Chapter 12

A few stray streetlights cast amber pools of light on the far side of the street from where I stood. Dense cloud layers hung over the city, seeming to squeeze the life out of it. I huddled next to the sliding glass doors, teetering on the rough edge of a cement planter box until reality slammed the breath out of me. Life wasn’t supposed to be this way. At least not like this. I wasn’t supposed to live in a constant state of grief, trauma, and panic, wondering when the next proverbial shoe was going to drop. But this had become my reality. I told myself that with all this newly built character, I was stronger; now that I'd acquired a whopper-load of life experiences under my belt, I’d be tougher. It was all just a big fat lie. I didn’t feel wise. I felt scared, vulnerable, and alone. I secretly wondered if I stood in the wrong line when they were handing out lives.

Pulling out my phone, I scanned through my contact list, wondering who I could call in the dead of night. I thought of Becki, but truthfully, I was too embarrassed to call her. We had spoken the day before and I had convinced her that we were doing okay, thanking her again for sending Sue to us. I scanned further. My parents were surely sleeping, and Jon’s mom was on the way to our house to get Hannah. I considered my Breakfast Club ladies, but over the years, as our children grew and attended different high schools, we had become involved in our own lives and found new tribes. My thumb stopped on Julie. Yes. Julie was one of my oldest friends, my 3:00 a.m. person. Someone I could call at any time, even when we hadn’t spoken for weeks, or even months.

Julie answered the phone on the third ring. A rustling of sheets and a single click told me she had sat up in bed and turned on the light.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” I croaked into the phone while on the edge of hysterics. I collapsed into the planter box, crushing the newly planted geraniums. Rainwater pooled at my feet, reflecting a mass of red and white jumbled letters. “We’re at the emergency room. Again!”

“Tell me everything. From the beginning,” she said.

And so we talked, me standing in a Seattle downpour, her in the heat of an Arizona night. I told her about my horrible day, how I had felt something sinister come over the room as I lay next to Andrew, and how Frightful had tossed herself against the window in a fit of anxious foreboding. I told her about Sue, what a godsend she was, yet even when Andrew was in her capable hands, I couldn’t relax. I told her about the picture Andrew had drawn weeks before, of a boy with wings and a cape and a chicken on a cloud labeled ‘Heaven’, and how I couldn’t get it out of my head. I also admitted to her for the first time that I was terrified my son was going to die.

“I told the lady at the front desk tonight that my son was dying,” I said. “What do you think? Am I overreacting?”

She paused for a long time on the other end of the line. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say. It breaks my heart.” She took a breath before adding, “Please remember that you’re not alone.”

I wanted to believe her, but right then, I felt more alone than I had ever felt in my life.

“Imagine me sitting next to you right now,” Julie said, “and we’re chatting in the corner of the living room where we met. Remember?”

I did. We first met as young parents in a bible study at a local church Jon and I were attending. We were a bunch of uptight parents who wanted to believe that God had His hand on the pulse of our lives, but in truth we were all skeptics, hoping to latch onto someone else who was stronger and wiser and more faithful than we were. Julie and I sat in the corner that first day, sharing our stories, oblivious to the rest of the group. We had laughed at the silly antics of our Kindergarten sons and shared in the sudden weight of responsibility we felt for them the moment we became mothers. And somehow, during the course of that night, we found we spoke the same language.

The sweetness of that memory dissolved as Julie’s voice broke into my thoughts. “Have you prayed?”

“Yes! Well, I think so. I don’t know. What does it matter anyway?”

I splashed my foot in the puddle, causing the reflected letters to shiver into streaks of color. I desperately wished Julie was there with me. She had moved to Arizona years before and, strangely, I still felt the sting of her absence.

“It’s worse than ever,” I said. “Way worse. I don’t know how long this can go on.”

Grim thoughts filled my mind, but I refused to speak them aloud, so I just sat there among the crushed flowers, listening to my friend breathe.

“I have your back,” she said.

“I know,” I replied through a mass of tears.

In the span of twelve months, Jon and I had made fourteen trips to the emergency room with Andrew. We now had our own direct phone line and social worker assigned to us. I guess I should have felt privileged, but I could only feel a gnawing sense of despair at our impossible situation.

“They’re replacing his NG tube through his nose right now. It came out this afternoon.”

I didn’t tell her about the drama that preceded Sue removing it. That was a story I didn’t have the energy to tell. I shifted my weight in the planter, triggering the glass doors to open. Andrew’s frightened protests tumbled out from the end of the hall, skewering my heart with a fresh wave of pain.

“Does anyone know why he continues to get worse?” Julie knew it was a loaded question.

“No. They have no idea.” I turned my face to the sky, catching flecks of rain off the edge of the overhang, cold splatters dampening the front of my sweatshirt. Grabbing a handful of broken geraniums, I crushed them in my hand before tossing the bruised petals to the pavement. “Tonight they discovered he has an inflamed liver, appendix, spleen, bile duct, and part of his lower intestine.” I said it like it was a common thing to be chatting about on the phone.

Julie sucked in a deep breath on the other end of the line.

“I honestly don’t know what to think. I’m numb,” I said.

The phone vibrated in my hand. Pulling it from my ear, I saw my favorite picture of Hannah flash onto the screen, one taken at the beach a few summers before. A picture of a little blond girl clad in a pink and tangerine swimsuit, leaping in the air above a glittery sapphire sea.

