"Penny"

Hello good peeps,

I said last week I'd be including one of my short stories in this weeks' post.  It's a true story from my cancer experience and is about one of my many heroes from my stays in the hospital (although I changed the name).  It's an early draft, and far from perfect, so don't judge, bitches.

Hope you enjoy it, and don't get bored and stop reading because its kind of long.  BUT READ IT ALL! 

Please.

PENNY

by Jesse Pardee

Penny is coming.

She waddles into my hospital room on Christmas with her mom, and is without a doubt the most precious bald kid I’ve ever seen.   She’s tiny and bouncy and apparently she runs this place, or so I’ve heard.

She’s three. She has leukemia.

It is only my third day in the hospital and Mom tells me Penny has been here for over a month.  We are the only patients on the pediatric oncology ward today, which I guess is a good thing; apparently this place is usually crammed full of little kids here for their chemo and their blood transfusions, their throat sores and their skin reactions, their radiation and their fevers, their low platelets and their depleted white cells.

 But it’s just Penny and me at opposite ends of the hall on this Christmas Day. 

Penny clings to her mother’s hand as they round the corner into my hospital room.  Her mom greets mine, and asks if it’s okay to come in.  Mom looks at me and I manage a small nod.  As they approach, Penny and I lock eyes.   

  She has the glare of a deadly assassin.

  She’s sizing me up.

  I’ve heard about Penny from one of the nurses, the one who keeps trying to make me walk: “Penny wants to meet you.  She likes to know everyone.”

 I know what this is really about.  Penny wants to check out the fresh meat.  I need to be on my A game.

Penny has bruises up and down her arms and legs.  From what I’ve learned about cancer so far, the bruises must be from running around the playroom with low platelets—but I have my own theory: she’s the Keeper of Pediatric Oncology.  She’s been cracking skulls.

Yes, yes.  She has most definitely been cracking skulls.

Her mother is talking to me but I’m not actually listening.  I’m a little bit high on morphine, a little bit queasy, and slightly terrified of this three year-old who refuses to look away.  Just keeps glaring at me, standing there with her little bald head, in her red and green outfit and Christmas socks.

Penny has blue eyes.  She has no eyelashes.  She has no eyebrows.  I think I spy a few sparse blonde hairs on her head, but I dare not look away from her face. 

 And so we stare, challenging each other, daring the other to move.  Little does she know I can hardly move anyway because of the catheter.

I’ve decided I really like my catheter.  I’ve befriended the catheter.  It allows me to lie in bed and feel sorry for myself all day long, living in my own mental shit-storm.  I can stare out the window at the skyline, at the wreath hanging on the other side of the building, at all the cars carrying people who are going anywhere but here.  I can wallow all day...and I never have to get up to pee. 

It’s liberating.  I never realized how enslaved I was by my own bladder—by that great oppressor,  the toilet. 

 I’ve decided I think everyone needs to experience a good catheter once in their life, if only so they can know the glorious phenomenon of drinking six glasses of OJ without even the slightest pressure on the bladder.

Disgusting and fantastic.

My mind is wandering back into pity mode.  There are so many things to cry about—anything really, from the pain to the suddenly very real concept of my own mortality.

Just as I think I might roll over and stare pathetically out the window for a little while, Penny makes a sudden move of the arm and I snap out of it.  She dangles a string of beads in front of my face.  She made it for me. 

It’s a bracelet, but not really because it’s actually just a string of rainbow colored beads on a frayed black string knotted at both ends.

It’s my Christmas present.

Penny hasn’t stopped staring at me.  I cock my head to the side and reach for the beads.  A non-verbal agreement has been made.

Touche, Penny.  I accept. 

 My extended family and some friends visit me in the hospital and bring Christmas presents.  They smile but the smiles seem horribly out of place.  There’s no masking this.  There’s no rose-colored glasses.  This shit is real. 

             Before they arrived, I dolled myself up for the first time since I'd been here.  I put on eye-shadow, mascara, lipstick…studied my face and pretended that just for a moment I was the same girl I’d been a month ago.  Then I brushed my hair for both the first time in days and the last time for a while.            

