Page 66

“We know you didn’t, Oliver,” Kelly assures him. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“But it is!” he screams, ripping the pillow from his face and sitting up. “It is my fault because I fell on her and then she got cancer and died!”
That’s not how it happened though. Yes, Oliver fell on her, and that’s what finally made us take her to the doctor, but for months before that, Mara had a limp. I thought it was growing pains and brushed it off. Kelly knew deep down it was something more and kept telling me we should take her in. Months went by, precious months where if I hadn’t been so hard-headed that kids need to toughen up and not run to the doctor for everything, maybe she’d still be alive today. But she’s not, and if anyone’s to blame, maybe it’s me.
“You didn’t make her sick, Oliver,” Kelly assures him, trying to hold him, but he keeps pushing her hands away. “She had cancer before we even knew and you falling on her, that’s how we found it so really, we should thank you because we got more time with her.”
“No, you didn’t.” He cries into his hand, so much anger and sadness releasing. “She died.”
No ten-year-old should ever have to feel the guilt of thinking it’s something he did that caused his sister’s death. No parent should have to shoulder the pain and pretend it’s okay when deep down they feel like they failed all their children that day.
I want this pain to end, and these emotions none of us can handle or understand to process them. This grieving shit, this useless emotion they say comes in waves, well it’s hit me like a tsunami today, and it needs to stop. Now.
The anger gets stronger, a fuel to the flames of blame. I can’t ignore it anymore. It surfaces and pulls me under. Inside our bedroom, I grab my heart, gasping for air, feeling trapped. The image of Mara lifeless in my arms taking over.
I don’t know how much time passes, but Kelly is in front of me, her hands on my face. “Talk to me,” she begs.
I can’t. I don’t want to.
“You shutting me out, this isn’t living, Noah. It’s surviving, and I’d rather drown in your harshness than suffocate in your silence.”
I’d rather die than feel this pain.
Twenty
The End
(The night that destroyed us.)
Journal,I think, no, I fear Mara dying is going to destroy us completely. It’s too much. I can’t take Noah’s silence any longer. It’s bubbling over the edge and at some point, I know I’m going to snap and this wall that’s been building is going to become indestructible. It’s hard to look at him anymore. Noah’s pain is so visible, and even though he’s trying to hide it, it’s there and raw, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. I know at some point the argument is going to happen between us and I know it’s not going to be pretty.
I tried so hard to get him to talk about what happened with Oliver and Hazel, but he shut me down and refused. It was like the night Mara died all over again. It started with, “We’re buying time, Kel. We can’t do this to her anymore.” And that was the last time Noah spoke to me about Mara. Isn’t that what’s happening to us now?
Do you remember that night, Journal? I wrote about it. It’s all here. Every gory detail.
Once I write in Journal,I usually never go back and read it. But tonight, I flip back through the pages to the one I’ve never dared to read again. I don’t know why. Maybe to remember my precious blonde-haired baby girl whose life was taken too soon.
It takes me a moment to find it, but then I do, like fate, like I was supposed to read this night over again. With a deep breath, I run my fingers over the worn pages, and the ink spread over them. And then I read what I wrote that day, August 28th, the day she died.
Journal,we’re at the end. I know, you didn’t see it coming, did you? We certainly didn’t. And now, there’s no tubes or alarms any longer. There’s no point. It’s the end. Noah’s sleeping next to her after being awake for the last three days, and soon, though we don’t know when, Mara will drift away and into the unknown. I want to believe she will no longer be in pain. We should be throwing her seventh birthday party we planned for her, but instead, we’re here, in a dimly lit hospital room in Austin, holding her hands and praying for comfort. So much has happened in the last three days since her last round of chemo.
Everything was fine on Friday when we went in for a check-up. Mara had said her back was hurting so we took her in. It was four hours later they called us back and asked us to come in. We did. They handed me a box of tissues and delivered the news. Silently, this disease had spread and taken over her tiny strong-willed rebel body. I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew since Mara started swelling on the right side of her body. Up until now, since we found out she had cancer six months ago, we’d been doing everything on her treatment plan, including surgery to remove the tumor in her thigh bone. But when osteosarcoma spreads, it usually goes to your lungs. In Mara’s case, it spread so rapidly there was nothing we could do to stop it. Now we’re here, a tumor in her chest so large it’s pushing on her heart, lungs, and airway.
“I’m so sorry. We could try to fight this, but the chance of Mara making it even through the next couple days is very slim.”
The blinding hope that maybe we would be given a miracle, it turned to no hope. We were done. There would be no more treatments and injections. No stem cell transplants. No more vomiting and bloody noses and hair loss and major surgeries where they cut apart her body to save her. The cancer had won. No matter what we did from here on out, it was the end. It was going to take her life from her.
The child life specialist, Vivian, she tells me, “God has a greater plan for her.”
Noah glares at her. “Fuck that,” he says, leaving the room. The way the door slams shut, it hurts.
I look to Mara, her eyes closed, her breathing quick and rapid.
I agree. It’s bullshit. I don’t want comfort. I want my fucking daughter to live. I want her to ride a bike and play and be everything she can be because she deserves it. She doesn’t deserve this awful disease that’s torn our lives apart and sucked all the life from hers. Now she’s skin and bones, no hair, and barely able to lift her head. Her shocking blue eyes, they’re gone. Lifeless. Even when she opens them, it’s not the same. I see it. She’s dying.
I hate. So much. It’s raging through me to the point that I want to lash out and destroy. I want to slam my fists into the window outside her room just to feel pain other than the emotionally draining ones inside me. I want so badly to cause physical pain on something, I’m shaking.
Vivian touches my shoulder. “I know this is hard. But you have to stay calm.”