Are You Sitting Down? (21 page)

“With hair?”
I asked, trying to laugh but it hurt too much.

“I don’t know.
I kind of like the bandages,” he said studying my head.
I knew he was joking.

*
*
*
*

Back home, Travis removed the bandages for me every other day to change them and let the stitches get some air.
The stitches resembled a large puffy closed eyelid across the side of my head, like some strange giant conjoined twin that my body had absorbed at birth.
My hair eventually started to grow back.
The black peppery fuzz
reminded me of
a GI Joe doll I played with as a child, except now he was recovering from a massive head wound
inflicted by some back yard war.

Somehow I found it easier to face the world with a hai
r
less fish bone-like scar on the side of my head than with no hair at all.
I was no longer the sad pale cancer patient for strangers to feel sorry for.
I kept my hair buzzed short, mainly to prevent infection near the wound while it healed, but the military look gave people a different impression.
Suddenly, they were happy for me instead of apologetic.

“God bless you, son,” an old lady said grabbing my arm, assuming I was a troop.
I just smiled and didn’t say anything.
It felt better to be appreciated than spurned with the plague.

I let Travis talk me into going to a restaurant
, but I would only go for lunch and take the chance that it would be less crowded than dinner service anywhere in this city
.
Avoi
d
ing
public places
now just
felt
like an old habit
I needed to break
.

The scar was permanent; the hair would not grow back to cover it entirely, but I found myself forgetting about it.
Patches of pi
g
mentless hair or no hair at all are li
ke mysterious pieces missing from a human puzzle.
I
was
really
the only one who
t
ook
notice.
Others ignore
d
it because it
wa
sn’t such a ra
r
ity these days
to see someone with a harsh visible blemish
, and their
behavior or lack thereof
help
ed
me
to di
s
regard it too.

The restaurant was a quiet sky lit place on the roof of some downtown hotel skyscraper.
It was enclosed in glass and you could eat inside, where they often opened all the windows, or outside on the terrace if it wasn’t too windy.
It was a place
Travis and I
had eaten
at in the past for birthdays or celebr
a
tions, or just for an excuse to go downtown.
The menu is filled with
anomalous
dishes like Seafood Ragout
and Wild Mus
h
room Pizza.
Travis laughed at me for sticking to the simple dishes I knew like Pimento Cheese on
Rye
or Chicken Strips with Hot Mustard.
He always ordered one of the more irregular
items
and let me sample some from his plate.

The sudden epileptic
seizure
was an awkward
tingle
I had never felt before. I jolted back in my chair like an astronaut at lift-off.
A strong force felt like it was pushing against my face and all I could do was shake
to escape its push
.
It was out of control and violent, forcing me onto the floor.
I was not conscious enough to know what Travis did, but I do know his patience greatly outweighs his fear.
He probably rolled me over onto my back and turned my head to the side so the vomit could drip from my mouth
and
I wouldn’t choke.
A waitress might have screamed.
Some of the other patrons stood up from their tables and watched.
Travis begged someone to call for an ambulance as I lay their convulsing.

“
These seizures are transient symptoms due to abnormal, excessive activity in the brain
,” the doctor told us.

The word
transient
made me think of those particles from the original tumor taking root on the opposite side of my brain.
They’d set up camp and another tumor was forming.

“What are his choices?”
Travis asked the doctor.

“In a few months, we could attempt chemo again,” the doctor answered.

“He may not have a few months!”
Travis yelled.
It was the first time I ever heard him raise his voice.
I liked it.

“I’m not doing chemo a second time,” I mumbled.
N
o one was listening to me.

“
The gamma surgery is also a possibility if this new tumor becomes malignant.
We still need to give the right side of his brain some recovery time.
Right now, it’s still too early to weigh the options.”

“No more surgeries,” I whispered.

“What do you want to do?”
Travis asked in a much calmer voice, turning to me, unaware of the things I’d already said.

“I just want to go home.”

And so we did.

That was the last time I ever saw a hospital in this world.

*
*
*
*

“Can he come here
and be with us
?”
My Mom asked Travis on the phone.

I knew she would ask.
I was mouthing the word
n
o to Travis and cutting the air with my hands like a referee.

“Sure, I can drive him up.
We’ll leave whenever he feels like it.”

“Why did you lie to her?”
I asked Travis when he hung up the phone.

“If I didn’t tell her that, they might come here and try to make you go back with them,” he said.

“I don’t want to go there.”

“You don’t have to go there.
You never have to go.”

Speaking words of hope felt good
. H
earing them felt even better.
But neither of us
could
ignore the inevitable.
At some point, I was going to go.

I imagined my mother and father at home in
Ruby Dregs
preparing a place for me, but it would be a place I wasn’t acquainted with.
Mom would pick up the newspapers and magazines that always clutter
ed
the floor.
She’d move the dust around with her hands and spit shine the pictures on the wall.
She would open the door to my room and let it air out.
She might change the sheets on the bed.
Dad would just sit and wait, with his hands folded neatly across his belly, in silence.

Mom would stand at the window periodically throughout the day
, pulling back the drapes and peeking through the yellowed blinds
, waiting to see Travis’s car pull up in the drive.
She’d envision the passenger door opening and me stepping out and running to the door to greet them with a smile on my face.
I’d come home.

From the moment I left it and moved
in with Travis
, that wasn’t my home anymore.
I felt like a foster child every time I had gone home to see them. A summer weekend, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or whenever all seemed like I was on guard and walking across a frozen pond.
At any moment, the surface
c
ould crack and I would fall in to a chill
ing
drown.

Several days passed, maybe weeks or months.
I stopped counting.
Travis had second thoughts
,
and
he said
I should go home and see them.
The phone had not rang once.
They never showed up at our door unexpectedly.
Mom had most likely pulled the curtains to and closed the door to my room again.
Dad had gone back to doing whatever it
wa
s that he d
id
each day
. They were just
waiting for their phone to ring
to
bring the news they knew would
inevitabl
y
come.

It was my time to go, to leave Ruby Dregs and never have to think about going back; to leave my parents although it felt like I’d left them long ago.  And sadly, to leave Travis though I could never imagine life without him.  I didn’t have to imagine that.  My life was almost over.

“It’s not about them anymore,” I told Travis when he carefully chose his words to try to get me to go.

“It never was about them.
I know that.
Don’t you want to see them?”

“No.
It’s too late, Travis
.
I’ve got to go now,
” I said crawling under the bed sheets.

“
Justin, not now!”

“
Please…j
ust hold me close and be strong for me now,” I told him.

“I can’t be strong when you are my only weakness,” he said as tears fell from his cheeks.

“You’ve done so much for me Travis, more than anyone else ever has.
Let me go.”

“Okay,” he whispered, squeezing my hand and crawling into bed beside me.

“Let me go,” I repeated.

I closed my eyes
,
rest
ing
my face against his side
.
He wrapped
his arm around my shoulder.

For just a moment, I was allowed to step back and look at us from across the room or maybe above it.
My scar was hidden against Travis’s shirt
. T
o anyone else we would have looked like a
normal
couple resting on the bed.
All the pain was hidden or gone. I held my transparent hands in front of my face with ease, as if holding a camera, and I pretended to snap a photo to remember this.
  I didn’t need a photo to remember, because I knew I would never forget him.