Six Months to Live (4 page)

Kids screeched and roared. Their laughter resounded in the halls as fistfuls of light, fluffy popcorn sailed through the room. Dawn quickly fashioned a popcorn bomb by clumping a ball together in her hands with glue. Then she flung it wildly at an opponent. The gooey mess came apart in the air and landed with a sticky splat on a boy’s bald head.

He wiped it off and swore revenge. Dawn squealed and dived under a table. He scrambled under it, too, armed with a handful of popcorn that he managed to stuff down the back of her robe. “I give up!” she cried, helpless with laughter. “I give up!”

A blast from a whistle caused the commotion to stop in mid-stream. Nurse Fredia and four other nurses stood in the doorway, their eyes wide with amazement.

“What happened?” Nurse Fredia gasped, holding a whistle in her hand. Guiltily, everybody looked at each other.

The nurse tried to look harsh, but everyone could see the laugh lines starting at the corners of her mouth. The other nurses buried their mouths in the palms of their hands to keep from breaking out into open laughter.

“You’re not mad?” Jimmy Porter, a ten-year-old, asked.

“Tell you what,” Nurse Fredia said to the room of hard-breathing kids. “I’m going to shut this door for twenty minutes. When I return, I expect the Good Fairies to have arrived and completely put this room back in order. Is it a deal?”

Everybody nodded and murmured, “Yes, ma’am.”

She left. The cleanup was accomplished in ten minutes. Dawn remembered the day for a long time to come. She remembered it not only because of the fun she’d had at the popcorn party, but because that very night a long clump of her beautiful auburn hair fell out in her hand.

CHAPTER 4.

The next morning, another hunk of her hair lay against the clean white pillowcase. “Oh, no!” Dawn wailed. “It’s starting! I’m really going bald!”

Sandy patted Dawn’s arm and confided. “Mine’s fallin’ out too. I-I didn’t want to say anythin’, but look.” The pretty blonde-haired girl dipped her head and Dawn saw a sparse area at her crown.

Dawn fought down her panic and despair and swallowed hard. “I guess it’s going to happen to both of us,” she said.

“Guess so,” Sandy confirmed.

It was bad for Dawn. But it wasn’t nearly so bad now that Sandy was going through it with her. “Misery loves company,” her grandmother had always said. Dawn understood what she meant.

“I guess I won’t be needin’ these anymore,” Sandy said, opening the drawer next to her bed and pulling out a small cardboard box.

Dawn lifted the lid and saw Sandy’s entire collection of hair combs, barrettes and hair ribbons. Sandy owned combs in almost every color imaginable—blue, green, red, purple, yellow—beautiful colors that coordinated with all her clothes. Now the combs would be useless. Dawn felt bitterness welling up in her. How cruel it was to go bald at 13! How awful it was to be sick all the time from the effects of the chemotherapy! How terrible it was to be tired and depressed, have sores hi your mouth, bruises all over your body and to be so thin you could count your own ribs!

“It isn’t fair!” she said aloud. “It just isn’t fair!”

“It’s just hair,” Sandy said with a shrug and stuffed the box back into the drawer. “Everyone says it’ll grow back.”

“I’m calling Mom,” Dawn said. “Maybe she can think of something.”

Meggie Rochelle did think of something. She arrived that very afternoon with Mrs. Cooper. The heavy-set woman with the pleasant face and ready smile was a member of Dawn’s church and owned her own beauty salon. She arrived with two small duffle bags. One was filled with hair grooming equipment. The other was stuffed with wigs.

“Now, let’s see what Dorothy Cooper can do about this ‘problem’ you’re having,” the woman said.

She went to work on Dawn first. Mrs. Cooper dragged a comb lightly through Dawn’s once-thick auburn hair. Large clumps landed on the floor with a gentle plip-plop sound. Dawn winced. But Mrs. Cooper worked quickly. She snipped, cut and shaped the remaining hair into a very short bob.

“This will help some,” she told Dawn. “At least it will be less noticeable for a while.”

Dawn surveyed herself in the mirror. “I look like Mr. T,” she lamented.

Sandy giggled. “My turn!” she cried, eagerly taking Dawn’s place in the chair.

Mrs. Cooper went to work immediately on Sandy. Within 20 minutes she had pruned Sandy’s long, silky white-blonde hair into soft layers. “Yours isn’t as thick as Dawn’s,” Mrs. Cooper said. “So it’ll look thinner a lot sooner.”

