Some Kind of Normal (20 page)

"What about the baby teeth thing?" I say, switching
gears easily.

"We can't use her baby teeth. I've told you that. But
it might lead to something else. I'm still researching."

"When?"

"I can't tell you when it will be, or if it will be
something at all. I'm trying here just as hard as you, Mrs.
Babcock." As I cool Ashley's head now with a washcloth,
hopelessness fills me. Every road is a dead end.

~~~~

I lost Logan when he was four in a Wal-Mart. We'd
gone to get the kids' Christmas pictures taken, and Ashley was in
the cart in a red velvet dress. Logan walked up and down the aisle
with me hunting for ingredients to make sugar cookies. While we
were sorting through the cookie cutters choosing shapes, I noticed
Logan had a plastic candy cane in his chubby fist--one of the big
clear things full of red and green chocolate candies.

"Where the Sam Hill did you get that thing?"

"Can we buy it, Mama?"

"No. Where'd it come from?"

He pointed to the end of the aisle. I swung the cart
around to return it, and Ashley reached out at the same time to
grab an angel cutter. The entire display cascaded to the floor.
Ashley squealed and clapped her hands as I looked at the dozens of
brightly colored shapes around the cart.

"I'll pick 'em up. You go put that back. Straight
there and back, you understand?"

Logan nodded solemnly and took off for the display. I
sighed and knelt to put the cookie cutters back in their box. When
I finished I stood and looked for Logan. He was gone.

"Dadburnit. Now where'd he go?" We high-tailed it to
the end of the aisle. There was a cardboard display with 24 holes
for the plastic candy canes. Not one was missing.

I looked around but he wasn't there. I kept walking,
looking down each aisle but he wasn't there. My heart started
beating a little faster as I reversed direction and went the other
way. Still no Logan. I started calling his name, quiet at first to
not draw attention to us, but then more loud. Customers stopped to
ask if I needed help and they, too, fanned out, looking. Someone
brought me the store manager.

"Is there a problem?"

"I lost my son. He was right here, and then he
wasn't. He's four, about this high, brown hair, brown eyes. He's
wearing black pants and a red sweater with a reindeer on it."

He spoke into a walkie-talkie, sending employees to
the toy section and the front doors and soon lights were going off
and the intercom was announcing a Code Adam and everything shut
down.

They found him in the shampoo aisle, frightened and
wondering how he'd gotten turned around.

For months after that I had dreams about losing him,
waking with that awful pit in my stomach. Even though I knew it was
a dream, I'd sneak into his room in the middle of the night and put
my hand on his back to feel him breathing, just to make sure.

The dreams went away before he turned six, and I
stopped checking that he was breathing every night. And in those
little acts of negligence, I lost him all over again.

~~~~

I started having the dreams again, except in the new
ones it's Ashley I've lost. She's in a hospital gown, and I take
her into the store to find medicine and she disappears on me. No
matter which way I go, she's always just out of reach.

I fall asleep in Ashley's room and a nurse wakes me
up.

"Mrs. Babcock?" I feel her hand on my shoulder and
I'm suddenly alert.

"What happened? Is Ashley okay?"

"I think you were having a nightmare. You were
calling for her." I feel my cheeks get hot, but she goes back to
Ashley's chart without blinking at my discomfort. "Lots of people
talk in their sleep. Especially around this place."

She's new on this floor, and I haven't quite gotten
used to her briskness. Her name is Ingrid, and she speaks with a
heavy German accent that I sometimes have trouble understanding.
She takes Ashley's vitals a little roughly. She takes her
temperature and blood pressure and writes them on the chart. She
pricks her finger. Ashley murmurs in her sleep and then is
quiet.

"What is it," I ask.

"465. Holding steady the last few days." I don't tell
her I already know this, that I know every number the last two
weeks. "You should go get rest," she says. "She'll sleep all night,
and it looks like you have a big day tomorrow."

