The ice was gone from the trails by mid-April, and the mud dried quickly in the warm sun. Gemma and I started running the track that carves its way through the ravine down to the river. It didn’t help. I was still tired. She would take the lead with a spring in her step, changing her stride from the sandy gravel of the main trail to the spongy moss in the depths of the forest, and then to the boardwalk over the marsh, while I’d struggle just placing one foot in front of the other.
Angela noticed how tired I was and said that I was going through changes, that I was in a growth spurt, and that tiredness is a normal part of growing up. She said that boys especially can get sore legs when they’re growing fast. They even have a name for it: growing pains. She said it would pass. She was wrong. She always is.
The kid in the bed next to me is crying. He’s about six years old, and his mother isn’t with him. I feel sad for him. A nurse comes, drawing the curtain with a soft swish. I wonder if I will ever get any sleep here. I’m so tired but my mind won’t stop spinning. It returns yet again to the track meet at school….
I get that loser feeling again of knowing that I’d let the others down. I hate it. I’d desperately wanted that day to be over so I could get out of the heat, lie on the sofa, and watch TV. Instead, I’d flopped on the grass under the trees, swigging from my water bottle and pouring the rest over my head in a futile attempt to re-energize. The announcer called for long-jump competitors to make their way to the pit. I dragged myself up, happy at least that this was the last event of the day.
When I finally got home, I staggered through the front door, throwing my gear aside. My running shoes were laced tightly to my feet. They wouldn’t kick off, and I didn’t have the energy to untie them, so I stumbled to the family room and collapsed face-down on the sofa.
“Adam!” Angela scolded.
I rolled my eyes at the thought that my mother was already home from work. At the same time, I realized why my grandfather was not at the door to greet me — he was up in his room, keeping out of Angela’s way.
“Oh, my goodness! What happened?” she exclaimed.
I had no idea what she was talking about.
“That bruise on the back of your leg?”
I swivelled to where Angela was pointing. There was a dark bruise all over my thigh. I yanked my shorts up higher. The bruise went right on up to my backside. “What the …?”
“What happened?”
I had to think for a moment before it came back to me. “Oh, yeah, I did long-jump. I covered a good distance with my feet, but then I fell backward and sat down in the sandpit. It didn’t hurt, though.”
“There’s no way you could have gotten a bruise that bad, that fast … unless the long-jump pit has rocks in it. Is anyone pushing you around?”
“No!”
I remember the look of concern on her face. “If someone was bullying you, or being mean to you, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course I’d tell you,” I said, thinking that Angela would be the last person I’d tell. “I guess I landed harder than I thought.”
She unlaced my running shoes, prying them from my feet. “You look exhausted. Go on up to bed. I’ll bring you a snack in a few minutes.”
But it was like my body had moulded itself into the sofa so that we were inseparable. Angela brought a pillow and a blanket and told me to stay there and sleep. The words were barely out of her mouth when I felt myself slipping away.
When I woke up, I was face-down on the pillow in a warm, wet puddle. I remember swiping my hand across my mouth, figuring it was drool. It was damp and sticky on the side of my face, and my hair was matted. It smelled a bit like metal. That’s when I realized it was blood!
I yelled, and Angela came running. Within seconds she was dialling 911. The paramedics got the bleeding mostly under control, and by the time we arrived at the emergency department of the hospital, I felt like a fake. “It was just a nosebleed,” I said sheepishly. But the doctors didn’t treat me like it was just a nosebleed. They asked questions and took vials of blood. Then they parked me in a corridor on a rolling stretcher to keep me under observation for the evening. Nothing else happened, so they sent me home.
Two days later, we were back at the Northern Lights Hospital, waiting to see Dr. Miller. The receptionist didn’t make eye contact when she asked for my health card. I got a bad feeling. We sat down. We waited. Angela had a magazine on her lap, but she wasn’t reading it. She never turned the page, even though she stared at it for ages. I tapped my foot and drummed my fingers. But before long I was too tired to tap, or drum, and it seemed just fine to sit and do nothing.
Finally, the doctor invited us into his office. There wasn’t so much as a hello, how are you? At least not that I remember. He just dropped the bomb.
“It’s leukemia.”
On the drive home, I was speechless. That was when Angela had started her one-sentence loop: “It will be okay, it will be okay.” Occasionally she threw in: “We’ll get through this.”
I remember walking into the house. It was still the same house I’d lived in for more than six years, no different from how it was when I’d left it three hours before. But it was different. Everything was different. It was weird, like my body was walking around, going through the motions of behaving normally, but my brain was a few steps behind — or to be more accurate, above. I hoped that it would drop back into my body real soon, because I felt seriously out of sync.
“What did the doctor say?” my grandfather asked as soon as we got in the door.
“I’ve got leukemia!” I blurted out, trying the words on for size, seeing how they would sound out loud for the very first time. They sounded fine. But I couldn’t look at my grandfather. I stared dumbly at my feet and then climbed the stairs to my room.
“Try to nap,” Angela called out as I disappeared. “It’s been a tiring morning.”
She was right, but my mind wouldn’t let me sleep then, any more than it will let me sleep now. It kept replaying the scene in the doctor’s office. Unfortunately, it only replayed the few parts that I remembered. Gaping black holes had swallowed part of the story, leaving it like a partly finished jigsaw puzzle, or more like one that was just started. I wish I’d paid better attention. It was all so confusing. And unbelievable. It still is.
Later, I heard Angela go to her room and phone Frank. The door wasn’t closed. I heard her side of the conversation.
“No, Frank, surgery won’t help … No! They can’t cut it out. It’s not a tumour! The cancer cells float around in the blood. They don’t clump together to form a tumour … No! Listen to me, Frank … There’s nothing to cut out … He’ll have to have chemotherapy … Radiation? I don’t know. Right now they’re saying chemotherapy … It’s the only option. It works in 90 percent of cases … Please, Frank, stop! Don’t go there.”
CHAPTER SIX
The female fish hawk can still see the big river, but the thick forest that should have lined its banks and provided her with a nesting site for the summer is mostly gone. Only a narrow band of greenery remains, not enough to offer her protection and seclusion. Away from the scrawny trees, the naked earth ripples like the beaches of her winter home where the ocean ebbs and flows, tugging the grains of sand and rearranging them. But there is no ocean here to leave its imprint on the land. She loses her bearings. She doesn’t know how high she is flying. She doesn’t know what direction she is going. She is simply flying.
In