The following excerpt takes place in October 2005, shortly after Helen's return to school. Helen and her father (Reuben) are the main characters.
When she got home, Helen logged her
father off on their desktop and logged herself in. He usually didn’t get home
until 5, so she had started to use the time he was away to practice her dance
steps in the living room and throw a few punches at the air. Her favorite song
for these sessions was “Hollaback Girl,” not just for the beat but mainly for
its slick depiction of confronting a vicious high school rival. She turned the
volume all the way to maximum and threw a mean right hook when she heard the
garage door open. Her father shuffled through the door from the garage to the
kitchen drenched in sweat, his cook’s apron hanging over his wrist.
“Sweet
pea, can you make dinner? I need a nap.”
Reuben fell back into the powder blue
armchair in the living room, the apron sliding off his wrist onto the floor.
Helen held her palm over his forehead. His whole face was pale and clammy, but
his forehead was hot. He barely moved when she rubbed his shoulder. Suddenly
the kitchen phone rang.
“Helen,
it’s Pete. Did your father get home okay?”
“He’s
home.”
“I
told him not to drive, but you know how he is.”
“Whoa,
whoa, whoa.” Helen lowered her voice. “What happened?”
“He
passed out at work today. Almost hit his head on the range. Good thing Jake
used to be a linebacker. No one else could have caught him.”
“Why
didn’t you call an ambulance?”
“He
started flipping out the minute someone said 911.”
Helen
took a deep breath out loud. “If it happens again, you better call.”
“I’m
sorry Leni, but I’m not his mother, I can’t tell him what to do.”
“Goodbye,
Pete.”
Helen
hung up the phone and knelt down next to the blue armchair, biting her lip as
her eyes began to water. She clasped her father’s hand in hers, praying that
the sinking feeling of doubt in her stomach was unfounded. Half an hour later,
he stirred.
“Dad?
Are you okay?” she asked.
He
wiped the sweat off his forehead and started to stand back up.
“Yeah.
Just a little tired.”
For
a few seconds, he couldn’t see his daughter anymore. Her voice sounded like it
was coming from a tunnel, screaming for him, and then faded out. There were
brown and green shadows that filled his vision. After a flash of light, everything
went black. When he came to, Helen was holding him up, barely, her knees
straining under his weight. Suddenly, she pushed him back into the chair and
ordered him to put his head between his knees. She pulled her cell phone out of
her pocket and dialed 911.
“I’m
fine,” he protested.
She
merely shook her head. “My father fainted earlier this afternoon at work and
now he collapsed in our living room… He’s conscious now… No… Yes… No… 97 Green
Valley Way. I’ll stay on.”
Five
minutes later, an ambulance was parked on the street. Helen opened the door for
the EMTs and went in the ambulance after her father. For several months, she
thought he was just tired from working long hours at the diner. He was trying
to put away more money for her college expenses, not to mention things like
prom (coming up in the spring) and long overdue repairs around the house. Most
of the waitresses and regulars at the diner had noticed that he had gotten
paler, slower, more tired. But they joked that he still had the appetite of a
teenage boy. Somehow, since he wasn’t losing weight and could still whip up the
best pancakes in Valley County, it was difficult for them to believe that he
could be sick. Helen tried to remember the last time her father had seen a
doctor for anything. He thought it wasn’t necessary, even at his age. But then,
she thought, maybe if he had seen someone they would have seen this coming. Whatever
it was.
In
the ambulance, the EMTs unbuttoned her father’s shirt halfway and rolled up his
pant legs to attach the leads for an EKG. Two leads were stuck on his calves,
one near each wrist, with a crescent moon of leads on the left side of his
chest, and a final pair of leads on the right side. Helen leaned over to look
at the EKG reading, even though she wouldn’t be able to interpret it. But she
did catch the EMTs nodding in approval of the spikes. They worked quickly, taking
his vitals, doing a finger stick for a blood sugar reading, and only commented
that his pulse was quick and weak, and he had a fever. Helen frowned. Something
was not right. She wondered how she couldn’t have noticed it earlier.
They
arrived at Westwood Hospital, dropping Reuben and Helen in the emergency department.
Before Reuben finished buttoning his shirt, the triage nurse whisked him away
to an exam room. Helen bolted after him, and was told to sit down in the
waiting room.
“You
can see him when they’re done with his bloodwork.”
“But
I’m his daughter!” she shouted out. “Let me see him.”
“Sweetheart,
you have to sit down,” the nurse insisted. “This is just going to upset you.”
