Poisoned Page 2

  When I’d pleaded for more help on the weekends, he’d claimed he was studying for his beer specialist certificate, while it looked to me like he was catching up on the Caribbean World Series. I’d turned away from him and the TV and changed Stella’s diapers.

  Blotting out my memories, I wove around a snow bank as carefully as I could. All I wanted was for the man I married to help raise the kids he’d brought into this world. I didn’t think that was too much to ask.

  A drive that should have taken twenty minutes took three times that. When we got to the hospital’s parking lot entrance, I could finally take a breath, relieved I hadn’t skidded and done a donut on the way. I looked away from the windshield for the first time in an hour.

  Ivy was pale, sweaty. Stella was red faced, sweaty. I parked in the first clear space I could find and extracted my children from the car.

  “Mama? Mama! I still have to pee.” Stella tugged at my open coat while I held Ivy’s shoulder and tried to close and lock the passenger door at the same time—a feat of acrobatics all my massage training had failed to teach.

  “Let’s get inside, honey. You can’t exactly go out here.”

  Stella pointed to a yellowed bank of plowed snow.

  “Somebody else did.”

  “That was probably a dog, honey. Let’s not look at that too closely.” I pulled her away before she could take off her glove or mitten and stick one of her bare hands into the urine-covered snow. I loved her curiosity…most days.

  “Come here.” I grabbed her mittened hand firmly. “It’ll be warm inside. They’ll have a bathroom.”

  I almost melted in gratitude when I spied the intake nurse. A familiar face was exactly what I needed right now.

  “Mrs. Garza, Ivy sick?”

  As I’d done too many times before, I lifted the form and clipboard from the desk. Wrote Ivy’s name and the date. Added “vomiting blood” to the symptoms box. The intake nurse took the board and pulled it down near her keyboard.

  “So sorry.” She shook her head in sympathy.

  “Can I ask you a favor? Stella has to use the bathroom. Can I leave Ivy here for two minutes?” I didn’t wait for a response. I didn’t have enough wipes or a change of clothes to deal with a Stella-sized accident. The way she was bouncing around told me we were less than two minutes from her bladder releasing.

  I lifted my youngest into a football carry and hightailed it to the closest family-sized restroom with scarcely a glance over my shoulder. I figured that no one stole children from hospitals. Babies maybe, but not sick ten-year-olds. The emergency room waiting area was as safe a place to leave my child as any.

  Ten minutes later, weighed down with Stella’s winter coat, hat, and scarf, I trudged back to the waiting room while my youngest did some video-girl, ballet-tap-combo pirouette down the shiny linoleum floor. I dropped everything when I peered into the waiting room and found it empty.

  “Mrs. Garza? Mrs. Garza?” the intake nurse called, putting a halt to the panic that had been surging inside my body when I realized I’d completely misjudged the odds of child abduction. “I put Ivy in number three. I didn’t want you to have to wait.”

  “Thanks.” I lifted my hands into a prayer posture, tipped them toward the nurse in appreciation.

  “You might want to put a mask on the little one.” She pointed to Stella. “Still seeing a few bad flu cases coming through here this spring.”

  I patted myself on the back for not commenting on these people’s idea of “spring,” and gave the elastic and paper contraption to Stella. She’d been to the hospital enough times to know how to get it over her own ears, nose, and mouth without my help.

  I picked up the stuff I’d dropped, then headed straight into the treatment bay where my older daughter lay, small and tan against the stiff blue-white sheets.

  “Ivy. How are you?” I asked while smoothing her hair back from her clammy forehead. “Has a doctor seen you?”

  She nodded. “They’re going to take me for a CT scan.”

  I turned away so that I could keep my worry from Ivy. The co-pay on the last CT scan had taken us two months to pay off. And that had only been with extra early morning and late-night shifts at Spasy. Now I wouldn’t even have that. I couldn’t even think about how I’d find another job with Ivy this sick. At least Tino’s salary covered the mortgage and car payments, if not a lot else.

  “I have a mask, Ivy.” Stella pointed towards Ivy’s bare face. “You don’t have a mask.”

  “I’m already sick, Stella. They don’t give sick people masks.”

