Radiate (21 page)

“I suppose,” I say, peering down at my big toe that’s now painted in a white and red French manicure style.

“The radiotreatment is painless, Hayley. I promise you, it only takes a few minutes out of the day.”

Tracy stands and then points to the “couch,” as she referred to the black table. It’s certainly not anything I’d want to stretch out on to watch a movie. Still, I do as I’m instructed.

“Mrs. Matthews, why don’t you wait outside the room? You won’t be allowed to stay once the machine is activated.”

“Oh, of course,” Mom says, and gathers her purse.

Sure... Mom can leave, but I get to be in here for five days as this machine fries my insides.

I slip off my sandals and stretch out on the table. At least the pillow is fluffy.

Tracy unravels the mass of Ace bandages and sets them on a nearby table. “I’m going to make a pinprick tattoo on your leg so I’ll know how to line up the machine.” True to her word, she pulls out a thick purple pen and draws a dot right in the center of my leg; the spot that was operated on three times. From there, she begins extending the lines in all four directions. Ugly purple marks crisscross my fresh scar like a mad scientist writing on a white board.

“Will that come off?” I ask.

“In time,” Tracy says. “Please don’t wash them off this week as we’ll be using these guidelines every day.”

I nod, but I really wish she’d used a red or blue marker so at least the lines would match my school colors. Oh well.

“Make yourself comfy,” she tells me.

I squiggle around a little to find the softest spot on the table. Not gonna happen. “I’m good,” I report.

“All right, Hayley. I’m going to leave you alone for a few minutes. I’ll ask you to take a deep breath and hold it. There will be a silence, a click, and then a hum. As I said, the treatment will
not
harm you. You won’t feel a thing. You must, however, lie very, very still for the few minutes it takes to treat you. While the machine is on, I’ll be able to hear you in the next room through the intercom if you need me for anything.”

Breathe. Hold it. Don’t move. So much to take in. So much to remember.

She positions me on the table and squares the above light to focus on her grid. She takes a roll of medical tape and secures it over the top of my foot and across to both sides of the table. “Since it’s your first time, this is only for good measure.”

With a pat on my knee, Tracy the tech in her SpongeBob scrubs disappears behind a swinging door into an observation room. Her voice comes across the crackling intercom.

“Are you ready, Hayley?”

“Yes,” I say instead of nodding. I’m so paranoid trying to
not
move that I feel like I
am
moving. Good thing she taped me down.

“Okay... Take a deep breath... Hold it . . .”

Click.

Whir.

Hummmmm.

The sound is muffled by the staccato beat of my heart apparently trying to start its own rhythm section.

A red hue covers my leg for what seems an eternity. I don’t blink for fear that even that slight motion could cause the radiation to kill off good cells in my leg. As soon as the light comes on, it fades away and the machine silences. The mighty monster is satiated for the moment, so it returns to its dormant state. I’m totally going to have nightmares about that thing.

“Good... Now breathe.”

A gush of air escapes me, followed by somewhat of a pant.

I did it. I got through it. At least the first treatment.

“See? It was easy,” Tracy says when she comes back into the room.

Sure, it was a piece of cake for her. She stood behind a lead wall and pressed a button.

I sit up and rewrap the Ace bandage around my scarred and purple-marked leg. I slip my shoes back on and crutch out of the treatment room to where Mom’s waiting for me in the hallway.

“Well?”

I muster up a bit of a smile, mostly glad that I made it through and didn’t mess up or make things worse for myself.

“One treatment down. Four to go.”

***

Monday night, I sleep like a baby. We’re talking out like a light before eight p.m.

Tuesday afternoon, I’m nauseated like all get-out. I throw up water and can’t stomach the tomato soup Mom places before me.

Wednesday after dinner (spaghetti that I can’t eat), I fall unconscious on the couch watching TV. It’s as if someone gave me a sleeping pill.

Thursday morning, Tracy tells me “extreme fatigue” is a side effect of radiation therapy.

“It’s very common. It’s your body telling you it has to rest. That’ll be gone about three weeks after your treatment is completed.”

Perfect. So now I’m narcoleptic.

