Page 7 of Tear Me Apart

“Excuse me?”

“My name is Lauren. Not Mom. His name is Jasper. Not Dad. Please stop it.”

“Yes, ma’am. Of course.” He regroups, then begins again, with a long emphasis on their names that is almost as infuriating to her as the parental nomenclature.

“Lauren. Jasper. Mindy is an athlete, used to pushing herself. If I were to guess, she’s always tired, always sore, and that’s been going on for several months, am I right? My bet is she’s been running ragged competing this winter, and it was easily missed, blamed on her training regime.”

Easily missed. Lauren’s daughter has a disease that might kill her, and it waseasily missedby those closest to her.

Dear God. How will they live with themselves if Mindy dies, and they chalked up her symptoms to aggressive training?

The surgeon’s beeper squawks. He reaches down, frowning at his belt. “I need to go, we have another emergency surgery. I’ll leave you in Dr. Oliver’s care, and I’ll see Mindy tomorrow morning during rounds. She’s a tough girl. Don’t worry yourselves too much. The leg will heal.”

And he bustles away, a flurry of blue scrubs and white coat. Lauren senses relief in the lines of his retreating shoulders—his job is finished, and Dr. Oliver’s, and Mindy’s, is just beginning.

Dr. Oliver gestures to the couch.

“Let me tell you where we go from here.”

The names of the tests are lengthy and confusing. He hands over a pamphlet with a smiling bald blue-eyed wraith on it—Dealing with Your Child’s Cancer Diagnosis. Lauren’s stomach flips. She wants to see Mindy, right now, wants to see her so badly it’s like a hole is being seared into her heart.

But she sits still as the grave, and pretends to listen, to comprehend; holds Jasper’s hand and leans into his warm body and prays they aren’t already at the end, when this morning, she’d awakened thinking they were at the beginning.

There is a plan, a “protocol,” that Dr. Oliver is going to follow. It involves aggressive chemotherapy—the induction period—followed by more treatment. Mindy will be moved from the surgical floor to oncology for more testing.

She cannot go home. She cannot pass Go. She cannot collect two hundred dollars. She is going to be stuck in this small hospital for the next few days, and they are welcome to stay with her. Many parents do, especially the first night.

Dr. Oliver is still talking, but Lauren tunes him out. She watches his mouth move. She watches Jasper’s eyes track over the man’s face, looking desperately for something positive to take away from this speech.

There is nothing more to glean, and Jasper is shivering when they stand and allow themselves to be escorted to a room two floors up. It is small but sunny, with the same oddly industrial yellow walls. Lauren does her best not to see any of the other patients as they pass rooms bedecked in personal items, afghans and photographs, ignores the small, bald children in wheelchairs staring into the hallways, ignores the chills creeping down her spine.

Dr. Oliver’s nurse gets them settled. Her name is Hazel, and she seems very kind—they are all so very kind, so kind it sets Lauren’s teeth on edge.

“Is there someone we can call, any family you’d like us to reach out to?”

Who would she call?

Her phone hasn’t rung since the accident, has it?

She digs into her bag, only to find the phone’s battery has died. Lauren doesn’t ever allow that to happen, but since her entire world is right here in this hospital room, there is no one she wants to talk to, so she’s left the phone in her purse, zipped tidily away so it won’t fall out, and it’s dead.

Stop thinking that word, Lauren.

Like Mindy, Lauren doesn’t have any close friends. With Mindy’s activities, it’s always been hard to establish friendships with the mothers of other girls her age. Either they were busy with their own extracurriculars, or too competitive to allow their daughters to spend time with Lauren’s. They are a solid, happy threesome, Jasper, Mindy, and Lauren. Truthfully, Lauren prefers it this way. Their solitude is a comfort to her. She was never much for large groups anyway.

“We should call Juliet,” Jasper says, and Lauren nods. Oh, of course. Juliet. Her little sister. Mindy’s favorite—only—aunt. She must be told. Jasper steps out to make the call.

Lauren is beginning to think she must be in shock. She is not thinking clearly. She watches the blizzard outside the window. The fluorescent lights and kindly nurses are making her so claustrophobic she wants to scream. Her instinct to flee is strong, to run into the snow and go back up the mountain to their house and wake up again and do this day over.

Of course, she can’t. She must stay together for Jasper. She must stay tethered to the real world for Mindy’s sake.

There is a small commotion in the hall. Mindy is arriving.

The techs wheel in the bed. Mindy’s leg is suspended, thin metal pieces disappearing into the bandages like the legs on a butterfly into its thorax. Her foot is half-casted, her toes peeking from their nest, black and blue and a strange orange-yellow—Betadine, from being sanitized before the surgery. She is still deeply asleep, her mouth slightly open. The painkillers must be tremendous to knock her out; her metabolism is Thoroughbred quick, and Lauren hasn’t ever seen anything touch it. She’s never seen her daughter asleep like this, either, unnaturally still, and the word prances in again—dead, dead, dead.

How will Lauren tell her how sick she is? How is this even happening? Mindy has been pale, yes, and she’s been tired, but Mindy thought—Lauren thought?—they all thought Mindy was simply training hard.

Oliver’s nurse watches these proceedings, then straightens a pillow and smiles at them again.