Ashley Bell Page 6

  After Dr. Sanjay Chandra departed, before Nancy arrived with Murphy, Bibi sat with her notebook and pen in one of the chairs by the hospital-room window, to record her thoughts and feelings while they were fresh. She was anxious, but not in the grip of dread. Not yet. The news had been a hard blow; however, she regarded it not as a calamity, but as a summons to action. Often her notebook provided a refuge from the world, and with it she seemed to step out of time, into a place where she had the leisure to reflect on her impressions and emotions before acting on them. This time-out frequently saved her from doing and saying things that she would have regretted.

  As she settled into the chair, her attention was drawn beyond the window, to a flock of large seagulls. The hospital lay only a few blocks from the ocean. The birds soared, plunged, soared again, each to its own intentions, exhilarated by the gift of flight, their joy as clearly expressed as any messages ever printed on the heavens by the sky-writing planes that advertised to summer beach crowds.

  Into her mind came a memory of gulls on a December morning when she was eighteen. She was crossing the university campus to visit Dr. Solange St. Croix, who with an email had called her to a student-teacher conference. The gulls were joyful then, too, but if she thought they were an omen foretelling a rewarding meeting with the professor, Bibi was soon disappointed, left confused, embarrassed….

  In spite of heavy competition, Bibi had earned one of the few places in the university’s renowned and exclusive creative-writing program. Some of its graduates had over the years become bestselling novelists and literary stars. For three months, she had diligently honed her craft, until her work had caught the eye of Dr. St. Croix, whom some called the holy mother of the writing program.

  The professor’s office décor set new standards for minimalism. One desk, cold steel except for a black-granite top. Two chairs. The visitor’s seat featured wafer-thin blue cushions that ensured discomfort if one lingered past fifteen minutes. To the left of the long window stood a narrow bookcase with eight shelves, all half empty, as if to suggest that from the entire history of literature, only a few volumes merited inclusion in this collection. On the desk were only a laptop, currently closed, and beside it the printout of an essay that bore Bibi’s name on the cover page.

  Dr. St. Croix—tall, thin, attractive in spite of herself—wore her graying hair in a bun long out of style and dressed as severely as a grieving widow. Her default image was of a cool, composed, and brilliant writing guru. She could be warm and funny, but she paid out her smiles sparingly, revealing her wit when least expected, thereby magnifying its effect. Now her eyes shone as cold and blue as the chemical gel in a refreezable ice pack. Her smile had flatlined.

  Bibi knew that she was in trouble, but she didn’t know why.

  “Miss Blair,” St. Croix said, “I understand you have expressed to other students some uncertainty about the value of being here.”

  Dismayed to hear her perhaps naïve concern expressed in those words, she said, “No, not at all. I’ve learned so much already.”

  “You worry that the system of inspiration at the core of this program is a confining set of rules, that to an extent it encourages disparate voices to sound alike.”

  “Someone has exaggerated my concern, Dr. St. Croix. It’s just a small thing that I think about. It’s natural to have little doubts.”

  “Our system of inspiration is not a set of rules, Miss Blair.”

  “No. Of course it’s not.”

  “We don’t press upon our students either a way of thinking or a rigid set of values.”

  Bibi doubted that was true, but she kept silent.

  “If you think in fact we do just that,” Solange St. Croix said, “then you have a fine excuse to drop out, one that even exasperated parents might have to accept as reasonable and ethical.”

  Bibi half thought she hadn’t heard correctly. “Drop out?”

  With undisguised contempt, the professor indicated the four-page manuscript. “How reckless of you to write about me.”

  The recent assignment had been to choose someone in the writing program, student or instructor, someone you knew but whose residence—whether dorm room or apartment or home—you had never visited, and then to create as vividly as possible a credible living environment that grew from what you had observed about that person.

  “But, Dr. St. Croix, you put yourself forward as a subject.”

  “And you know perfectly well it’s not what you’ve written that is outrageous. It’s what you’ve done.”

  “I don’t understand. What have I done?”