Thursday night, I can’t get through reading e-mails or checking people’s Facebook. I’m sick as a dog, and now the skin on my leg is so massively dry that even the most intense Jergens skin lotion won’t help. I manage to eat two Snickers bars so I can bring my blood sugar levels up before I crash hard at eight thirty.

Friday morning, I’m dead to the world and can barely come to consciousness when Mom rattles me on the shoulder.

“Wake up, sweetie.”

“Nuh-uh,” I mumble into the pillow.

“This is it, Hayley. Last treatment and then your dad’s coming to get us. We’re going home.”

This sparks in my brain like a clanging alarm clock and three cups of espresso.

Home. Back to Maxwell. Back to my life.

It’s really the only thing that forces my limbs awake and into action. Since I slept later, I forgo a shower and grab the last Snickers bar on my way out of Cliff’s. Mom has our bags packed for when we return from UAB.

For the first time all week, I’m not overanalyzing my position on the therapy table. I easily slide up onto the pad and stretch my leg out into position. Tracy, noticing my confidence, even skips taping my foot down before she slips away into her protective room.

One last click, zoom, and hum of the simulator.

I sit perfectly still.

But in my mind, I’m running free. I haven’t a care in the world weighing me down. I’m running down the sidelines of the football field, cartwheeling, and doing back handsprings. There’s nothing holding me back. I can do anything. I’m unlocked from the medical shackles that have held me back all summer.

My goal is in sight.

I’m going home!

The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.

—John Vance Cheney

Hey, ladies, need a ride to Maxwell?” Dad asks when he pulls up in the truck outside Cliff’s apartment. He just drove three hours to get here, and now he’s turning around to do it again. He must be as relieved as I am that I’m done with this.

“Yes, please!” I say enthusiastically.

We load our things into the truck, and Dad helps me up into back seat of the cab.

He’s brought a pillow along that he places on the seat and hefts my foot up on it. “There. Buckle up and make yourself comfortable.”

I do as he says, clicking the shoulder strap around me.

Mom climbs into the front, and we’re off.

Soon, the skyline of Birmingham is nothing but a faded memory. Dad weaves through Friday afternoon traffic heading south on I-65. I lean my head back and let out a long, deep sigh, one that’s been stuck in my windpipe since the day I discovered that nasty-ass growth in my leg. I can’t believe that was only six weeks ago. In some ways, it feels like yesterday; in others, it feels like years.

Mom turns in response to my massive exhalation. “Are you okay, sweetie?”

“Just thinking.”

“About what?”

I give her a “you’ve got to be kidding me look,” so she adjusts forward in her seat.

Cancer.

It’s something old people get. People who smoke or drink too much get afflicted with it. It’s inherited. Millions of people walk in charity fundraisers to combat it. Telethons are held for it. Pink is now the color that represents cancer prevention.

I’ve always liked pink. So why couldn’t I prevent it?

Cancer.

An uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells.

I remember my church did a fundraiser a few years ago for Ralph Rodgers when he was diagnosed with lung cancer and needed help paying for treatment. I’ve put spare change in the cans in the grocery store for the American Cancer Society. I’ve seen the billboards on the highway with pictures of sick kids.

I’m
one of those sick kids.

Rapidly, my pulse begins to pick up, seemingly matching the seventy-five miles per hour Dad’s doing. My breath hitches in my lungs. For a second, it’s as if I’ve had the wind knocked out of me, just like the time when I was twelve and was skateboarding down the hill in Ashlee Grimes’s yard and busted it big-time. The air returned eventually then. Now, I’m not so sure.

Dr. Dykema’s rough voice rings clear in my head as I’m hearing an echo of the side effects of chemo and radiation.

Nausea.

Diarrhea.

Dry skin.

Abnormal menstrual cycle.

Brittle nails.

Extreme fatigue.

Loss of appetite.

Nerve damage.

Hair loss.

I gasp in air as these symptoms tumble around in my mind like wet towels in the dryer.

