Elephant in the Sky (18 page)

44

Nate

My legs hurt. Something is on them and I cannot move them. I try to lift one. It moves a little bit but not that much. So I try again. It moves a bit more. But it feels really heavy.

I open my eyes. Just a little at first. Then more. No one is with me. I am in a room by myself. But I can hear the elephant monsters screaming somewhere near me. They want to kill me. I am scared.

At least I know I am safe. It makes me feel better to be locked up in this room at the zoo so the elephants can't reach me. Even though they are so loud outside my room and they are very scary.

“Nate? Oh, baby. You're awake!” Mommy says. She runs through the door with Daddy. They run over to my bed.

“Mommy! Daddy! Don't go out there. Please! The monsters will KILL YOU! I DON'T WANT YOU TO DIE!” I scream. I start to cry. Just a little bit at first because I am trying to be brave. But then I start crying harder because I am so scared the monsters will eat my mommy and daddy. I do not want them to die.

“Champ, it's okay. Mommy and Daddy are safe,” Dad says. He holds my shoulders with both of his arms and looks at me in the eye. “We were just with Dr. Aldridge for a while, and we're sorry we weren't here when you woke up.”

“Are you feeling okay?” Mommy asks me.

I shake my head. I feel sick. Like I'm going to puke.

“Maybe you're hungry. There's some food for you here, if you want some?” Mommy stops holding my hand and walks to a table to get a tray. There is food on it. A sandwich. An orange. Something that looks like a yogurt. And apple juice.

“What would you like to eat, bud?” Dad asks me.

I stare at them. Don't they know the food is made with poison? I can't eat food that has been poisoned. That would be stupid.

“Would you like a sandwich?” Mommy asks me. She really wants me to eat so she must not know about the poison but if I tell her she will die. I can't remember why she will die if she knows but I know she will. I try to remember what will make her die but everything is so foggy in my brain. It feels like marshmallows. And it hurts. It hurts really bad.

“I'm not hungry.”

“You need to eat something, Bean.”

I shake my head. It hurts more.

“How about the apple juice then?”

I don't want apple juice. Or anything to eat. I feel like I'm going to puke.

I take the apple juice and throw it against the wall. That will teach them for trying to make me drink poison.

At first Dad looks like he is going to get mad at me. But then he just looks sad. He leaves the room and comes back right away with towels. He cleans up the mess on the floor. He still looks sad.

“How about some ice chips? Or water?” Mommy asks me.

“No.”

“Do you want anything at all? Maybe I could go get you a cookie from the cafeteria?”

“No.”

“I know … ice cream?”

I shake my head again. I do not want anything. I don't know what cafeteria she is talking about but I know there is poison there too.

“Maybe later, hon …” Daddy says to Mommy. He is talking softly to her. I watch him rub her back.

“Do you hear that?” I ask. “The radio. It's the radio again! The zoo has turned it back on. They're talking to me. They are telling me not to eat. And you should know why …”

“Why honey?” Mommy asks me.

“Because of the poi —”

Stop.

I can't tell her or she will die. I shut my mouth tight. I bite my lips so I cannot speak anymore.

“Why don't we talk about food later?” Dad asks. And I know he knows.
He
knows about the poison. “Let's get you up. You've been in bed a long time, champ. Might be good to walk a bit.”

“WE CAN'T GO OUTSIDE! THE MONSTERS ARE OUT THERE AND ARE WAITING TO KILL US!” I scream. Why can't they learn? Why won't they listen to me? I throw my fists into the air but Dad steps back and I do not punch him. I'm glad he stepped back. I do not actually want to hurt Dad.

“Okay … it's okay, Bean. We won't go outside,” Mommy says. “Can we walk around this room? Is that okay?”

I look at her and think about the question. I wonder if it's okay.

“Shhh,” I say. “
Shhh! Beee quiet!
”
I listen for the man on the radio to start talking. For him to tell me whether or not I can walk around the room.

The room fills with silence.

“Nate?” Mommy asks me after a few minutes.

“I said
shhh
.” I try to kick my feet but they still feel heavy. I kick harder and my mommy steps away. She is finally quiet.

We keep waiting in silence. I do not know for how long.

We wait.

We wait.

Then, suddenly, the man's voice is back. He is talking over the radio, and says to me, “
Nate. Good boy for
not eating the poisoned
food. You are very smart.
Stay away from the food.
You will die if you eat it.
”

“Did you
hear
that?” I ask Mommy. I start crying. I'm so scared because I think she heard the man on the radio. Because then she will know about the poison. And she will die.

Mommy shakes her head to tell me no.

“Oh
thank you
!” I shout. My voice is very loud. Even for me. But I am so glad. I am glad my mommy will not die.

“
Nate?
” The radio voice continues. “
You can walk around.
Start now
.”

I turn to look at Dad and tell him that I can walk around the room. It is safe.

Dad helps me get out of bed. I turn and hang my feet over the side. I feel really weak all of a sudden, but the man on the radio told me to walk around the room, so I have to. Dad lifts me off the bed and my bare feet touch the floor. It is really cold. Smooth.

