If I Lose Her (22 page)

 Colombia was
such a mixed experience. I was excited to travel, to see something outside of
my little box, to be shooting my first serious correspondent story, but most of
me knew that I was just running away. Overall though I was just ready to get to
work and think about something other than my miserable situation.

 The flight
was bumpy as hell and when I landed it was raining. I collected my bags and
went to the bar at the edge of the airport. My contact was another Scripps
photographer named Matt Brennon. I didn’t know what he looked like. I was just
hoping he would have some camera gear or something.

 I found the
bar on the edge of the airport where only two men sat with their backs toward
me. I wasn’t surprised that the bar was nearly empty since it was only eleven
in the morning. 

 “Are you
Matt Brennon?” I asked one of the men.

 “I’m
Brennon,” the other answered.

 I reached
out and shook his hand.

 He looked me
up and down like I was the one who hadn’t shaven in four days.

 “I’ve got a
car outside,” and I followed him.

 He opened
the passenger door and climbed through to the driver’s side of his little green
Peugeot. Then he jerked out of the parking lot, put it in second gear and cut
off three people as he pulled out into traffic.

 “This your
first time in the field?”

 “It’s my
first time out of the states.”

 “Shit.”

 “Is that a
problem?”

 “Let’s hope
not. The gist of what you need to know is that the water’s safe, the food is
good and cheap except for Mondongo, and don’t take anything from strangers
ever. Want a piece of gum?” He asked reaching in front of me to the glove box,
fishing out one of the dozen or so yellow packs and putting a piece in his mouth.

 “What’s
Mondongo and why am I not supposed to take anything from strangers? No,
thanks.”

 “Mondongo is
tripe soup and people lace shit with a local drug called burundanga that will
knock you out. If you’re lucky you’ll just wake up with all your shit gone.”
Then he reached into the back seat, swerving the car into the next lane of
traffic, retrieved a yellow envelope and handed it to me. “That’s your
credentials, the key to your room and a contact card with numbers for police
and the US embassy. Have you ever covered protests before?”

 “Yeah.
That’s no problem.”

 “Well, just
remember. You’re NOT in the States anymore. The police are generally reliable,
but things can go south in a minute here so keep your eyes open. Don’t carry
your gear around with you at night, and don’t ever go into the mountains. Never
go into the mountains. They’re mostly controlled by FARC. Last week a good
French shooter, with ten-years experience in-country, was shot and taken
prisoner. We still don’t know where he is. Any questions?” He asked pulling up
in front of a lime green and orange stucco building with the word ‘hostel’
painted on the front. 

 “How will I
get ahold of you if I need something?”

  “I’m a
journalist not a baby sitter. If you need something either contact your editor
or the embassy.”

 I climbed
out of the car and shut the door.

 “Okay,
thanks…” Then he drove away.

 The number
on the key read 14 so I went up to my room. The bed was clean and the walls
were thin. I could hear a couple in the next room having sex like it was on TV,
so I put my stuff in the closet and went downstairs to look around. Backpackers
talking in several different languages went in and out of the lobby along with
about a dozen people painted in Colombia’s national colors of gold, blue and
red.

 The air was
thick and humid with the mixed smell of wet leaves, ground coffee and diesel,
and the buildings were all the pastel colors of the rainbow. At the end of the
street stood a man selling watermelons and bananas. I walked around for a while
keeping a small map in my head of where I was in relation to my room so that I
would be able to easily backtrack when I was done exploring. It didn’t take
long before I came to the stone wall surrounding the city where three red and
black horse-drawn carriages sat waiting to clop tourists around town. After
passing my fifth fruit cart I decided to stop at one with hanging pineapples,
oranges, bananas, pears and apples and buy a fruit shake. The day was getting
hotter, so I decided to drink it on my way back to my room. I turned the key to
number 14, kicked off my shoes and laid down on the bed. I didn’t even have
time to pull the covers over me before I was asleep.

 When I woke
up, some hours later, I pulled out my map and took note of the areas where Dan had
said rallies had been taking place. I also oriented myself more with where I
was. The sun was beginning to set and I was hungry so I set out to find some
dinner and do some more exploring. One of the restaurants just a few blocks
from my room was playing some decent jazz, but when I looked at the menu I saw
that it was easily outside of my budget. So, I sat down at an outdoor table
just a few doors down where I could still hear the music and tried to decipher
the menu. They had some photos so I ordered by pointing and enjoyed my meal.
That night I had a hard time sleeping so I wandered the streets.

