Chapter 12

THEY SHOULD ALL BE ALLOWED TO HAVE HAIR

“Captain Pluton declares that this Milky Way before us shall stand as our field of combat!”

The animated purple-caped and purple-tongued superhero cut a bold swath across the galaxy, leaving a wake of light behind him that fractured into a rainbow of lavender, plum, and dark grape.

Patrick sat next to Braden in the recreation room of St. Genevieve’s children’s wing, young folk stretched out before him in the dark, all craning their necks to look at the screen where the new release played. It was a kindness shown by the movie studio to give children too ill to ever have a hope of seeing it in an outside-world cinema the chance to enjoy Captain Pluton and his exploits. A small privilege in an otherwise grim existence.

For these children, it was the world beyond these walls that was a dream. Inside them was the reality of hospital slippers and stuffed baby seals. Baseball caps covering heads in warm rooms, and bathrobe belts too big for waists that grew smaller by the week.

Patrick made a point of keeping his eyes on the movie. He knew that if he looked down at Braden sitting cross-legged next to him, he wouldn’t be able to pull his gaze away. And that would only distract the boy and make him self-conscious, but still he couldn’t help it as his eyes settled on the profile of all that was important to him.

“Dad, you’re staring again. I know I always look too cool for school, but you don’t have to point it out to the lady, do you? You’re totally cramping my style.”

Rebecca, sitting on the other side of the boy, smiled.

“Sorry, buddy.”

“It’s okay, but if you’re gonna be my wingman with women, you’ve got to let me fly the plane.”

“Got it. I’ll stick to serving peanuts to the passengers.”

Braden looked up at Rebecca, who was clearly amused by the repartee between the son and his father.

“You’ll have to excuse him. He hasn’t had a date in, like, three years. The only ladies he talks to already have a thing for me.”

Rebecca considered the medical reality of Patrick’s “love life”: all love for Braden.

“Sounds like he’s stuck playing second fiddle to a real Romeo.”

“I don’t have to work hard at it. They all love me for my big heart.”

Rebecca reached out and stroked the boy’s hair. “I can see why.”

Braden leaned over and whispered, “If only Dad would take a night off from staring at me while I’m asleep and put a little romance into his life. It would free me up to nab one of these nurses for myself.”

Rebecca looked over at Patrick, whose eyes were fixed on the cartoon where Captain Pluton, in a cape befitting his purple essence, flew across the heavens followed by a host of supporting superheroes.

Captain Pluton’s character was the embodiment of Pluto, which had been stripped of its standing as a planet in the solar system by astronomers on earth. So he had a chip on his shoulder and hadn’t been willing to help out Angela Earth, even though she was being held captive by her jealous younger sibling, Sister Moon. But now Captain Pluton had had a change of heart and was charging into action. He was now ready to face off with Sister Moon and her minions of comet foot soldiers, who brandished their tails like sabers.

“The fate of the whole cosmos hangs in the balance of the fight we fight here tonight!” Saturnia, Pluton’s love interest, proclaimed this as she arrived at the last second and spun her deadly rings into the ranks of the oncoming comet foot soldiers.

You got that right, Patrick thought as he couldn’t help but reach out and grip Braden’s hand.

Rebecca watched the tight squeeze between the two. Her mind began to churn. She’d worked so hard for so long to bleach herself of any kind of bias. It was her job to ensure the welfare of children; here was a child on the brink of having his heart opened and closed, left to a father who she wasn’t satisfied was capable of taking care of him.

Financially, that is. Emotionally, there was no debate. Patrick was a balm to the boy; that was clear. But Ted Cake had put so much pressure on her supervisor, who in turn dumped it on her: Patrick was months behind on his rent, electricity, heat, the essentials of life, let alone the amenities that could make this boy’s complete recovery a certainty.

And Ted Cake could offer those amenities: a huge income and a comfortable place to live. So many material advantages, servants, the best food, vacations for the boy. Her brain went into a full swirl as she reprimanded herself for being in this position in the first place. She’d never wanted to dictate people’s lives; she’d wanted to save them.

