Wake (90 page)

It’s Morning They really are discharging Jem. Apparently his fever is pretty much gone, and apart from a tendency to cough up phlegm, Jem is ready to go home to recover. I don’t like it. I think they should keep him for at least another day, until he’s a little stronger. I argue this with Dad over breakfast, but all he can say is that it’s not his decision. “You know Jem hates the hospital,” he tries to reason. And I hate the dentist, but I still go when I need to.

“They need the bed,” he says when he gets tired of arguing with me.

“
Jem
needs that bed.”

Dad gives me a testy look. “Trust me. It won’t be easy, but he’s strong enough to come home, okay?

Enough.”

Mom insists on driving over to the hospital early, even though Jem isn’t being discharged until at least two o’clock. He missed his dialysis appointment this week, so he’s hooked up to a dialyzer now, and the plan is to discharge him when that treatment is done. Mom is the first one off the elevator when the doors open, but Dad and I follow at a more reluctant pace.

Dad hates seeing Jem in the hospital. The only way he can deal with it and not lose his mind is to treat him like a patient, and that’s a sure way to test Jem’s temper.

A nurse is with him when we walk in, taking his blood pressure. She has him in a good mood and that’s better than I could have ever asked for.

The dialyzer takes up quite a bit of room beside the bed, so I make myself comfortable against the far wall with as much distance between me and that creepy thing as possible. It turns my stomach a little, watching the blood flow through the tubing and get spun around like the feed on a cassette tape. Jem catches me looking at it before I have time to hide my disgust, and his mood takes a nosedive.

I don’t even want to be here. I only came because Dad asked for my help.

Mom pets Jem’s head and kisses his cheek. She tells him about shopping for fresh fruit with Elise to make milkshakes for him. Jem tries to show enthusiasm, but it obviously costs him a lot of effort.

It takes another half hour to finish his dialysis treatment, and then another forty minutes to get him ready to leave and complete the discharge paperwork. He’s at the tipping point between sick enough to need care and not sick enough to merit a bed in the hospital. I try to keep it in perspective, because all of his symptoms will look worse in the atmosphere of the hospital. It’s not that bad that he’s still so achy and stiff that he needs my help to put his clothes on—that’s just a regular flu symptom. So he coughs a little—

he’ll be okay soon.

“What are you looking at?” he snarls at me. We glare at each other for a few seconds before my inevitable win comes: Jem has to break the stare to cough, and I chuckle.

“Score.”

“Shut up.”

Dad comes back in with the discharge paperwork tucked under his arm. “Don’t antagonize your brother.” I’m not sure whom he’s talking to. “You ready to go?” he asks Jem. Dad doesn’t seem bothered by the lack of response; he’s just eager to get home.

Mom brings the car around the door of the hospital while Dad and I wait with Jem inside the vestibule.

The wide hospital wheelchair makes my brother look even thinner. He’s well bundled in a thick fleece blanket, but he’s still shivering slightly. It’s a damp day and that makes his breathing worse.

As Dad and I help Jem into the car, I silently hope whoever gets my brother’s newly vacant bed desperately needs it, because otherwise I’m
really
going to resent this whole situation. He’s still so weak and sluggish that he can barely buckle his seatbelt.

“Just sleep, honey,” Mom tells him. “It’ll be a quick ride home.”

As we pull out of the parking lot, Mom drives so slowly you’d think she was a first time parent with a newborn in the car. Jem leans a little closer to me in the back seat and asks how warm it is outside. “It’s pretty warm.” The rest of us are wearing t-shirts, but he’s bundled up and cold. I put an arm around him to warm up and feel his cheek. It’s clammy.

“He’s a little warm. Maybe we should take him back to the hospital,” I tell Dad.

“I don’t want to be in that fucking hospital,” Jem mutters. “I’m fine.” I think the wad of phlegm he proceeds to hork up would beg to differ.

*

When we pull up to the house Elise comes out onto the porch, eager to be part of the action. I think it disappoints her to see that Jem is still so sick, even though he’s home.

Dad and I each lend him a shoulder for the long, slow walk inside—because Jem does insist on walking, even though it’s no great difficulty to carry him. The distance is about twenty feet between the car and the living room, and by the time we get to the couch Jem has to sit down. He can’t get a breath.