"What's tomorrow?" I have a sudden mental picture of
them yanking the pump off Ashley with the same ceremony of pulling
the plug on a coma patient.

"I don't know what's going on, but your doctor left a
note in the chart." She hands me the paper.

Tell Ashley's mom to go home and get sleep. Tomorrow
is a big day. We start plan C.

My heart beats faster. I laugh at the thought that
Dr. Benton knows I am here and that the McDonald house has become
home, but mostly I laugh because there's finally a plan C.

After hours of questions, thousands of Google hits
searched, an entire notebook full of ideas, Dr. Benton has found a
plan C.

"Can I keep this?" I hold the note up and Ingrid
grunts. I kiss Ashley on the head and whisper into her ear. "Hold
on, baby. Tomorrow we find the cure."

I've got no idea if plan C is a cure, or if it will
even work, but I don't let myself think about this as I cross the
parking lot.

There are a few families in the common room sipping
coffee and chatting. They could be anywhere, friends trading
stories over Folgers decaf. I wave but don't stop.

Our room is dark already. The blinds are closed, the
lights out, and I see Travis's body under the covers. I slip out of
my clothes and into pajamas and slide into bed next to him. It is
only the third or fourth time we've slept down here together in the
last month.

We have always kept an invisible line down the bed.
His side. My side. We each needed that space of our own, but
tonight the space is too big. It's been too big for a long
time.

I scooch over and rest my arm alongside his. He
stirs, so I turn on my side and whisper, "Are you awake?"

"Sort of."

"We have a plan C." It sounds ridiculous when I say
it out loud, like we are secret agents planning some covert
operation, but immediately he turns towards me and props himself on
his elbow.

"What is it?"

"I don't know. Dr. Benton left a note for us at the
hospital." I am so excited my voice is shaking.

"Do you think it's the doctor that is flying in
tomorrow? It must be that. Do you know anything about him? What did
the note say?"

"Just that tomorrow starts plan C."

He considers this. "You can't get your hopes up too
much about this, Babs. We don't have any idea what this is."

"But it's something. It's something, and something is
a good thing."

"Maybe." I can tell he isn't sure. Anger flashes
through me.

"What do you mean, maybe? Anything is better than
nothing, and nothing is what we've got now."

"I don't know, Babs. You've researched everything.
Dr. Benton has talked to every expert in the field. There's no
known answer. No sure thing. This don't happen enough for there to
be any kind of precedence." The big word slides out of his mouth
like he's comfortable with big words and trying to show off.

I know the word precedence. It's in the SAT book. It
means this hasn't happened before. I know that ain't right. I know
at least two people have died because they were allergic to this
insulin, and no amount of science could change that. I know this,
but I haven't told him.

"Then Ashley will be the precedence. She will be the
one in all them medical journals, and parents will read about her
and it will give them hope."

"I'm just saying you don't know what it is. Whatever
it is, they haven't proven it will work. Maybe it's dangerous.
Maybe it's experimental. Do you want our daughter to be some
doctor's guinea pig?"

"She already is." I'm out of bed now and scrambling
for my jeans. "I don't get you. You give me this holier-than-thou
lecture about having faith and believing, and when I finally find
something to latch onto, you tear it down."

"I just don't want you to be so desperate you'll
cling to anything, even if it's going to put Ashley in jeopardy. Do
you have any idea what some of these experiments are like?"

I pull my t-shirt on over my pajama top and pat my
hand over the dresser to find the keys. "We
are
desperate, Travis. And she's
already in jeopardy, which you'd know if you spent more than an
hour with her a couple times a week." I grab my pack of cigarettes
out of the drawer, stuff them in my pocket, and slam the door after
me. I know I've hit below the belt on the last comment, but I'm
angry and I don't care so much.

The families in the common room look up and smile
like they didn't hear anything. It's like that here. There's a lot
of hushed arguments and tears and slammed doors, because there's
just no leaving the stress at the hospital. All of us drag it back
and aim it at the only ones who care enough to be here with us. We
try to act normal, but it's no more than a house of shattered
lives, and every one of us knows it.

