With the surgery looming, I pretty much turn into a hermit, surviving on Ryan’s stream of commentary on his BSG progression. I want to go watch a few episodes with him, but by the time I get back from my final tests I’m too tired to even think about dragging myself to the family room.
Mom is the one who chooses to leave me alone. Not actually leaving, just not talking. Her worry barely filters through the room as she works on her cross-stitch project by the window. Between my phone and some comedy on the TV, there’s plenty of entertainment.
Veronica texts every now and then to complain about school. Finals. All the things that seem so far removed from me. Sure, I brought my textbooks and teachers sent along assignments, but I’ve barely felt the urge or had the stamina to actually tackle it.
TUMOR SQUAD
Veronica
Ugh can you all chill while I’m at school?
I’m not sure a break from texting would do her any good since most of it was about procedures. Luis has been a constant upbeat jokester. Part of me knows I should worry about this because there’s nothing more dangerous than when a kid like him finally cracks. But also maybe that’s just the way he always is.
Medical Coach
Starting the last season.
Ellie
I have to say this is impressive. Jack couldn’t even manage one season while he was at debate camp.
My message glares at me, another sharp twist in my gut. Mom’s blogging pushed away all thoughts of what happened at Morelands between Ryan and me. We both are in agreement that the kiss didn’t happen and we’ve gone back to whatever we were before that.
Ellie
You are not allowed to finish while I’m in the hospital.
Medical Coach
Then I may need another show.
Ellie
I’ve created a monster.
Medical Coach
So say we all.
He also asks me other things and we continue to leave our hospital lives behind, exploring life beyond Coffman. Classes. What I’m thinking about for college. And surprisingly, I want to know about him too. I want to see his life beyond these walls.
We get in a long fight over Ivies vs. state schools. He tells me that he wants to be an engineer, but not the boring kind. Or even the kind that goes into space.
Truthfully, I don’t even know what that job entails. I’m pretty sure there’s math involved.
Medical Coach
Roller coasters.
Ellie
What?
Medical Coach
I want to design roller coasters.
That launches into a whole thing about Ryan wanting to help design and engineer amusement park rides. It’s part of the reason he’s considering schools on the West Coast—they feed right into places like Disney and Six Flags.
Medical Coach
Aren’t you like a nationally ranked speech person?
Ellie
What’s your point?
Medical Coach
Why can’t you go on Broadway?
Or move to LA and come hang with me?
Ellie
Do you see people like me in the movies?
Medical Coach
So you’ll be the first.
I sigh and drop my phone on the bed. Just thinking about the future like that makes my thoughts run together. How can I think about what might come in the next five years when I’m just trying to make it to the end of this one?
Ellie
I don’t think it’s that simple.
Medical Coach
What dream is?
Ellie
Yeah, but it’s not like normal hard.
It’d be like extra hard.
My brand of hard.
Medical Coach
Your brand of hard?
You lost me.
Ellie
Like hard plus.
Yeah, it’s hard to be an actor.
But like when you’re one of the first.
When you’ve gone your whole life seeing yourself only in the mirror.
Not on-screen.
Not in books.
Not even in my family.
I stop there and stare at these words, realizing I sent them. These thoughts I’ve kept hidden, swallowed down because they were probably too much for anyone but me to understand. Wrong. Ugly. And I just told them to Ryan. I panic, unsure if I should backtrack and try to make him forget he ever saw this hidden part of me.
Medical Coach
I guess I never thought of it that way.
The group chat has continued without us and I get some emoji eyes from Veronica. So at least one person has clocked that Ryan and I are not participating. I try to add some thoughts, weigh in on the conversation, but mostly I sleep and text Ryan. My whole body feels wrung dry and I’ve been left to salvage enough to keep surgery ready.
Dad finally arrives, just another reminder of my impending surgery. Mom practically flings open the door, and he comes in, tie undone and suitcase in hand. I smile and hold my arms out for a hug. He sets his bag down and comes over to give me one. I take a deep breath and relax, not realizing until now how tense I’d been with only Mom for company.
“How you doin’, kiddo?” he asks.
I shrug. “I’m having surgery soon. Sooo probably not great?” I add a brilliant smile so he’ll get my joke.
He chuckles and Mom coughs, drawing our attention back to her and the grave face she wears to remind us of the severity of the situation. We forgot how Mom reacts to surgery—how she’s panicked and any little thing can set her off.
Dad backs up, placing himself between Mom and me as if he knows the fight that’s about to erupt. “We talked about this,” Dad says quietly to Mom, as if he can keep the peace this way.
Mom bites her lip and I think this whole moment might pass. Surgery’s close now; we’re all in hell. Then she opens her mouth and out comes her frustration. “How can you joke about something like this?”
I blink. What?
Of course I should be thinking about her feelings.
Is she serious? I’m allowed to joke; it’s my body. Dark humor is the only thing standing between me and absolute depression.
“Gwen,” Dad says, trying to cajole Mom and pen her in so she won’t explode.
“Probably the same way you can write about it,” I say. The words leave my mouth and I don’t even try to stop them. Normally I would. Hold them in, pin them down, swallow them, but I’m done stomaching her feelings.
Mom looks like I slapped her, even going so far as backing up and cupping her cheek.
“How can you say that?”