“You shouldn’t stay down here,” Mom says. “You should be in a proper bed. You need your rest.”

Jem complains for the sake of his image, but doesn’t put up much of a fight as I lift him and carry him upstairs to his room. Mom and Elise tuck him into freshly washed sheets that he can’t smell and prop him up on pillows to ease his breathing.

Dad starts measuring out pills from the bottles on the nightstand. Mom goes to get a glass of water, and I leave to move the car into the garage. The only one who doesn’t move is Elise. She sits cross-

legged on the bed beside Jem, watching him like a loyal dog.

Moving the car is too short a task, and I dread having to go back inside. It’s tense like this when he’s ill at home. We all walk on eggshells, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I close the garage door and call Celeste. She asks if I’m still at the hospital and I tell her we just got home.

“How are things?”

“No worse than usual.” That’s not saying much.

“How are you holding up?”

“Surviving.” It’s a mark of how well she knows me that Celeste doesn’t ask if I want to talk about it. If I wanted to, I would.

“My phone is always on me. Cal whenever you need to, okay?”

“I will .”

“We’ll work out a visit when things settle down again.”

“Alright.”

“Should I let you get back? Or do you want to shoot the shit and pretend?”

“I just wanted to touch base.” Celeste has a way of centering me. I like the normalcy of her—absolutely nothing changed when I moved away.

“I’ll let you go then.”

“’Kay.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too.” We say goodbye and I pocket my phone. I have to get back inside. There’s so little I can do for my brother, and it would be a horrible thing to be AWOL when he really does need something from me.

I enter the kitchen to find Elise sitting at the island with the phone in front of her. Mom stands nearby, listening with a stony expression. The call is on speakerphone and Elise puts a finger to her lips when she sees me. I listen to the voice and recognize it as Willa’s. I don’t think she knows she’s on speakerphone.

“I get off work at three. I can come straight after.”

Elise is inviting her over? Jem just got settled.

“That works,” Elise agrees. “See you then.” She hangs up the phone and I turn to Mom.

“You think he’s up to having visitors so soon?”

Both Elise and Mom shake their heads. “Jem insisted,” Elise says. “We can make sure she doesn’t stay long. A bit of company might make him feel better.”

Mom sighs resignedly and admits that Willa does know how to behave around sick people. “I think we can trust her not to disturb him.”

It’s only forty-five minutes until Willa is due to arrive. I ask Jem if he wants to take a shower. Three days of nothing but sponge baths haven’t done him any favors. Jem agrees and I ask Dad for help. An extra set of hands is necessary to help Jem out of his pajamas. We strip him on the edge of the bed and wrap a bathrobe around his skinny shoulders.

While Jem brushes his teeth, struggling not to cough for two whole minutes, Dad does all the work of covering up the central line in his chest. I’m glad he knows how, because I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I run the water hot at first to warm the bathroom and the surface of the tub, and then dial it back to a comfortable temperature.

Dad reaches out to help Jem off with his bathrobe, and Jem asks him if he wouldn’t mind leaving.

“Are you sure?”

“I’ll be all right. Eric’s here.” It’s a non-answer; one that gives Dad cause to cast suspicious looks between us. Likely there’s something that Jem wants to say to me in private, and I’m not sure I want to hear it.

“If you need anything I’ll be down the hall .” Dad leaves and Jem sort of sighs. Maybe it’s not a sigh.

Maybe he’s gasping for breath.

“What was that about?”

“I can’t deal with him in doctor mode,” Jem says. He looks to the shower and changes the subject. “Is the water running warm yet?”

I help him out of his bathrobe and lend him my shoulder for the short walk between counter and tub. A small part of me feels bad about this; he has to sacrifice so much dignity just to take a shower. But the better part of me just wants to help my brother and not be ashamed by it.

Jem’s knees shake with standing. He holds onto the towel rack with his free hand and tries to step into the tub. He can barely lift his foot half the distance he needs to clear the lip. His shin bumps softly against the side of the tub and he tries again.

“Here.” I lift Jem up and sit him down on the floor of the bath. He can’t possibly stand for an entire shower. I detach the showerhead and run the water over him to warm up.

