Jenna Lassen

Fiction Writing - Nam Le

08C:097:003

 

He was eight years old again, breathless and dropping to his knees in the packed snow. The sun was low, setting ablaze iced fields. The brilliant light was chased by a muted violet, and the violet bled into the deep dark of country night. He should be getting back to the house, to supper, but he wanted to stay. His chore pants were soaked and stiff at the knees, and his toes were numb. His hands were freezing, his cheeks at once flamed and chilled. He was so satisfied.  

     Though home and family were not a half mile behind, he was the only person on earth. There was only his breath, disappearing in front of him, sharp and fresh when he inhaled. There was only the heat in his cheeks and the heavy, solid weight of his body against the drift. He wanted to lay down and be still forever, watching the twilight give way to stars.

 

Lately, waking up was unpleasant. His tongue was coated, and there was this overwhelming taste in his mouth, a smell in his nose and throat. It reminded him of the deceptively-sweet coating on pills, and he had to take shallow breaths to avoid gagging. His eyes were tired and dry, blinking hard when he wanted to focus on something. Though his arms were thin lengths of bone and tissue, prone at his sides, he knew it would take an appreciable effort to lift or adjust them.

He tried not to focus on any sensations or discomforts below the waist. Despite how quickly and thoroughly his physical dignity (likewise his hair, body fat, and sense of humor) had been reduced by his body’s betrayal, he was still embarrassed to have to urinate through a tube.  The nurse who changed his bags was definitely indifferent to their one interaction, but he was wont to avert his eyes anyway.  This, among other things, was another reason waking was starting to be tedious. But he had been to this stage before and knew tedium was preferable to its successor, apathy. He knew the cycle of attitudes attributed to a dying man. He knew a lot of things he would gladly, on a quick, cloying breath, give away forever.

“I’m here,” Janene announced absently, loudly, as she walked into the room with an armload of magazines. She didn’t look at him.

He made a noise in his throat and tried not to look petulant. They had fought yesterday – yesterday? – about... something. Something about the house. He wasn’t sure.

“I called the furniture place and told them to hold that set,” she said.

Couches. And a big reading chair, yes. Sage.

“Good, that’s fine,” he said, swallowing. “Do whatever.”

“Okay. And what about the color?”

“I hate green. But do whatever.”

She sighed, fully exercising her lung-capacity, and finally looked at him. Her dark hair was cropped shorter than usual, exposing her over-tan neck, making her cheeks look fuller. She had put on weight recently, but she always did when he was in the hospital. She used to joke that for every pound he lost, she gained two. After the second round of cancer, that joke was shelved.

When they first met, she had long, straight hair that touched the middle of her back. She started cutting it short when they had their first baby. He tried to picture that long hair on her now and was distracted by her eyes, still boring into his.

“Oh...what?”

Her look softened and he felt the familiar grip of her pity lifting him off the hook once again. Love, she had corrected him on the day it was laid out just how good he really had it. But her look meant pity if he made it pity, and today he wasn’t in love.

“Dr. Bailey give the results for Tuesday yet?” she asked, opening a magazine.   

“No.” His back still ached from Tuesday. A spot he couldn’t reach to soothe and wasn’t allowed to touch anyway. This was the big one – the results would spell out a long, retractable recovery or a whirlwind finish. “Nate call?”

“Last night. He’s such a lifesaver. I really don’t know what I’d do, Evan. So reassuring, so calm,” she said, shaking her head and shrugging. Her dangly earrings caught the light from the window and made patterns dance on his sheets and across the wall.

“Yeah,” he said, unmoved.

Nathan was his younger brother, a physician back in Iowa. He had been the one to patiently and thoroughly explain to Evan what multiple myeloma - the cancer that made quick work of his white blood cells, feasted on his marrow - truly was, even after his own doctors had confused and agitated him with words meant to dispel panic, foster stoic resolve. There had been no stoicism in Nathan’s sincere explanation.

“You’re going be one hurting guy, Ev. You’re going to be puking your guts out with the chemo. You’re gonna feel tired. Very tired. It’s rough,” he said meaningfully, and Evan could picture him at his kitchen counter, receiver pinched between ear and neck, red hands balancing his weight on the countertop. “I’d warn you about hair-loss, but you’re already ugly,” Nathan added.

