Going Too Far(35)
Author: Jennifer Echols

As if John and I were on a shopping date.

He tried the locked door of Dixie Dental and played his flashlight beam around the waiting room. Offhandedly he said, "We haven’t talked about anything important the whole shift."

"Like?" I hoped he meant we should talk about 6:01 a.m. Thursday, which was approximately two hours from now. I hoped we were back on.

"Like cancer," he said.

Now (here was a disappointment. But I could tell this was really bothering him. He avoided my eyes and kept examining Dixie Dental’s posters of smiling cartoon tooth people, to make it easier for me to answer.

"I wouldn’t have pushed you so hard if I’d known," he said. "Don’t ask me how I went to high school with you and never heard about it."

I followed him as he walked up to Bama Blinds, Curtains, and More, which strangely did not have window coverings. He tried that door. I focused on where I was walking. Despite looking down, or maybe because of it, I tripped over my own feet and nearly fell trying to avoid a crack. I didn’t want to break my mother’s back. In fact, of all the things I regretted about the way I handled leukemia (or failed miserably to do so), I was most sorry for worrying my mother. Every time my dad guilted me about her, I just wanted even more to escape, which got me in more trouble. I wished I could take it all back.

Lord knew how many times I’d broken my mother’s back already. And the walkway awning seemed awfully low all of a sudden. I stepped off the sidewalk and into the empty parking lot, where it was safer. Tall light poles held up the dark blue starless sky.

"The treatment dragged on until I was a sophomore," I said. "But all the business of my hair falling out, the ambulance rushing to school to pick me up when I collapsed in the hall, everything that would get your attention—that was in eighth grade, middle school, when you were already in ninth grade at the high school. There’s no reason you would have heard about it. And it doesn’t even make sense for me to get on you about your cigarettes. I didn’t get cancer by smoking cigarettes. I got it because I’m lucky. I guess I just don’t want anyone else to go through that."

Especially not you. I thought it, but I couldn’t say it.

He turned on the sidewalk and faced me, looking down at me below him in the parking lot. "Tell me what happened," he coaxed.

"Oh, no. It’s not a big deal. I know I act like it is, but…"

The sickeningly inspirational Phil Collins song came through the speakers. I couldn’t help smiling.

"Okay, I’ll tell you, because this is my theme song. ‘Look Through My Ass.’"

John showed me his dimples. "I think it’s ‘Look Through My Eyes.’"

"No, no, no. See, I had an adverse reaction to the chemotherapy. They kept switching me to different drugs and starting over. I was on my deathbed for months. In fact, the ambulance Tiffany’s riding around in now was my deathbed."

Nodding to show me he was still listening, he turned away and shone his flashlight into the store again so I could talk, which I appreciated. As he finished examining Bama Blinds, Curtains, and More and moved up the sidewalk to the next store, he half turned to make sure I followed along with him in the parking lot.

I explained over the music, "I had to get all these MRIs so they could keep track of my multiple organ failure. I don’t know if you’ve ever had an MRI, but they slide you headfirst into this excruciatingly small tube. I would always close my eyes and sing this song at the top of my lungs to the creepy radiologist looking at pictures of the inside of my body. I swear, it’s this sweet song from a Disney movie they showed in the rec room on the pediatric ward, and it’s got the highfalutin full-blown orchestra and the violins and everything, and then there’s Phil Collins singing, ‘Look through my aaaaaaaaaass.’"

John’s shoulders shook with laughter. He actually lowered his flashlight, closed his eyes, and let himself do nothing but laugh for a few seconds.

And I glowed, just from making John laugh.

I was such an idiot.

He let out one last small laugh and continued up the sidewalk. "That’s where your claustrophobia came from," he called over his shoulder.

"No."

Chapter 14

What happened was, I was running every day in PE, and I started to feel really tired. That’s how they found out I had leukemia. They told me I needed treatment that would make me feel a lot worse than the disease. I told them where to go. My mom got mad and said I was vain and I didn’t want my hair to fall out. Well, yeah, that was an issue. But the problem was more that I didn’t feel like I was dying. I knew I was dying because they told me, but I didn’t feel like I was dying. I just felt tired. And if I took chemo, I’d feel like I was dying. The doctor’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he called in the hospital’s child psychologist to convince me.

She wanted me to post to the supportive cancer blog online and sign up for summer cancer camp. Cancer can be fun! I told her what I thought of cancer camp. That’s when I dyed my hair pink, before one of the psych appointments. It hasn’t been my natural color since. Just my little way of saying screw you. Not that I had anything against this poor lady. She was doing her job. But I didn’t want to be counseled. I wanted not to be dying. They switched me to a different psychologist, a man who used tough love, to no avail. I’d lived through thirteen years of tough love from my dad. I told Mr. Psychologist where he could put his tough love.

The first treatment day came and went. I refused to do it. They waited a few days and counseled me some more and wheedled and pleaded and almost had me convinced, but I backed out at the last minute. By that time my mom was all cried out, always sitting in a comfy chair and crocheting oceans of blue afghan like it would cushion her from reality, and my dad was fed up. He told me I was killing my mother. He said we would go to this third chemo appointment and I would let them put the IV in my arm and I would smile while they did it or there would be no more iPod, no more TV, no more friends, no more meeting boys at the movies, grounded for life. Fine. We got to the hospital in Birmingham a little early. I asked my parents if we could drive to Dreamland and grab some barbecue to go for my last meal before I started taking chemo and barfing. I asked nicely. They said sure. My dad left me and my mom in the car while he went in. I asked my mom if I could have a sweet tea with my barbecue. She said sure and went inside after my dad.

I bailed out of the car and took off running up Thirteenth Avenue, running for my life. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. I didn’t get far. Birmingham is uphill both ways and, oh yeah, I had leukemia. I made it past ten houses and around a bend in the road before I collapsed in somebody’s azaleas. It was about this time of year, chilly but everything was blooming. A cherry tree scattered delicate pink petals across me as I lay there. That’s when I finally realized I was going to die. And what was I being so emo about? People died every day. I was nothing special. On the other hand, most girls my age, like Tiffany and Julie Meadows and LaShonda Smith, were sitting in algebra class at that very moment, humming pop songs and memorizing the Pythagorean theorem while I was expiring in a stranger’s shrubbery. Why me? I had been just like them until a few weeks before. But I wasn’t one of them anymore. Now I was a teenager who defied her parents and cussed at adults. Dying made more sense now that I deserved it.