“You don’t mind doing this, do you?”

“Of course not.” I give him the showerhead to hold and stand up to reach the soap off the shelf. He just has to sit there, warming himself with the water, while I wash his back and neck and head. I would say his hair, but it’s hardly worth the name. The sparse strands look like a fourteen-year-old’s first mustache, in between the bald spots. A few of those hairs get washed down the drain as I rinse him off.

He has to wash his own chest—he knows how not to disturb his Hickman. I help him wash his arms and legs and feet.

“Help me up slowly?” he says when he’s ready to get out of the tub. I get three towels ready. One I drape over the toilet and the other I wrap around his shoulders while he’s still in the tub. Moving him causes a head rush and Jem throws his arm out like he’s going to fall .

“I’ve got you.” I set him down on the toilet and wrap that towel around his hips.

“My fuckin’ head…” he mutters.

“Relax.” I use the third towel to dry him off while he tries not to shiver. I try to do the job as fast as possible, but there’s no keeping Jem warm in this state. I ease him into his bathrobe and walk him back to bed.

He’s too dizzy to sit up alone, so Jem lies down while I col ect pajamas and socks from his drawers. “I forget what it’s like,” he says. “Being healthy.”

“This is just a minor setback.”

“I feel like shit.”

I set the clothes down on the bed and give him what Elise calls my Big Brother Glare. “Are you going to let Willa see you feeling sorry for yourself?”

That shuts him up.

Willa: June 8 to 10

Thursday One short conversation has completely changed the tone of my day. School is something that happens far away. It’s a familiar feeling—this invisible, airless chamber that separates me from the throngs of other students. I felt it when Tessa was dying, when I couldn’t find anything funny or pleasurable and everyone else’s life seemed to be so simple and perfect. After that, I felt nothing for a long time.

Now, I’m stuck with the knowledge that Jem has an infection serious enough to merit a night in the hospital. I think Eric was full of shit when he said Jem would be home so soon. The hospital wouldn’t take a patient so lately in remission and send him back home the very next day.

Up ahead I see Diane, gesturing widely as she complains to Paige about something inconsequential. I have no intention of approaching her, but my feet steer me that way and I walk through the hall way crowd, right up to Diane. I get so close that she has to take a step back.

“Hi Willa,” Paige says, right before she gets it that I’m in no mood for pleasantries. Diane wrinkles her nose at me. She takes one step and her back comes up against the bank of lockers.

“You’re standing too close,” she says in that annoying soprano voice.

“Shut up, whore.” She gasps indignantly. “Next time you get sick, cover your fucking mouth when you cough.” I reach up and close a hand around her mouth and jaw. She tries to dodge my hand and I press her head back against the lockers. “Or better yet, cover your nose too.” My other hand covers her nostrils. Diane starts to struggle. “Until you fucking suffocate and relieve us of your presence, you dumb bitch.”

I let her go, and a small part of me enjoys the look of fear in her eyes. If there’s anything I miss about my life in St. John’s, it’s that people automatically knew not to fuck with me.

I walk away, and not twenty minutes later a hall monitor summons me to the front office. Diane squealed. I miss out on first period, sitting in the vice principal’s office while Diane sobs out her overdramatic rendition of events. I deny everything. There are no marks on her; she can’t prove a damn thing.

“Other people saw!” Diane protests shril y. Paige is called down to the office to corroborate. She doesn’t seem to remember a thing either.

I don’t know if it’s fear of me or deep dislike of Diane that motivates Paige, but I owe her for this.

*

Elise and Eric aren’t at lunch. I don’t usually sit with either of them, but I notice their absence in the cafeteria. It scares me. Did something happen to Jem, bad enough that they had to leave school?

I go out to my car to make a phone call . Elise’s cell doesn’t even ring. The call goes straight to an automated message from the phone company that says the number is unavailable. She has her phone turned off—she’s at the hospital.

I drift through the remainder of my classes like a living ghost. It’s strange how easily that mode of being comes back to me after all this time. When my mind isn’t blank with incomprehensible fear of the future and indifference to the present, it’s winding in circles, and it always comes back to the sneaking suspicion that Eric told me half-truths this morning. What if it’s not just an infection? What if he relapsed and doesn’t want me to know?