            I tell them all about my catheter and how much I like it, but I’m sure they dismissed it as morphine-induced babbling. 

            Later on, I’m relieved that they’re gone--especially my friends.  I don’t want anyone to know that I’m weak, that I’m capable of crying, of being scared; if they stayed too long, they were bound to find out. 

            Penny must’ve noticed it right away.  I know she did.  She was tough as nails, this three year-old and she could smell my weakness, I was sure.  

            I hate my weakness, but I don’t care enough to change it.  I still refuse to walk.   There’s no point.  “Will you just walk to the end of the hall?  Will you walk to the dayroom ?  Will you literally take two steps outside the room?”

            No.  I won’t.  Stop. Asking.

            Mom comes in with my apple juice.  She’s tired, I can tell.  Mentally and physically.  Every once in a while she looks around the room at the pukey walls and the buzzing machines and the two bags of poison hanging from the medicine pole.  It hasn’t sunk in yet for her.

            Dad is watching TV in the chair next to me, and has been trying to keep me and my sister laughing. 

            My sister is mad about Christmas.  She keeps asking if we’ll have our own Christmas when we get home, with our Christmas tree, and our stockings, and our own surroundings.  Mom tells her yes, but I know that we won't feel like celebrating when we get home.  I haven’t even thought about home.  It requires thinking about life without my catheter and I’m not ready to accept it.

            Mom puts a straw in the apple juice and holds it up to my lips.   My lips are dry and cracked again and the straw feels funny against them.  I take one sip, then two, but refuse to have too much at once.  I’ve heard about chemo, I’ve heard about the puking, and I’ve vowed to keep my stomach as empty as possible--against everyone's wishes.  But the docs insisted I have apple juice and Miralax because apparently bowel movements are a big deal here.  They’re the cancer equivalent of a touchdown.  Unfortunately the catheter isn’t equipped for that.  A serious flaw in my new friend.

            Mom sits down on the empty bed next to mine—the first time she’s attempted to relax all day.  She takes off her sneakers and puts her feet up.  She’s trying to look comfortable but I know she’s far from it.  She smiles at me, but it takes effort.

            “Isn’t that Penny adorable?” she asks.

            “She doesn’t like me,” I say.

            “She’s three years old.  She doesn’t know what she likes.”  Dad.

            “She stared at me the whole time like I was a disgrace to cancer patients everywhere.”  I knew, of course, that at three she was incapable of making a judgment of this sort, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d let this little girl down.  That she’d expected to meet someone like her—someone courageous and playful, and above her disease—only older and braver. 

            But I was older and pathetic.  Pitiful, really, lying their basking in my catheterization and self-loathing, playing the poor little victim.

            “I know why she was staring at you,” Mom says.  “Her mother told me out in the day room.”

            “Told you what?”

            “When they left our room, Penny asked her mother why she didn’t have pretty hair like yours.  She was mesmerized by it.”

            My hair?  Penny was staring at me because she wanted my hair?  So she wasn’t condemning me for being a self-pitying martyr with no balls?

            There was a strange silence in the room.  I picked up the string of beads from the bedside tray where I'd left them.

I began to cry.

            “It’ll grow back, honey.  It’ll grow back when you beat this.”  But I wasn’t crying about the hair.  I wasn’t crying about the cancer. 

            I don’t know what I was crying about.

            The pain is gone.  They’ve taken away my catheter.  They say I don’t need it.  My condition is improving quite rapidly, and the tumor isn’t pressing on my nerves anymore.

It’s been three weeks since I started chemo, and I’m back for more; but this time, I don’t have the luxury of my own room.  This time I have a roommate.

            Penny is in the cubby across from me, where she’s been since Christmas.  Where she’s been for over six weeks.

  Penny likes Dora the Explorer.  Penny likes Dora the Explorer a lot.  It plays on her TV from early in the morning until late at night, and since I still refuse to leave the room, I’ve learned a lot of Spanish.

            “Duerme” means sleep, which is all I do.

            And while I “duerme”, my “familia” plays with Penny in the dayroom.  Penny balances toys on her head.  She tells you where to put your pieces in Candyland.  She cheats at cards.  All this I’ve heard, but don’t know firsthand because I never stop sleeping and I’m still afraid of Penny.