As I tug the end of my long hair, the realism of what I just went through sinks in. Am I going to lose all of this? I hadn’t even considered going bald a possibility. I mean, I’ve watched TV shows where the characters have cancer and never get their makeup smudged let alone lose one hair on their head. But this is reality—my reality.

Oh my God. It’s really
hitting
me.

>>BLAM<<

Like a thick two-by-four smack against my forehead.

Reality sets in.

Understanding coats me from head to toe.

I don’t know why it took this long to comprehend the breadth and depth of my diagnosis.

I had cancer.

Like cancer cancer.

Real, live, not made for television cancer.

Malignant cancer that dared to attempt to take my leg. Take my
life!

Cancer that thought it could beat me.

Cancer that thought it could defeat me.

Fucking cancer.

Yeah, well, fuck you, cancer!

I try to calm myself. It’s over and done with. I won.
I
defeated
it.

It’s gone. Cut out, burned with chemicals and zapped with radiation.

Take that!

Where is the cancer now? In some jar in the pathology department at UAB so doctors can study it and learn from it.

Where am I? On my way home to get back to school, get back to cheerleading, get back to life.

Damn straight. Fuck you, cancer!

I glance down at my left leg stretched out on the back seat and propped up on the pillow my dad lovingly brought from home. My leg is still covered in an Ace bandage only to provide protection for the very delicate skin still healing from the surgery and still stained with the purple radiation guidelines. I’m healing. I’m overcoming. I’m winning.

I’m going to have one hell of a scar and an interesting story to tell for the rest of my life.

It is what it is.

An absurd thought enters my mind, causing a bubble of laughter to sneak up through my lungs and burst out in the silence of the car.

Dad jumps. Mom spins around.

“Hayley! What’s wrong?”

I can’t stop laughing. It feels amazing.

“I was just thinking,” I say between giggles. “You know, with a scar like this, I think I can pretty much rule out that future career as a
Playboy
centerfold.”

Mom’s face breaks into a broad grin, and her hearty laughter joins mine. Catching her breath, she says, “You can still do it, Hayley. They’ll have to photograph you from the right side, though.”

Our conjoined laughter over my ludicrous joke soon alters to me crying.

Big, chubby tears that roll down my cheeks and land on my T-shirt.

Mom starts crying, too—a catharsis for both of us perhaps.

I let the tears flow, heavy and hard, from the swirling emotions. Relief. Anger. Uncertainty. Thankfulness. Irritation. Gratefulness.

Mom laces her fingers through mine and squeezes. It says she loves me and is proud I’m dealing with this. Her face blurs from the window of tears cascading from my eyes. It’s okay, though. This outburst was a long time coming.

This is the first time I really cry.

***

“Meeeeeeeooooooowwww!”

My kitty, Leeny, sits just inside the kitchen door as Mom, Dad, and I walk in. It’s like she knew I’d be coming home today and wanted to be the official welcome committee.

I lean the crutches up against the kitchen table and bend to scoop up my beloved pet. Immediately, her motor boat of purring starts, and she rubs her head against my chin. It’s the best homecoming anyone could ever ask for. I kiss her on her furry head and then return her to the floor.

Dad hauls our bags in; Mom brings the two plants I got while I was in the hospital.

“Now, Leeny, don’t you dig or pee in these plants,” Mom says to our pet. Like Leeny cares.

Nabbing the crutches again, I make my way down the hallway to the base of the staircase. Dad stops me before I can start climbing.

“Your mother and I were thinking that we can give you our room downstairs and we’ll take your room upstairs so you won’t have to climb.”

It’s the sweetest thought but not necessary.

“Dr. Dykema told me not to run or jump. He didn’t say anything about not climbing stairs.”

My parents exchange glances.

“It’s up to her,” Dad says to Mom.

“It’ll be good for me. Good exercise.”

Mom widens her eyes. “Please promise me you’ll be careful.”

“Duh . . .” I say with a laugh.

It takes a good ten minutes to climb the twenty-six stairs—steps I usually take two at a time in a few seconds flat. Dad, bless his heart, spotted me the whole way up as I cautiously climbed toward my room.

“Phew!” Leeny bounds up the stairs easily and passes me to head right into my room. “Showoff,” I call out to her.