“Hannah’s calling. I have to go. And thank you for listening.”

I clicked over. “Hi, Mom,” Hannah said in her sing-song voice, the one she used when trying to cheer me up.

“Hi, sweetheart. You still up?”

I checked my phone for the time. 3:24 a.m.

“The dog gacked on the carpet again. But don’t worry. Grandma and I cleaned it up before we left.”

Finn had a little problem with doggie-anxiety. When he sensed tension in our home, he didn’t know what to do with himself. It usually resulted in him leaving his coveted spot on the heat register to drag himself down the hallway to the area rug in front of the TV where he proceeded to barf on the carpet. Never mind that he had just crossed miles of hardwood floor to get there.

“Me and Grandpa are making waffles in the morning. Do you want me to save you one?”

Rainwater ran down the sides of my face and I wiped it away with the sleeve of my sweatshirt.

“Mom?”

“Yes, honey, I’m here. Why don’t you save me a couple for when I get home?”

“I love you, Mom. Brother will get better.”

Brother will get better. It was part statement and part question and since I didn’t know how to respond, I said, “I love you, too. Very much.”

I shucked my wet sweatshirt and tied it around my waist before walking back in to the lobby. I slipped past the woman with the paper butterfly and back into the room, where I found Jon sitting bolt upright, asleep in a chair. The room was full of shadows, the only sound Andrew’s drugged breathing and the whir of the narcotic pump.

I pressed my face to the top of Jon’s head, breathing in the familiar scent of his spicy shampoo and my favorite lavender soap—a perfect mixture of the two of us.

“You can go now,” I whispered into his hair.

He reached up to stroke my face before fishing his keys from his pocket. “Let me sleep a couple hours, close up a few things at work. I’ll be back after lunch.” And then he was gone.

I stood there, feeling alone, like I had never been here before, although I knew for a fact we had been in this very room the week before. I reached for the doctor’s wheeled stool and crab walked it to the edge of Andrew’s bed. Andrew reached out a hand, placed it in my open palm, and made his familiar symbol for bird: Pointer finger and thumb pinched together, the remaining three fingers spread out in a fan.

“You miss her, don’t you?”

He bent his wrist forward, then back, confirming his answer with a hand-nod. I cupped my other hand over his, sandwiching the thought of Frightful between my two palms.

My skin prickled as a thought pushed its way into my mind. I remembered seeing Andrew and Frightful on the porch only days earlier. But instead of their usual place in the old wicker chair, he lay flat on the wooden steps with her nestled on his chest. His body had been soft, relaxed, melding into the wooden planks. A look of contentment painted his features, even though I knew he was in pain. I thought it a little odd at the time, but hadn’t asked him about it.

Andrew slipped his hand from between my palms, tapped his chest twice and laid his hand over his heart.

“Yes. I know she likes to sit right there,” I said, reaching out to touch the area above his belly. He winced. “Does she know how you feel? That you’ve been having a hard time?”

He nodded with his head this time. “Frightful has special powers,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “She fixes my heart. When it’s scared, it flutters and jumps around. When it’s sad, it’s too heavy.” He reached for my hand, placing it on his chest. “She makes it work right. She makes me better.”

I let my head fall to the bed, face down in a rumple of starched hospital sheets. How did this child of mine, who so often spoke in a way I didn’t understand, make more sense than anyone else? After a while, I felt Andrew’s breathing deepen, his body twitch. He was asleep again.

That night, Andrew was admitted to Seattle Children’s Hospital for the fifteenth time. He was hydrated and medicated for pain. When the pain went beyond what the medications could mask, I became his voice again, translating his version of sign language to his medical team. This time, they didn’t tell me it was the flu. And this time, he didn’t come home with us the next day, or the next week. He remained in the hospital for months.

At home, to bring some outward show of control in our lives, Jon thrust himself into gardening. Soon, our lawn was devoid of any weed, moss, or fir cone, and an unnatural shade of green due to the amount of fertilizer he poured on it. I, on the other hand, scoured the Internet like my hair was on fire, anxiety propelling me into the wee hours of the night, hoping for a morsel of information I could grab onto, something that would be a miracle cure. When I failed, I threw myself into my growing stack of notes, sure that some clue would reveal itself.

Hannah was just the opposite. She became quiet, reserved, even stoic at times. “This is for Andrew,” she said one day, a shy smile tipping at the edge of her mouth.

She handed me a construction paper envelope full of notes, each with a hand-drawn picture of Frightful in a variety of poses and costumes. One as a soldier with a rifle, others as The Hulk, Superman, Iron Man, and Shadow, each with a determined look on his face—if that was possible for a chicken with a beak for a mouth. “It’s for courage,” she said. “He can be strong if we’re strong, too.”

I started to weep. Hot tears pushed through my simmering anger and despair at the unfairness of our life. How could this be happening to us?

I drew her close, squeezing her in a bear hug. “Yes, Hannah. We all need courage. Thanks for reminding me.”

That simple gesture stopped my frenetic searching, and served as a stark reminder that I had two remarkable kids who needed not only my love and attention, but my courage, too. It would take courage to summon faith in something I couldn’t see. I wasn’t at all sure what that meant.