Beautiful Tragedy (A Standalone Romance Novel) (12 page)

Megan said she would and Debbie closed the door. I had
a feeling that once she got inside she was going to decide to call grandma
herself. It was nice of her to worry, but I hated it. I despised being the
center of all of this negative attention. I closed my eyes and lay my head back
against the seat and thought once again…
I
just want to be normal
.

When I opened my eyes again, we were at the emergency
entrance of the hospital. Megan parked where the ambulances go, and I was
trying to tell her she wasn’t supposed to park there. She acted like she
couldn’t hear me again and jumped out to grab a wheelchair. She opened the car
door and was going to try and help me out, although I could have done it
myself, when an orderly showed up.

“You need some help?”

“No, I can do it myself.”

“Yes, please,” Megan said.

Am
I not talking out loud?

“She’s really weak; I don’t want her to fall.”

The orderly told Megan where to park the chair and
once again I was treated like Ragged-Ann. He put his hands around my waist and
told me to hold on around his shoulders and then he lifted me into the chair.
It was really way too much of a production and I told Megan so as he pushed me
inside. I guess she must have been able to hear me that time, because she
finally said, “
Shhh
, Molly. Hush!” Now my feelings
were hurt. I was sick and she was yelling at me.

The guy who had helped us pushed me up to the triage
desk and then told Megan she could go move her car. I had to answer a bunch of
questions and while I was doing that the nausea returned and I found myself
staring at the bottom of a Pepto-Bismol pink plastic bucket. I had the dry heaves
a few times, but nothing was coming out. The nurse was taking my vitals now,
and she said that I was running a temperature, my pulse was high and my blood
pressure low. She and I both knew what that meant, I was dehydrated.

“Have you been drinking water?” she asked.

“Does coffee count?” I asked her.

She wasn’t in the mood for humor though. I guess
because of what they see every day, nurses rarely are. I admitted that I may
have forgotten to drink enough but just for the last two days. Otherwise I was
usually really good about it. She didn’t give me credit for that though, and
excused herself when Megan came back and went to call my oncologist. Jeez! What
a tattle-tale. When I was able to lift my head out of the bucket, I looked at
Meggs
and said, “Now I’m going to get a lecture you know.”

My best friend looked me in the eyes and said, “Good.
You need to take better care of yourself.”

“I usually do…” I wanted to defend myself, but mean or
not, she was right. I stick to my diet religiously, and usually make sure to
drink six bottles of water a day. I knew how prone I was to getting dehydrated.
I had been a little distracted lately…maybe it was Brock. If that were the case
however, then it came back to being Megan’s fault. She was the one who
introduced us.

When the nurse came back, she told me that Dr. Harris
wanted her to admit me. I protested again. I was fine; I would just go home and
drink some more water. I them so, and again my words fell on deaf ears. As she
got the paperwork ready, Megan said, “I’m going to step out in the lobby and
call your grandma.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary, Meg. They’re going to
stick an IV in me and pump me with some fluids and cut me loose. I don’t want
to worry her.” She’ll come right away, and she’ll have that look she gets when
her eyebrows have been drawn together in the middle too long.

“We don’t know that,” Megan was saying. “If I don’t
call her, Dr. Harris will. Then I’ll be the one getting the lecture when she
gets here.”

Megan was right; grandma would be pissed if they
didn’t call her. “Okay, but be sure to tell her I’m okay and not to race right
over here.”

“Yeah,” Megan said with a little laugh, “that’ll
work.” She knew my grandma about as well as I did. Before leaving, she leaned
down and hugged me real quick and said, “I’ll be right back.”

When Megan got back they were trying to start the IV.
Once the ER nurses got the fluids running in me they would take me to the
oncology unit. When I was really sick and getting chemo in the hospital every
month I had a Meta-port. It was implanted in my chest and they would numb the
spot and access my veins through my chest. It kept the veins in my arms and
hands from getting ruined from the harsh drugs, plus it was easy if I was
dehydrated, or needed blood. I remember being so happy when I was in remission,
and they had taken it out. Now as the nurse dug into my arm, looking for the
scrawny vein that had packed up and moved away, I wished I had it back. After
three tries, a male nurse finally found one in my hand.