  “Oh.” Stella already had one of her little legging-clad legs up and over the metal rail at the side of the bed when she asked, “Can I sit next to you?”

  Ivy, like me, had learned to move fast where the four-year-old’s will was concerned. My older daughter leaned as far as the IV let her. They run a line automatically these days. It was probably in her chart somewhere that she was always a little dehydrated. Ivy put her hands into Stella’s armpits and lifted her up until her sparkling boots cleared the bed’s railing.

  Then she tucked her sister right next to her. My big one and my little one were very different, but these moments of communion really warmed my heart. Let me know that when Tino and I were gone, that they’d at least have each other.

  He’d been right about that one.

  Their dark heads were pressed together. Stella was laughing so hard that she had to lift her mask over her head, and it now sat on top of her curly hair like a fat light blue headband or a weird nurse’s cap. I dug my phone from my pocket and snapped a small grainy photo. It wasn’t perfect, but I wanted to keep this memory vivid in my mind if things got hard. Harder than they already were.

  “Mrs. Garza? I’m Doctor Richardson…. You can call me Kirsten. I don’t know if you remember, but we met a few months back, when I was called in to consult on her case. I’ve been reviewing Ivelisse…” Dr. Richardson tripped over the pronunciation.

  “We call her Ivy. You can just call her Ivy,” I said like I’d done so many times in the past. To make it easy for the people up here who stumbled through my daughter’s beautiful name. One that in its full form meant life.

  The doctor pulled a pen from the pocket of her white coat and scribbled a note in the chart.

  “I’ve been reviewing Ivy’s chart, and I think we could benefit from a new scan. I’ve put in the order. Just waiting for someone to take her up to the radiology floor. I don’t want to make any kind of guesses about diagnosis until then, okay? Plus we’re doing blood and urine, the full panel workup.” Dr. Richardson paused, her eyes shifting left to right. “I think, though, you should call Ivy’s father. We should have something more in the next couple of hours.”

  Dr. Richardson didn’t exactly smile. Maybe it was more of a grimace. I tried not to read too much into it as I tried to remember her specialty, why she’d been called in before. It was pediatric something. They were all pediatric…something—immunology, radiology, endocrinology. Instead of worrying about what Dr. Richardson thought she’d seen in her initial workup, I kissed Ivy on the forehead when the orderly came to take her, then bundled up Stella.

  “Where’s Ivy going, Mama? Can I go?”

  “They’re doing something like an X-ray. Are you hungry? I think it may be close enough to lunchtime that there are some French fries down in the cafeteria.”

  “Papas?” My daughter’s smile was beatific as if I were offering her sainthood and not merely potatoes.

  “Yes. Papas.”

  “Sauce?” Stella’s voice went up like she was one of those people talking on public radio.

  By sauce she either meant the hot sauce Tino liked or ketchup. Either way, I was pretty sure the cafeteria would be able to give Stella what she wanted.

  When we got downstairs, I placed two quick calls to my husband. Left him a voicemail on his work and cell phones. Then, I let Stella help me slide a tray across the metal grille lines in the counter picking up fries from the f
ry cook and Boston cream pie from the dessert rack. Then I got two pints of milk—one chocolate, one plain.

  While I waited to pay, I fingered my phone wondering if I needed to leave another message for my husband. As if someone had read my mind, it rang in my hands. The caller ID said it was him.

  “Tino,” I said by way of greeting.

  “I just got your messages. I was down in the plant—lautering. We’ve got some great new brews coming down. Today I’m trying out one with fresh fruit and another with dried.”

  I hated to crush his enthusiasm for separating hops from wort, but our daughter was more important than getting Americans drunk on overpriced beer.

  “You need to come to the hospital.” I put it as plainly and directly as I could without giving in to the hysteria that was starting to bubble up in my chest now that no one had smiled for hours. Now that the fourth doctor in as many hours was examining Ivy.

  “You got it? Right? My message.” Tino’s voice was heavy with impatience. “I can’t leave right now. The brewmaster is coming down here in a few. Snow delayed him at the airport. I can’t miss this meeting. It’s crucial to my career.”

  He’d talked about the man like he was god descended from the heavens.

