Surge

20

Five days had passed.Only five days ago, less than a week, I’d thought Drake having anxiety and fainting was the worst thing he could ever go through. I was wrong. Oh-so wrong.

I walked into the house that evening after a very long few hours in the hospital, settling Drake in for a stay. I’d run to several stores, his apartment, and everywhere I could to get him comfortable for his stay. He wasn’t coming out anytime soon.

Not only did he have this aplastic anemia, it was severe. People talked about receiving news from a doctor, and how they thought they should take someone else in case they missed a vital detail. I hadn’t forgotten a single thing about those twenty minutes with the doctor. The doctor had came in and sat—that was the first sign something was wrong. He’d delivered the news under fluorescent lights that made his hairline glisten. An announcement for a fundraising bake sale in the gift shop faintly entered the room from the corridor as Dr. Chidozie had said Drake needed to be hospitalized.

Drake’s face, body, his everything, had frozen. I knew he’d convinced himself it was nothing. But it was something. A monstrous something. When the doctor had said that this was a life-threatening disease, I’d seen right through Drake’s shirt, through his skin, and watched his heart drop from his chest to somewhere below. I’d wanted to dive into him, like he was the deep sea, swim down into the dark and rescue it. But I couldn’t.

I hadn’t done anything but let Drake ask many questions and allow him not to ask the only one I had: How long does he have to live?

Because that was what we were dealing with now.

Now I was home after the longest week of my life. I’d forgotten to take off my shoes. The noise they made walking down the hallway, to me, was silence but had beckoned my mom to come walking swiftly toward the kitchen where I ended up.

My chest was nothing but an empty shell right now—a dark, empty black hole that would suck every bit of joy from every last cell of every limb of mine. I didn’t know exactly how it worked, but heartache was a real thing. Emotions, scientifically, were supposed to take place in the mind, but my chest banged with a ferocity of an outer space implosion that could create an entirely new dimension. Sadly, it was one I really did not want to live in.

“Maeve?”

I glanced up from wherever my eyes were, I hadn’t been focusing on anything in particular. It was a wonder I’d driven home because even now, gazing at my mom, I hardly even saw her. A fuzzy, dead, and very turned-off sensation obscured my every thought.

My mom came over to me and wrapped her arms around me. Her embrace thawed me a little, and I lay my head on her shoulder.

“It’s not good, Mom. It’s not good.” Tears instantly clogged my throat, my nose, and choked me off. “It’s…”

I couldn’t get the words out. Streams of tears blinded me. All the strength within had been used up in that doctor’s office. Sobbing didn’t begin to describe the outpouring from my soul. The pain reached the deepest part of me and flooded out like a tear had just formed at the edge of the atmosphere and everything that had ever been since time began came flooding into the world as we knew it. I cried unstoppable tears. They raced out of me, each one as insatiable as the last because my spirit knew that no amount of them would make me feel better, but I couldn’t stop trying.

I didn’t even particularly notice when my mom led me to the sofa in our living room. She sat us both down and held me. When I finally dried up, probably from pure dehydration rather than feeling any better, my mom’s shoulder was soaked and a few strands of hair were plastered to my face.

My mom reached up her fingers and gently pried them off my face, tucking them behind my ear. She smoothed all of my hair back. I closed my eyes and breathed in the soothing touch I needed so badly. I hurt everywhere.

Patiently, my mom just held my hand, saying nothing, she was there with me. She knew the gist of what had happened this week. She knew Drake had fainted. She knew about the transfusion. She knew about the tests. But she didn’t know the diagnosis.

I finally found the courage to speak. My voice was nasal and husky. “Drake has a blood disease.”

“Leukemia?” Mom’s voice came out almost like a whisper.

“Leukemia would have been the best outcome… it’s worse. It’s like, ‘this could be our last year together’ worse.” I snuffled in quickly, pulling back what felt like another sob gearing up. “There are only two treatment options. Either drugs or a bone marrow transplant.”

My mom’s breath hitched. First, a shock wave stiffened her body. She furrowed her brow. Her eyes darted back and forth quickly, thoughts passing from left brain to right. An answer came to her, but her positivity was out of place. She knew it even before she said, “We’ll all get tested. We’ll all see… I’ll put a message out to the world, and we’ll find him a match…” She gathered me up into a hug. “Or maybe the drugs’ll work…”

I buried my head. My mom’s perfume was sweet and strong. For the first time since all this had happened, I felt like I could actually sleep. My mom’s bosom felt like home. Like a place to hide. I wished I never had to lift my head again. I could just die here in a bouquet of roses and only ever remember Drake and our good times. If I didn’t lift my head, I wouldn’t have to watch him suffer.

God, I wished it was me instead.

I had more to say, and at the same there wasn’t anything relevant to say. Breathing in the aromatherapy of my mother’s chest, I braved the world and peeled myself away. We stared at each other, with sad eyes of injustice. And empathy. Two women seeing and knowing each other on the deepest level.

I knew how my mom felt now. The feeling of being robbed of what storybooks and movies promised. Being robbed of what you let yourself believe would be a happily ever after.

But quickly, as it often happened with the Lewis women, anger rumbled inside, mixing with the sadness. I was pissed off with life just as much was anything. I shook my fist at the universe, pounded the earth with my hands. I wanted to fight it all until my very last breath. Or Drake’s.

I’d never felt so connected to Dixie Lewis and I had no idea if minutes or hours had passed in the time we sat on the couch in our living room. But we were silent for long enough to let a new and very special bond build between us. I was so glad she was still here. Still with me. If she was strong enough to survive my dad, a broken neck, and rehab… I could see in her eyes, I could do it, too.

“Honey.” My mom’s expression was soft but determined. “You need to keep hoping. Never, ever stop hoping. Hope is a prayer to fate. If you don’t ask, you won’t get. We never stop hoping, you hear?”

I nodded quickly, worried that if I uttered a word, I might cry again.

All of a sudden, she slapped her hands on her thighs with a big clap. “That’s it.” My mom got up from the sofa. “I need to talk to Nora.”