The back yard is quiet. Quiet meaning there's no one
there, but not that it's silent, because the city is moving all
around us. Though there's a fence and several lawn chairs, it don't
feel like a backyard to me. Beyond the fence is the parking lot of
the hospital, and too often there's the siren of an ambulance
blaring through the night. Other hospitals are close by as well, so
we're surrounded by tall buildings whose lights blaze all night. I
sit in a chair and light up a cigarette. The ritual calms me, and
after a few deep draws my hands stop shaking and my shoulders let
go some of their tension.

I miss my own house. I can't even begin to count the
amount of things I miss there. I've only been back twice, and it
felt like walking into someone else's life. My house, my clothes,
my bed and kitchen, but not my life. When Ashley is back, I think,
it will be home again. I don't let myself think of any other
possibilities.

A helicopter flies over and lands on the roof of a
nearby hospital. I wonder who it is in there, and why they're in
need of Medivac, and who might be speeding through the streets of
Austin to arrive in time to see them. Without thinking I'm praying,
God let them all be
safe and well.
I wonder if I'll ever see a helicopter again
without sending up a prayer and reliving these weeks.

When I finish the cigarette, I crush it and bury it
with my shoe in the flowerbeds before going back inside. I'm not
ready to face Travis again, so I pour a cup of coffee and join the
two ladies in the common room. We've met briefly before; one is
cancer, one is heart problems. This is how we know each other. I am
diabetes.

"Hi," cancer says as I sit. "Rough night?"

"The same," I say. The two women hmm, because here
same is not necessarily good. "How is your son?"

"Good. If good is throwing up and losing your hair
and losing weight. Which apparently with cancer is good. We keep
telling him that."

It
takes poison to kill the poison that is killing him
, I
think.

"Is it working? Do the doctors think it's
helping?"

"Oh yes. We should be going home soon." She crosses
her fingers like a child does. "We hope this will be our last
overnight visit to Children's. It's looking good. He won't be able
to play basketball in the fall, and he's more worried about that
than anything, but I think this time it's going to be gone for
good. There's plenty years of basketball left, I keep telling him.
Plenty of years."

"Have you been here a lot?"

"Two years, on and off. He was only twelve when he
was diagnosed. Isn't that your daughter's age? Anyway, it feels
like two years of childhood stolen right out from underneath him.
You'll understand. It goes by so fast. Even without the cancer, it
goes by too fast to waste precious time in the hospital."

"Did you know a Meagan? She was here not too long ago
for leukemia. Her parents stayed in our room."

Cancer sips her coffee. "Un uh. But I didn't stay
here every time Jason was admitted. I stayed with my aunt for
awhile. But there's only so much you can intrude on family. They
have their own lives, and they don't really understand. They want
to, mind you, but they just can't. And then it's just easier not to
try to make them feel comfortable with the whole thing." She drifts
off a bit into her coffee and stares at the wall.

"And your son?" I ask cardio.

"He's on the waiting list for a new heart. He's at
the top of the list now. The doctor's are really hopeful there will
be one soon." She seems hopeful.

"How old is he?" The coffee is horrible.

"Three."

We fall into silence again. We sit drinking bad
coffee until other parents begin trickling in, then we say our
goodnights and go our separate ways.

When I climb in bed again, Travis is snoring. I stay
on my side of the bed and stare at the ceiling until the light from
the moon between the blinds moves across the room and
disappears.

~~~~

In the morning Dr. Benton leaves a message on my cell
phone to meet him for lunch downtown. He gives me the address for a
Mexican restaurant. Travis and me leave the hospital around noon.
The restaurant is a small, out-of the-way place not far from the
university. My first thought is that Ashley would love it, with its
bright colors and tinny music. A string of colored chili pepper
lights runs from one side to the other, and impossibly big
sombreros and lively sarapes cover the walls. A few college-aged
kids sit in a booth in a corner, but otherwise it's empty.