Janene saw the corners of her husband’s mouth lift and reciprocated, finishing with, “He’s a God-send.”

She started talking about the dimensions of their future kitchen; she got to tile options, and he wished she would leave. He’d let her use his retirement money to remodel, and now his days contained an excess of color swatches and knob-options. He wanted to be alone. No. He was constantly alone, constantly without energy. He wanted to sleep, but not the uncomfortable, queasy rest of late. He wanted those drugs, the good ones they administered after his last marrow transplant. The ones that made him dream in thick, syrupy colors and remarkable smells. He wanted to wake up tasting random memories and not his chalky nausea pills.

“I have to go to the office before I get the dogs,” Janene said, shoving the magazines into her bulky tote and stopping close to him, running two soft knuckles along his jaw gently, briefly. “Let me know when they’ve got the results. Have someone call, kay?”

“Kay,” he said, shrugging down into his bed. The temperature in his room always seemed to drop when she left, and colors melted off the walls. He was glad to be free of the responsibility of alertness, but he missed the sweep and jump of the light from her earrings.

When he next awoke, the results had been in for hours. This time, the cancer would kill him.

 

     Mercedes wore a chunky silver cross on a black ribbon around her neck, and she was insufferable.

     “Give me a smile today, Evan,” she would say flirtatiously, her accent warping his name into a tease.

     “How’s my baby blue-eyes?” she’d croon, opening his shades when he only wanted it dark, quiet.

     “Jesus loves you, honey,” was the worst and most frequent, whispered firmly as she patted his hairless head or made a show of tucking him in.

     She had started showing up when they moved him into the ICU. She was gorgeous, vivacious, smelled oh, just so good – and he hated her. He was finally on his way out, and she was standing in the way of his peaceful exit. If it were easier to draw breath, easier to fight back, she’d know exactly what to do with that cross.

     “Good morning, Sunshine!” she said. “Is Janene coming today? Do I get you to myself?” she asked, checking his chart. She frowned briefly and took the pen from the clipboard, marking something before looking at his eyes. Hers were deep brown and wide, always clear. She wore purple scrubs and small, turquoise earrings shaped like teardrops.

Sometimes she sang in Spanish, other times she recited scripture. Always she checked the chart, checked his fluids, checked the IV, checked his pulse, checked his breathing, checked the monitors. She finished by clamping a warm hand around his foot, checking to see if his toes were cold. He hated that especially.

“So, I’ve got a little time today,” she said, sitting comfortably beside him on the bed, her thigh almost up against his. “We can finally have a nice conversation.”

He felt like crying and turned his head, ashamed and pathetic. Anger turned to childlike frustration when you couldn’t fight back. His throat was tight and he wanted her to disappear, to lift away like vapor. He wanted to be alone. She took his hand.

“Evan, pobrecito,” she said softly, her contralto voice warm like her palm. “We never talk anymore.”

“Go away,” he grunted into his pillow, feeling better. She must have adjusted his fentanyl drip.

She smiled, “Do you want to hear a bible story?”

“No,” he said firmly, secretly pleased with the attitude in his voice and with the warmth spreading through his limbs.

“Well, then, how ‘bout you tell me more stories?” she suggested.

His brow furrowed. More?

“Finish the one about bike racing in the mountains. You didn’t get to the end. After your friend fell off – that one.”

 How did she know that? He didn’t remember...must have...

“Not that one,” he said stubbornly.

“Then, how ‘bout when you were a vet. Tell me animal stories.”

He was a vet. Yes. He’d practiced out of the university, lecturing Tuesdays, Thursday mornings. But it was...distant; he couldn’t remember the details. He closed his eyes and the temperature in the room jumped 20 degrees. His face was screwed up tight, his jaw pressed right up against the heifer’s muscular backside. He grimaced and breathed through his mouth, one gloved arm so deep inside the animal that he seemed a part of the strong, steaming insides.

He opened his eyes to grab an instrument near his feet, but Mercedes was there instead. He was disoriented and blamed her.

“No, not animals,” he said grumpily, getting his bearings.