“You’re
already upsetting me by keeping me out here!” Helen screamed. “I was there! I
can tell you exactly what happened!”
She
began to step towards the patient care unit, and the nurse threatened to call
security.
“Can’t
you tell me why I can…?”
No
one answered her. Most of the people in the waiting room glanced in her
direction, looked her over, pausing to read her eyes, and returned to their
month-old copies of People and Better
Homes and Gardens. She wondered what they
were looking for. Did they think she was crazy or something? One of the women
scolded her son for turning around in his chair to watch her, telling him not
to stare. Ten seconds later, Helen caught her looking at her.
Helen
kept twisting her hair around her fingers and tapping her toes. She
periodically stood up to take the pressure off her tailbone and walk around.
She had waited almost two hours when a middle-aged woman with a lot of
turquoise jewelry approached her.
“Helen,
I’m Sasha Pearlman,” she said slowly, annunciating her name. She placed her
hand over her heart. “I’m a social worker.”
“Where’s
my father?”
“Honey,
I think we should meet in my office first.” Sasha placed her hand gingerly on
Helen’s arm, as if she were a lost child.
“No,”
Helen protested. “Tell me where he is.”
“We’re
trying to get a clearer picture of your family,” Sasha continued, walking
through the side exit of the ED, towards a pathetic looking side office. The
bookshelves were overstuffed with social work journals, binders and loose
papers.
“What
do you need to know about our family?”
“We
feel that one of the most important components of healing is a supportive home
environment. Now, we need to know who else you and your father live with.”
“No
one.”
“So
your mother and father are divorced?”
Helen’s
eyes widened. “He’s a widower. Don’t you have that in your file?”
“I’ll
write that down… Now, when did your mother pass away?”
“When
I was born. October 20, 1988.”
“Oh.
Is there anyone else in your family who you and your father rely on for
support?”
Helen
sighed. “We rely on each other.”
“No,
dear, I mean, if one of you were in serious trouble, who would you call? Your
grandparents? An aunt or uncle? Cousins?”
“No.
It’s always just been us.” Helen scoffed. “You don’t have to make that sad
face. We’ve gotten along just fine by ourselves.”
“If
that’s the case, I’m going to have you meet with Dr. Kingston now.”
Dr.
Kingston was very quiet when Helen arrived at her father’s bedside. She
straightened out her lab coat and told Helen to sit down.
“I’m
not sure what to tell you both,” she murmured. “We got the test results back.
Mr. Fiennes, your B cells are elevated. Those are a kind of white blood cell.
That concerns us because it could suggest some serious illnesses.”
“Like
what?” Helen asked.
“Leukemia.”
“What?”
“We
have to do more testing to figure out what we’re dealing with, exactly. In the
mean time, we want to keep your father overnight so we can give him a platelet
transfusion. We think that might help bring some of his numbers back to
normal.”
When
Dr. Kingston left, Reuben started to shudder. Tears pooled in his eyes.
Watching him, Helen felt her stomach sinking into a pit. The beeping of the
cardiac monitors and pagers in the ER, and even the moaning of a woman who had
been in a car accident, no longer hit her. She inhaled, and pushed away the
anger she had felt towards Jess, towards Kristen, and even towards Max. As a
wave of new nurses and doctors broke through the curtain, she forced herself to
stand up straighter, and lift up her chin. Her father had stopped listening,
not even blinking when one of the doctors mentioned a bone marrow biopsy. Helen
grabbed his shoulder.
“Dad.”
She nudged him again. “Dad, we can go home. They want to do the biopsy tomorrow
morning. I told them I’d drive you.”
“No,”
he dismissed. “Leni, you have school tomorrow.”
“Um,
I think driving your father to a biopsy counts as an excused absence.”
“That’s
not what I meant,” he whispered.
“Can
you give us a minute?” Helen asked the resident oncologist who had been
hovering over her shoulder.
She
drew the curtain closed and leaned in. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“Helen
Grace, I can’t let you do this.” He clasped her hand. “I’m supposed to be
taking care of you. Not the other way around.”
“Dad,
you can’t fight something like leukemia by yourself.”
“Honey,
no one’s said for certain that I have it.”
“No,
Dad. They did.” She paused. “I think you drifted off when that guy Dr. Kutzner
was talking. He wants to do the bone marrow biopsy to see how bad it is.”
“Damn.”
“We’re
going to beat this thing,” she told him and herself.
No comments:
Post a Comment