We brush our teeth, climb under the covers, in silence. It is obvious what should happen; it has been weeks. Maybe months. I’ve lost track. But it is equally obvious this is not going to happen. I turn away, but let my foot drift over to touch Brian, the smallest of conciliatory gestures. He doesn’t move away or toward me; just lets my foot rest against his. Toes to toes, the best we can do. Brian turns to face me. “Alone is one way to get through adversity, but is it the best way?” This formulation is a joke, something we say, That’s one way to … whatever the thing is … but is it the best way? No response from me. No giggle, no touch. Silence.
“In hard times,” Brian says, “people typically do better when they huddle together for warmth.”
“Who are you, Shackleton? I know how to cope with adversity, Brian, but thanks for the lesson.”
This silences us both. I have no idea why I’m lashing out. Gracie is OK, she’s sleeping not six miles away. But I am bizarrely furious. Fury in search of an object.
We’ve been dangled by our ankles while children dropped around us; children fell. Surely there is someone to blame.
DAY 40
I spend Valentine’s Day reading to Gracie under a string of diffuse heart lights, a gift from Bobbie, who’d noticed Gracie’s growing light sensitivity. Yet another side effect. We hang the hearts above her bed, and they soften and rosy the room into twilight.
Dr. K comes in the next morning, “Her numbers look great,” she says. “She’s ready.”
“For what?” I ask. I’m afraid she means some new treatment.
Dr. K looks amused. “To go home,” she says. “She’s ready to go home.”
I start to cry. Dr. K, who knows the rhetic count and the hemoglobin and the liver function numbers of every kid under her care, does not know how to respond.
“This is good news,” she says.
“I know,” I say, and cry a little more. For once, I don’t apologize for crying.
Gracie says, “Mama, why are you sad?”
“I’m so happy I’m crying,” I say.
“Mama,” she says, and leaves it at that. There is nothing, apparently, one can say to someone as daft as I am.
I walk out to the parents’ lounge to call Brian. “We’re being discharged.”
“That is beautiful news,” he says, and I can hear the catch in his voice too. This news means more to us two than to anyone else on earth.
Gracie spends the day before discharge watching, for the umpteenth time, the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy goes on an arduous journey populated with allies and terrifying enemies. Dorothy collapses in a poppy field and gives up. Dorothy makes it home, where she’s told it’s all been a dream. Gracie calls the cowardly lion “the courage lion.” He’s her favorite. At the end she turns to us with excitement and says, “The courage lion’s not afraid of anything!”
Well …
She arches her eyebrows and turns her hands palm up. “Are they living? Actually?”
“If they are real,” I say, “what do you think the courage lion is doing right this second?”
She gives me a withering look. “Brushing him teeth.”
Can a kid who can’t get her possessive pronouns straight be employing irony?
“He could be brushing him teeth,” I say. “He could be brushing them scientifically.” A phrase Brian uses to get Gabe to brush.
“I don’t know because I can’t see him,” Gracie says. I love her pragmatic, dogged streak. Just tell me, damn it—is he or isn’t he real?
DAY 44 (DISCHARGE DAY)
Gracie wakes up nervous, her first sentence, “Is Bobbie gonna be at my good-bye?” Leaving Bobbie is terrifying. Bobbie keeps her safe. Bobbie knows how to handle things. Bobbie has bubbles and juice and secret ways to make the pain stop. We strip the room in anticipation. All the cards and toys and accumulated clutter are gone. We leave the string of heart lights in place until the last. “Can I bring the hearts home?” Gracie asks. “Will they work there?”
Bobbie arrives with her air of mischief, her cat-eye glasses, her calm, her humor. How are we going to keep recovering without her?
“OK, Gracie girl, get ready to say good-bye to Tough Guy,” Bobbie says.
Gracie shoots us a smile. “Bobbie came.”
“Of course I came,” Bobbie says. “I have to make sure you don’t steal my machines!”
Gracie giggles, her lilting, air-burst giggle.
“Gracie, this is gonna be the last time I unhook you from Tough Guy. After this, you’ll be off leash forever. Are you ready?”
Gracie gives a solemn nod.
Bobbie unscrews the plastic IV tubes that lead from Tough Guy to Gracie’s chest catheter. She rubs down the catheter ends with alcohol, flushes the lines with saline and heparin, and recaps them. I watch intently; this will be my job at home, and keeping bacteria out of the lines is crucial. Any bacteria that make it into the line have direct access to Gracie’s heart.
Gracie looks up at Bobbie. “Good job,” she says, and this phrase seems to encompass everything Bobbie has done for her over the last fifty-four days. The gum she made appear out of thin air, the bubbly apple juice and plastic champagne flutes on New Year’s Eve, the morphine drip with its magic red button, the heart lights. Bobbie, the mother of four sons, has made Gracie feel like the most important young person in her life.
Bobbie wheels Tough Guy, now an independent operator, to the door. Before she pushes him outside, she pauses and asks, “Gracie, do you have any last words for your friend?”
Gracie looks Tough Guy up and down. “Be good to the next girl,” she says.
I expect leaving the unit to be anticlimactic, the way big change sometimes streams by in a slew of undifferentiated details. But I’ve forgotten about the “confetti parade.” When a family leaves the unit, staff and any patients well enough to stand line the halls and cheer and throw confetti.
This strikes me as a form of heroism. Patients and their families celebrating someone leaving, as they stay behind. We bow our heads under the tiny colored disks of paper that fly toward us as we walk, as the other patients clap and cheer. Gracie grins and grins and grins, and waves her regal wave, devouring the moment.
Ramya stands in the doorway of their corner room. She tosses her handful of confetti gently toward Gracie’s knees and leans down to say good-bye. “Have fun at home, Gracie. We will meet you there.” She stands up, and we hug.
Behind her, as we embrace, I see baby Varun asleep on his bed. He is hooked up to all the standard stuff, wires and cords and IVs. And at the center of the equipment, the boy. Dark headed, huge-eyed Varun, dreaming his one-year-old’s dream. I imagine he’s dreaming of his mother’s neck and hair, the nest in which he spends each day, Ramya’s hand cupping the back of his head.
I don’t want to say good-bye to Ramya, and at the same time, I can’t wait to get the hell out of there.
In the scrub room I examine Gracie, free of Tough Guy, free to move around unfettered in her pink sneakers and street clothes. I look at her closely. She is almost normal. Not too swollen, not too hairy, not yet. That would come later, with the steroids. Now, she looks pleasingly like herself, except bald. But bald in a nice way; her exposed skin is a delicate, translucent pink over a skull that is perfectly round. A few pastel pieces of confetti cling to the crown of her head, the ridge of her ears. She is a human cupcake of a girl.