The Gift

I wake up in the morning knowing I had weird dreams but not able to remember them. My eyes still closed; I feel a hand run across the top of my spiky hair. I open my eyes and turn my head.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” my mom says to me.

“Morning,” I say, sounding groggy.

“Had a sleeping pill I see,” she says with a smile.

“Been a hard few days,” I tell her.

She raises an eyebrow and says, “Oh? The nurse said you were doing well.”

I quickly reassure her I am doing okay, and that it isn’t me but some other kids here. Mom knows as well as I do now I’m doing. She’s very involved in my treatment, progress, and prognosis, even though she can’t be here with me all the time.

I actually prefer it that way. She would smother me.

My dad works full time and then some, to pay for all of this. They don’t discuss it with me, but even I know that insurance only covers so much. Mom works part-time as a Real Estate agent, so she can make her own schedule.

She spends as much time as she can with me, but I force her to spend time with dad. This gives me some alone time (well, non-parental time)., as well as some together time for them. If I didn’t force the issue, the only time they would see each other was my seemingly infrequent stays at home.

“How’s Dad?” I ask.

“He’s good, sweety. He told me to tell you he sends his love and he’ll be down this weekend. Says he misses hugging his teddy bear.”

I smile at that. Even though I don’t see much of him, we are close. I wouldn’t call myself a daddy’s girl, because I grew up being more tomboyish, but I do have my girly moments and dad has no problem going from one extreme to the other.

We could spend the day fishing up at Big Bear lake, clean up, then go dress shopping.

Being thirteen has, however, caused one small issue. One that I use to tease him mercilessly. See, he has no problem shopping with me, expect when it comes to undergarments. Together we can shop for Mom and pick and choose the lacy kind for her, but he goes red if I guess the same types of things for me.

It’s only recently that I’ve even begun to be interested in the frilly and lacy types of things. I’ve thought about it and have decided that it’s because, in part, that I probably won’t be around to fully appreciate it later on. I know it’s partly the depression talking as well.

All the things I’ll miss out on: Boyfriends, kissing, probably sex (or so I’ve been told), marriage, kids, growing old with someone to love and to love me.

Dad lets me buy the girly things, but he won’t help me pick them out. I guess it’s my form of teenage rebellion torture. While Dad won’t complain and he’ll happily buy me whatever I pick out, I don’t do it very often. There’s really no reason to. I spend so much time in the hospital it’s moot.

I’m here enough and stable enough to wear my own pajamas (which my mom stocks and washes) rather than being stuck with the typical butt-shot hospital gown, or the itchy hospital pjs, but why wear girly things when I’m trying to maintain feeling human and probably couldn’t manage pretty with both Mom’s and Nurse Lacey’s help.

Doctors and nurses are taught to ignore things like nudity and sexuality with patients, and I certainly wouldn’t be doing it for them, so… pointless, right?

Anyway, I guess I had been quiet for too long because I her Mom ask, “You zoning on me? What to go back to sleep?”

“No, mom, just thinking about how much I miss dad.

“I smell breakfast, have you eaten?”

She shakes her head no, and says, “I wanted to surprise you. Surprise!”

I hold u my arms – I want a hug. I need a hug. She gets up and obliges me, and when she finally let’s go I tell her, “Go get breakfast and we can eat together.”

“You need anything before I go?” she asks.

“My slippers. I need to tinkle,” I say. Stupid IV.

She grabs e bear feet while I raise the head of the bed and lower the whole thing. Throwing back my covers, I turn and Mom puts my slippers on my feet for me, which is good because my pump must have been working overtime throughout the night. Putting pressure on my bladder might have caused it to explode or something.

I stand up, grab my metal and plastic companion, and shoo my Mom away to go get her food while I did my morning usual.

Finishing the process of emptying what seemed to be several gallons (you think exaggeration, I think not), I flush and shuffle out to the sink to wash my hands and face.

Humm, hair still too short for, well, anything, so I run my fingers through it, making it stick up a little and not look slept on.

Feeling a little blue, I start making faces in the mirror when someone walked in. My curtains were pulled back so the whole room was open and visible. I turn slightly, tongue still sticking out and did a mental head slap when I saw who it was.

It was nurse Jason H. He wouldn’t tell me what his last name was. Said I would make fun of him if he told me. I might have if I didn’t get tongue-tied when he was around. He was cute. Another nurse finally gave in and told me his last name – Heidi.