            But this particular afternoon, I’ve been puking like a fiend, and am unable to sleep.  Mom has gone to the nurse’s desk to see if my anti-nausea meds have arrived, and Dad is home with my sister.  I’m alone, for the moment.  “Dora” is not playing across the room, so I assume that I’m truly alone.

            I’m wrong.

            Out of nowhere, Penny’s bald head peeks around the curtain.  She glances briefly over her shoulder to make sure her mother isn’t there to stop her, then tiptoes to my bed.  There’s a band-aid on her forehead and one on her elbow.

“What are you doing?” she demands

            I smile.  “Throwing up.”

            “For what?”

            “From my treatment.”

            “For what?”

            “For my cancer.”

            Silence.  She leans on the bed, and the movement of the mattress makes my stomach churn.

            “Where’s your hair?”

            My heart drops.  It’s only been a week since we shaved it off.  I forget that it’s gone sometimes, until I run my fingertips along the rough skin on my scalp.  I refuse to look in the mirror.

            “I lost it.”

            “For what?”

            “From my treatment.”

            “For what?”

            “For my cancer.”

            Silence.  I’m sensing a pattern.  She’s reminded me of my bald head but I’m not mad.  I smile at her.  Penny smirks.

            Just then her mother returns, and tells her to stop bothering me.  I say it’s no problem, but Penny’s mother knows I’ve been throwing up all morning.

            She and Penny return to the cubby and I hear a “Dora” episode begin on the TV.

A nurse comes in and asks Penny if she would please have some water, some Kool-Aid, something.  Anything.

            “She hasn’t had anything to drink today.  Her counts are coming up, and she’s ready to go home soon—but if she doesn’t have something to drink, we’ll have to put her on fluids, and she’ll be here another couple of days.”

            Penny still refuses.  Her mother implores her to have just a sip of her Kool-Aid but she won’t budge.

            I consider going back to sleep, since it’s been a good fifteen minutes since my last hurl.  My eyes are heavy and I know that as soon as I close my eyes I’ll be out like a light. 

            But all at once, I’m pressing the button for the nurse.  When she arrives she’s surprised to see me awake, and I ask her if she can bring my Snapple from the fridge in the day room—my Snapple and a paper cup with ice.  She smiles, glad that I’ve decided to rejoin the land of the living, even if it’s only for something to drink.

            “Penny!” I call out.  I’m surprised by the sound of my own voice, which hasn’t been raised above a pathetic croak in weeks.  I still feel like shit, and want nothing more than to go back to sleep, but something stops me.  Something is different.

            Penny scurries over to my bedside, and I sit up.  I realize she’s never seen me sitting up before, only lying down, wallowing in my self-pity.

            “What?” she demands. 

            “You don’t want anything to drink?”  Penny shakes her head ‘no,’ just as the nurse returns with my Snapple.  She sets it on my tray and I begin to pour it into the paper cup.

            Penny watches me with sheer curiosity.  This is the most movement, the most speaking, the most interaction we’ve had, and she’s seems taken aback.

            “That’s too bad,” I say.  “Because I was going to bet you that I could drink this Snapple faster than you can drink your Kool-Aid.”

            Penny’s eyes grow wide and she shakes her head furiously.  “No you can’t!”

            “Hmmm.  I’ll bet I can.” 

            Penny is across the room and back in less than ten seconds, cup in hand, Kool-Aid spilling out the top. 

            We stare each other down one last time.  This time the playing field is different.  We’re two baldies in this crazy cancer game together.  We’re equals. 

            We’re warriors.

            On the count of three, we tip back our cups.  I sip mine slowly and Penny drinks hers fast, eyes still locked on mine.  She slams her cup down victoriously, and crosses her arms, proud of her win.  She grins, and her teeth are stained red with Kool-Aid.

            “TOLD you!” she gloats.  “Now what?!”

            “Well,” I glance over my shoulder at my pillow, tempted to slip back into my denial-sleep.

 I look back at Penny and sigh.  “I hear you cheat at cards.”

HOPE YOU ENJOYED!  

JESSE

PS>>OMG JODI ARIAS, RIGH!??????????????????