Chapter Twenty-Nine

When we arrive at the hospital, there's a flurry of activity in the hall outside Ashley's room. Doctors and nurses are flying in and out of the room, rolling carts in and out, frantic but controlled. "What's wrong?" I grab a nurse's arm. "Is it Ashley? What's going on?"

"She's got pneumonia," she says shortly, brushing me off.

Logan and I dress quickly in the gown and gloves and mask. By the time we get in the door, it's just Dr. Van Der Campen and two attendants, and they are transferring her to one of those beds with wheels.

"Where are you taking her?"

"Down to x-ray."

He pushes past me. Ashley's lips are tinged blue and her eyes are dull. I grab her hands in my gloved one. "It's okay, baby. They're going to take you to get some pictures of your lungs. You'll be fine."

"I can't breathe," she says, struggling with every breath. I hold her hand as the attendants roll her out of the room, and then watch as she disappears around the corner.

"She's going to be okay, right?" I ask as Dr. Van Der Campen brushes by.

"This is the one complication we were most worried about," he says, with little feeling. "Even under the best circumstances, pneumonia can be dangerous. With Ashley. . ."

He don't finish, and I don't need him to. She's got no immune system. She's got no ability to fight off the terrible disease that is squeezing her lungs. Her body's an open invitation.

I'm suddenly sobbing. I sink to the floor, crying so hard I can't breathe. I'm making a fool of myself, but I can't help it. Since that first day in Children's Hospital, that day when the nurse told me Ashley would be fine and live a very normal life, I've known in my gut that this day was coming. Ashley is dying.

And from nowhere there are two hands lifting me up, and I'm in Travis's arms. "It's okay. I'm here." Like I am a child, he picks me up and carries me back into Ashley's room, untying the mask so I can breath and stroking my hair with his fingers. "It's going to be okay."

I cry harder, because I know he don't know this for certain, but I want so hard to believe it. Travis, who has always made everything right, can't control this.

He holds me until I stop crying, and then wipes the tears from my face.

"How did you get here?" I ask, punctuating the question with a hiccup.

"Dr. Van Der Campen called Dr. Benton last night, and Dr. Benton called me. He said he was afraid Ashley might be taking a turn for the worse, and he thought I should be here. I took the red-eye out."

I don't even ask what a red-eye is, I'm just so thankful he's here. Then I realize there were two pairs of hands picking me up, and I look around. "Was that Dr. Benton?"

"He came out too. He thought we might need the support and someone to talk to who understood the medical lingo."

I laugh through the tears, because I can't think of any other doctor who would care whether or not we understood. "Where did he go?"

"I think he went with Ashley," Logan says. "He walked that way, anyway."

I feel completely embarrassed now by my breakdown, but Logan just says, "Sheesh, Mom, you shouldn't bottle stuff up like that. When you explode, you really explode." He grins one of his big, goofy grins, and it makes me laugh.

"Can you go get us some Cokes?" Travis fishes around in his pocket. He finds a couple crumbled bills and hands them to Logan.

When he's gone, Travis sits on the bed next to me. "I'm sorry, Babs. About the baby thing. I didn't want to leave mad, and the whole time I was gone I just wished I could come back and make it right."

"You're right," I say, waving it off and then blowing my nose. "I'm so busy looking at the next step, I stop living in the moment we're in."

"This is gonna work. Dr. Benton says the stem cells are multiplying really well, and they look strong."

"I don't want to replace Ashley with another baby."

"I know that."

"And the baby wouldn't be just a donor. Watching them grow up . . . they're almost gone already. In a few months Logan'll be out of the house. Ashley's next. What will I do without babies around?"

He takes my face in his hands, his skin warm against mine. "We'll have each other."

It's such a cornball thing to say I almost laugh again, except Travis don't usually talk like this, and I think he's serious.

Dr. Benton knocks on the door. "Can I come in?"

Travis quickly drops his hands.

"Of course," I say, rubbing at the hollows below my eyes to clear off the mascara I'm sure is smeared.

"They have her in X-ray. She'll be back soon. It looks very mild. Dr. Van Der Campen was very much on top of it. He called a few days ago and was afraid it might be coming on. He upped the antibiotics in the drip."

"Is it clear now?" Logan says, peeking his head in, too.

"Where are the Cokes?"

"Oh." Logan looks surprised. "Did you actually want them? I thought you were just trying to get rid of me."