She’d wanted to be a doctor. Why had she thrown it all away on some ridiculous mistake? It was a mistake that would never be her friend, ever.

Her eyes traveled across the sea of small heads looking up at the screen, knowing she’d been disallowed to treat any of them, now only directed to take one small boy away from his dad and place him with someone who wasn’t his parent. Once Ted Cake got his hands on Braden, who knew how long it would be before Patrick could gain full custody again? Maybe only weeks, but then again, maybe months. What if it turned out to be a year? A year in the lifetime of a father and son was just that, a lifetime.

Rebecca felt faint and her breath became strained. She leaned over Braden’s head to Patrick. “I’m going to stretch my legs,” she mouthed.

Rebecca had walked past the same nurses’ station three times before she realized she was traveling in a circle, a circle that happened to have four right hallway corners. The children’s wing here wasn’t as big as at Lenox Hill, but any children’s wing at all was big enough.

In her days as a resident, she had decided early on that she would specialize in geriatric medicine. Rebecca had told herself that the elderly were the ones in need of the greatest care. It was they who had married, raised children, contributed to the general welfare of society, and now, in their late stage of life, deserved the best treatment any hospital had to offer.

But now Rebecca wondered. Had she swung the pendulum of her skills to that other side of the age spectrum not out of nobility, but out of cowardice? Was it just easier to care for a human being who’d lived a full life? In her days as a medical student, Rebecca had logged only limited time with sick children. The little ones who’d awakened from birth to a world named after a disease: leukemia, neutropenia, progeria, and on and on. The terms had spun through her mind like a carousel of painted horses carrying no riders.

Was that why she had been drawn to geriatrics? For the same reason she’d told Patrick she needed to stretch her legs, when actually it was her heart that was uncomfortable? Rebecca had seen this gentle man reach out and take hold of his son’s small hand. She told herself they needed their privacy.

But what kind of privacy was there in a room packed with little people who lived their lives in a crowd of doctors, nurses, and attendants? Whose illnesses meant endless tests and treatments and procedures that left them completely vulnerable and tore away at any semblance of solitude? Little people who would probably never know what it was like to be bigger than little? Who would never know what it was like to walk down a high school hallway and suspect that they were the biggest geek God ever bestowed on the world? Who would never know what it was like to come down with the flu the very afternoon of their junior prom and then watch from a bedroom window while their date took a visiting pretty cousin instead? Who would never know what it was like to feel the pain that a full life inevitably brings with the very act of living?

These were her memories, not theirs. But would they ever get the chance to have memories? Even painful ones?

Life was full of pain. It was unavoidable, but it was also what gave the joy its own life and limbs. Pain was obligatory. There was no getting around that. But suffering was optional.

Rebecca stopped walking and let the thought stream through her brain and heart. “Pain is obligatory. Suffering is optional,” she said out loud to herself.

Here she had been, polishing her guilt and grief over an old mistake whose shelf life had long since expired. She’d given herself a good, self-indulgent dose of suffering. The panhandler was right. “What’s done is done.”

Rebecca looked ahead down the hallway and saw a child crouched in the corner, busy coloring. She must have passed by the young boy all three times without noticing him. But he was a welcome sight, looking healthy, rosy-cheeked, and clear-eyed. Rebecca approached the boy and looked down to where he was scribbling away with a brown crayon across a hospital pamphlet.

The pamphlet was a brochure for the treatment options for childhood bone cancer. On the cover, a face no more than three years old smiled out from under a hairless scalp.

The boy’s crayon drew on hair. He finished the pamphlet, set it down on the pile he had already completed, and moved on to the next.

Rebecca’s presence finally caught the boy’s attention and he looked up at her, expecting to be reprimanded for defacing the brochures. He met her gaze with quiet defiance. “My sister should be allowed to have hair. They should all be allowed to have hair.”

The boy returned to his dogged coloring, his hands determined to restore what had been stolen from his sister, his eyes fixed on fixing his world.

Rebecca studied the child. “Yes,” she said to herself, deciding what would be her daily motto for the rest of her life. “Suffering is optional.”