 Cartagena by
night was very different from Cartagena by day. The air was full of music and
much cooler but still comfortable. People laughed and drank and stumbled around
trying to find their rooms while I walked and thought about how much Jo would
love to photograph this building or eat that food. Even in this place where no
one knew my name I could not escape how hurt I was at being turned down.
How
could she lead me on like that? How could she sleep in my bed and laugh at my
jokes and make me fall so much in love with her just to say no to being my
wife? Maybe I’m not what she’s been looking for. Maybe it’s because I don’t
have a good enough job. Maybe if I had gone to a better school I would be
making more money.
Maybe maybe is all I could think about.

 Cartagena
wasn’t all tourism though. Down one side street I found two young boys
sleeping, curled up next to each other on a cardboard box. They broke my heart
so I took the rest of the cash I had in my pocket and handed it to one of the
boys who rolled over and looked at me as I walked by. “Gracias,” he whispered
obviously trying not to wake his friend. Then I went back to my room finally
ready to get some decent rest.

 I was on no
real schedule. Some days I would barely have time to grab a cup of tinto before
heading to a rally where I would shoot for 12-14 hours just to return to my
room and spend another 2 hours doing a quick edit, writing a handful of captions
and sending the photos off to Dan, and at other times it might be days before
anything happened. Sometimes the rallies would be just a few hundred students
carrying signs around a park, and other times thousands would clash against
police barricades. One evening I spent four hours photographing two teens as
they went around the city spray painting “resistencia estudiantil”, on
buildings and street signs.

 Somewhere in
those sweaty, manic weeks my anger, frustration and heartache slowly washed
away leaving behind only the pain of how much I missed Jo. I missed the warmth
of her body curled up next to mine. I missed finding her pink soaps and frilly
lotions laying at the bottom of my shower. I missed pulling my laundry out of
the drier and finding a single tiny sock clinging to the leg of my jeans. I
would sit in my stark, hostel room and roll around in my mind what my life was
looking like without Jo in it, and it was as two-dimensional as a photograph on
a wall. I used to work hard in class so that I could get done and spend time
with Jo; I used to cook so that I could eat with Jo; I used to keep the car
clean so that Jo could be proud being seen in it, but without Jo around none of
that mattered. I was ready to go home.

 I had about
a week and a half left before my scheduled flight, and I was getting bored with
the shots I was getting. I overheard that students at a local Catholic school
were going to have a sit-in to protest a new curfew that the police were
imposing on school and university campuses, so I decided that I was going to
try and embed myself with the students. I sent a wire off to Dan with an update
on what was happening and where I was going to be, then I headed downtown.

 When I
arrived, dozens of busses and armored police vehicles were opening their doors
and releasing a cloud of men and women in riot gear onto the street, however
the police were in the minority. Apparently the news about the sit-in had gone
viral, and thousands of students from all over the country were converging to
rally for education reform and a lowering of student fees. It wasn’t just
university students who had come to the rally either. The youngest person I saw
carring a sign couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old. I knew
this was the story I had come to photograph, so I put my camera to my eye and
began clicking off frames.

 One
photograph was of a wall of police shields splattered in orange and white
paint. Another was of an ocean of student faces waving flags and signs. Another
was of a slender woman and a police officer twice her size playing tug-of-war
with the arms of a small boy.

 A single
student on a bike pressed his front tire against an armored truck as it sprayed
him in the face with a water canon. Then the police turned their canons on the
crowd.

 I got a shot
of a dog getting sprayed while a boy ducked behind a concrete barrier.

 I didn’t
even have time to check the images on the back of my camera for the chaos that was
ensuing. All I could do was keep pounding off frames and changing out memory
cards whenever they filled up. The pocket on my left leg was full of empty
memory cards. The pocket on my right was filling with used ones. I felt like a
soldier in the army trying to keep track of my ammo.

 When the
police started putting on gas masks I knew the climate of the rally was
changing, and when they started shooting tear gas they made no distinction for
age. Even though the air was getting sharp I kept photographing.

 Snap. A
demonstrator dusted in white, with a tear-streaked face doubled over in the
street, trying to spit out tear gas.

 Snap. A
protestor with a bandana wrapped around his head throwing a gas canister back
at the police.

 Snap. A tiny
island of men with shields standing barely visible in a cloud of smoke.

 The tear gas
wasn’t quelling the crowd but making it more violent. Protestors began throwing
rocks and setting cars on fire, so the police drew their batons.

