I must sleep some. Coughing wakes me up and I turn toward the invisible roommate. But it’s my own coughing. The sky is crimson and bloody, the edges of the city skyline like a black marker scratched on the red wound in hasty stitches to staunch the bleeding. The coughing’s much worse. The band in my chest tightens. My ribs ache with the effort to suck in air after each spasm. With each whistling gasp, Mom winces as if she’s caught her finger in the door. She leans down, a whisper hovering, but when my hands loosen on the bedrail and the heart monitor’s blips slow, then pause, she stands back up and starts to yell.
“Help, oh, God, nurse, help. Stieg”—she shakes my father who’s asleep in the chair—“get someone. He’s choking.”
Before Dad makes it to the doorway there’s a new, deep voice and the broad bleached shoulders of a uniform bearing down on me. A male nurse works the dials and presses my chest with hard urgent thrusts with the heel of his palms until the blips are steady again and my lungs fill. For several long minutes no one says anything and he stares at me without any judgment, just intent on trained observation.
“Hey, kid.” He raises his eyebrows. “You back?”
And I nod. I’d like to thank him, but I’m afraid to breathe in and trigger the cough again.
“After we arranged for these high-powered drugs you asked for and went to all this trouble, you gotta stick around.” He lifts me, wrapped in the sheets, up off the bed and onto a mechanized stretcher. He moves efficiently, snapping and tugging the tubes and the hanging bags of medicine. Straps cross my chest and arms, another set over my thighs. He chats with Dad about the Yankees and the Dodgers. I’m disconnected and connected again without feeling anything except smaller shudders in my bones and gut. Everything is shrinking into itself, tighter and tighter. When my stomach twists, I fight the urge to curl into myself. That explains the restraints, illogical as it seems that my body is still laced as it struggles to find air. Razor cuts stab and twist in the deepest part of me. My teeth clamp down so no one can hear the moans I’m battling to keep buried.
The nurse ignores the choking coughs and the family trailing in my wake as he pushes the wheeled stretcher steadily. Once we get to the elevator Joe blocks the door to delay its closing, while Mom and Dad and Nick squeeze in around the stretcher. And even though Meredith’s not here, holding my hand with those perfect fingers, I imagine her with Mack and Juliann, the three of them shoulder to shoulder on his basement couch, waiting for word. I can see them lining up at the end of the fishing pier, setting off fireworks to celebrate my coming home. The elevator groans.
“Family road trip,” Nick says and we’re off.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In 1906 my seventeen-year-old grandmother snuck a buggy from the livery stable and drove the horses down Main Street and out of town. One hundred years ago proper young ladies did not drive carriages. When obstacles, expectations, and conventions jam me up, I think of my grandmother and embrace the risk. As a fifty-seven-year old, writing a teenage boy’s story was risky, even after three teenagers of my own.
Being a writer is different from being an author, more so today with publishing industry consolidations and the insistence that success as a writer is measured in sales figures. That Alex Carr, my editor, and AmazonEncore championed Daniel’s story speaks volumes to the future of books in whatever format readers crave, a vision that AE promotes in all that it does for writers and readers. I will never forget the ongoing support of a slew of fellow writers, librarians, and book-festival organizers who remain the foundation on which a writer’s bridge to readers is built. And without my friends from our small Virginia town and the doctors and nurses at Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia, who treated my cancer and gave me insights into Daniel’s, I might have missed this chance to honor J. D. Salinger and Holden Caulfield.
Finally I have to thank Chris, my partner for life, who loved Daniel Solstice Landon from the first draft of the first chapter. Chris has worried over Daniel as conscientiously as he did our own children, and like me, he is relieved that Daniel discovered the true meaning of family.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. At first Daniel accepts his parents’ refusal to follow the established treatments for leukemia, but when he realizes he’s not getting better, he is forced to reexamine that decision. How much control should a minor have over his own medical treatment? What risks does Daniel face when he takes action for himself? Is a teenager capable of making life decisions without his parents’ input?
3. As J. D. Salinger’s character Holden Caulfield reports his feelings and actions, the reader begins to question Holden’s reliability as a narrator. Is Daniel a reliable narrator? Does he see his dilemma and the issues with his friends clearly?
5. Books and the characters in them often impact one’s view of the world or a particular challenge. Does Daniel’s fascination with Holden Caulfield add to Daniel’s insight into the issues he confronts or not? What changes occurred in your view of those same issues after you listened to Daniel’s reasoning?
7. Studies support the importance of family activities in confidence levels of children. How do Daniel’s brothers, Joe and Nick, influence Daniel’s take on the adult world and his ability to face his illness?
9. Courts and politicians impose rules that dictate personal and family decisions. Do you think the state has the right to dictate what kind of medical treatment a child receives? Is Senator Yowell’s effort to change the law to help the Landons an appropriate action for a politician?
11. Choices about sex and drugs hound today’s teenagers. What things do Daniel, Meredith, Mack, and Leonard consider when they have to make those choices? Should the fact that Daniel is dying affect his decision to sleep with Meredith?
13. As a result of cases like Daniel’s, several states changed their laws to allow informed minors to consent to their own medical treatment. Do you think that change is good? How might the new medical consent law affect other laws that regulate the behavior of minors?
A Teachers’ Guide with Writing Projects for a combined study unit on Catcher, Caught and Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is available online at www.catchercaught.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Catcher, Caught, Sarah Collins Honenberger’s third novel, was inspired by her desire to reconnect today’s teenagers with the voice of J. D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield through a narrative based on the true-life story of a teenage boy suffering from leukemia whose parents refuse to allow him to receive traditional treatment. After penning Catcher, Caught, Honenberger fought her own personal battle with an aggressive cancer. With the cancer now in remission, she continues to write about families in crisis from her Virginia river house.
Previous Works By Sarah Collins Honenberger
Waltzing Cowboys
White Lies: A Tale of Babies, Vaccines, and Deception
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