"I'm going back to x-ray to check on everything. The nurses will be in to disinfect in a minute and you--" he points at Travis, "need to find yourself some isolation clothes. No breathing around Ashley when she comes back."

We go together to find the Coke machine, and Logan runs into one of the boys from the hotel.

"Hey Caleb, what's up?"

"Becca's getting out tomorrow!" His round, pink face is glowing as he rolls his cold can between his palms. "They think she's in remission."

"Sweeeeet!" They bump hands in some macho new ritual, and Caleb takes off down the hall.

"Is she in this trial?" asks Travis.

"No. She has cancer." I think about how the nurse at Children's the first day said that it was better to have diabetes than cancer. One could live a fairly normal life with diabetes, she'd said. I look at us, clothed in scrubs, waiting to hear whether Ashley is going to live or not, and think this is some kind of warped normal.

When they wheel Ashley back in, she's inside a clear plastic tent with tubes up her nose. Her lips aren't blue anymore, but her eyelids are heavier than usual.

"Hey sweetheart," Travis says, holding her hand in his gloved one.

"You all look like aliens," she says, a coughing spasm following.

"You're the one in the plastic bubble," Logan says, poking at her through the blankets.

She reaches out and holds my hands too, so that we are all connected in some way. "I feel like I'm suffocating."

"You've got fluid on your lungs," Travis says, sounding all doctory.

"Are there any other complications I should know about?" Ashley asks. "I seem to get them all." She coughs again and we wait for it to subside. "Just when I think it can't get worse. . ."

"Oh, it can get worse," Logan says, and we all look at him in horror. He shrugs and pulls a folded paper out of his pocket. "Brian Lee emailed to ask if you'd go to the fall dance with him if you're home by then."

"How's that worse?" Travis demands.

"I don't think her hair will be grown in by then."

~~~~

The pneumonia is a set-back, to say the least. Everything slows down. They cut the drugs they're giving her for the stem cells and her immune system, and they ramp up the antibiotics and a few others drugs I can't name.

We're practically living at the hospital now, afraid to leave. She's lethargic and only half-conscious during those few times she opens her eyes. Every breath is a struggle, and sometimes when I look around at us camped in her room, it seems we're all just waiting around for her to die.

Finally today they come and take the oxygen off, and she eats a tiny bit of chicken broth, and we begin to resume our new normal. When I look around the room at our family, I think no one in their right mind would want to be us, and yet I wouldn't want to be anyone else, anywhere else. It's true that trials make you stronger.

Travis is on the phone with the insurance company, demanding they pay for the Medevac trip to Children's Hospital that first day of our new lives. He's strong and intelligent sounding, and when he looks up at me and winks, I blush. He looks ten years younger, he's dropped so much weight in the last few months. I can't help but think the diagnosis, while terrible for Ashley, hasn't done us much physical harm.

Logan is in the bathroom looking in the mirror and fingering the turquoise that tinges the ends of his Mohawk. I can't tell if he's admiring the recent change or deciding on a new color. He, too, seems more comfortable in his skin. When he glances over and sees me, he grins, and I find myself smiling back at him.

Ashley is asleep, like usual, in her hospital bed, her skin as pale as the sheets around her. Tubing runs out from the IV drip and disappears in her hand. Max the pump lays on top of the blankets and his tubing slithers under the covers and disappears beneath her nightgown. A blood pressure monitor is hooked up to her arm and makes a funny, whirring noise every few minutes as it squeezes her and then releases with a slight whoosh. Underneath all of this, Ashley barely moves. The briefest glimpse and you'd think she was dead.

And yet, here we are.

I remember Pastor Joel saying in a sermon once that spider silk was stronger than steel. I had leaned over and whispered in Travis's ear, "Then I must be Wonder Woman cause I'm brushing them off the porch railings every day."

He snickered, but at lunch Logan said, "That's true. I learned it in science. If you had spider silk and threads of steel the same width, spider silk is five times stronger. It's more elastic and harder to break than plastic."

"That so?" I couldn't tell if Travis was more surprised by the facts or that Logan was actually paying attention in class.

Now, I look at my family and think about that spider web. Alone, we look frail and easy to beat. But we've been steel. Against diabetes. Against the reporters and protesters. Against the school.

I thought for awhile I might lose it all. Ashley and Travis and Logan. But against all odds we're still here.

~~~~