 I got a
photograph of people throwing bricks on police from building windows, one of
three riot police knocking a woman to the ground and another of protestors
bashing a police vehicle with bars.

 The smoke
was starting to burn my throat and make my vision go blurry so I decided to
pull back to a side street and try to find some water. There were clusters of
police around different corners blocking off traffic and arresting people. Then
I heard someone holler from an alley. As I went down the alley I found three
police punching and kicking someone who they had cornered. I started
photographing. The police clearly didn’t know I was there and it took a minute,
but when one of the police stepped aside I suddenly realized that the person
being beaten was about twelve years old, and he looked unconscious. That’s when
one of the police drew his baton and raised it over his head. “STOP!” I yelled.

 Through the
lens of my camera I watched all three turn and look at me. I clicked off a few
more frames and the officer with the baton yelled something to the other two
who started running towards me. I didn’t have time to process what was
happening, but I knew it was bad, so I just turned and ran. My second camera
body was bouncing against my back so I lifted it and ran with one camera in
each hand, and didn’t stop until I was within a few blocks of my hotel.
Thankfully I was lighter than they were in all their gear, so I was able to
lose them.

 I
immediately wired the photos of the beating to Dan who put them on the
newspapers website, and overnight the photos went viral. Within the next 48
hours the entire world was looking at the faces of three Colombian officers
standing with baton raised over the bloody body of an unconscious boy who
turned out to be thirteen years old. Either my photos or the rallies or a combination
of the two were enough of a catalyst to spark a government referendum on
student education. I didn’t care about all that. I was just thrilled that it
was my shots that had broken the story wide open. Three days later I was on a
flight back to the United States.

 In so many
ways I was exhausted. Tired of running. Tired of being angry. Ready to have my
life back. Ready to have Jo back. And, if she needed me to slow down then
that’s what I was going to do.

 I didn’t
tell anyone I was coming home, I just landed at the airport, caught the AF bus
back into Denver and went home. I was aching to see Jo, but it was late and I
was still in a different time zone, so I just dropped all of my clothes in the
middle of my apartment floor, scrubbed down in the shower and crashed
face-first into my pillow. My pillow. My own perfectly amazing pillow. Then I
was out.

 The next
morning I woke with a bounce in my step both excited and nervous to see Jo
after so many months, like it was our first date all over again. I looked at
myself in the bathroom mirror.
Do I look older?
I felt older somehow. I
shaved and ran some gel through my overgrown hair, then I looked around the
apartment. Everything was right where I had left it three months ago. I had told
Jo that she could use the place as much as she wanted, but it was obvious that
she hadn’t been here in months. I took a neat pair of black slacks out of the
closet and laid them on my bed. Then I saw I still had a clean white shirt in
the closet so I put those together and got dressed. My white kitty with its
sleek lines was in the parking lot right where I left it, and it was so nice to
sink down into the drivers seat and hear the engine rumble. I took a turn
through Lodo to pick up some flowers from my favorite shop, ‘My Dutch Flowers
Market’, just off 17
^th
and Champa. Then I got on I-25 and headed for
Aurora.

 It was
interesting to see the stark contrasts between Cartagena and Denver. Maybe
everyone feels it when they travel, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how
there is so much of the world out there that people in Denver will never know
while there are so many more people in the world that will never know Denver.
It’s almost like we are living in different worlds all on the same planet.

 As I turned
down Jo’s street I started getting nervous, and for the first time in three
months the thought struck me:
Maybe she’s angry at me for leaving.
Maybe
she hates me for running away.
No no. I wasn’t going to go into all of that
now. I was only a block away, and I wasn’t about to turn around.

 I pulled up
in front of her parent’s house with its sculpted bushes and American flag
waving half-heartedly in the nearly nonexistent breeze. I looked at myself in
the mirror then remembered I had forgotten something. I patted my pockets then
snapped my fingers.
Let’s see if there are any still in here,
and I
reached over and opened the glove box. Yep, a box of mints were tucked away
underneath some papers, so I popped one in my mouth, grabbed the flowers and
went to the door.

 I knocked,
but there was no answer.

 I looked at
my watch. It was just after ten in the morning.

 I looked
around, hoping for some odd sign of life lurking in the house.
I guess I can
call her. No. I want it to be a surprise. I could drop by mom’s store and see…
Then the door opened. It was Jo’s dad.

 “What are
you doing here?”

 “Hey, is Jo
home?” I asked holding up the flowers.

 “Get the
hell off my porch. What nerve do you think you have thinking you…”

 “Daddy, who
is it?” a soft voice asked from the other side of the door.