“Fine,” she said, bemused, handing him ice chips in a plastic cup. “You choose.”

He sucked on the ice and looked at the V of her top, the cross hanging centered on her gold skin.

“Last fall we went to Arizona,” he started.

“You and Janene.”

“And she wanted to do this flea market, and it was the desert. I didn’t want to,” he continued, remembering how dry, how hot it was, how he had only just started feeling good again. “But we went and there was this tent. A little Crow woman and her sons...they were making these planters, big, ugly planters.”

“Like to pot flowers in?” she asked.

“And they had some there to sell...some were just plain, but there was this one, an armadillo, it was glazed. Had to weigh over sixty pounds. Huge, probably three feet long and ugly...terrible. It was 250 bucks, but I had to have it,” he added, looking up at Mercedes, raising his head off the pillow. “I bought it from those Indians and planted tulips in it. Big Dutch tulips like my mom would grow.”

She didn’t respond and he laid his head back on the pillow in defeat.

“No. I didn’t do that,” he said, closing his eyes, so sad. “I liked that stupid thing, though.” He raised a thin wrist encircled by hospital bracelets and covered his eyes with cool fingertips. “I wanted it and forgot about it...but when I had to come back to the hospital I remembered...I felt...” he stopped and swallowed thickly. “I never bought that stupid thing.”

Mercedes lifted his hand from his forehead and patted it, laid it on his chest. “Don’t worry about it, honey,” she soothed. “Tell me a different story.”

He shook his head. No more stories. He was ready to sleep now.

“Tell me again about when you were a little boy, playing in the snow and watching the sun set,” she said, rising from the bed and lifting the covers up over his arms.

“I never told you about that,” Evan replied softly before sinking into dream.

 

Whenever he was lucid, someone was crying: Janene, eyes red, blowing her nose, pinching his arm with her grip; Shondra from the department, not touching him or even looking at his eyes; his nieces, Nate’s daughters, praying over him as tears wet their faces; his children, spouses in tow, clutching his hands angrily, literally at a loss.

Today it was raining, pattering against the window, and Evan felt disconnected and good. He was sick of the blubbering and lied to Janene, told her he was too tired for visitors. She kissed him fiercely on the head and left to go home and shower. He waited patiently for Mercedes to come and tried not to look too hopeful when she entered moments later. He was unsuccessful. She beamed.

“You finally love me!”

“Get over yourself,” he said, his voice gravelly. “Look at this.”

“Who’s it from?” she asked, ignoring his chart and coming close, lifting the card to which he was pointing from the nightstand.

“My nieces.”

She read it and, to his irritation, started crying.

“It’s from John,” she said, snatching a kleenex from the box and dabbing her eyes. She folded the card and sat next to him. “John 16:33.”

“Read it.”

“I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

“They’ve been trying to save me for six years,” he said skeptically.

“Is it working?” she asked, blowing her nose.

“What ‘things,’ Mercedes?”

She looked up.

“Says, ‘I’ve told you these things,’” he pressed.

She took a cleansing breath and considered, saying, “Well, when Jesus said it, I think he was talking to his disciples. He was telling them about how he would soon die, and how they shouldn’t...falter, under trouble. ‘Cause he’d already fought the battle for them.”

“What is that supposed to do for me?” he asked, unmoved.

“Well,” she spoke slowly, thoughtfully, “I suppose your nieces were talking about your fighting the cancer-” She stopped at the look he made.

He hated that phrase – fighting cancer. It was no fight; there was no battle. He and cancer never duked it out. It was more like standing there, unaided, while his body and cancer took turns breaking him. The only thing that fought the cancer was the chemo, and that had turned on him, too. There was no fight, no glory. There was no peace. He told her so.

“Oh, Evan,” she said with such compassion he had to look away.

“Leave me alone, Mercedes,” he said flatly, tired of all the emotion he didn’t understand or feel.

She was gone when he opened his eyes. He struggled, reaching down near his legs where the card lay and, grabbing it, tucked it gently under the blankets by his side to look at again later.