“It’s probably not going to work if you need meds,
it’s so small. Hopefully we can get enough fluids in you to pump up the other
ones before they need them.”

They took me to the oncology unit then and got me
checked into a room. It felt good to lie on the cool sheets of the hospital bed
and I had just started to fall asleep when the nurse came in to check my
vitals. After she did that, she told me that Dr. Harris wanted them to draw
blood too. Great, hopefully my little skinny vein held up. I looked at poor
Meg, sitting there at the bedside and told her, “Hey, thanks for bringing me.
You don’t have to stay here.”

She just made a face at me. I knew that no matter what
I said, she wouldn’t leave me alone. When grandma got here, and I knew too that
she would come, then
Meggs
might leave. The nurse
took the blood and left, and I finally got to drift off to sleep for a while.

I had strange dreams; it probably had something to do
with not having much fluid in my brain. Brock was in all of them, and we were
dancing on the rooftops of all the building at the university. He was singing
to me, sometimes it was Justin Timberlake, but one time…it was Brittany Spears
and I have to admit, I was embarrassed for him. Just about the time we had
danced our way across the rooftops and were standing at the edge of the roof of
the three story tall library, he went in for the kiss. This time I was going to
do it, I couldn’t wait for our lips to meet….

“Molly…Molly wake up.” I opened one eye. It was Dr.
Harris.
Damn you evil oncologist!
I
opened the other eye, and where Megan had been in my peripheral vision before
now sat Grandma.

“Hi Grandma,” I said, “Hi, Dr. Harris.” I was still
mad at him for ruining the kiss, but Grandma was here so I had to be polite.

“Hey Molly. How are you feeling?” Grandma asked.

“I’m okay, Grandma,” I told her. “I’m just a little
dehydrated. Everyone’s overreacting a bit, I think.”

Dr. Harris cut in then and said, “Molly, your
hemoglobin is low. We’re going to have to give you some blood too.” See, pure
evil. Now I would be here all day. He wasn’t finished yet though, as he went on
to say, “I’m going to admit you at least overnight too.”

“Oh no, I have classes tomorrow. I don’t have time to
be lying in a bed…”

“Molly,” he interrupted me. He was not only evil, he
was rude. “Your Bun/Creatinine ratio is 10:1.”

I wished that I didn’t know what that meant. But,
unfortunately, my evil oncologist was one of those outstanding communicators
and excellent teachers. When we first started all of this nonsense he had
explained to me more than I thought I needed to know about Blood Urea Nitrogen
and Creatinine. The BUN was a molecule that came from protein breakdown. It
mostly gets excreted when we pee, but the amount of it in your blood can
indicate the rate of blood flow through your nephrons.

Creatinine is also released into the blood by muscle,
and it measurement shows how well the kidneys are able to either reabsorb it…as
they should, or if it’s just excreted. If I was normal, my ratio would be
around 15:1. A 10:1 meant bad things, likely a necrotic kidney, or at least
necrotic nephrons inside the kidney. Necrotic means dead and to a girl with
only one kidney, that could mean dead period. It was not the best news I had
ever gotten.

“So what do we do about that?” I asked him.

“First we take care of your blood count, and then
we’ll run some more tests,” he said.

I looked at Grandma. Her face was drawn tight like it
always is when she worries about me and that line between her eyebrows was
deep. Poor thing, she was really pretty for an almost sixty-year-old woman. In
her heyday, she had been beautiful. Sometimes when I look at her and I see the
lines around her eyes I wonder if she would look ten years younger if it hadn’t
been for me and all of the worrying she does. I held my hand out to her and she
took it. She smiled at me; she wanted me to believe everything would be okay.
That’s what grandma’s do. I closed my eyes and tried to drift back into the
dream.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

BROCK

Jake was on the couch playing video games when I came
out of my room with my guitar slung across my shoulder.

“Where are you off to?” Jake asked me as he shot at
the zombies that ran amok through the city.

“I’m going to go over to the hospital. I don’t have
much going on today. I thought I’d see if they’d let me play for some of the
kids or old people in the oncology unit.”

