Just another Tumor

Hospitals into homes

Ethan Davidson 

    Sometimes I think I'm okay. I think about all the things I have been through and I tell myself that I'm not a statistic. I'm not going to be one of those make a wish kids. I'm going to be healthy and the tumors are going to stop and I'll be okay. My Mom will go back to work and my Dad is going to stop worrying about our family. Kate will stop hating me. Well maybe stop hating me as much. My friends will come back and everything will be okay. I tell my body that it's ruining me as if it's not a part of me. It's not. My body is its own thing that I'm just attached to as a prisoner. I wonder if my family thinks the same. If I didn't have this stupid disease everyone's lives would be so much better. I wonder if it's okay to think this much in an MRI machine? Probably fine, well not fine but thinking is fine. Tumor not fine, thinking fine. Don't think about the f*****g tumor, Jesus Christ don’t f*****g cry either. You knew this would happen one day. It was either going to be your heart or your head. Turns out to be your head this time. Is it done yet? I feel like it's been hours. "Hey, how long do I have left in here?"  

    "You got another 30 minutes in there, bud." f**k. So, it's only been 10 minutes? I need this not to be a tumor. I need this to be a false alarm like on my kidney. Ha, that was a good time. My mom thought I had a tumor when really it was just a UTI. My mom thinks everything is a tumor. I throw up from the flu? Tumor. Red eyes from not sleeping? Tumor. Not talking as much? Tumor. Forgot to take my meds? Tumor. Every f*****g thing is a tumor and it pisses me off that most of the f*****g time I don't feel right is because of a f*****g tumor. The one time I knew for sure it wasn't a tumor was with Sam. The way she makes me feel is not a tumor. It's a feeling of... I don't even know. f**k I need a nap. Just fall asleep Ethan. You got 25 minutes at least. Just fall asleep and then wake up it'll all be okay. “Ethan? You awake or just cat napping?” 

“What?” 

“There we go, we got the scan so, I’m taking you up to your room now.” It’s so f*****g bright in this place, I wonder if they do that for the patients who can’t go outside or have a window. Just so they can feel like they’re not left out in the dark to die or wither away. I think the only dark place in the hospital would be hospice on the top floor. I don’t think it would be the morgue since they have to examine the body, so, there’d be lots of light. The morgue isn’t so bad, it doesn’t hold any meaning for me. It’s just a place where they store the bodies. Hospice freaks me out. Everyone sitting around a barley living person, waiting for them to die. I would never want that. For people I love to see me fade away. I want to die quick and without people knowing I’m dying. I already have enough pity party going on. “Okay, this is your roommate for now.” The nurse points to a girl with purple and teal hair laying in a bed with a book? Or maybe a journal? Sketch pad? 

“Hi, cerebral aneurysm, you?” She’s loud and I’m barley awake to even answer her right now. 

“June! that’s not okay to say someone you’ve just met! You don’t even know his name yet, I’m sorry about my daughter. She’s a bit, much.” Her mom looks shaky and nervous. Kind of like my mom. 

“It’s fine. Von Hippel-Lindeau syndrome. They think I got a brain tumor.” She laughs and her mom swats her arm which makes her laugh even more. I wonder if this is from the aneurysm?  

“That’s it? Just a tumor? Well they can get that out no problem, well, depending on where it’s located.”  

“They can clip an aneurysm.” As I say it, she glares at me with intent to make me uncomfortable, it works. 

“Misses Hale, I have a few papers for you to sign.” 

“June be nice to the boy.” the woman grabs her daughters arm and gives a gentle squeeze. 

“Always.” She smiles at her mother and as soon as she turns away, June rolls her eyes. A dying girl with attitude. “So, tumor. You got so many months to live or what?” 

“Me? No, they haven’t said I’m dying yet. What about you? Your aneurysm too hard to get or are you in to get it clipped?”  

“Well, I’ve had it for a while and they said it wouldn’t cause me any problems because they already clipped it. Hence the scar here.” She lifts her hair and a small curved out line is under all the mess of her coloured hair. “But apparently I have a new one that’s making me have seizures and a bunch of other fun things. They don’t know if they can get it.” Her hands fidget with themselves. As one hand twitches her face tenses and her other hand holds the shaky one.  

“When’s your surgery?” 

“Depends on what my mom is signing. You just came back from scans or what?”  

“Yeah, MRI.” 

“Make sure you ask to see them, it’s interesting knowing where everything is. Especially if you have a tumor. Those things are savage sometimes. They literally push existing tissue right out of the way.”  

“You sure know how to make someone feel better.” I look at the window and it’s lined with picture frames. Dogs, people, there’s one of a girl riding a horse. I guess she notices my staring. 

    “Those are my friends, my dogs, and a memory.” Her eyes sadden when she gets to last one. I wonder if it’s her, the girl on the horse. She looks different. The girl in the picture seems preppy, determined to win plus she has brown hair. June looks like someone who’s given up trying, like she doesn’t have anything left to give except herself. “I hate that my mother brings those things. It’s supposed to help you not stress out and remind you of home. All I want to do when I see those pictures is rip my brain out.” 

