Hush Little Baby (23 page)
Drew and Addie are thriving, but a part of me is shriveling.
Two days ago, Addie spotted a “big deewr,” and she raced to get me so I could see it. I set down the newspaper, and hand in hand, we walked to the backyard where she had seen it. I didn’t shush her because I was on the phone, or say “just a minute” because I needed to return a dozen e-mails that had popped into my box in the previous ten seconds. I didn’t say I couldn’t because there was laundry or dishes or because I was just too tired. I simply went with her when she asked, and I was glad I did. The big deer she spotted was actually a moose, its giant fuzzy antlers so large that I wondered how he balanced them on his head. It stood, legs spread wide, pulling radishes from Goat’s garden.
That is until Goat hobbled from the back door with a mop in her hand and, screaming Salish, chased it away. It galloped off, and Addie and I laughed and laughed until our stomachs hurt.
When I told Paul the story, I said the antlers were so large they reminded me of a
Beach Blanket Babylon
hat and he stared at me blankly, and again, I was reminded of how much I’ve left behind.
I’ll never again own a Kate Spade purse or a Noguchi end table. I miss my shoes and my clothes, the artwork Gordon and I shopped for together, then debated over where it should hang.
When I’m working, the restaurant filled with people and chatter, I forget about what I’ve lost, but in moments of stillness, it floods me with such grief that it takes over every part of me.
The ceiling above me has water spots, and with the nausea, the stains spin into shapes—the one that before I thought looked like a rabbit today looks like a gun. I stop the spiraling thoughts before they lead me back to Compton.
Drew slams into the room. “Mom, Addie threw up.”
I’m exhausted, and it feels like my body weighs three hundred pounds, but I drag myself from my bed.
Addie lies on the small daybed in Paul’s room. Her thumb is in her mouth, and she holds a Barbie with no clothes in her other hand. Vomit drips down her cheek and the front of the mattress, pooling on the floor. I cover my mouth and nose with my shirt to keep from retching, but the stench is overwhelming, and I lunge for the bathroom down the hall, barely making it to the toilet in time to throw up myself.
When I return less than a minute later, Addie’s crying and so is Drew. Between yesterday’s narrow escape and today’s events, they know we are doomed, that I’m not equipped to save them.
“It’s okay, baby,” I say as I bundle Addie into my arms and carry her downstairs to our bathroom and start the tub. Her skin burns through her shirt and shorts.
I stare at the rain running down the window like clear veins. Lightning flashes and thunder claps and I jump, half expecting to see Gordon filling the frame. At every sudden sound, I’m certain he’s found us. Like a dinosaur stuck in a bog of mud, I await my certain fate, only unsure of its impending form—a drowning flash flood, starvation, or a merciful strike of lightning.
The baby inside me is like a ticking time bomb. My hand moves to my swollen belly, and the warmth beneath my shirt shifts my grief imperceptibly to tenderness. I look at Addie, her smooth, white skin surrounded by warm water and bubbles.
This is your big sister
, I tell the baby.
From beyond the door of the bathroom, the door to our room opens, and I freeze, turn off the spigot, and strain my ears toward the intrusion.
“Hi, Paul,” Drew says, and I relax.
“Hey, Hawk, your mom here?”
“In there; Addie’s sick.”
“Yeah, I saw that in my room.”
He steps into the bathroom. His hair is mussed, his chin unshaven. He looks like he always does when he returns from the city, like he didn’t waste a moment of it on sleep. His jeans sit so low on his hips they look in danger of falling down, the elastic of his boxers sticking out above.
“Sorry about your room,” I say. “I haven’t had a chance to clean it.”
“Is she okay?” He steps toward us and kneels beside the tub. Addie looks listlessly at him through half-open eyes. “Hey, Little Fish, how you doing?” His concern fills my heart.
Addie shakes her head.
Cackling Salish interrupts from behind us, and Paul stands to make room for Goat.
Goat bends over the tub, moves Addie’s face by her chin so she can look in her eyes, touches her forehead with the back of her hand, then stands and barks something else at Paul in her native tongue.
She walks away, taking Drew by the hand as she goes.
I look at Paul. “Goat’s going to give Drew some lunch. We need to get Addie dressed so we can take her to the doctor.”
