Somebody Up There Hates You (2 page)

2

S
O HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED
next. After the whole Cabbage Night performance, I was beat. And being beat at this point in my life is like nothing you've ever experienced, I assure you. Let's face it, I'm in pretty poor shape. I mean, I don't want to dwell on disease details and all that, because it's so boring and disgusting, but things get a tad rough, especially in the evening. And that's an ordinary evening—this was Cabbage Night! I wish I could say I stayed up until midnight, like Grandma used to, but not so. I rolled myself into my room at, like, seven thirty, and then I sat in my chair, shaking and trying not to throw up, for about twenty-five minutes before Jeannette, who's one of my favorite nurses, black woman with an easy smile, she came in and said, “Well, well, Mr. Devil-Man, you're not looking so energetic now. You need some help in here?”

And I tried to smile. But my face was stiff with makeup gunk and my guts were heaving. Luckily, I don't eat anymore—my choice. Simple common sense decision for those in our position: if you don't eat, you don't have to shit. If you've ever sat on a pink plastic bedpan while people hover around your bed, patting your back and holding you up by the armpits, and there you are, trapped, and your guts are running like crazy, you get it. In hospice, they don't force you to eat or even drink Boost. It's cool with them if you choose to go just a tad more gentle into that good night. Anyway, before you could say “Boo,” Jeannette had a nice warm washcloth and she was wiping my face. And chuckling to herself the whole time. Dipping the formerly white washcloth into a basin of water that was swirling green, black and red and laughing, shaking her head. When she was done, she grabbed me under the arms and hoisted me up onto my mattress like I was three years old. I mean, this woman is strong. I'm skinny, sure, but I've grown a lot in the past year. I'm almost 6'2", rough estimate. That's why I like it that 82 percent of nurses, according to the Richie Casey Unscientific Survey conducted over, like, a million years in and out of an amazing array of hospitals, are overweight. They carry muscle under the blubber and, man, can they lift. That's the kind of thing you come to appreciate when most of your own muscle power has gone with the wind. When you've got legs like toothpicks and a rib cage like a turkey carcass the day after Thanksgiving. Oh, and something like 54 percent of nurses smoke. Of course they know it's a lethal habit, but considering what they see, hear and smell every day, do you blame them? I'd love to smoke, too—and come to think of it, that's something they should also allow us here in hospice, right? I'm going to bring that up with the administrators, I swear. Add it to my list.

Jeannette fussed with the sheets for a minute, then she put her hands on her hips and grinned down at me. “That little drama you created was fun, my man, I'll admit it. You and your girlfriend sure did break up the monotony, and I appreciate that.” Then the grin changed to a fierce scowl, scarier than any mask ever invented. Like Jeannette's mouth grew fangs and her eyes spit sparks, sweartogod. “Only, if you two ever light a fire in this place again, you will be one sorry pair. If I catch either of you with a lighter or a match or two sticks you're rubbing together, you will pay, big-time. And I do mean pay. Got it?”

“Yes, ma'am. Got it,” I said. But, really, I was so stuck on hearing someone refer to Sylvie as my girlfriend and the two of us as a pair that I kind of lost track of everything else. And then Jeannette slapped a brand-new pain patch on my shoulder. That's Fentanyl, every three days, 50 mg, some good stuff. Not quite as good as Dilaudid, IV, but I'm done with needles. No more pokes, pinches, pricks. That's in the past. And they can still go up on the Fentanyl—will, they told me, whenever I ask. I think those things go up to 100 mg. After that, straight onto morphine, any dose, any time. They promised. Always nice to have a plan for the future.

Jeannette also rubbed the antinausea gel that I call Puke-Away on my wrist, and I was happy as a little clam, drifting to sleep in a world where Sylvie and I went to some chick flick together—some lame romance that she'd talked me into—and that was okay because the next week we'd go to see the new Terminator for me. And then we went and got a pepperoni-sausage-double-cheese pizza, and then we fooled around on the big couch in her basement, and she let me get further than ever before, my hands all over her, everywhere. Lips and tongue, too. I mean, I'd almost reached heaven.

