Chapter Twenty-Four

"Can we go to the beach?" Ashley's been staring out the window for a good minute or more before she drops this bomb at the dinner table.

Everyone's finally home and we're picking over chicken, along with the green beans and tomatoes Janise brought from her garden. Thank goodness salt isn't off the menu yet.

"Why?" Travis asks, reaching for the Tabasco.

"I just want to. It's been a long time since we've gone."

"The youth group went last summer," I say.

"Yeah, but that wasn't the family."

"You want to go with the family?" Logan asks, his mouth full of tomatoes. "Why?" I kick him under the table.

"I just want to." She pushes the food around the plate but don't eat anything.

"You need to eat, Ash. You took insulin already. You'll go low if you don't."

She wrinkles her nose. "I don't see that happening, Mom."

She's probably right. Her sugars are eeking up again, and it's been hard to keep it under a hundred, even without eating.

"How about we plan to go when we get back from Baltimore?" Travis suggests.

"I want to go now. Before we leave."

"Why?" Travis asks again.

"Because," she says stubbornly.

"Because she's afraid she's not coming back," Logan says, tomato juice dripping down his chin.

We all freeze, forks in the air, not believing what Logan just said.

"What? It's true, isn't it?" He looks at Ashley, who scoots out her chair and runs out of the room.

"What?" Logan says, looking at Travis and me. "We all know that's why. We can't say it?"

I give him my best look of disgust and leave him to Travis, who is giving him an earful as I make my way to Ashley's room.

I knock on the door and walk in when she don't answer. "Ash?" She's sprawled out across her bed, her headphones plugging her ears and her eyes closed. I tap her and she don't move. I take the earphones out. "Ashley?" Finally, she looks up. I sit next to her. She rolls over and stares at the ceiling.

"It's true. If that's what you want to know. Logan's right."

"Jeez, Ashley, you think if this thing don't work we're going to leave you there?"

"No. I think if it doesn't work, I'm going to die."

"Don't be melodramatic," I say, sounding much more confident than I feel. It's not that I don't want to admit it's possible. I don't want her to admit it's possible. Every motherly instinct is telling me to lie, lie, lie.

"I know what's going on, Mom. I've been sick, not dumb. I don't make insulin. I can't take insulin. It's pretty simple."

I think how casually she tosses out the word insulin, like everyone knows what it is and does, like she's saying I got a heart and it don't beat.

"So going to Corpus Christi and watching the oil refineries belch their smoke over the gulf is your dying wish?" Even she can't resist smiling at this.

"Yeah. Camping at the beach. Just like we used to."

I stand to go. "I'll see what I can do."

Travis isn't too thrilled with this idea. "What happens if she gets sicker when we're out there?"

"We bring her home."

"It's so dirty. Maybe we should stay in a hotel."

"She has diabetes. A little dirt isn't going to raise her blood sugar."

"What do we eat?"

"I can cook chicken and green beans just as well over a campfire."

"How will she go swimming with the pump?"

"I don't know. Maybe we don't go swimming. Maybe we just walk on the shore with our feet in the water."

"I don't know where the camping stuff is."

"It's in the garage." This is Logan, who's come into the kitchen to grab a handful of cookies now that Ashley is gone. "So we're going?"

I look at Travis, who looks back at me and shrugs. "I guess we are."

~~~~

We're all actually excited as we pile in the truck the next morning. I've banned the I-Pods and the cell phones in the spirit of making this a family trip. Ashley's blood sugar continues to rise, and the itching's getting worse, but she's insistent and our plane trip to Baltimore is still a few days off. She could itch at home or on the road, so we throw in the tent and the sleeping bags and the camp stove and take off.

"Can we at least listen to music on the CD player?" asks Ashley, not even fifteen minutes from home.

"And not that country junk you guys like, either," Logan pipes in.

I shuffle through the stack Travis keeps in the glove compartment and pull out the only non-country one he has. It's 50s and 60s music, and the kids groan, but when I turn it off they yell to put it back on, so I do.

It's fun music, and we find ourselves singing along enthusiastically, mostly out of tune, and laughing over the goofy lyrics. When Wonderful World comes on we all sing louder, the windows of the truck down and the hot wind blowing away the cares weighing down on us the last weeks. For a few moments, it's as if none of this has happened and we're all back to the way we used to be, years ago, before the hospital and before adolescence, before money troubles and time wore us down.

Travis takes my hand as he sings.

I used to love this song because it felt like my life. It's really just a litany of things I don't know nothing about. Me and Louie Armstrong-- neither one of us knew about biology or science or French. But we had love. I liked that all that mattered was love.

I danced around the kitchen singing this song with the kids when they were little. It seemed funny then. A tenth grade education don't seem too bad when your kids can barely speak and they only need to learn colors and shapes and letters, and love is the thing they need the most. But pretty soon it's algebra and dissecting frogs and Spanish and curing major diseases, and love's just not enough.

I let the others' voices carry the song, and I watch the flat ground turn into rolling hills and the clouds gather on the horizon. I ignore the signs that say the next rest stop is 110 miles away and that civilization's behind us, and we are heading further out to where there is nothing if we should have trouble.