Sandy tipped her head at her mirror reflection and nodded her approval. “I kind of like it,” she mused. “I’ve always had such pitifully thin hair. It takes forever to grow. It’s kind of cute real short.”

Dawn’s mom and Mrs. Cooper agreed. “Well, whenever you get tired of your own hah-,” the hair dresser began, “then try one of these.” She lifted the second duffle bag onto Dawn’s bed and unzipped it. She pulled out wigs in all styles, colors and lengths.

Sandy squealed with delight. “Oh, Dawn! Look at this! I’ve always wanted to be a red—

head!” Sandy scooped up a bright red wig, bushy with tight curls, and pulled it onto her head.

Dawn laughed. “You look like a clown!” Dawn cried. Then she jerked on a jet-black wig in a smooth mid-length that barely covered her ears.

“You look like an elf!” Sandy teased. “How about this?” Sandy cried, pulling on a chestnut-colored hair piece that cascaded to her shoulders.

” ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!’ ” Dawn quoted laughingly.

“Would you like to try something that looks bizarre?” Mrs. Cooper asked, her blue eyes twinkling. She held up a pink and blue hairpiece that poked up in thick spikes.

“You could put out somebody’s eye,” Mrs. Rochelle gasped.

“Don’t you think it’s me?” Sandy squealed and pulled it onto her head. The effect was so comical that everyone burst into laughter.

The two girls rummaged through the pile of wigs. They eventually settled on two casual, undramatic styles that looked cute and natural on each of them. Sandy chose one more golden than her naturally blonde hair color. And Dawn chose one in a dark brown, curly style. They snuggled the wigs securely on their heads and primped in front of the mirror.

The afternoon had been fun, but tiring. Dawn felt her energy reserves ebbing as her mom

prepared to leave with Mrs. Cooper. “Thanks, Mom,” she said.

“Yeah, thanks a whole bunch,” Sandy added. “It makes going bald a whole lot easier.”

Mrs. Rochelle squeezed both girls tightly, blinking back some unbidden tears. “You two are wonderful kids,” she said. “I’ll do anything to make this easier for you. Anything!” she added for emphasis.

Dawn watched her mom and Mrs. Cooper hurry away. Then she and Sandy left their room to show off their brand new hair at the nurses station. Afterward, Dawn fell into an exhausted sleep … a sleep so deep and dreamless that she didn’t even wake for supper.

The chemotherapy continued to take its toll on Dawn. In six weeks she’d lost 15 pounds. Her clothes hung limply on her five-foot frame. Her bones and joints ached. The nurses had to put a thick lambskin pad under her pelvis so that her hip bones wouldn’t jab and bruise her skin from the inside whenever she slept at night.

A fine rash covered her arms and legs, a reaction to the combinations of drugs. Her blood vessels erupted, causing deep purple bruises to appear like splotches on her body. Her skin took on a blackish cast as the drugs affected the pigmentation. Scabs formed on her lips and

she could no longer bear to look at her own reflection in the mirror.

“It isn’t me, Mom,” Dawn told her mother whenever she saw her mirror image. “It isn’t me.”

Mrs. Rochelle held Dawn’s hand tightly and smoothed her daughter’s dry, papery skin with her palm. “I know, baby,” she whispered. “And once you go into remission, you’ll get your regular face and body back. I promise.”

Remission. To Dawn, the word sounded like an unobtainable goal, a Utopia that she would never reach. Remission, she had been told, was like an island of peace and comfort, away from the drugs and chemicals that burned and hurt going into her veins. These were the drugs that caused her to retch and heave until she felt like collapsing. These drugs caused her to feel so weak and tired that she could hardly lift her head from her pillow.

She tried to eat, but the drugs caused foods to taste peculiar, odd, strange. Sweet things turned bitter in her mouth. Chocolate tasted so horrible that the thought of brownie s and fudge made her gag. Yet sometimes she developed cravings both bizarre and weird.

The nurses were always ready to accommodate any craving, any request for food at anytime of the day or night. Dawn ate tacos at 3 A.M. and spaghetti for breakfast. She managed a watermelon-flavored milkshake one afternoon and

thought it tasted wonderful.

Her parents stood by her. They were always there, always comforting, always loving. They answered her questions, told her the truth about her illness and kept her informed about school, church and world events. Usually, she was too sick to care. But it helped knowing that they tried so hard to keep up her spirits.

