Fix You

Hospitals baffled me.

Everyone seemed to always be in a rush, always trying to be anywhere but where they already were. The way they talked to you—it was like you were just one of many, never an individual. You were an item on a list and as soon as you were checked off it was out of sight, out of mind. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. You were supposed to be cared for, looked after, someone’s goddamn priority. They were supposed to help you; instead, they treated you like a nuisance.

I couldn’t tell you how many hours I spent there waiting on good news that’d never come. Some part of me knew I was wasting my time. The doctors, cold and standoffish as they were, had never been anything but realistic. They said someone like you didn’t have much of a chance against what you were fighting. Maybe one of them would have some miraculous epiphany and they’d rush in and cure you. If you knew I daydreamed about such things you’d laugh and tell me I’ve watched one too many episodes of House. I would’ve given anything to be in Princeton-Plainsboro.

“Good morning, Miss Marleau.”

“Dr. Beleznay,” I acknowledged, nodding at him as he stood in the doorway of your room. You would’ve criticized my curt response.

“How are you?”

He was moving about the room so quickly my head began to spin. He checked this, tweaked that, wrote down such-and-such on his clipboard. When I didn’t reply, he turned to look at me. He looked tired. We both understood one another then. He was tired of trying to help people he knew he couldn’t; I was tired of playing God’s waiting game. If you, too, were going to be taken from me, I wish He would just take you already. Every day I woke up and you were still alive gave me false hope that maybe we’d walk away from this unscathed.

“I’m tired,” I responded finally.

He offered me a sympathetic smile. “I think we all are.”

I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that he had no idea what it was like to be in my position, but I had a feeling he did know. It wasn’t as if I was the first person to take up residence in the hospital, to slowly watch a loved one die and know there was nothing I could do. My suffering wasn’t exclusive. It never had been. I’d grown cold and bitter, choosing only to remember and acknowledge the bad in the world rather than the good.

Some people are just born with tragedy in their blood. That was me—us, rather. It wasn’t fair. You were just a kid and knew nothing of the darkness in the world. I’d been around the block a few times, having experienced some pain but nothing close to what I felt after the accident. I never thought you’d be an orphan at the age of four; I never thought I’d be responsible for you at twenty. But you were family, flesh and blood, and that was my job. You were my brother. I never would’ve abandoned you.

It was hard, trying to take their place. You asked about them all the time and I never had the answers you so desperately wanted. Per your request I took you to church. You asked God why He took your parents away; I had to answer for His silence. Your innocence tore me apart. No one deserved to hurt the way you were hurting. I would’ve sold my soul to the devil to take your pain away.

The days got easier as time wore on. You stopped having nightmares sometime around your sixth birthday and were able to sleep through the night. Two years had been taken from you—two years that you could’ve spent happy and normal, like the children you’d see when I’d take you to the park. You made the decision that year to finally go to a real school instead of having me homeschool you. You were tired of burdening me, you said. I never told you how those six little words broke my heart. No six-year-old should feel like a burden.

Six months later your life was turned upside down again.

It started out innocent enough: night sweats and a sore throat—nothing we hadn’t dealt with before. I gave you that god-awful purple liquid every night before you went to bed and you always told me you felt better in the morning. That lasted a week before I finally dragged you, kicking and screaming, to the doctor. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes when he told me it was more complicated than he’d originally thought. We spent the next two weeks in and out of UPMC as they ran test after test. Even though we were both naturally pessimistic, I don’t think either of us suspected the truth: you were dying.

“Anything new?” I asked. My voice sounded foreign. It was weak and cracked, like the foundation of a building that had supported too much for too long and was finally throwing in the towel.

“I’m afraid not,” the doctor replied. “For right now I think it’d be best to keep him on his regular course of medications until something does change. Then we can go from there depending on if the change is good or bad.”

I nodded, unsure of what else I could’ve done. Dr. Beleznay had been giving me the same prognosis for months: nothing new, no changes. As relieved as I was that you weren’t getting worse, I couldn’t understand why you weren’t getting better. It was like you were frozen in time, stuck in a place where you were teetering on the edge of death, and no one had the heart to push you over.

“What should I do?”

He sighed. “I don’t know, Annick. I’d tell you to go home and get some rest but I know you won’t listen to me.”

“What would you do?” I asked softly.

“I’d do exactly what you’re doing,” he answered, “but you’re running on empty. Please, if only just this once, try to get some sleep. I’ll call you if—”

“No,” I interjected. “I can’t leave him. I’m sorry.”

He nodded in understanding and called for a nurse. “Jen, get Miss Marleau a pillow and blanket, would you? She’s going to be staying here tonight.”

