Chapter 10

We withdrew Andrew from high school just two weeks after I was transformed into a superhero.

“We’ll be back soon,” I told the principal behind a fake smile. “He just needs to concentrate on getting better.”

What they didn’t know was that neither Jon nor myself thought it would happen any time soon. We were hoping he could start again the next fall and repeat his sophomore year, but we weren’t sure if that was possible.

True to her word, Becki had been sending us help in the form of meals and drivers for Hannah to get to and from her after-school activities. But with Andrew home full time, we needed more.

“I can’t get Andrew to talk to me,” I told Becki during one of her visits to the house.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“He just won’t share how he feels about any of this.”

“You said he likes stories,” she said. “I’ve been thinking of sending over a woman to help with some things and read to Andrew. She’s great, and I really think he will like her.”

“I’m not sure…” I said, not wanting to sound ungrateful.

“Why?”

Truthfully, I didn’t want anyone to see what went on in our home. If it was nightmarish to me, it would be horrifying to anyone else.

“I think you are all exhausted and it would be good for Andrew to see a new face. Think about it,” she added.

I was curious. I would never have thought to have someone over to read to him.

“Who is this person?” I finally asked.

“I call her, ‘Books on Tape’ Sue. She’s amazing! Let her help you. And trust me, she can handle it.” When I didn’t answer, she said, “She’ll be here tomorrow.”

How did she know that I was worried about someone else caring for Andrew? When I called, I thought she would offer more help with Hannah, or even someone to run errands for me, but with that simple line: Trust me, she can handle it, she had cut through my anxiety and allowed me to breathe.

The next day, ‘Books on Tape’ Sue walked into our home and into our chaos. Andrew was in the bathroom, lying on the cold tile floor, clad only in his oversized underwear. His pain and nausea had been so demanding that even the highest dose of narcotics I could safely give him offered little relief.

I was upstairs when I heard a knock at the door, followed by a hesitant, “Hello?”

“Just a minute!” I was mortified Sue was in my home, and was secretly cursing Becki’s hare-brained idea.

Sue climbed the stairs and found me wrestling with the cord of an oscillating fan near the sink in hopes of cooling Andrew’s scorching body. Sue dropped her purse and crawled onto the floor next to Andrew. “Hi Andrew. I heard you like stories. Can I read to you? We can sit right here.”

Andrew flicked an eye in her direction. A long minute later I heard, “I like hero stories. Stories like The Hunger Games.”

I ran to his room in search of the book. I didn’t know why he had chosen such a gruesome tale. He had insisted on it at the library, along with a World War II documentary, Harry Potter, Calvin & Hobbes comics, and an assortment of Judy Blume books. None of it made sense to me—the cacophony of young children’s books, fantasy and war.

“Who’s your favorite hero?” Sue asked.

“Shadow,” I heard him reply.

He was talking about that strange black and red hedgehog again. I kept finding the small plastic action figure in his pockets or school bag, even perched on top of the TV.

“Is Shadow that cool black and red guy with the crazy spiky hair? My grandson loves him!” Sue said.

A look of surprise crossed Andrew’s face, and for just a second, a hint of a smile. In that moment, I fell in love with Sue. Her easy manner and the way she engaged with Andrew changed everything. Sue quickly became his comrade in adventure. She easily slipped into conversations with my son, something I hadn’t been able to do for a long time. Each day she visited, Sue would weave new stories together aloud at Andrew’s instruction and the two of them were off into their own world. For weeks they explored the life of a quirky boy named Fudge, in old Judy Blume books, and read and reread tales of young men and maidens warring against evil in order to save the world from fear and destruction. And some days, when he was well enough, they left the books inside, choosing instead to sit on the porch with Frightful.

“Frightful has powers,” I heard Andrew tell Sue one afternoon. “She talks.”

“Do the other chickens talk?” Sue asked.

“Of course not. They just cluck.”

As if on cue, Frightful stood up and clucked. She slipped out of Andrew’s grasp and hopped down to the walkway to peck at a string of moisture ants.

“Do you think Frightful will go to heaven?” Andrew asked, twirling a loose feather between his fingers.

Sue looked at her new friend, surprised at the change of topic. “I suppose so. I think God’s creatures are special. And I think we agree that Frightful is extra special.”

“Good. Then I will always get to see her,” he replied.

Later, as Sue shared Andrew’s conversation with me, the drawing of the boy with wings came to mind. My heart sank. Andrew always circled difficult topics, never discussing directly what it was he wanted you to know. Instead, he led you to a conclusion he had already made. This conclusion paralyzed me.

Many days when Sue visited, I hovered around the corner in the hallway, waiting, listening, thanking God for sending us relief in the form of an intensely patient woman with a bewitching voice, who could lure my son into a trancelike state. But one day, things changed. Andrew’s fever skyrocketed to an all-time high, the lesions in his mouth became gaping holes, and he stopped eating entirely. During our next trip to the ER, they proposed Nasogastric Intubation (NG) for hydration and feeding.

“You should be able to put some weight back on him without disturbing those ulcers,” we were told.

Andrew was stabilized, and then sent home with an NG feeding tube threaded through his nose and down to his stomach. Remembering my son that day, frail and weak, I have no idea why we agreed to bring him home. I think we had just begun to accept his illness and ongoing pain as something we had to live with. It had become our insane version of normal.

In an attempt to cheer him, Hannah pressed Frightful to the downstairs playroom window where Andrew lay on a makeshift bed. Soon after, the chicken took up residence on a broken flowerpot next to the window, and we heard the constant tap-tap-tap of her beak on the pane. When we locked her in the pen, she screeched and squawked, causing Jon to make not-so-veiled threats.

“Wk-wk-wk-wk-wanh! Wk-wk-wk-wk-WAHN!”

I want out! I want OUT!

Frightful poked her beak through holes in the chicken wire in her attempt to escape.

“Don’t you think it’s a little weird for a chicken to act like that?” Jon cornered me one afternoon.

I glanced out the window at the chickens scratching in the rose garden. “I’d be mad, too, if I was the only one locked up while my friends were out feasting in the garden,” I said.

“You know what I mean. Frightful doesn’t care about the garden. She just sits in front of the window all day, staring at Andrew.”

He was right. She’d been acting unusually odd for the last couple of days. When Hannah went to the coop to collect eggs, she screeched and bolted through the door, running across the yard to her flowerpot. I had tried to nudge her away with a toe and she had lunged at me with a clawed foot.

“She’s gone batty!” Hannah cried.

“She’s just scared,” I told her, wondering if that was really true.

Sue walked into chaos the next afternoon when I was on the verge of collapsing under the sheer horror of each long day. Andrew was screaming and had been vomiting for hours. When I called his doctor, he had tried to convince me to give him more anti-emetics and wait it out. I sometimes wondered if the doctor thought I was exaggerating his symptoms, because on many days when he saw the doctor, Andrew would behave normally, feeling perfectly fine. The next, he would be horrifically ill. It made no sense.

Sue took control, sending me out of the house to get fresh air and perspective. After she left, however, an eerie, almost haunted silence descended over the room and Andrew. Outside, Frightful suddenly stood frozen on the flowerpot in the rain, her wings spread wide like a shield. We made eye contact, the raptor and I. She pierced the air with a screech before throwing herself at the window, imploring me to take action, to help her best friend. Horrified, I reached for the phone in my pocket and dialed Jon at work.

“You have to come home. NOW!”

In a fit of panic, I drug Andrew and the mattress through the door and into the hallway where Frightful couldn’t see him. When Jon arrived, the two of us lifted Andrew into the car and left the bird calling for our son in the rain.