  Bibi recoiled when she saw that her claim of puzzlement angered Solange St. Croix beyond all reason. The woman’s posture was that of righteous indignation. Something worse than vexation and barely less than wrath drew her face into leaner lines.

  “What you think is clever, Miss Blair, is only low cunning. I have no patience for you. I won’t dignify your behavior by discussing it.” Her face flushed, and she seemed no less embarrassed than she was furious. “If you don’t drop out, I will see that you’re expelled, which will complicate any academic future you may have and be a stain on you as a writer, in the unlikely event you have a future as one.”

  Even then, people didn’t push Bibi around without consequences. She stood up for herself when she was in the right. She leaned in to trouble. She was likewise practical, however, and she knew that she was outgunned in this inexplicable conflict. If she stayed, she would be struggling forward with a sworn enemy who was the founder of the writing program. She had no future here. Besides, while it was true that she had learned much in the past few months, it was also true that she entertained serious doubts about the program.

  When Bibi reached for her manuscript, Solange St. Croix drew it back. “This is my evidence. Now get out.”

  Beyond the hospital window, the seagulls sailed westward in a loose formation and out of sight.

  Bibi didn’t know why the birds triggered the memory of Dr. St. Croix instead of recalling to mind one of the hundreds of memorable experiences she’d had involving surfing and the beach, where gulls were omnipresent. Unless perhaps it was blind hope that had made the link between then and now. Leaving the writing program had turned out to be a good thing, had led to her becoming a published author much faster than otherwise would have been the case. And so perhaps death from brain cancer was no more inevitable than had been the ruination of her writing career.

  That made a kind of sense. But she knew intuitively that it was not the correct explanation.

  She never had figured out what had so incensed the professor. And now she wondered if the offense of which she had never been properly accused was in some mysterious way related to the death by brain cancer that she now faced.

  Bibi was sitting on the edge of her bed, making a list in the spiral-bound notebook, when her parents arrived with the intention of lifting her spirits as best they could, although they did not succeed in this. The moment that they walked through the door, the stricken look in their eyes was poorly synchronized with their smiles.

  They didn’t fail her; they never could. Only she could keep her spirits up. Anyway, she wasn’t depressed, certainly not despairing. She didn’t have time for that. Or the inclination. Even as grim as it sounded, her prognosis was a challenge, and the only reasonable way to respond to a challenge was to rise to it.

  She was still the girl whose mind was always spinning, and now it spun out tasks for her mother, which she added to the list in the notebook. “They’re keeping me here until tomorrow, maybe even till the day after. Dr. Chandra needs to do a few more tests to plan a course of chemo and radiation. The choice is mine, and I’m going to fight. I need you to go to my apartment, bring my laptop. I’m going to research the crap out of this. I need changes of underwear. And socks. My feet get cold. Some of my nice soft towels. The ones here are scratchy. And all my vitamins. My iPod with the headphones. I’ll have to use headphones in here.” Because she maintained a post-
office box, she needed her mail to be collected and brought to her. She described a few other errands as she appended them to the list, and then she tore off two pages and handed them to her mother.

  Grateful to have something to do other than dwell on his daughter’s situation, Murphy said, “We’ll split up the work, Nancy. You take the apartment stuff. I’ll do the other running around.”

  Bibi said, “No, Dad. Let Mom take care of it. You get back to business.”

  He looked perplexed, as if he had forgotten that he was anything other than her father. “What business?”

  “The one Pogo is this very minute running into the ground.”

  He shook his head. “But I can’t—”

  “You can. You must. If I’m going to devote all my time to this battle, I won’t be writing. My income will dry up. Mom’s commissions will probably go to hell while we’re fighting this. You’ll have to support me as if I were ten years old again. You have to, Daddy.”

  Hugs and kisses. Declarations of love. Clumsily expressed covenants to face the future together with resolution, to win in spite of the terrible odds. And then her parents were gone.

  After using the bathroom, while washing her hands at the sink, Bibi studied her reflection in the mirror—until her vision blurred and one face became two, smeary and distorted. Vision problems were a symptom of gliomatosis cerebri. She gripped the sink with both hands, taking slow deep breaths, wondering if she would go blind. Not yet. Her vision cleared.