“The doctor who is your friend?”
Paul shakes his head. “We need to drive to Spokane. Addie’s very sick. She needs to go to the hospital.”
I bite my lip so I won’t cry, so Addie won’t see me fall apart. Paul looks like the emotions are getting the better of him as well. He turns away, wiping his nose on his sleeve as he reaches for a towel. We both know it’s over. The jig is up.
“I’m going to get changed,” he says. “I’ll meet you out front.”
I wrap the towel around Addie, dress her, then, from behind the bureau, pry off the envelope I taped there six weeks ago that holds my license and our insurance cards.
W
e drive faster than I thought Paul’s antique truck could go and arrive at the emergency room in under an hour and a half.
The admitting nurse takes one look at Addie’s limp form slumped over Paul’s shoulder, and mercifully, without asking questions, directs us through the double doors and into a curtained room containing a bed surrounded by machines.
The doctor, a man slight as a jockey with a trim dark mustache and goatee, arrives within a minute. He ushers Paul and Drew from the room and directs me to stand in a corner. He uses a stethoscope to listen to Addie’s heart and a light to look in her eyes. He rattles off Addie’s vitals to a gray-haired nurse twice his size, and she records them onto a chart.
“How long’s she been sick?” he asks as his fingers prod Addie’s listless body.
“A couple weeks. I thought it was the flu and that she was getting better because it would come and go. But yesterday and today it got much worse.”
The nurse says nothing and keeps writing, but I feel her condemnation. She wants to know why I waited so long to bring her to a doctor.
“Mommy.” The voice is small and weak but powerful enough to stop time.
The entire room quiets, and everyone turns to the bed.
I move to Addie’s side. “Hi, sweetie,” I whisper, and kiss her damp forehead. “It’s okay. Don’t be scared. You’re in the hospital where they can take good care of you and make you all better.”
She nods, and her thumb goes into her mouth and her eyes flutter closed.
The doctor’s hands linger on her stomach, above her pelvis. He focuses on the ceiling as he prods deeper on the left side.
“She needs an ultrasound and start an IV of fluids,” he says to the nurse, and walks away.
The nurse follows him from the room and returns ten minutes later with a bag of liquid attached to a rolling stand. She inserts a needle in Addie’s arm, and Addie barely moves, and I’m filled with horror at her lethargy.
“I need you to fill out these forms,” the nurse says.
I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the blanks.
“Would it be okay if I go to the restroom?”
“Down the hall and through the waiting room.”
I stumble through the curtain and out the double doors. Paul stands, and Drew looks at me, and I mumble something about still not knowing anything and continue down the hall that leads to the restrooms and the exit out of the hospital.
I rub the swollen bulge of my stomach and clutch my purse, which holds the identity of my past, as well as Sissy’s passport, which could be the identity of my future. I glance back at Drew.
The exit sign glows red, and the arrow points to the late afternoon.
I take another step toward it, then the sliding panes open and Goat walks through the door, followed by her sisters and Isi and Boris and Fred and Sissy and Sissy’s three kids.
I abruptly change course, turn into the women’s room, and lock myself in a stall.
I
’m in the medical director’s office, and the director sits across from me, his hands folded over his pressed white coat.
He says the word, but it doesn’t register; there are too many circuits misfiring.
He says it again. “Tumor.”
His lips pucker around the first syllable before settling into a grim line after the second.
There are other words that fly around that one: “cancer, surgery, nephrectomy, one kidney, long-term prognosis.”
“She’s four,” I answer.
He nods. The office is cluttered with files and papers and computers and anatomical skeletons, and it’s very warm. “The pediatric surgeon’s driving in now. He should be here in about an hour. In the morning, when Addie wakes from the surgery, we’ll transport her to the children’s hospital by ambulance, and after a biopsy, we’ll know more.”
“You’re doing the surgery tonight?”
“Mrs. Kane, I know this is a lot to process, but we don’t know what we’re dealing with, and every minute could be of the essence. We’ll take out the tumor, then we’ll know more.”
I put my face in my hands, the heels of my palms pressed into my eye sockets.
“Is there someone we can call for you?” he asks. “Your husband perhaps?”