Jen nodded and disappeared down the hallway. I stole a glance at the clock: quarter past ten. Dr. Beleznay had been late in his nightly rounds and I assumed that to mean the worst. He was never late unless something went wrong. I didn’t have the heart to ask who it was. It wasn’t any of my business, anyway. Whoever had just lost their child was suffering a pain far greater than any I’d ever be able to comprehend and even thinking about asking for a name or disease made me feel dirty.

“I just administered his Cytoxan,” he told me. “Same as always: he’ll sleep most of the day. You can expect him awake tomorrow afternoon in time for lunch.”

I nodded. You usually slept 18 hours now. Dr. Beleznay said that was a side-effect of the drugs they had you on, that if they didn’t give you all of them you’d be in an indescribable amount of pain. Ever since our parents died I’d developed a thick skin; there were a multitude of situations I could handle. Seeing you in pain wasn’t one of them, so I let them do what they had to. Although it ripped me apart to see you laying in that hospital bed, so small and undeserving, I’d rather you sleep more than half the day than feel even a shred of evidence of your disease.

I miss you, Alex. I miss you like hell and you’re not even gone yet.

“Hey, Doc?”

“Yes?” he answered, turning around in the doorframe.

“What are—does the kid even have a chance?”

He sighed. “I don’t know. The good news is he hasn’t gotten worse, of course, but the downside to that is he’s not improving on any of the medications we’re giving him.” His hands dropped to his sides and he moved toward me, placing a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “I want to tell you everything will be fine but I can’t. Just know your brother is a strong kid and try to keep your head up.”

“And if he’s still unresponsive to the meds?”

“We keep trying,” he answered simply. “We’re not going to give up.”

I nodded. “I just want to be realistic about this.”

“Of course.” He turned to look at you. “NHL is a tricky one, Annie. Especially in kids. But the statistics are on Alex’s side. The five-year survival is at 85 percent now, which is a significant improvement from decades past.”

“So if he can just hang on for three more years…”

He nodded. “Most of the time I try to keep my optimism to myself in case things take a turn for the worse, but it’s different with Alex. I don’t want to give you false hope, Annie, but at the rate things are going I’d honestly be surprised if this didn’t turn out in his favor.”

“Thank you, Doc.”

Another sympathetic smile was sent my way. “I know it’s hard, but I think Alex would want you to keep your head on straight through all of this.”

And then he, too, was gone.

He was right. You’d hate to see me so bent out of shape even though I hadn’t particularly been in shape since the accident. My head was always someplace it shouldn’t have been. Every thought was about our parents or the way they’d died. I had nightmares just like you did, but I couldn’t let you know that. I thought I needed to be strong enough for the both of us, that you deserved to grieve more than I did. Whether or not it worked, I don’t know. I probably never will.

I thought becoming a parent, so to speak, at twenty was going to be the hardest thing I’d ever done. After losing Mama and Dad, I knew nothing would compare. And it wasn’t as though you were a bad kid; you were quite the opposite. I just knew I wasn’t ready for that kind of responsibility. Now I was responsible for another life. I had to clothe you, feed you, protect you. I had to fill the shoes of our parents, your real ones, and though I’d never been self-conscious in my entire life, I was then. No matter what I knew in my heart to be true, I felt like I wasn’t good enough. Not for you, anyway. You deserved the world after what you’d been through and back then I wasn’t in a position to give it to you.

After the funeral, I began looking for answers. Mama had always been deeply spiritual and always told me to seek out happiness rather than devotion. You were too young to understand what that meant, then, but I always promised I’d teach you what she would’ve wanted you to know. Regardless, in her quest for spirituality came understanding. She was almost open-minded to a fault but it was a comfort I hadn’t realized I’d been missing since they left us. When I was a little girl, Before I she always used to read me stories or bore me to sleep with lessons before I went to bed. Sometimes they were from the Bible, sometimes they were from Aesop’s Fables. But only one had ever stuck with me.

The origin of suffering is attachment.

Buddhism—something not many parents would try to explain to their children but Mama was different. She wanted us to share her thirst for knowledge and understanding.

And then I did understand. These people at hospitals—they weren’t cold. They didn’t treat you like one of many simply because that’s how they were. They had to. They couldn’t afford to get attached because if something happened to you they’d live their lives in complete misery because death was everlasting. A million prayers couldn’t stop it once you’d been targeted. If they let themselves become attached to every child who walked through their doors, already halfway gone, they’d never know what happiness felt like. They’d subject themselves to a lifetime of suffering and that was no way to live. However, as Mama would say, there was always an upside.

The cessation of suffering is attainable.

God, I hoped so.