Dessert First (16 page)

Rachel looked at me like we'd never met. “I—”

“How about you leave.” Leaning in to shove her out of my room, I got a whiff of her perfume. It was like wrestling with an orange-scented lavender field. “Before you say something that makes me beat you until
you
need blood.” I grunted and pushed her toward the hall. “In case. You hadn't noticed. Transfusions. Aren't going great. In our family.” She tried to not get bulldozed out, but I had an advantage. Soccer midfielders shove girls around all the time. “Oh, wait—between Brian-climbs you did notice. Even reminded me. That I'm killing Beep.” I shoved the door closed between us and clicked the lock. “Thanks,” I finished through the locked door.

• • •

That night, Mom joined us for “family dinner” while Dad was at the hospital with Beep. We were having vegetable stir-fry with rice. Mom added some chicken to mine—which she'd picked up at the store—and scattered pale tofu sponge-cubes on Rachel's.

“Could you pass the soy sauce?” Rachel asked, because tofu—made of soybeans—still needs soybean sauce for flavor.

“Sure you want me to touch it?” I picked up the bottle. “With my blood-spattered hands?” I set it in front of her.

“Do you have a cut?” Mom's eyes widened in alarm.

“Relax. It's metaphorical blood.” From a metaphorical cut all the way through my soul.

Mom looked at me with the same eyebrow-crinkling I give to people rattling off rapid French: No idea.

Except there's no fourteen-pint limit to the metaphorical blood supply. Maybe you just keep bleeding forever. I could have hassled Rachel more, but with my bone marrow chewing on Beep, there was already enough of me attacking siblings.

Drowningirl didn't answer my Cipher emails. When, as Cipher, I tried to post on her Facebook page, I got a message she'd terminated her account. Which left me terrified: Had her brother died? Had she finally jumped off a bridge?

I still hung out with Evan at lunch and we did homework together on Tuesdays at Tyler's, but it seemed like my personality was mostly sucked out by sadness, and it felt weirder and weirder to flirt with Evan electronically while I was pretending to be Cipher. That left Hunter as my only online buddy, and with him, it got intense. We exchanged a flurry of messages every night in early December, when I couldn't sleep. I'd sometimes page back through his past Facebook timeline about the developments with his AML. Man. He had no idea how to post in Mom Calmese. A teensy, say, raw.

I sent him the link to my blog on mastering the language of Mom Calmese and explained he ought to have a special Facebook page for updates in Mom Calmese on his medical condition. He said there was no way his condition could be explained calmly. I said I had mad skills and could translate anything. He called B.S.

K:
Try me.

H:
My liver's the size of a football. Have jaundice and am turning yellow
.

K:
Although he hasn't gotten any sun, Hunter's looking tanned. More blood tests soon.

H:
Latest round of chemo was the worst ever. Barfing everything.

K:
Hunter's body is responding quickly and dramatically to the latest round of medicine. We're optimistic. This seems like the most powerful dose of chemotherapy he's had. We're hopeful about this new round of treatments.

H:
ANC is 320.

That was absolute neutrophil count, and the number meant he had practically no immune system left.

K:
We have to put on masks and gloves and poufy hats when we visit Hunter. We probably look like visitors from Mars. But he seems happy to see us.

H:
What about when I die?

That was a tough one.

K:
Hunter left us last night, after fighting as long, and as bravely, as anyone could. He was tired by the end, and he's finally in a better place, beyond pain. He was wonderful, and we were lucky to get to know him and for every minute he was with us. We'll miss him and remember him always.

That one got blurry while I was typing it, because I'd really gotten to know Hunter, in the months of messaging, but hit send anyway. There was a delay before anything came back.

H:
I'm afraid. Think I'm going to die. Soon.

That was even harder. It took a while before I could answer.

K:
Hunter is sharp mentally and making plans about the future. What's your phone number, Hunter? I'll call you now.

H:
Don't want to be a bother.

They didn't let patients use their cell phones in his hospital's ICU, but there had to be a landline in his room.

K:
Give me your damn phone number, tough guy. I've got info, from my brother Beep. It might help.

H:
You can't. They don't put calls thru after 10. East coast here, girl—it's after 1
A.M.

K:
Ha. If I can't work them at the nurse's station to get through, I deserve to be fired as a cancer sib. Send me your number, and I'll talk to you in five minutes. I promise.

Hunter gave me the nurse's station phone number and his room extension. I took a deep breath and called. There was no receptionist at that hour, and the first nurse gave me serious pushback, with a side of attitude. “Are you on Hunter's team?” I finally asked. For the long-term stays like chemo and bone marrow patients, at UCSF they have a specific team of nurses, so there's continuity and you get to know them. I figured the deal was the same at Johns Hopkins.

“No.”

“Then can I
please
talk to someone on Hunter's team? He's having a hard time, and somebody should know.”

After a long pause, a professionally crisp, but more cheerful voice came on. “Hello, this is Nancy. I'm on Hunter's team.”

I asked if she had a couple of minutes to talk, because I knew ICU nurses are insanely busy. She said it was quiet. In the meantime, I shot Hunter an email:
On the phone with Nurse Nancy.
“Thanks for taking great care of Hunter. I'm Kat, Hunter's best friend, from out in California.” Which was kind of a lie. But I did limit it to California.

Then I worked Nancy like a pro. I explained that my twelve-year-old brother had ALL and AML and I knew it was against their general policies, but I'd been exchanging messages with Hunter, and I had to talk to him. “He's at a low spot. He's afraid of dying. There was a thing my brother Beep went through that might help with that. I promised Hunter I'd use my cancer sib skills and get through.”