~~~~

We set up the tent without making too big of fools of ourselves and decide to go walk along the shore before the sun goes down. Ashley lingers behind us, searching for shells and pretending that she isn't so tired she wants to lay down in the sand and sleep. Logan pretends to be searching for stones to skip, but I see him slipping shells into the bucket Ashley sets down every now and then. We are all pretending this is something it isn't, which is Ashley's version of a "make a wish foundation" request.

At the campsite I cook chicken over the stove, but Ashley picks at it and excuses herself to go to bed. When I go in the tent, she's already half-asleep.

"Did you test?"

"No."

"You gotta test, Ash. You can't just go to bed without knowing what your blood sugar is."

"Why?"

"Why? Why?" I can't bring myself to say why. "Because you have to, that's all."

"It's high, Mom. And more insulin isn't going to help that, so why bother?" She rolls over and closes her eyes.

I hunt through the duffle bag and find the meter. "Give me your hand." She does, begrudgingly. I prick and panic when the number comes up over 550. "Good mother of Moses, Ashley. It's 558."

"Toldja," she says, and tucks her hand back under her.

"Don't go to sleep. Don't you dare go to sleep." I pull her shoulders up so she's slumped upright like a rag doll. "Travis! Travis!" I yell, sure everyone in the campsite can hear us. In a split second he's at the tent flap. One look at Ashley, and he's running to the truck.

"I'm calling Dr. Benton. Logan, put out the camp stove and roll up the sleeping bags and throw everything in the back."

Other campers come over and ask what's wrong and offer to help. In less than ten minutes we have everything in a heap in the bed of the truck and are on our way to the hospital. Dr. Benton tells us to meet him there and to keep Ashley awake and make sure she is drinking water.

This is, I'm sure, the longest three hours of my life. There's no music on the way home. No fun banter, no jokes. I sit in the back with Ashley and try to keep her from falling into a coma.

~~~~

When we arrive at the hospital, a small entourage is waiting. They hook her up to IVs again, and Dr. Benton changes the insulin brand, hoping that'll buy us a little time. He pumps her full of steroids again and we wait.

"How could we be so stupid?" Travis mumbles.

"It would've happened no matter where we were," I justify.

"But if we'd been home, we'd have been three hours closer."

"It doesn't matter now," Dr. Benton says. "She's here. And we need to get her to Baltimore as soon as possible."

Suddenly, Janise is here, hugging me and telling Travis and Logan to go home and finish the packing we started, that she'll stay with me. I don't even ask how she knows we're here; I'm so relieved to see her. It's 2:00 in the morning by the time it quiets down. Janise works the phone and pretty soon has us a new flight out and calls Donna Jean to have her take us to the airport in the morning. Dr. Benton comes in at 5:00 to tell us Dr. Van Der Campen is expecting us and will meet us there.

The new insulin, or steroids, or the IV works, and Ashley is back down in the 200s by the time Donna Jean arrives. Her arms and legs are covered with wheels, the circly, hivy things that come from the allergy, and Travis brings her a light, long sleeved shirt and a long skirt to cover them. It won't be good to have people on the plane worried about her being contagious.

Dr. Benton gives each of us a hug as we leave; the sun is barely up. "Will you be there, too?" I ask.

He shakes his head. "This is Dr. Van Der Campen's baby. I have a job here. But I'll call, okay? You're in great hands."

Janise also hugs us goodbye. "I'll pray for y'all."

"I don't know what I'd do without you," I say.

"Go," she says.

I climb in Donna Jean's Suburban next to Ashley and wave through the window. As she drives away, I think this is not the way I intended on leaving.

~~~~