“Not hanging out with Molly today?”

It was hard to have a conversation with a guy in his
boxers, sitting sideways with his tongue hanging out for balance. “I don’t
know, maybe later,” I said. “Where’s Megan today?”

Jake shrugged, “I think she had her fill of me last
night. She wasn’t impressed with the place we stayed. I guess it was because
she had to move dirty dishes and empty pizza boxes off the sofa where she was
supposed to sleep. Tim’s mom works…a lot. She’s not much of a housekeeper. I
forgot to tell Megan that before she agreed to stay there.”

I laughed. Poor Jake was always in trouble of one kind
or another. It was good that he didn’t really let it get to him I thought, as
he blew up a zombie convoy and grinned from ear to ear.

“I’ll see you later,” I told him as I went out the
door. The zombies were getting back up; I think the grunt was for me.

When I got to the hospital I went to the children’s
unit first. I liked playing for the kids. They didn’t expect anything fancy,
just fun. It also helped me put my own stuff into perspective. I mean if a bald
three-year-old can sit in the bed while poison is being pumped into his veins
and still giggle at my silly songs, then who was I to feel sorry for
myself…ever.

I spoke to the nurses who said they were always glad
to have me. They told me which rooms would be okay to go into. The first one
was a little guy named Carlos. He had just turned four his mom said, and he was
sitting in his crib with an IV, watching SpongeBob and eating a strawberry
Gogurt
when I got there. I had met him a few times before
when I’d come here. I knocked on the door and his little face lit up, “Brock!”
he yelled. It sounded more like “
Bwock
!” but I liked
it.

“Hey buddy, how are you today?”

“Mama says we can go home tomorrow. I’ll be there for
Michael’s birthday.” Michael was his older brother. He had told me about him
the last time I was here. He was turning twelve and Carlos hero-worshipped him.

“That’s great!” I told him. I loved his enthusiasm.
“That must mean you’re doing better?” I looked at his mom when I said it. The
last time I had talked to her, the little guy’s tumor wasn’t responding very
well to his treatments.

“The doctor changed the chemo. The last MRI showed
that the tumor was shrinking.”

I looked back at Carlos and smiled at him. “High-five
on that, buddy!” He held out his little hand and I gave him a five. “You have
any requests?” I asked him. I knew what he was going to say; it was the same
every time.

“Five little monkeys!” he squealed. It wasn’t my best
work, but what are you going to do? I sat in the chair next to the bed and we
sang it…five times while I strummed the tune on my guitar. It would be stuck in
my head now for the rest of eternity, but as I left his room and saw that huge
smile on his little face, I knew that it was worth it.

I played for two more kids. One was a little girl who
was six and a half. She was shy, but she loved Katie Perry. I did my best girl
voice while I sang “Eye of the Tiger” and for some reason, that made her laugh.
The next guy was a thirteen-year-old. When I’d first met him, he was really
angry about being sick. He had a tumor in his brain too, an inoperable one. I
told him about mine, and he said, “You’re lying. You don’t look sick.”

“I was bald as an eagle my freshman year in high
school,” I told him. “You see all these tattoos? I got them to cover up the
scars all of the IV’s left on my arms.” He still looked skeptical so I parted
my hair and holding it apart with each hand I told him, “See the scar? That’s
from one of the three surgeries.” I also had a drain in my head. When the tumor
had gotten big, it blocked the ducts that drained the cerebral spinal fluid out
of my head and cause horrific headaches. They put in the drain, and they had
never removed it. The doctor told me that my brain had grown to it, and to take
it out now would just be more traumatic. I had a tiny little bump under my hair
where it was at. I told him to feel it; it was just like the one on his head,
apparent because he was bald. “When you get better, you can grow your hair out
and no one will ever be the wiser,” I told him. I was pretty proud of myself
when he smiled. Then the little traitor blew it for me though. He turned to his
mom and said, “Can I get tatted up to cover the scars?” I tried to laugh it
off, but I thought maybe it was time to move on. In my defense, I did mention
to him that I didn’t get the tats until it was legal.