long as I can” cry like I do. She has a sad puppy dog kind of cry. She cries softly, her mouth pursed together, sniffing in quick inhalations through her nose and then letting out this high-pitched, sing-songy whimper through her mouth.

“Hand me my phone. I have to call Cathy and find out what’s going on at school. And I was supposed to finalize the music list this afternoon for the Dance for Darfur DJ, and go through carpet samples for Gretchen and—”

“Mom.” I roll my stool closer to the bed and hand her a tissue. “It’s okay, please don’t worry about all that right now. It doesn’t matter.”

“No, I need to”—she wipes the tissue under each eye—“find out what’s going on [cough] because I need [cough] to handle it.”

I don’t think Mom takes mental snapshots like I do. In fact, I think she already has her mental snapshots picked out before they even happen, like she needs control over all the images in her head, and how they make up her memories. And I don’t think she’s ready to let being sick be a part of them just yet, be a part of her yet.

I put my hand on her back because she’s leaning forward now like she’s trying to cough, but can’t quite get anything out. “Are you okay?” I hand her more tissues.

She nods and grabs her bedpan, coughing up into it hard. Then she wipes her mouth with the tissue. But when she tries to speak again, she just starts coughing. I watch her pause to catch her breath, a metallic taste overtaking my
mouth. When she breathes in, she makes this low, wheezing rumble, then lets out another huge cough. Another breath in, another wheeze, another cough. And again.

“Mom?” But she keeps coughing and wheezing and spitting up into her bedpan. The sounds she’s making are the most awful sounds I’ve ever heard, ever. It’s like I can hear things moving around, trapped inside her chest, clawing to get out.

“You need water?” I push her call button and try hard not to panic. The metallic taste in my mouth is making me feel queasy. I grab her cup of ice chips from the table. “I called the nurse, so—”

“I can’t—feel like—I can’t—get a breath,” she squeezes out.

I run out into the hall shouting, “She can’t breathe! She can’t stop coughing!” to whoever’s close enough to hear. Soon our room is jam-packed with nurses all crowding around Mom’s bed. One is clipping something onto her fingers, another’s attaching tubes and IVs to a new machine that’s being wheeled in, another’s paging Dr. Madson, and everything’s beeping and buzzing and talking and ringing and crinkling and shoe-squeaking. Now they’re putting tubes in her nose, and a mask on her face. Mom’s shaking her head back and forth, flailing her arms, and coughing and coughing.

“Okay Linda, I know this is scary,” one of the nurses says in a slow, low voice, “but the calmer you are, the easier it will be to breathe, okay? Now try to give me a nice deep breath …”

I watch as Mom stops flailing and somewhat surrenders to the nurse’s rhythmic breathing. With each steady breath she takes into her mask, the numbers on her machine change with a beep. 90% BEEP 89% BEEP 87% BEEP 88% BEEP. I feel like I should do something, but I don’t know what. Maybe I should find out who invented this oxygen-reading machine and strangle them, because the sound of that BEEP is making me want to lop off my ears.

Dr. Madson charges into the room then with Pam and Allissa practically walking on his heels. Since the two of them can’t get to Mom, who’s entirely surrounded, they rush over to me. Pam starts asking nonstop questions. Allissa’s just silent and still, not even aerobics-class crying. As the amoeba-blob of nurses shifts and grows around Mom, Allissa shuffles off to the far corner of the room, her eyes staying on Dr. Madson, who’s listening to Mom’s chest now. He moves the stethoscope around to different spots, saying things like “Crispy” and “Lungs are crispy on this side.”

What? What does that mean?
I’ve never read anything about crispy lungs on the Internet. And I swear Dr. Madson looks worried. That’s not good. It’s not good when the doctor looks worried. He’s saying something to the nurses about Mom’s bladder, and drainage, and excess fluids, and there are so many people in this room, there are way too many people in this room. And it’s so hot in here, like way too hot. The collar of my sweater is choking me again.