  Bibi took her lunch by the window. She ate every bite. Other than surgery, treatments for cancer often caused prolonged bouts of nausea and a depressed appetite. She needed to forget about being svelte and pack on several pounds of reserves to get her through the coming battle. She supposed that eventually she should shave her head instead of waiting for her hair to fall out in a mangy fashion. The more she took control of her appearance, the better.

  Poor Paxton would come home from war to find that his fiancée had morphed into a bald sumo wrestler. Well, he said he would always love her, through the bad times no less than the good, and she believed him. If she had him all wrong—which she didn’t, but if she did—then she was better off knowing the truth sooner than later. The only plus to having brain cancer might be that it provided the ultimate test of your guy’s true intentions. Given a choice between putting herself through gliomatosis cerebri and putting Paxton through a lie-detector test, she would of course have chosen the latter; but she hadn’t been given a choice.

  A perky blond volunteer in a candy-striper uniform, smelling of a lemony perfume, came to collect the lunch tray. Bibi arranged for the girl to go to the cafeteria and buy a supply of PowerBars in various flavors. “I want to look like John Goodman by next week.”

  “Who’s John Goodman?”

  “A large actor. He played Roseanne Barr’s husband on TV.”

  “Oh, yeah. He’s in lots of movies. He’s cute.”

  A nurse arrived to get a urine sample. A phlebotomist drew five vials of blood. A woman “from legal” had papers to be signed.

  Bibi engaged in only minimal small talk with them, though for most of her life she had been a fountain of words. Everything in this world amazed and fascinated her—from the fragile beauty of a lily to the mysteries of quantum mechanics—and she usually had to share her wonder or burst. Being named Bibi had encouraged her to chatter away because, even as a child, she had been determined to impress upon everyone that, in spite of her name, she wasn’t a toy, not frivolous, but a keen observer of the world, a philosopher by the time she graduated from the potty chair. She had never been for long struck speechless—until she received a diagnosis of brain cancer.

  Her mother returned at five o’clock with everything that Bibi had requested, and her father phoned minutes later to say that the three of them should have dinner together in her room, not hospital food, but whatever outrageous high-calorie fat-rich takeout she wanted. Cheeseburgers and milk shakes. Burritos. Four-cheese pizza. Anything, anything.

  “No, Dad. Mom’s exhausted.” Nancy began to protest, but Bibi raised one hand to quiet her. “You both are. These two days have been hard on all of us. You and Mom have dinner, just the two of you, with a good bottle of wine. I’m okay. I’m not going anywhere. I just want to do some research on my laptop while I eat, then early to bed. I hardly slept last night. I’ll ask for a sedative. I want to be dreaming about a certain Navy SEAL by seven o’clock at the latest.”

  To get Nancy out of the room and off to dinner, Bibi had to escort her along the hallway to the elevators. Alert for any tendency of her left foot to drag, determined not to become Quasimodo with boobs, she walked with her shoulders back and her head up.

  “What about the tingling?” her mother asked. “The fifty-cell-phones-on-mute head-to-foot thing?”

  “It’s quieter. And I haven’t had that rancid taste all day.”

  “Baby, I can see your left hand’s still weak.”

  “So I’ll use the other one to scratch my butt.”

  In the elevator alcove, the doors to one of the cabs slid open. Nancy didn’t get aboard. “This is so wrong. I can’t just leave.”

  As the doors started to slide shut, Bibi blocked them. “Mom, we have to stay as normal as possible. The three of us can’t group-hug twenty-four/seven. We’ll melt down if we do.”

  When Nancy tried to speak, she couldn’t. Her mouth trembled.

  Bibi kissed her mother’s cheek. “You’re a sweetie. Now go. Eat too much. Drink too much. Live, Mom. Live. I sure intend to.”

  In her hospital room again, she sat at the small table by the window and used her laptop to learn about anticancer and cytotoxic drugs. Alkylating agents. Nitrosoureas. Antimetabolites. Mitotic inhibitors. At least her disease was enhancing her vocabulary.

