12th of Never

Chapter 75

JOE AND I spent the night inside a cozily furnished hospital room, holding Julie, bottle-feeding her, and telling her that she was a good strong baby and that we loved her so much.

When we weren’t with Party Girl, we slumped in chairs in the waiting room, where we counted holes in the acoustic tiles and sometimes caught a few, very fractured z’s.

As long as the night had been, the hours between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m. had been longer. We drank vending machine coffee as we waited for Dr. Erwin Dwy, Julie’s hematologist, to see us. And then, finally, he came to the waiting room and brought us back to his office.

Dr. Dwy was 6 feet 9 inches tall, going gray at the temples, and had a long, smiling face and sad eyes. He offered us chairs at his desk and we sat across from him, watching him take phone calls from parents of sick children. Between calls, he apologized, then took another call, until at last he gave us his attention.

“Let me be candid with you,” said Dr. Dwy, folding his hands on his desk. “I don’t have wonderful news.”

I was already terrified; I had been in that state since we’d last seen Dr. Gordon and she had said Julie should have an aggressive workup at the hospital. But now, looking into Dr. Dwy’s eyes, I reached a new high in terror.

I went rigid. I gripped Joe’s hand hard, and I flashed on the night I gave birth to Julie in a blackout with an electrical storm crackling around me. I remembered screaming like a wounded mountain lion—and I wanted to scream like that now.

I don’t have wonderful news.

Joe said, “Tell us what you know, Dr. Dwy.”

“Of course,” he said. “Of course. Well, we gave Julie every test in the book—blood tests, CAT scans, we even did a bone marrow biopsy. She took it very well.

“But this is what it all comes down to,” said the sad-eyed man. “Julie’s white blood cells are abnormally large.”

I blurted, “She has an infection. Dr. Gordon said she had an infection.”

“We believe she has malignant lymphoma. It’s in the leukemic stage.”

Everything went white.

The blood left my head and although I was staring at Dr. Dwy’s face, I saw nothing. I heard a buzzing, then someone was calling my name. I was on the floor, my chair tipped over beside me. I heaved and someone placed a garbage bag right beside my mouth. I heaved again, then there was something cold on my chest.

My blouse was open. Dr. Dwy had a stethoscope on my chest and was listening to my heart. I pushed him away, saying, “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

I tried to sit up, but when I did, everything began to fade again. The doctor told me to just stay down and I tried that, but after a minute or two, I asked Joe to help me up.

When I was standing, Dr. Dwy righted my chair and I buttoned my shirt.

Dr. Dwy said, “Your blood pressure is very low. Have you ever passed out before?”

“No. Because this is the first time someone told me that my daughter has cancer.”

Joe put his arm around me. Tears were sheeting down my face, but I wasn’t sobbing. I was in the present and I was listening hard. I had to keep myself together for Julie.