Sandy suffered the same agonies. When it was especially bad for one or the other, the one least affected would help the other. They read poetry to one another. They told each other long, silly stories about school and childhood fantasies.

“When I get married,” Sandy would say, “I want two children, a boy and a girl. I’ll call the boy Christopher and the girl, Dawn ,

“

“I’m going to college just like Rob,” Dawn would tell her friend. “I’m going to be a lawyer. Daddy always said I could argue the fuzz off a peach… .”

“Do you think Jason will ever want to kiss me again?” Sandy would ask.

“Do you think I’ll ever be able to be on the cheerleading squad again?” Dawn would counter.

On the days when they both felt decent, they struggled to keep up with their respective school work. Dawn was determined to pass to the eighth grade. Her cancer was not going to hold her back an entire school year! She took the tests her teachers prepared for her and her mother brought to the hospital. She even managed to

complete an English term paper. But algebra had to wait until she felt better. She simply couldn’t manage to grasp it in her weakened state.

Rob wrote. He called often. Rhonda called, too. But her friends eventually stopped coming to the hospital. They told one another that the sight of Dawn was just too depressing. Secretly, Dawn was relieved that they stopped visiting. It was disheartening to be around them. They didn’t understand. No one but Sandy really understood what she was going through.

So, Dawn waited, accepting her therapy and taking her medications. She waited for that wonderful day when the bone marrow aspirations, the blood tests, the red count, the white count and the platelet count would all show that she was finally in remission. It would be then that her body and her mind were winning the war against leukemia. She would be winning the battle for control of her life.

“You have a fever,” Nurse Fredia said. She slipped the end of the electronic thermometer out of Dawn’s mouth and flicked the white sheath off into the garbage can.

“So what’s new?” Dawn asked weakly. The chemotherapy had caused her to have fevers before.

Nurse Fredia’s cool hands brushed Dawn’s brow and her eyes looked worried and concerned. “I think this one’s different,” she told

Dawn. “You may be coming down with an infection.”

Dawn’s heart gave a little lurch. She knew it was dangerous to get an infection while taking chemotherapy. The powerful drugs killed cancer cells, but they also killed and weakened normal cells. She simply didn’t have the inner resources to fight off an infection, not even a simple cold.

“What does that mean?” Dawn asked through dry, cracked lips feeling suddenly weak, then hot, then cold.

“I’m calling Dr. Sinclair,” Nurse Fredia told her and left the room.

In minutes, doctors seemed to materialize around her bed. Hands probed, voices whispered, sounds rose and receded all around her.

“Dawn!” Dr. Sinclair was calling her name. She struggled to speak, but no sound came out. Why couldn’t she answer him? She wanted to.

“Dawn,” his voice said from far away. “We’re going to move you, Dawn. We’re taking you down to Intensive Care so that we can monitor you more closely.”

She wanted to tell him, “No.” She wanted to let him know that she was fine right here in her own room. But she was too weak to respond, too weak and tired and cold and hot.

From far away she heard Sandy say her name. And it sounded like she was crying….

CHAPTER 5.

Someone lifted her onto another bed, someone with strong, cool hands. The bed started to roll. Dawn was conscious of moving out of her room, onto an elevator and down a long hallway. Overhead, the lights flowed past like a stream. She shut her eyes against the glare and the intensity of their brightness.

Her head hurt. It pounded, throbbed and ached. It felt like it weighed a ton and she couldn’t manage to move it from side to side. The rolling bed stopped in another room. This room was quiet. The lights were very dim.

The hands lifted her again onto another bed. There were machines and a curtain all around the bed. She felt surrounded by nurses she didn’t recognize. Where was Nurse Fredia? Dawn felt confused and disoriented.

Someone attached little metal cups to her chest. Wires led from the cups to a machine next to her bed. The compact machine sounded blip-blip-blip as a tiny green line journeyed across its television-shaped face over and over.

“That’s the signal of your heartbeat,” a voice explained.

What a funny place to keep my heartbeat, Dawn thought. Why would they want to see her heartbeat? Didn’t they know she had leukemia?

Someone else stuck something in her arm. Dawn moaned and felt something warm flood through her. An upside-down bottle clanked next to her bed on a metal stand. Dawn saw it and wondered why it was filled with red liquid. Her chemotherapy wasn’t red ….

“We’re giving you blood,” the nurse told her. “Your blood count is very low. We’re giving you antibiotics, too.”