And then a real devil paid me a visit. Sylvie's father. Smelling like Marlboro smoke and bourbon, his face sweaty and purply-red. Porcupine bristles on his cheeks. I mean, the man just walked in. And that's one of the worst things about this place and every other hospital room on earth.
Anyone
can just stroll on in. No one even knocks. There is not one iota of privacy in this place. I mean, sure, there are doors on our rooms and sometimes we can keep them shut for about twelve seconds at a time, but the doors have glass windows in them—as in totally transparent. So there you are, on display, day and night. Enough to make a grown kid cry. And don't even try taping a poster or hanging a towel over those windows. Nothing attracts a legion of irate nurses and antsy therapists more than that.

Here's what I'd like to say about this, to everyone. Listen up: we're teenagers. At home, we'd have
KEEP OUT
signs on our bedroom doors and—duh!—locks. We would slam our doors in everyone's faces and hang out alone in our bolted, private, sanctuary rooms. Free at last, praise god almighty, free at last.

But here? Hell, no. An example: here, Sylvie's mother and her three little brothers hang around her room all day, every day. Hour by hour, minute by minute,
all day.
The little ones, twins I think, run Matchbox cars around the railings of her bed, and the biggest one—the makeup supplier—sits in a corner with a stack of comic books. Her mother clucks around her nonstop, all red-eyed and swollen-faced. Once, I heard Sylvie yelling at her mother, who'd probably just asked her something simple like, “Do you want another pillow, honey?” Sylvie just flat-out screamed, “No, I don't. I want to be left alone. Leave me aloooooooooooooooooooooone.” Sweartogod, that last syllable went on for, like, twenty seconds until Sylvie ran out of breath. Then her mother—short little dark-haired Italian lady, all round and soft—and the three little boys scooted their asses out of there, every one of them in tears. Then I heard Sylvie groaning in her bed, saying, “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.” And I didn't go anywhere near that room that afternoon. After that, the boys never come in at night anymore and the mother leaves around seven. Now it's Sylvie's father who camps on the fold-out in her room every night. So it's still the no-privacy routine: mother and bros all day, father at night. And when the father is in there, Sylvie never, ever yells at him.

And let me be clear about this: that man scares the bejesus out of me, even when I'm
not
dreaming about his daughter. That man is so mad, so furious, so sad and so, I don't even know how to say it, so, like,
nuclear-blasted
by his daughter's dying that he gives off toxic fumes. No lie, the man glows orange and smells like rotten eggs. Pure sulfur, I swear, running in his veins. And he hates everybody. He's a lawyer, Sylvie says, but I don't know—he seems more like the fucking Godfather to me.

And this is the guy who just stomps on into my room and leans over my bed on Cabbage Night itself. Talk about vicious tricks. I am more than a little stoned and a little horny and beyond exhausted, so all of this has what you might call a nightmare quality about it. Worst case dreamland scenario, come to life. First, the man rattles the metal side of my bed. He leans over and hisses, “You awake, wiseass?”

And I let my eyes open. His bloodshot eyes are about six inches from mine, and he's breathing dragon breath all over my face. I put one hand under the sheet, on the red call button, just in case. Here's the thing: you're helpless in one of these beds. It's a goddamn
crib
. Like you're a
baby.
Talk about sitting ducks. So your only means of help is the call button. “Yes, sir,” I say. “I'm awake.”

He leans in even closer and he says, “Then listen up, asshole. You stay away from Sylvia. Leave her the hell alone.” His eyes go all watery and he says, “Do you know how tired out she is after your little prank? She collapsed in her room, and the nurse could hardly get a blood pressure. It was like—like, nothing. Scared the crap out of me. You little prick.” He reaches out a hand and grabs the front of my T-shirt, still the Black Sabbath one. “I don't know what kind of lowlife bitch raised you or why your parents aren't even here, but I'm filling in for them, okay? And if you go near Sylvia again, you'll—”

But he doesn't get to finish, because I sit up, roaring. And I just start screaming and swinging. Because no one, and I mean no one, calls my mom a lowlife bitch. I get in one good fist to his mouth before nineteen people run into the room and pull the man away from my bed. It wasn't much, but I had the satisfaction of seeing blood curling down his lips before Edward, the huge gay nurse, shoves him out of my room, hard. See, Edward doesn't like this man a bit because of an earlier shoving incident at the nurses' station, which I heard all about. Stories like that fly up and down the hallways like demented bats. Any kind of excitement, any slice of good gossip, I mean, that's our daily bread. And that day, the day of the incident, there was yelling and cursing and security called and all kinds of good shit to liven things up. Anyway, let us just say that Edward is not a fan of Sylvie's old man. And that's fine, because you want Edward on your side, trust me, and I'm pretty sure he'll always be on mine. Edward's got my back.