I wiggle my toes to try to warm them up. I take a step. Then another. Daddy is holding one hand and Mommy is holding the other.

I feel woozy.

Wobbly.

Scared.

“You okay, bud?” Dad asks me.

I say yes, even though I'm not. Even though I feel so funny in my brain.

Dad lets go of my hand for one minute. I think he wants me to try myself. But that is when I fall down. Mommy tries to hold me up on her own but she must not be strong enough. Because all of a sudden I'm on the cold, smooth floor. I think my shoulder must have hit first because now it is hurting. I wince at the sharp pain.

Dad scoops me up and puts me back into bed. “Maybe we'll try again later, champ.”

“He needs to eat,” Mommy says, looking at Daddy. “He needs energy.”

But I won't eat.

I don't want to die.

45

Ashley

I glanced down at the glowing clock on the car dashboard. Three fourteen. The school bell would ring in one minute, and Grace would likely be out somewhere between ten and twenty minutes after that, depending on how talkative she was at her locker.

I sighed and picked up my iPhone. I was taking Grace for a mother-daughter afternoon so we could spend time together. Given the number of hours I'd spent at the hospital over the past week, I knew she needed some alone time with me.

I scanned through my waiting emails to answer the most important ones. I always responded to Jack, as well as any others I felt were time-critical, including the urgent ones from Ben. Just as he'd promised, my associate creative director was only looping me in when absolutely needed, and I owed him the courtesy of replying to anything he felt was important.

“Huh, would you look at that. Only about a hundred today …” I murmured out loud. Despite the fact that I hadn't set foot in the office in over a week, my emails hadn't slowed down. I tried to wade through them on a daily basis, but felt the most stress in my day when I did. Things were happening at the office at lightning speed, and it was tough to keep up over email and phone.

I opened the last email from Jack, which had been sent twenty minutes earlier, and squeezed my eyes shut after I read it. He wanted to know when I would be back in the office, and was practically demanding that I tell him what was going on. I'd manage to skirt the issue over the past week, but my boss was growing less patient by the day and I knew it was only a matter of time before I would need a new plan.

I hit reply and told Jack that Nate was doing better, but he wasn't fully recovered and the hospital was still doing tests. I thanked him for his patience and understanding given the very difficult medical issue my family was going through, and told him I'd try to pop by the following morning to touch base in person.

I'd bought myself twenty-four hours to figure out what to do.

Almost instantly, Jack replied, saying he was in New York until the weekend, adding that he had needed to go because I wasn't there to go myself. Jack suggested Monday morning for our face-to-face meeting instead.

Perfect. Jack's trip bought me more time. And if Nate wasn't well enough for me to go in the following week, I'd call Jack and ask for more time. I was doing the best I could, trying to balance being there for my very sick son while managing a creative team of thirty from afar. In order for me to achieve the balance of two things that were as massive as that, it had to be on my terms. And on my schedule. If Jack couldn't understand that, then he could screw himself — and find another creative director to run his show.

Feeling better after my internal rant and rationalization, I responded quickly to the other emails that needed my attention. Less than ten minutes after the bell rang, Grace came skipping outside and climbed into the front seat.

“Well, that was fast!” I said, turning to give my daughter a big smile. “I'd say it was your quickest exit from school yet.”

“Yeah, well I want to get my new shirts! I'm thinking we start at Aritzia, and then maybe hit up Forever 21, Hollister, H&M. Oh, and we
can't
forget Lululemon either. And maybe Abercrombie, too …”

“Hold on, Grace. I said you could get
one
new shirt. From
one
store,” I replied, putting my arm around her seat to reverse the car.

“Yeah, yeah. I know. But we can still just shop at the others.”

“Okay. That part sounds good. But remember:
one shirt
,” I said, and laughed. “How was school?”

Grace quickly responded with all of the latest news, and my mind raced to keep up with all of the quickly changing, ongoing sagas of her almost-teenage group of friends. By the time we reached the mall, I was exhausted.

“So, Holts first?” Grace asked, switching gears from her talk about her friends.

“Sure. Whatever you'd like, sweetie.” I pulled the car into a parking spot, and we got out to start our shopping.

Grace found her “perfect shirt” within five minutes of being at the mall, and begged to get it despite my continued warnings of her not being able to get another one.

Oddly enough, Grace stayed true to her promise of not asking for a second shirt, and we had a fun afternoon together laughing and chatting our way through her favourite stores. It was the most normal I'd felt in over a week.

As we snuggled into a cozy booth at dinner that night, Grace ordered her favourite spaghetti and meatballs and I decided to try the angel hair primavera.

“So how have you been, honey?” I asked Grace as she slurped her Coke. She shrugged in response.

“Is there anything you want to talk about?”

“I told you everything in the car.”

“No, you told me all about your friends. And what's happening at school. And I loved hearing all about it. But I want to talk to you. I want to know how
you
are doing.”

