She beelined for the entrance, crowded with families, visitors, and staff wearing scrubs, their blue ID lanyards flying. She went through the doors, showed ID at the front desk, and entered a cheery, bright atrium that looked ten stories high, hung with colorful mobiles. The floor tile was covered with stars, planets, and circles, like a whimsical solar system, and the lobby was more like a playground than a hospital. Children pulled levers on a funky modern playset and banged on a piano in a glass-walled music area with real instruments. More than one toddler wore a surgical mask, and Mary felt a wrench in her chest as she passed them.
She joined the crowd at the elevator bank and rode up in an elevator packed with staff, families, visitors, and both sick and well children. She couldn’t fight the sensation that she was entering a world that she had never been a part of before. She had grown up so healthily, but she knew from talking with Simon that Rachel lived an entirely different life as a child. Simon never complained, always mindful that Rachel was the patient, and he hid the toll that her illness took on him. He lived every day since her diagnosis with the strain of her up-and-down white cell count, her sudden rashes and mouth sores from chemo, and the fear of sudden or unexplained fevers. Mary sent up a silent prayer for Rachel and every other child at CHOP, fighting a daily battle for something that so many adults and children took for granted. Life itself.
She got off on Oncology, then kept going until she reached the special wing with bright green doors that read Blood & Marrow Transplant Unit, next to a Purell stanchion with a red sign, VISITORS: PLEASE DO NOT VISIT IF YOU ARE FEELING SICK. Mary knew from Simon that she was entering one of the most private areas of the hospital, since its young patients had so little resistance to disease, even less than other cancer patients. In fact, Mary had learned that in order to be able to accept a blood or marrow transplant, the child’s immune system had to be essentially destroyed so that it wouldn’t reject the marrow.
It would be a three-hundred-day countdown to transplant day, and before that would be an endless series of blood tests, a spinal tap to make sure that there were no leukemic cells, three days of total body irradiation followed by three days of chemotherapy using Thiotepa, which required that Rachel be showered every six hours and go to the bathroom every two. Transplant Day would be Day Zero, and Rachel was only on day 278, so the trick would be keeping her in remission and without infection so that she could maintain her eligibility for the transplant. Even so, Mary had been surprised to learn that CHOP’s BMT Unit didn’t require surgical masks unless the patient was in isolation. CHOP wanted to keep its atmosphere as friendly and upbeat as possible, and the nurses and doctors wore street clothes. Visitors weren’t restricted unless the patient was in isolation, which Rachel wasn’t.
Mary used the sanitizer, went through the doors, and walked to the nurses’ station, a curved wooden counter with a colorful mosaic of ducks, butterflies, and flowers. “I’m going to visit Rachel Pensiera in 3E46A,” Mary said, and they gestured to the right. She followed the curve around the desk, and along a path of pretty stripes on the floor matching the mosaic. Children’s pictures hung on the wall, and a homemade bulletin board with a baseball hat that read WE ARE THE ONCO TEAM, THANKS FOR BEING A TEAM PLAYER!! Underneath were homemade baseballs and on each one was a crayoned thank-you to a nurse, a doctor, or a fellow patient.
She passed a painted mural of Ronald McDonald holding a teapot in one hand and a tray of muffins and flowers in the other, which was mounted above a glass door next to a sign, FAMILY LOUNGE. She hadn’t realized that McDonald’s sponsored a lounge here, though her parish church cooked Christmas meals for Ronald McDonald House in West Philly, which was a large home that the company maintained for out-of-town families who needed a place to stay during their children’s hospitalization at CHOP. She turned the corner and kept going until she got to Rachel’s room, easily identifiable because of its cutout of her beloved Horton, the elephant from Dr. Seuss.
Mary peeked through the window and could see Simon sitting next to Rachel’s hospital bed, reading her a book. Rachel looked more pale than she had been, with her eyes closed like half-moons and her little bald head to the side, grasping a plush purple elephant under one arm. The light in the room was gentle, shed by a pink elephant lamp that must have been brought from home. A crayoned sign taped to the head of the bed read RACHEL, and red, white, and blue streamers were woven through its slats, decorations that a healthy child would have put on bicycle spokes.
The room had a window on the far side, overlooking the atrium, and in the middle was Rachel’s hospital bed with its vital signs monitors, computer monitor on a standing desk, and IV stalk to the left, next to a rolling night table with a pink-plastic pitcher, a yellow tub of Magic Markers, and board books. On the far side of the bed was a blue chair, a counter with a video game console, and a long purple couch with a bed pillow and an elephant print coverlet, under which Feet slept soundly in his clothes. His Mr. Potatohead glasses lay folded on top of his stomach, rising up and down as he snored.
Mary swallowed hard, touched. She admired the way Feet and Simon had stepped into the vacuum created by the sudden death of Rachel’s mother, Ellen, which broke everyone’s heart. The aneurysm had struck Ellen when she’d been shopping with the baby at Toys R Us, a story so remarkable that it made the local news. In the aftermath, they’d all been left reeling, they’d thought Ellen’s death was the worst thing that could happen. Rachel grew into a happy, precocious toddler who loved to babble away, and Mary would take her to the library to give Simon a break. They’d pick out some books and snuggle into the denim beanbag chair, and Mary had loved every minute, breathing in the sweet smells of Rachel’s dark curls and reading her whichever books she chose. The one book Rachel always wanted was Horton Hatches the Egg.
Mary forced herself to keep her emotions at bay, thinking of it now. She used to wonder how much Rachel remembered of her mother and Mary sensed that Rachel knew that her mother was gone and that she herself was their collective egg. And after Rachel’s dreadful diagnosis, Mary never stopped taking her to the library, reading Horton to her and fulfilling a silent vow to always be faithful to the little girl, one hundred percent, in Ellen’s memory.
Mary came out of her reverie when suddenly Rachel’s eyes fluttered, her dark-eyed gaze unfocused until it found Mary. A slow smile spread across Rachel’s face, and she gave a wave with her free hand. Mary waved back, and Simon turned around to see who had arrived.
“Hi, Mary!” Simon called out. “Look who came to visit you, Rach. It’s Aunt Mary. Come in, Aunt Mary!”
“Okay.” Mary opened the door, reminding herself of something Simon always said. See the child, not the cancer. Then you’ll be happy when you visit, not sad.
“Mary!” Rachel raised her arms for a hug. “Hi!”
“Hi, honey! I’m so happy to see you!” Mary put her belongings down, went to Rachel’s bedside, and kissed her on the cheek. The child smelled like Jolly Ranchers and antiseptic wipes.
“I ate my whole dinner.”
“Good for you.”
“Horton helped.” Rachel smiled sleepily.
“Good for him. What do elephants eat?”
“What Daddy says.”