 He turned as
Jo stepped past him.

 She held her
hand up over her eyes to block the sun, and I noticed a dark bruise on her arm.
It took her a moment to realize it was me.

 “Alex?”

 “Hey you.”

 She just
fell into my arms and started crying.

 “Oh my god
Alex. I never thought I would see you again.”

 I pulled her
close to me and buried my face in her neck. She started sobbing.

 “Hey hey. I
told you in my letter that I was coming back. I just needed to get away for a
while and clear my head,” I said as we went into the house and sat down on her
couch.

 “No Alex,
you don’t understand,” she said looking at me.

 This was the
first chance I had to get a really good look at her. She looked so frail with
dark bags underneath her eyes.

 She took a
deep breath and closed her eyes. Then she pulled the stocking cap off of her
head I hadn’t even noticed she was wearing. All of her thick brown curls were
gone. She was completely bald.

 She opened
her eyes and tears rolled down her cheeks.

 “I’m dying.”

 “What?” I
asked taking a deep breath.

 She just
closed her eyes and touched my face.

 My vision
went blurry and the back of my throat began to burn.

 “What? But…
I… you can’t… what do you mean? How… I mean how long have you… I don’t
understand,” I said standing up.

 She just
started crying again.

 She took a
tissue out of the box on the coffee table and tried to compose herself.

 “Do you
remember how sick I got the night of the art museum show?”

 “Yeah.”

 “Well a
couple of weeks earlier I had started throwing up so I went to the doctor, and
they thought I had had some food poisoning or maybe an allergic reaction to
something so they decided to do some tests. Well, the day after the museum
showing we got the results back and it looked like there were some blood
abnormalities, but they still didn’t know what it was. So they took some more
blood samples and sent them to the Mayo clinic in Minnesota, and when the
results came back they were positive that I had Osteosarcoma, which is essentially
a tumor in my left leg.” She wiped her eyes. Then she pulled aside her robe to
reveal a partially healed incision about two inches long in her leg.

“As soon as they
realized what it was I began chemotherapy treatments and went in for surgery. They
removed the tumor and thought that they got it out of my leg, but the blood
tests showed that there was still a problem,” she said starting to cry harder
again.

 “It’s moved
into my lung Alex and it’s getting worse. I wanted to tell you about the tests
but they didn’t know what was going on and then when we found out it was cancer
I was going to tell you, but I guess I just wanted to live life like normal for
as long as I could. Then you proposed, and I didn’t know what to say. Of course
I wanted to marry you Alex, but I couldn’t just say yes if you didn’t know what
was going on and there we were in that fancy restaurant and I didn’t know what
to do…”

 I walked
back to her, laid my head in her lap and just started crying.

 “I’m so
sorry I didn’t tell you Alex.”

 “Oh no Jo,
I’m sorry. What would have happened if I hadn’t come back in time? I’ve wasted
the last three months. What have I done? Oh my god what have I done?”

 “Shh, shh.
Please don’t think that Alex…whew. I don’t…” and she closed her eyes, put her
hand on her forehead and leaned back against the couch.

 “What’s
wrong?” I asked looking up at her through blurry eyes.

 “I…I need
you to go now Alex, I don’t want…”

 “Let me
help, what do you need me to…”

 “Just GO
Alex, please,” and she convulsed and put a hand over her mouth to try and stop
herself from vomiting. Then we both stood up, and I reached out for her, but
she shook her head and waved me away as she rushed off to bathroom.

 Her mom
followed after her from the kitchen and her dad walked over to me. “I think you
should go now Alex.”

 “But I…”

 He just
shook his head.

 I paused for
a moment.

 
They
don’t need you. She doesn’t need you,
I thought as I could hear coughing
coming from the bathroom.

 I didn’t
know what to do, so I did what I had done so many times before and made it easy
on myself. But as I turned and walked to the door I saw, sitting on the
bookcase by the door, a framed copy of the photograph I had taken of Jo and I
at Buffalo Bill’s grave the day she met my mom. It was the one of her laughing
as I lifted her off the ground and spun her through the air. It looked just
like the photo of my mom and dad that I had grown up looking at hanging on my
wall at home.
You look so much like him
, I remembered her saying.

 
My life
would have been different if my father had stayed the night my mother told him
she was pregnant, but he didn’t, he ran. It’s time I stop running.

 I turned to
Jo’s dad.

 “Listen
Mike, I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I left three months ago, but I
didn’t know Jo was sick. She needs me now and I need her, so unless you call
the police, I’m not leaving.”