I knew he must have been teased a lot when he was younger. Well, maybe through high school and possibly college too.

“Well, I can see the cat didn’t get your tongue. Trying to get a fly to land on it?” he asks.

I go red and my ears feel hot as I put my tongue back into my mouth. I say, “I kinda bit my tongue in my sleep and was just looking at it.” I probably should have just told him the truth, which I’m sure he would have understood, but it was too late now.

“Want me to take a look?” he asks, eyebrows cocked like he knows I just lied to him.

I quickly shake my head no, a little too fast and the room spins some and I grab my IV pole to steady myself.

He sets my breakfast tray down quickly and came over to me. The room stopped spinning and I look up at him and see concern on his face.

“I’m okay,” I assure him.

“Come on, let’s get you back in bed. I might as well give you a once over before you start eating just to make sure you’re okay.”

I think I blush again.

We walk together over to the bed and he sits me down. I was going to kick my slippers off but Jason beat me to it. He took them off, setting them down on the floor and then he checked the circulation in both feet.

After checking the pulse points on the top and inside ankle of both feet, he ran a fingernail up the sole of my feet, causing them to curl – and for me to get goosebumps. “Well,” he says standing, “Your feet are there and they seem to function correctly. They do, however, smell like forest.”

I was now burning up and wholly mortified. He just said I smelled.

Stepping aside, he bent and put his hand under my legs, raising them and turning me into the bed. Straightening, he put a hand on my shoulder and tells me, “Relax. It was a bear joke. Not a very good one from your reaction either. Straighten.”

I sat up straight knowing what was coming next. His hand went up the back of my shirt and he pressed the cold metal circle against my skin. I must have jumped a little as he says, “Sorry.”

It’s a strange sensory mix having a cold metal disk and a warm palm both together on my back.

I inhale through my nose and out through my moth several times, as he moves the stethoscope around, listening to all five lobes of my lungs.

Pulling his hand out of my top he says, “You’ve got two lungs alright. Doesn’t sound like you swallowed any whistles or squeaky toys.”

He rubs the stethoscope diaphragm across his palm to warm it up more and hands it to me saying, “You’re turn.”

The female nurses do this themselves as do most doctors, but it’s nice to be given a little privacy and dignity sometimes. When you’re in a situation like this – poked, prodded, and gawked at by doctors, nurses, then numerous imaging techs and seemingly everyone under the sun, you grow dull to people looking at you wearing next to nothing, or in some cases nothing at all. It’s easier for kids because your body isn’t really an issue, but as soon as you go through puberty you start feeling a little self-conscious being naked or exposed to strangers (or worse yet, people you know, like certain male nurses).

Nurse Jason bent over slight as I put the stethoscope up the front of my pajama top, expertly placing it over my heart for him to listen to it. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them, looking into my eyes.

Such pretty blue eyes. Gah, there goes my ears again.

He nodded slightly and I removed the disk from my top. Looping it around his neck he says, “Good news and bad. Bad news is your ticker isn’t ticking. The good news is it’s going thub-dub over and over, which is actually a better sound. It does sound a little fast however.”

Doh! I say nothing.

He checks my central line site, then pulls over the blood pressure machine and checks my BP, pulse, temp, and pulse-ox all at the same time, pulling out a little notebook and writing the results in it.

“Your BP is a little low, which is why you were dizzy. You had…Vertigo.” He knows I’m a big U2 fan. We both smile. It’s a game we play, talking in song titles.

He pushes my table with my breakfast over to me. It feels like all this has taken an hour, but it’s only been a few minutes.

Brushing something off my table he says, “Crumbs from your table.” And so it begins!

Looking at my tray I see a packet. Perfect! “Wild Honey?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “You forgot… Grace.”

“All because of you.”

He tsks. “With or without you.”

I shrug. “One step closer.”

“Pride,” he says shaking his head.

I smile. “Magnificent!”

He slumps his shoulders and says, “Moment of Surrender.”

“Walk on.”

He turns and heads towards the door, saying, “Peace on Earth.”

“Beautiful Day.”

“Love and Peace, or Else.”

“Breathe.”

Reaching the door, he turns and waves his hand by his nose saying, “Raised by Wolves.”

I stick my tongue out at him and he winks at me. He glances out the door, then back at me saying, “Sometimes you can’t make it on your own,” and walks out waving goodbye.