“No idea.” I’m biting my lip to keep from throwing up the juice.
“You’re turning green. Need the bucket?”
“Thanks.”
While I spit orange drool into the plastic kidney-shaped pan that I know is meant for another kind of liquid altogether, the nurse smoothes my hair off my forehead and tucks it behind my ears.
“Ever thought about getting a haircut?”
“You and my dad.”
“First impressions are important. They can’t give medicine to just any old Harry who shows up at the emergency room. And certainly not chemotherapy. It requires a slew of tests and forms and doctor’s opinions, to say nothing of parental consent. And money or insurance. Did you think it would be like taking an aspirin?”
“If you open the backpack, the papers are all in there.”
“Listen, you aren’t Barbie. You didn’t come with a backpack.”
“I had one, and a suitcase. Is that here?”
She shakes her orange hair. “Sorry.”
“The law says I can make my own decision.”
“Not if you’re a minor.” She holds out the battered copy of Senator Yowell’s letter with the statute language stapled on the back. “These were in your jacket pocket.”
“Didn’t you read it? It says a minor can consent if he’s fully informed. That’s the whole thing, the reason I came to New York.” Holden will forgive me for not mentioning all my reasons.
She puts the papers in my hand. “Did you read it? The conditions include written verification from your parents that you’ve been informed of all your medical options. I guess I’m supposed to believe that piece of paper was in the phantom backpack.”
When Jolie comes back from dealing with the other patients that stream by in gurneys and wheelchairs, I tell her the story from the beginning. Not the sprained ankle and Meredith, but the rest of it. She smoothes out the pages of Senator Yowell’s letter while she listens, and I’m surprised when they buzz to say a second tray has arrived.
“Dinner,” she says.
“What was the other?”
“Lunch.” After she yanks the table around and props me up on the pillows in front of the tray, she turns down the lights and tells me she’ll check back later.
“With the doctor? I need to talk to someone official about starting the chemo. I’m not sure how much time I have.”
“We’re dealing with all that. Just eat as much as you can and get some rest.”
“Do you have to leave?”
“Shift ends at seven, kid. By tomorrow morning the doctors will have some results from the tests and they can make some decisions.” She nods at the tray. “Right now eating’s your job. Tomorrow’s another day.”
“And you’ll be back then?”
“Sure. In the morning.”
“You’re not just saying that? You mean it?”
She smiles and snaps a quick salute.
All alone in the curtained space, I go over the plan that made so much sense back in Virginia. It’s beyond embarrassing the stuff I’ve done to try to beat this leukemia thing: stealing Nick’s life savings for the train ticket, crying on the phone to Meredith, and seeing Mack strung out and not sticking around to be sure he stops. Even with Senator Yowell’s new law and all his political cronies’ high hopes for a more fair system, I should have known they wouldn’t make it easy for a kid. It’s not looking like I’ll be able to convince the New York doctors to give me the stupid chemo drugs. And I can’t even disappear.
To fail at this, too, after the failure of my body is too much. Now that I’m miles from home, I can see the mistake so clearly. Leukemia is one of those problems you can’t solve yourself. The list of Dad’s twelve steps from AA floats in my consciousness like the Ouija board, though the room is suddenly crooked and the white shapes move in and out of focus, on one side of the bed and then the other.
First, Dad says, you have to admit you have a problem you can’t control. Then you have to admit you need help from a higher power outside yourself. I’m partway there. A recovering leukemia addict? That’s not quite right. Leukemia’s the only part that fits. The room around me whirls. The clock, the machines turn fuzzy and unreadable. My eyes blur and my throat gets thicker. The walls are tilting up around me, so I know I’m sicker than I’ve ever been, sinking, dying. Just before it all goes black, a familiar voice tunnels into the cold slap of air from the automatic door that gapes open to the coal black cavity of a New York City night.
Mom’s found me after all.
I’m not sure how I get from the emergency room gurney to a real hospital bed. The room is dark except for the mechanical light that glows from behind the curtain rack above my head. They’ve hidden my bed behind a half-drawn curtain. Green this time, instead of white. The curtain confuses me because it’s hard to believe they’d put someone as sick as me with these scheming overblown white blood cells in a room with another patient. But I can hear the other guy breathing in long slow rasps just outside my space. From the rattle in his throat, it’s a good thing he’s on the other side of the curtain.
No surprise that there’s no mirror in a cancer ward. Outside the picture window the lights of New York flicker like the candles on the Phantom’s subterranean organ. I wonder how far down it is from this room to the street. There’s nothing in Essex County this high.
“How long did they say for the results?” It’s Mom’s voice directed at the doorway, the only block of solid light in the murkiness.
“It’s a long process.” The answer comes from a strange woman in scrubs who steps up to the bed as she’s stripping clear gloves from her hands. A stark white mask on an elastic circle rings her neck like jewelry. “They’ve already done the lab work. We rushed it through since it’s so… because of his condition. We’re lucky his white count is just high enough. If he’d spent any longer on the street… They’re going to try to do a super round first, about twice the normal dose, then stabilize him for the helicopter ride to Virginia.”
When Mom nods from the other side of the bed, a small rush of air brushes my face. I can’t help the smile, though I doubt anyone else notices it. The rest of me is wrapped in sheets, swaddled like a baby. Back at the beginning again. So… I haven’t made that leap to independence after all, but somehow I’m not as bummed as I would have expected.
Dad appears, his collar looking suspiciously like the one on his pajama shirt. “Doctor, are you sure he can manage the altitude?”
The unspoken joke starts me coughing again. Remember Butch Cassidy when the railroad’s hired guns are chasing him and the Sundance Kid? Standing on the cliff above the raging river, Butch says, “I can’t swim,” and Sundance laughs. “Are you kidding? The fall will probably kill you.”
The doctor, edging toward Dad and away from me, assumes her best bedside manner. “That’s why the medevac. It’s high-speed. He should be in Richmond by six tomorrow morning, even with the chemotherapy infusion here. MCV has a bed for him in ICU. You can visit him there.”
“I’m not leaving him,” Mom says, dredging her words through a monotone of guilt.
“Sylvie.” Dad’s voice. “Let these people do their jobs. This treatment is what Daniel wants.”
The doctor fiddles with the buttons on the machine. Even I can tell she’s giving my parents time to adjust. “You all sit tight now. Transport for the treatment will be here shortly.”
Nick’s bubble-gum breath is close. “Hey, Daniel, old buddy. You awake? Thought you could get away from us, huh? The Clampetts come to the Big Apple.”
I’m all out of fancy words.
Nick stays close. “Joe’s gone downstairs for coffee. He says you forgot this.” He spreads my fingers and he positions something in my palm; dry, smooth, the edges worn soft with use. My copy of Catcher. There in the blurred, overly warm air of nighttime hospital purgatory, the sharp memory of the dark cover and sunlit letters burns behind my eyes. Holden’s right after all. When you jump, there are lots of people watching.