“You’re a pretty angry person.” 

    She looks me with a dead expression and says thank you and puts some headphones in her ears. I guess she’s done talking to me. I lay back and try to focus on something other than how extremely white the ceiling is. But I mean, how the hell do you keep it like that? I bet when the lights are off you can still see because that thing must reflect even the tiniest bit of light. I wonder when my parents are coming up. Or down? I have no idea where I am. Well I do but, I don’t know where I am in the hospital. That’s another thing that’s kind of weird with hospitals. There’s so many tunnels and hallways and elevators. It looks normal from the outside but inside it’s like an ant hill. I wonder what she’s listening to? I feel like she’s the kind of girl that listens to screamo kind of bands. So loud that it just sounds like static ringing through your ears, angry lyrics for an angry person. Or maybe she’s the kind of person to listen to classical, like she needs some peace to her chaotic lifestyle. Listening to Mozart’s Serenade No. 13 because she just can’t get the smell of the hospital to leave her heart. I can’t picture her listening to popular music. Rap does not look like her kind of thing. You never know though. Maybe she’s a hood rat kind of girl. No, doesn’t look like that. I need to go for a walk. I get up out of bed and start heading to the door. The floor is cold. Why the f**k is the floor cold in a hospital? Shouldn’t it be warm for the old people? Or just the patients in general?  

“Wanna take me with you?” I look back and June is sitting on the side of her bed. Her feet dangle there with bright ruby socks. They don’t match the very dull blue coloured hospital night gown at all, but they do match her hair. 

“Sure, do you need help?” She looks over to the wheelchair and then to me, a hesitant shake of her head and she starts to roll her I.V machine with her to the door. She seems shaky but confident. “So, how old are you?” 

“I’m 17 going on 12.” Her smirk lightens her face a bit and she doesn’t seem to be as harsh. “That’s what my mother would say. She thinks I’m too immature for what’s happening with me. An aneurism isn’t a death sentence.” 

“I don’t know sometimes it is.” She glares at me and I laugh.  

“I’ve had Tyler for two years and he’s only just stared to grow again.” I look at her confused, “Tyler’s my ex and also my second aneurism. Fitting. I think anyway, he was a nightmare. Kinda sorta, maybe. He used to tell me I was amazing and beautiful but so were the three other girls he was with. That jackass took my first kiss. Now I have another aneurism and they both kind of handicapped me.” She stumbles but catches herself, pauses and continues to move forward. “Don’t worry about me, heh, Tyler’s pushing on my cerebellum. So, Tumor. What’s yours gonna be named?”  

“I don’t name them.” 

“Well that’s f*****g sad.” She looks at her hand again, shaking, trembling, “if you name it something you hate, it’s easier to not feel empty when it’s gone.” Her hand shakes harder and her face hardens. 

“Do you want to go back?” I ask her only because she has stopped. 

“Don’t.” She speaks in a sharp tone of voice, sharp enough to cut a diamond.  

“Don’t what?” 

“Don’t give me that pity party sad sack face that I don’t even have to look up to see. It shakes when I’m tired, or nervous, or mad, or happy.” 

“Which one are you?” She smirks and looks at me. 

“Guess.”  

“June! What are you doing walking, you know you need a wheelchair!” Her mom comes rushing across the hall with a nurse and chair in tow. June sits down and laughs. Her mom doesn’t seemed amused.  

“Don’t worry mom I was just showing Tumor the floor.” She looks at me and winks. I feel blushed. 

“June Marie, where are your manners?! I’m so sorry.” Her mom is genuine in her fearful expression, embarrassed of her sickly daughter. 

“It’s completely fine ma’am. I’ve been called worse.” I shake her hand and it’s soft. Not like a gentle soft, more of an over tired weak soft. 

We walk back to the room together and my mom is in the room with a doctor. She’s been crying, they’re not old. I have a tumor. They sit me down on my bed and draw the curtain, they explain that it’s too small right now to be able to operate but it’s in a dangerous area. I can’t process this anymore. I stare blankly at the curtain, at some point my Dad has shown up and grabs my shoulder. I hear Kate crying. I might die with this. I look down at my hands. Sam can’t know. Sam has to be out of the picture. I breathe and I somehow tell everyone to leave. My mom asks to stay and I’m harsh. I don’t mean to be but it just come out hard. Everyone leaves and I’m alone on my bed. I look to the table beside my bed, there are blue spray-painted daisies and picture frames of my family, a picture of me and Kim. I throw my pillow at them. The vase crashes and the pictures scatter.  

“You don’t have to die alone you know.” A voice from the other side of the curtain whispers. “I’ve been there. Multiple times. Hell, I pushed the love of my life away because of this second aneurism. Don’t think for a second that you’re alone.” 

“What if I want to be.” June laughs, it fills the dry room with some light.