And then Jeannette sits with me for a while, cleaning up my knuckles, which just split wide open on the man's teeth. She wraps gauze around my right hand, sighing and
tsk
ing the whole time, muttering under her breath. I try to explain and only get as far as saying, “He said my mom was—” and she hushes me with a pat on the shoulder.

“I know, honey. You just lie back now and rest. Your heart is going like a hammer. I don't like that. Just shush now.”

And I fall asleep with her hand soothing my forehead, and it's almost like having my mom with me. Even though I'd been so happy that Mom
wasn't
going to be here for a while, now it seems like I want her. I don't know; it's real complicated, isn't it? Families. Teenagers and parents. It's all very strange.

Here's the thing. It's one of the parts of hospice that drives everybody crazy. Families. In the regular hospital wards, they keep some kind of check on how many family members can show up at one time and bother you, and there are some sort of visiting hours and times when no one's supposed to be there, so you get a little time off. (Except for the Puerto Rican families in the big hospital in New York. Man, no one could keep those people out: grandpas, great-grand-somebodies, seventeen aunts with three kids each, never mind the parents and siblings— everyone came, carrying some kind of food in aluminum containers, smelling like garlic and spice and onion—the whole
familia
showing up day and night. Best damn meals I ever had, whenever my roommate was PR or Dominican or some other kind of Spanish dude. Or, come to think of it, an Orthodox Jew—then all kinds of stuff from the deli showed up. A feast. Here's Richie's free advice to all: if you're going to be in a hospital for a while, claim you need to eat kosher. They can't manage that in the institutional kitchen, so they order out. Brisket, bialys, corned beef on rye, noodle pudding, all of that.)

But here it's a whole different story. No rules about visiting hours and limiting the invaders. Here, as they like to remind everyone, they're “treating the whole family.” Great, so it's, like, mad crowded in some rooms, and even at midnight there are people parked all over the place, bored and impatient and stressed and total pains in the ass. Nonstop. Like living in the subway. It stinks.

Okay, back to topic: my mom, the story, short version. Whenever I'm in the hospital, my mom comes in on her lunch hour and late every night and she sleeps in my room on the fold-out or cot or whatever she can round up. I mean, she's kept up this routine, on and off, since I was eleven and started hanging out, way too much, in hospitals. Some of those stays were, like, months and months. Some just days. But she's always been right there, curled up on some lousy cot, all night, every night. She's got to keep working, so she can't hang around with me all day. My mom had me when she was my age exactly—seventeen. And there were only us two, and she worked two jobs—whatever she could get, and luckily she's good with numbers and can keep books and stuff like that, but sometimes it was just cashiering in Price Chopper. She worked her butt off, always, and she kept us in health insurance totally on her own.

But my mom took a leave of absence from both jobs just recently, when the word
terminal
kept popping up on my charts and when, finally, the word
hospice
became part of my permanent temporary address. My mom, who never even got to sit her butt down and rest on Sunday all of my life, my mom took leave. My mom took what her prick of a boss calls compassionate leave: as in, no paychecks. I mean, how fucking compassionate is that? But she says she doesn't care about that. What matters is that she's been with me day and night now. And I swear she looks sicker than me, and she shakes and cries and has to go out for a smoke every half hour. At night, when she comes back in, I let her kiss me good night like I'm two years old, and then she falls asleep and I look at her curled up on that crappy couch, her cheeks all sunk in and her eyes all puffy, and I think I'm going to lose it. And sometimes I do, the only fucking time the sadness comes through and I want to kill anybody who hurts her and, yes, I'm aware that nobody else on earth could hurt her like I'm doing right now. And that's the worst of all. That's SUTHY with a vengeance. It just sucks, all of it.