  “That the cousin of Ed Strohmeyer you keep talking about?” I asked, mainly to prove that I’d been paying attention, not because I cared one bit.

  Tino often accused me of not being supportive of his “career goals.” But I’d uprooted my family and had moved to snowy, cold Cleveland. I didn’t know what more I needed to do to show my support for him.

  “Felix Braun is his name. Practically grew up in a brewery in Germany before coming over here after the war and setting up the recipes for Strohmeyer. He really knows his old-world techniques. He’s all but retired and is thinking of promoting one of us to brewmaster when he moves back permanently. They say this is his last ever trip to the States.”

  I cringed at his use of the stuck-up phrase. The States. Neither one of us had a passport. Had never left the States.

  “I gotta meet with him today if I want a shot at this,” Tino continued. I sent prayers up to thank God that he couldn’t see my face. I was guessing it wasn’t a nice one. “It will make my career if I can head up my own craft brew brand. I think I have a good chance if I can convince Braun at this meeting that I have what it takes to make something unique that the average guy likes to drink.”

  “Sauce?” Stella piped up. I looked across the table where we’d sat with our trays of food.

  I lifted the Tabasco from the little metal basket on the side. My little one shook her head. I hefted the glass bottle of Heinz, same headshake. I looked around at the tables. Found mustard just within reach, pointed to it. Another shake. This one came with a trembling lip. I was quickly running out of chances to keep this one on an even keel. I carefully pulled the phone from my ear and lifted my eyebrows. My daughter got the message.

  “White sauce, Mommy,” she insisted. “It’s white.”

  Tino was yammering on about expanded distribution opportunities while I was trying to imagine what in the hell kind of white sauce Stella had experienced in her four short years on earth.

  “’Naise.” Stella clapped at the sudden resurgence of her memory. “Daddy called it ’naise.”

  “Mayonnaise?” I asked. The other “naises” were yellow.

  Stella nodded enthusiastically. I was up and out of my chair about to pester the cashier. She must have overheard because she was ready with a handful of yellow and blue Hellman’s packets.

  “Go to the meeting or whatever,” I said into the phone interrupting Tino’s monologue on craft brew marketing. “I’ll handle things here.” Like I always did, I muttered under my breath before I pressed end and shoved the phone down in my bra. Then I used my teeth to open packet after packet, squeezing blobs of the gelatinous sauce onto Stella’s plate. She dipped her potatoes, started humming and swaying in her seat. All the signs that she was happy and content and okay with life as it was right at this moment. I envied her that simplicity where only the present mattered.

  Six hours and what seemed like dozens of tests later, no one was swaying happily or humming where they sat.

  After more pestering phone calls from me, Tino had finally arrived. No one would talk to me until I’d summoned him here. He’d come under threat of divorce or barring that—death.

  The nurses had long since left to move on to more acute patients. When the doctors had finally come back, it was dark outside. All of our stomachs were rumbling, but I didn’t want to make a repeat trip to the cafeteria. Doctors didn’t wait around.

  Tino and I, with Stella fast asleep, had been ushered into a little room with a couch and a couple of upholstered chairs. I took a moment to glance at Tino, see if his dread mirrored mine.

  We each sat like stone-faced statues on the furniture waiting for the doctors’ pronouncement. Neither Dr. Richardson’s face nor those of the two doctors to her right and the two to her left were an omen of good news.

  “Mrs. Garza. Mr. Garza,” she started.

  I nodded. Grabbed onto Tino’s strong hand. Our differences disappeared in the miniscule gap between our skin.

  “I’m sorry to tell you this.” She paused for a moment, looking toward Stella. The four-year-old was fast asleep in her father’s lap. “We found a tumor in Ivy’s right kidney.”

  For a long moment I didn’t hear a thing. Just air rushing past my ears.

  “A tumor? Is it cancer?” Tino’s voice cut through the static. Stella’s head bobbed with the force of his words, but my youngest didn’t wake up.

  “We won’t know for sure until radiology makes a final determination. I’ve consulted with the urologist, radiologist, and oncologist on call, though,” she said, her hands going wide. I looked at the man and woman on one side of her and the two men on the other. I was guessing these were the specialists. “…and we’re sure it must be. We compared today’s scans to ones you took six months ago and this mass…it’s nonexistent on that earlier one. Nothing grows as fast as cancer.”