I struggle to free myself from the nest of pillows and blankets I’ve lived in all day. My feet shake under me, but I stand my ground. “Because I asked you to stop writing about my life. You agreed.”
Dad looks first at Mom then me, trying to read between the lines of what’s happened. So Mom didn’t tell him.…
“You asked me to not write about you anymore. But this is about all of us.” She looks between Dad and me, searching for teammates. Maybe Dad is on her side, but I am squarely on the opposition. “People have always wanted to know how we’re doing, how they can support us. I wanted to be able to give them that. I wrote about what I was doing—how things were going.”
“This is not a team sport,” I shout. Despite what Ryan thinks, I am in this alone. “My life is not yours. You do not get to make my life about you. What else do you need me to say? I can’t say it much clearer. I want this to stop. No more posts about me going into surgery. Nothing about me at the doctors’. No photos. No nothing. I don’t just want to be removed from this narrative. I want this narrative to end.”
“All right,” Dad cuts in, trying to be the peacemaker. “I think we’re all running a little hot tonight and could do with some space. Ellie, we understand where you’re coming from.” Mom fists a hand in her hair like she’s trying to hold something together or perhaps rip it all apart. I suppose my words—my request—is doing both.
Mom and I mutually agree to ignore Dad. He’s here, but he hasn’t been here.
“We’re doing important work raising awareness and money for families to learn how to deal with this curveball life’s thrown them,” Mom says, her voice rising.
“Why do they need every detail of what I’m going through? For years, I have lived under this cloud of a girl you’ve made me out to be, and nowhere in this have you seen me for who I am.” Tears cool my heated cheeks. I reach up and wipe them away, unsure when I started crying.
Ready to butt in, Dad faces Mom and plants his hands on her shoulders, trying to calm her down. She brushes him off and he’s back to playing referee between us. He looks at me and I glare back. If he tries the same tactic with me, I will not be able to hold it together.
“Okay,” he says, his voice firm. I imagine this is the tone he might use with his employees. “Let’s all just take a moment. We”—he looks at Mom—“understand what you’re saying, Ellie.” Mom looks ready to start round two. My family may not survive this request. Here I was believing that maybe—just maybe—things could be different. But I had to make them different. Ryan taught me to ask the hard questions and hold out for answers.
“I don’t think she does,” I say, standing my ground.
He holds up a finger to silence me, a gesture that I know means I am skating on very thin ice. “We know that surgery is part of your life. But,” he says to cut Mom off, “it has also been a major part of our lives. Through the work your mother has done, we support others. It was a way to build our own version of hope.”
And here I am smashing that fragile hope to pieces, to burn the world down that she has worked so hard to build.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate that—I just…” I look between them—they mean well, but right now it’s hard to see beyond my frustration. “I just can’t stay her defenseless little girl forever.”
“There is so much I gave up for you.”
“Gwen,” Dad says, an edge to his voice that hasn’t been there before, one that distinctly says Stop.
We ignore him, and there’s no way for Dad to stop this fight. It’s been brewing for too long.
“Oh sure. What could you have possibly given up for me?”
“I lost friends. My career. Your father and I got divorced—” Mom cuts herself off and her face pales, like she didn’t mean to say that. I stand there, my anger and frustration completely driven out by shock. Divorced.
“That’s enough.” Dad’s voice is sharp and cuts through the messiness we’ve ended up in.
Wait, what?
“What?”
Dad’s face crumples and Mom smacks a hand over her mouth like she can’t believe what she just said. He holds out a hand as if to calm a wild animal, but I pull away. I thought it was just a feeling that I ruined my parents’ lives.
“You’re divorced?” I somehow get the words out around the dread pooling in my chest. “Does that…” I look to Dad, not wanting to put the words to breath.
“Ellie, it’s not what you think,” Dad says.
“I’m sorry, I don’t…”
“It’s complicated—” He reaches for me and I jerk away. No, this is not what I want.
“So you’re not married?”
“For where it matters, yes—on paper, no. We didn’t have good insurance at the time. And—”
“And I needed a lot of insurance.” You don’t get forty-plus surgeries in by sixteen and not rack up some pretty impressive hospital bills. “So you got divorced?” I don’t understand it. “I ruined your lives.…”
“Ellie,” Mom says, her voice full of regret and pain. I want nothing to do with it. No wonder she doesn’t care about what I want.
“We are still your parents and we love you very much.”
“At least that’s better than Darth Vader,” I mumble.
Dad presses his lips into a fine line. “Let’s sit down and talk. It has to do with a loophole in qualifying for Medicaid. Let us explain.” Dad walked in on a minefield and probably didn’t know it. Mom and I have been good at avoiding the dangerous, fraying edges of our relationship. This just severed the last threads holding us together.
I cross my arms over my chest. “I’m good standing.” Just when I thought the hospital might not break me—I get hit with this. The hospital and all the medical care—me, it all destroyed my mother’s life.
“We love you,” Mom starts, and that’s it, I can’t hear it anymore. Her voice is abrasive on my skin, peeling away the hard coating I need to get through the next twenty-four hours and surgery.
He takes a deep breath. “We’re all tired and on edge—”
“I guess I’ll wait to read about it on her blog.”
I take off, pushing past both of them, crushed under the weight that the hospital really does break everything.