 

On a Wednesday night, he started to crash. His body locked up, jerking as something worse than dry heaves left his chest quaking and his throat tight. He could relax every few minutes, but he got so cold he would shiver and tense-up again. Little noises came out of his throat, but he was too overwhelmed to be embarrassed. It hurt. Oh, oh. Help. It...it was so bad. So bad.

Janene held on to his arm plaintively, pathetically, as the evening oncology staff did what they could. Basically, they maxed his painkillers and exchanged loaded glances. Time stopped with every irregular inhalation, starting again when he focused on the sounding monitors, still keeping rhythm. He wanted Mercedes, sure the only thing for him was her low voice, her warm hands, her distraction. He asked for her, but the nurses looked at him as if he were speaking in tongues. They were useless, talking to the doctors in important tones as they stood around him. The morphine was more effective, and he let go of the sheets as he stabilized. Janene took a tissue and dried the wet line running from his eyes to ears. His jaw was set and his face was red, mottled from exertion.  

“Oh, darling. Oh, my dear. Oh, my Evan,” she whispered chokingly, as if he wasn’t even there. She wiped her own eyes and left the room, still whispering.

He wanted to cry out to her. He wanted her to stay. Don’t leave me. Oh, don’t.  But his voice was trapped, and his pleading eyes were unnoticed by the nurses who filed out next. He could feel himself sinking; he was being swallowed. A roaring hole, an eddy of delirium, was spinning him in. He let it.

  

 

“Do you think he can hear us?” Evan asked, eyes closed, cheek smashed against her taut belly.

“He?” She raised an eyebrow, running her fingernails through the hair at his nape.

He shrugged. “Just a hunch,” he grinned, letting his hands span her girth, smoothing to her back, to that slight dip he loved. The tips of her long hair brushed over his hands. He let his fingers tickle her spine and gasped when the floor dropped out from under them. They were falling, and he could only lock his arms around them as tightly as he could, praying with his eyes squeezed shut. Oh, Jesus. Please, Jesus. Oh, help. God.

He didn’t remember landing, but it must have been easy. Everything was easy. His arms were tired, though. He let her go, flexing his fingers, and was surprised by the solid thunk of her body hitting the snow. But it wasn’t Janene, and no wonder his arms were tired. He got on his knees and realized it was getting dark, because he had trouble making out the ridges and details of the clay armadillo. His hands slid over it, the glaze like ice. In the twilight you could hardly tell its color. But he knew it. He sighed and laid down on the packed snow, keeping his hand on the glittering green.

They would call him in to supper soon, and he would probably be in trouble with his things so wet. But he couldn’t leave his prize, couldn’t just leave it to the freezing Iowa night. He’d worked so hard for it - fought so, so hard. What would they think of him, showing up without it? He turned his head and saw stars reflecting on the unyielding armor. So heavy. He probably wouldn’t even be able to lift it again.

Lying there, he watched puffs of breath disappear, tracing constellations with his gaze. A long sigh emptied his chest, and he closed his eyes against the stars. He would not take it with him. He realized he had paid dearly and much, for what?  A piece of clay, frozen and cracking on the snow beside him. And it no longer glittered for him. Oh, how light he felt. His hands were free, his cheeks warm. It was late, and he got to his knees, taking a few grounding breaths before standing and heading home. It was dark, but he knew where he was going.

   

He woke up when Mercedes started pulling socks onto his feet. He cracked open his eyes. She smiled apologetically.

“Your toes were popsicles.”

He took a few testing, slow breaths, shifted his body a bit. Someone had opened the window, and the cool air felt good in his lungs. He felt tired, but...there was something else. He felt full, satisfied. He looked at Mercedes, backlit by the window, humming something nice and dumping Janene’s styrofoam coffee cups into the garbage. His chest filled with gratitude, with hope for the first time in six very long years. He wanted to tell her a new story.

“Mercedes,” he said softly, because it was a secret.

“Honey?”

“I was wrong, so many things...”

She smiled gently and ran two knuckles along his jaw.

“Tell me again,” he said earnestly. “Tell me that verse.”

She exhaled knowingly and sat down next to him, comfortable, her necklace catching the red light from a monitor and flashing it back to him. Once, twice. Her voice was low and rich, and he was glad to be awake.

“I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace...”