  The “C” word.

  My biggest fear—realized.

  “What can we do?” I blurted. “Is…is my daughter going to die?”

  Though she was silent, Dr. Richardson’s fierce headshake was enough reassurance for the moment.

  “I think it would be best if you leave her overnight. I’ll make sure she’s checked in as a patient. Tomorrow the pediatric surgical oncologist can examine her. Get a final determination. We may take more scans. Then we’ll talk about staging and treatment.”

  “You don’t think he’ll say it’s a mistake, this diagnosis?” Tino asked, his voice high and tight, his accent more pronounced than I’d ever heard it.

  “I’m sorry, but no. It’s just a matter of getting the oncologist’s official sign-off.”

  “You won’t take a…what do you call it? Veronica?” Tino turned to me, looking for some kind of excuse as to why this couldn’t be real…some kind of lifeline.

  “A biopsy,” I answered. It was all I could offer. “Like with Abuela’s breast cancer.” I turned to the trio of doctors. “Why no biopsy?”

  “The kidney is a very sensitive organ,” a male doctor said. “We only do biopsies in the rarest instances. We’ll leave that ultimate decision up to the pediatric surgeon, but it’s unlikely he’ll want to go that route. The blood and urine and scan results are pretty conclusive.”

  “What are the treatment options?” I asked. When I’d snapped that picture of my girls, I hadn’t imagined that all that dark hair which had been in the way of Ivy’s brown eyes might disappear with some kind of chemotherapy.

  Who hadn’t seen pictures of children’s cancer wards? The little ones moving through the halls, IV stands in hand as they walked like pale, bald ghosts among the healthy.

  “I don’t want us to get ahead of ourselves, but I also want you two to be able to sleep tonight,” Dr. Richardson said. “I want to emphasize that the
prognosis on these types of cancers is pretty good.

  “As long as there’s no spread, and the lymph nodes aren’t implicated, then there are a large number of treatment options. The least radical, though, may be laparoscopic surgery to remove the tumor.”

  Dr. Richardson and the others must have clearly read our blank faces staring straight back.

  “It’s pretty neat,” the youngest doctor piped in. Her left breast read Joy Hanson, M.D. It did not have the alphabet soup embroidered after her name like the others. “The surgeon makes the tiniest incision, then uses a camera to visualize the tumor, then removes it. At Cleveland Clinic, they even use a robot.”

  A squeeze on Dr. Hanson’s forearm from Dr. Richardson shut her up quick.

  “What Dr. Hanson is saying is that there are many ways to execute the tumor removal. We’ll tailor our approach to Ivy’s stage and age and overall health.”

  “Can she live with only part of her kidney?” Tino asked.

  “People are able to function normally for the remainder of their lives with only one kidney,” Dr. Richardson answered. She sliced her hand through the air, hard. “That’s enough for now. Go home. Get some sleep. Ivy’s in good hands. She’s already out—sedative.”

  Dr. Richardson took her charts and stethoscope and stood from where she’d been squatting in front of us. “Let’s talk tomorrow.”

  She stepped from the room, the others bustling behind her without so much as a good-bye.

  “What was it that you had to tell me?” Tino asked offhandedly. He did that a lot, half paid attention to the important stuff I said. Usually I’d soft-pedal the bad news, but I didn’t have it in me today. I turned to him and said it plainly so that he would understand.

  “I got fired today for calling off. I’m not sure we can even afford the co-pays for today’s hospital visit, much less any kind of cancer treatment.”

  “We have the money, Roni. I wish you wouldn’t worry so much about that. I’m able to provide for all of us.”

  “It’s not just the money, Tino,” I started. Though that was a huge part of it. Macho posturing and blatant chauvinism couldn’t pay the bills. He seemed to have conveniently forgotten that half the reason I’d gotten the job at the spa was for the affordable insurance. Strohmeyer had a gold-plated plan that cost both arms and both legs. “It’s the health insurance from Spasy. I’m going to lose that too.”