I shake my head. I’m sure he’s already on his way.
I stumble from his office and back toward Addie’s hospital room.
To get there, I need to go through the waiting room. A dozen people stand when I enter. Fred holds Drew’s hand, and Drew breaks away and runs to my side. I hold him close as we pass by the Flying Goat crew. Goat touches my sleeve, and her sisters bow their heads. Paul steps in my path, and I fall into his arms.
He whispers a prayer into my ear; the words I don’t understand, but the meaning seeps into my heart.
When I get to the room, Addie’s sleeping, her shallow breaths keeping rhythm with the bleeping machines that surround her. I glare at her round tummy beneath the sheet and the malignancy beneath her skin.
The size of a grapefruit
, that’s what the doctor said.
How could I not have known? Why didn’t I take her to the doctor sooner?
We sit for an hour, then a nurse comes to prep her for surgery.
I’m signing the last release form when I hear a commotion down the hall.
Drew shrinks back in his chair at the sound of his father’s voice, and I leap to my feet. I recognize Paul’s voice as the one Gordon’s arguing with, and I run toward the waiting room.
“Who the fuck are you?” Gordon barks.
Through the square glass panes of the swinging doors, Paul blocks Gordon’s advance. Paul’s a head shorter and weighs a quarter less than what Gordon does, but his gaze is leveled on my husband’s.
“I’m a friend,” Paul says.
“You fucking my wife?”
Paul winces; Gordon looks crazed. He looks a decade older than he did six weeks ago. His face is unshaven and etched with lines that weren’t there before. His shirt is wrinkled, his eyes bloodshot with lack of sleep, and his mouth is a thin slash pinched tight with rage.
Shoulders straighten and chests expand, then one by one, the other Elmer City citizens rise to their feet and move to stand behind Paul, creating a human gauntlet. Even Boris stands in defiance.
Gordon wears his windbreaker, the shoulders splattered with dark spots of rain. Beneath it is his Glock, so tight against his ribs it doesn’t even make a bulge. He reaches for the zipper, and I burst through the doors.
Everyone turns as I push through the crowd to step between Paul and Gordon and to cower in front of my husband. “Addie’s sick,” I say. “They’re taking her to surgery. You need to come now so you can see her before they put her to sleep.”
I pretend not to notice his hands in fists at his side.
As Gordon walks beside me, Paul says something so quiet only Gordon can hear it, and Gordon’s head snaps back to look at him. Paul doesn’t flinch. Like two lions competing for a pride, the challenge has been declared, and if they meet again, only one will remain.
The nurse mercifully waited for me to return before she put the mask on Addie.
Gordon actually freezes at the sight of her in the bed, her skin pale as the sheets, her eyes drooping and sad.
“Hi, baby,” he says as he walks to her, his voice breaking.
“Daddy?”
He nods and lifts her hand that doesn’t have an IV in it to his lips, and even through all my fear, and all my hate, my heart feels for his love of his little girl.
I move to the other side of the bed where Drew stands back from the scene, and I put a protective arm around his shoulder.
“We need to go now,” the nurse says.
Addie rotates her head to look at me, and I step forward still holding firmly on to Drew.
“It’s okay, baby,” I whisper. “You’re going to go to sleep now, and when you wake up, you’ll feel much better.”
“What’s wrwong with me?”
Gordon looks at me for the answer as well.
I let go of Drew so I can sit on the bed beside her, and I put my hand on her tummy. “It’s actually kind of silly,” I say, forcing a reassuring smile onto my face. “There’s a ball in your belly.”
“Like the one in your belly?” she asks, and I feel Gordon’s eyes shift from my story to the bulge of my waist.
I shake my head. “Mine’s a baby and it’s supposed to be there, but yours is a ball that’s making you sick, so the doctors need to take it out so it won’t keep growing.”
She nods, and I kiss her dry, hot cheek, then stand so the nurse can put the mask on her face. Her green eyes get wide, then slowly close, but they never stop looking at me.
Gordon, Drew, and I walk her to the doors that lead to the inner sanctum of the hospital, then we’re asked to return to the waiting room where we’ll be kept posted on the surgery.
With tension thick as sludge and Drew between us, we walk like a worried family to await the news of our loved one.