It took another couple of minutes before Nurse Nancy agreed. In the meantime, Hunter had emailed me,
Nancy's my favorite nurse
, so I even mentioned that.

“Okay,” she finally said. “But don't make this a habit. And if he doesn't pick up on the first two rings, I'm hanging up on you. And don't keep him up too long. He's already having enough trouble sleeping.” Yay, Nancy.

Hunter picked up on the first ring.

“Hey. It's Kat.”

“Hey.” He sounded shy, which somehow reminded me of Evan. “It's Hunter. You got through.”

“Of course,” I said. “I work miracles. They just don't let me pick which ones.”

He laughed, so I knew right then, one way or the other, he'd break my heart.

Despite Nurse Nancy's warning, Hunter and I talked for two hours, in the middle of his night and what was turning into the middle of mine, while I sat in the darkness lit by the blue of the computer screen. We talked about ourselves and each other, and then other important stuff. I told him about Beep's near death experience, and Beep's seeing what went on in the next room during the code, and the tunnel of light. I told him how Beep didn't seem afraid of death anymore. Like he'd seen the trailer, and decided the whole death movie would be fine.

Maybe it wasn't fair. Hunter was a senior basketball player. I played the my-twelve-year-old-brother-is-not-afraid-of-death card. Maybe Hunter had to give up fear, because of the guy macho code. But I like to think Beep's experience touched him. Anyway, in the meantime, Hunter got more morphine, from his favorite nurse, Nancy, who didn't even hassle him—or me—about being on the phone at 3
A.M.
his time, which added her to my long list of official cancer nurse heroes.

“You're an angel,” Hunter said.

I snorted. “And you're getting spacey on morphine. If I'm an angel, I'm the angel of sarcasm.” That somehow made me think of Evan, and how much I liked to make him laugh.

“Better you than the angel of death. She can come another night. Sarcasm Angel—I like that.”

After two hours of talking, he slowed down, until he was drifting off, between sentences. “Should I take it as an insult, you falling asleep on me?” I asked

“Compliment. I'm not anxious. Between you and the drugs, I can go.”

“Sweet dreams, Hunter.”

“G'night, Kat.” Then I guess he lost track of who he was talking to, drifting off on poppy juice. “I love you.” There was a click and a dial tone.

Okay. What?

My replacement bone marrow was supposed to make cells that would hunt down all the mutated cancer leukocytes in Beep and destroy them.

But it didn't work.

Maybe it was because Beep was so sick before the transplant, they'd reduced the intensity of the chemo to not kill him. Or my bone marrow sucked. Or both. But Beep's AML came back.

In the meantime, Beep caught a fungal infection in his lungs, aspergillosis, and the side effects of the drugs they gave him to fight that were awful. Even by cancer kid standards. He got some new videogames and a little more time, but he didn't get well.

Treatment boiled down to two options: The docs could try repeating the transplant or “let the AML run its course.” (Weirdly, even in hospital ICU wards, where they're occasionally carrying bodies out in bags, they don't call it “death.” It's “letting AML run its course,” like we're spectators at a microscopic obstacle track the leukocytes jog around.)

I tried to talk Beep into another transplant. Rachel said we should use her cells this time (since mine were obviously defective) but the docs shot that down because I was a better match. Plus, Rachel was stuck-up, so her clotting factors were bound to be off. Also, she has the disposition of a hissing tarantula, so what were the chances of a match with a human sibling?

It didn't matter. Beep said he wasn't going through pre-transplant chemo again, and that his original deal was that he wouldn't have to. The docs chimed in that even a reduced regimen of chemo and radiation to get Beep transplant-ready would almost for sure kill him, especially with the lung fungus.

Mom leaned hard on Beep to say yes to another try, but she could see it wouldn't work unless he miraculously got better first. The docs had run out of other ideas. And even Mom was getting tired of medically torturing Beep to try to save him.

It was a typical Thursday morning when I was cutting school again to be with Beep while Mom worked, long after it was clear, at least to me, that my bone marrow was attacking Beep and the immunosuppressive drugs were messing him up. Along with the lung fungus, Beep was fighting mouth sores and thrush and joint pain and a swollen liver, and there was a hospital-wide contest between the viruses and bacteria and fungi to see who'd kill him first.

“I'm done.” Beep turned to me, flopping his head over on the pillow. “I want to stop and go home.” His voice was strong.

A surgical mask was tickling my cheeks and nose, and the plastic hair net was crinkling my forehead. I scratched my cheek with the back of my medically-gloved hand to keep from getting more germs on him. “To die,” I said. That's what it would be.

“This isn't living,” he said. “I'm going anyway.” He and I had talked about this for a week, and he'd been certain the whole time.

Hard to argue with, but I blinked tears anyway. “Are you sure?”

“How about a second opinion? Do you think I've suffered enough?”

“Too much.” I looked away. “I wanted it to work.”

“Me too. Sorry.” He said it like he'd let me down. “Can you help me tell Mom? She doesn't always listen. Like, today?”

Chestopher, my favorite nurse and Beep's too, was on that morning.

“Hey.” I caught up with him out by the nurses' station. He could probably see I'd been crying.

“Are you okay?”

“As much as I'm going to be,” I said.

Chestopher squatted, like he did when he talked to the little kids, so I was looking down at him instead of him looking down on me.

“Beep wants to stop. He wants to go home.” I was sniffling, but I didn't wipe my nose—that would put deadly germs on my hands.

“I know.” His face was concerned. “He told me. He's wanted that for a while.”

“So what do we do? Who do we talk to?”

“There's a medical team meeting this afternoon. At three. Your mom and dad should talk to them.”

That would work. Mom would be done touring houses by late morning and back at the hospital. Dad was a short Muni ride away, downtown.