  As the March afternoon dressed itself in scarlet to approach the evening, a nurses’ aide brought a dinner tray. Suitable reading with dinner did not include an article about the side effects of chemo. As she ate, Bibi watched amusing dog videos on YouTube.

  The bad thing happened when she got up from her chair to wash her hands. A sudden pain of migraine intensity split her skull.

  She almost dropped to her knees. She staggered, made her way onto the bed, and pressed the call button for a nurse.

  Sudden headaches could be a symptom of gliomatosis cerebri, a consequence of pressure on the brain; however, they usually occurred in the morning. The tests she’d undergone the previous day had not revealed excess cerebrospinal fluid. “No hydrocephalus,” the doctor had said. Maybe that had changed.

  Having raised the upper half of the bed, she sat with both hands clasped to her skull and imagined that she could feel the bone itself deforming with each throb. The nurse arrived, asked a few questions, and returned with aspirin plus another pill. Bibi didn’t ask about the second medication, just swallowed it with a long drink of water.

  “I’ll keep checking on you,” the nurse promised. “Now rest.”

  When the woman left, Bibi twice tried to recline, but both times she panicked when a vivid sense of falling overcame her. More than a mere feeling, it was an absolute conviction that she would tumble backward into a bottomless void, as if she were sitting on the brink of eternity. Besides, the very act of leaning backward as much as an inch or two intensified her headache. Even knowing that the inclined bed would prevent her from so much as lying full-length on her back, she made no third attempt. Sitting forward, head hung, eyes closed, she wrapped her arms around her torso as if to anchor herself.

  To her surprise, in five minutes or less, the pain began to diminish. Aspirin didn’t work that quickly. Evidently, she owed her relief to the second medication.

  When she opened her eyes, red radiance bathed everything, and she at first thought that she must be having vision problems again. Then she realized that none of the lights were on and that the room, previously brightened by only sunshine, was now illuminated by the sunset, which had melted the sky into a fire-shot river of molt
en glass slowly flowing west and away.

  She reached for the lamp control that was clipped to the bedrail. The oval dimmer switch felt wrong in her fingers, felt soft and scaly, as if she had gripped the head of a living reptile, and the pale cord wriggled in protest. She dropped the switch and watched with astonishment as her suddenly stiff-fingered hand pecked at the air like a bird pecking at a tree trunk to feed on crawling insects, pecked violently, pecked and pecked, and she could not control it.

  Seizure, she thought, and as if confirming her own diagnosis, she grunted and mewled like an animal, and made thin hacking sounds in the back of her throat.

  The stiffness in her hand spread up the arm, through her body, and she fell backward against the inclined mattress, which stopped her, but she didn’t feel as if she had been stopped. The brink she had feared earlier was there, and she was overcome by a sensation of plunging into a void, down and down, plummeting, although the hospital room shimmering with crimson light did not recede, which it should have if she were really doing an Alice down a rabbit hole.

  Several glossy spots of darkness appeared in her field of vision, floating like fat beads of black oil in the red radiance, first fewer than a dozen, then scores, then hundreds. As all light vanished and the glistening blackness flooded over her, she tried to cry out for help, but like all drowned girls before her, she had no voice.

  Two weeks after fleeing from the apartment above the garage, four weeks before Olaf padded into her life, on another sleep-in Sunday for her parents, young Bibi rose and dressed while the last defenses of the night barely held off the advancing dawn. She tucked two granola bars into the pockets of her fleece-lined denim jacket and, as the morning spread its flamingo-pink wings across the east, she walked two and a half blocks to the park along Ocean Avenue.

  She sat on a bench at Inspiration Point to watch the breaking surf and the dark sea as mottled green-greenblack as watermelon skin. From that perch, she sometimes imagined herself to be one of a pirate crew sailing on violent tides, or else a whale so big that she feared nothing in her shadowed watery world. This morning, she imagined life after death, not as it might be in Heaven, but as it might be here and now, in this world, if such things as ghosts were real.