 We looked at
each other for a few seconds, then he stepped aside.

 I went to
the bathroom and saw that the door was cracked open. I could hear her
convulsing and crying. 

 I opened the
door.

 Jo turned
and looked at me, her eyes swollen and red. Her mom looked up at her dad. He
just nodded, so she moved back.

 “I’m not
leaving,” I told Jo. Then I wet a washcloth in the sink, knelt down beside her
and handed it to her. I put my hand on her back as she kept throwing up. 

 When
everything was finally out of her system I picked her up and carried her up to
the couch in the living room. She laid her legs across my lap and fell asleep.

 I sat there
with her in my arms trying to wrap my mind around what she had told me;
thinking about all of those things I had seen and done in South America while
the most extraordinary person I had ever known was here dying. While I was
photographing students she was getting blood tests. While I was drinking fruit
smoothies she was having a part of her leg removed. While I was taking in the
freshness of a tropical rain she was having her frail body bombarded with
enough poison to kill the demon inside her. It was more than I could handle,
and I began crying again. This time quietly; this time full of so much regret.

 After a
while Jo’s mother came in and whispered: “Is she asleep?”

 I nodded.
Then I cradled her in my arms and lifted her off the couch.

 “I’m going
to put her in bed,” I whispered to them. Samantha nodded and gently touched the
top of Jo’s smooth head.

 I climbed
the steps and pushed open the door to her room with my foot. This wasn’t the
room I had remembered my Jo growing up in. A medical bed lay in the center with
various machines on either side. I laid her down and pulled the cover up to her
chin. I touched the tissue thin skin on her sallow cheek with the back of my
hand still trying to absorb what was happening. Then I gently closed the door
and went down stairs.

 Her father
sat nursing a cup of coffee as I entered the kitchen.

 “It’s so
good you’re here,” Samantha said as I leaned against the kitchen wall. “She’s
been asking if we had heard anything from you every single day. Every time we
would go out to get the mail she wanted us to check if there was a letter.
Every time we got home from a doctors visit she would refuse to lie down before
checking and re-checking the answering machine to see if there was a message.
Alex, where have you been?”

 I started
crying again and ran my hand through my hair. Then I hugged Samantha. After a
minute, I pulled myself together enough to answer her question.

 “I had no
idea she was sick,” I said taking a tissue out of the box on the counter and
wiping my face.

 “Would you
like a cup of coffee?” Michael asked.

 “Yes
please.” Then I told them about the story I was covering in Colombia and how I
had proposed.

 The day wore
on and they made me a sandwich while I told them about some of what I had
experienced, while they got me up to date on more of the details of what Jo had
gone through the three months I was gone.

 “There are
good days and there are bad days,” Samantha said nursing her third cup of tea.
“Unfortunately, there are far fewer good days than bad ones lately. Anymore we
just do what we can to help her be in as little pain as possible. We try to
distract her as much as possible, but it’s been more and more difficult. Oh,
Alex it’s so good you’re back. You mean so much to her.”

 “I’ll be
honest,” her dad continued. “It’s been really hard, but I know she’ll be glad
that your back,” and then he started choking up, which made me have to reach
for another tissue myself.

 I mustered
the courage to ask the hardest question of all. “Do they have any idea how long
she has?”

 They looked
at each other.

 “There’s
just no way to know for sure. In the beginning, when we found out it had
spread, we weren’t sure if she would last three months, but she refused to
think that she wouldn’t see you again. Now we just thank God every morning that
we wake up and find that she is still breathing.” Then Samantha started crying
again.

 Now it was
getting dark.

 The handle
fiddled on the front door and it opened. It was Susan.

 “Hey,” I
said with not much energy.

 She put down
her bags, walked over and just hugged me.

 Susan was
married now and living just fifteen minutes away, but most nights lately she
was sleeping on the couch, trying to help her parents keep vigil.

 “Alex, it’s
so good you’re here,” she told me.

 “Can I just
stay with her tonight? I mean I don’t know how I’ll be able to go home…”

 “I’ll get
you a blanket,” Samantha said putting her hand on my arm.

 I walked up
to Jo’s room and carefully opened the door. Then I took off my shoes and sat down
in the large chair next to Jo’s bed.

 “This should
keep you warm,” Samantha whispered as she walked into the room. “In the
beginning we had to wake her up in the middle of the night to give her
medicine, which was so awful because of how much pain she was in, but now we
just let her sleep.”

 “How much
does she sleep?”