“I don't know,” she responded, shrugging her shoulders again. I watched my daughter squirm in her seat as she waited for the next question. From behind me, the waitress appeared and set down some bread and olive oil. Grace immediately picked up a hunk of bread, tore it in two, and smeared them one at a time through a plate of city-famous olive oil.

“Mmm …” she said, chomping up the bread.

“Grace! Chew with your mouth closed, please.”

“Whatever,” Grace replied through an open mouth of food. She rolled her eyes.

“Pardon me?” I asked. My daughter was a lot of things, but she was rarely rude to me.

“I
said
whatever. Geez. Chill out, would you?”

“Grace Carter. You need to think long and hard before you say one more cheeky word to me,” I said firmly. I watched her eat the bread. She had closed her mouth, but her eyes weren't leaving the table. And when her tears hit the plate sitting in front of her, my heart broke.

“Oh, Grace … honey, I'm sorry,” I said, scooting out of my seat and switching sides of the table so I could sit beside her. “I had so much fun with you today, and I don't want to ruin a wonderful dinner with my only daughter. Let's start again, okay?”

Grace shrugged and wiped away the tears that were falling more quickly.

“Sweetie … honey, tell me what's wrong.” I brought her in close to give her a hug. She suddenly seemed like she was about four years old again, when she had been small and quiet, and innocent to all of the world's hardships.

“I … I want to …” she sputtered as she tried to find the right words. “I … I'm scared. And I want to know what's wrong with Nate. I miss him. And I miss
you
!”

“I know, honey. And I miss you too,” I replied, pulling her in for a hug. She was crying openly now, and it dawned on me that I couldn't remember the last time she had cried in front of me. Especially in public.

“When are you going to come home? And when is Nate going to come home so we can be a family again?” Grace asked, weeping into my shoulder. I hadn't slept one night at home since Nate was admitted into the hospital, but Pete and I had decided that he would return home to try to provide as much normalcy for Grace as possible. I thought that Grace sleeping in her own bed would help her, but it was clear that she desperately wanted Nate and me to return home as well.

“I'm not sure when we'll be able to come home, honey,” I replied honestly. “But I know I won't be away forever. And I bet it will go by faster than you think.”

“But Mommy … what's
wrong
with Nate?” My heart leapt hearing her say “Mommy.” Nate still called me that, but Grace hadn't in many years. “Why can't I even see him? And why won't you tell me what's wrong with him? I know you know. Moms
always
know. ”

I took a deep breath. I knew there was no more hiding what was going on with Nate. Pete and I had talked endlessly about what we should say to Grace. About when we should tell her, and if we should talk all together or one-on-one. But we hadn't gotten past talking about how to have the conversations. We hadn't made any decisions.

Dr. Aldridge had recommended that we be honest and direct, in an age-appropriate way. And she had also cautioned us to be very mindful of what a big change it would be for Grace. She stressed that finding out about a sibling with a mental illness could be as life-changing as being diagnosed with the disease.

In the therapy sessions that Pete and I had started with Dr. Aldridge, she had been determined to focus on the entire family and not just Nate. She explained that quite often parents spend so much time thinking of the child who is ill that they often neglect to see that the disorder creates other, quiet victims. That the child's siblings hurt too but don't want to complain or make things any worse for their parents. So they often get ignored.

“Sweetie, Nate's sick.”

“I know that part. How is he sick?”

“We really don't know yet. That's the honest truth. And we're doing a lot of testing to find out.”

Grace dismissed my answer by rolling her eyes and letting out an infuriated sigh. Her arms remained tightly crossed against her body, and she refused to look at me.

I waited, knowing that a bit of silence often worked well when trying to get Grace to open up about something she was upset about.

When her eyes finally met mine, I was hit with a well-known glimpse of saddened aggravation. It was a look I'd never forget. In the moment my daughter's eyes met mine, she looked exactly like my father. And it took my breath away. I was flooded with emotions that hadn't visited me in many years yet at the same time had never left and were still very much a part of me.

The moment passed quickly, and Grace returned to her normal self. “Mom? Come on. I'm not a kid anymore.”

She was right. I was skirting the issue. Again. My stomach was in knots at the thought of another one of my children hurting. The time had come. There was no more avoiding the truth. I got out of the booth and returned to my side of the table, where I could look directly at her. I reached out for her hand, and she gave it to me.

“Do you remember when you got sick a few years ago with scarlet fever?” I asked Grace.

“Does Nate have scarlet fever?”

“No, honey. He doesn't. But you know how you had a whole bunch of symptoms, so we took you to the hospital because we didn't know what was wrong with you?” I asked Grace. She looked slightly puzzled, so I kept going. “You had a really sore throat, and a funny red rash all over your neck and chest. Remember?”

“Oh right! And my stomach hurt. But not as much as my throat. I couldn't even swallow.”

“That's right. So we took you to the hospital. And the doctors did a lot of tests, and told us you had something called scarlet fever. But we didn't know right away. We had to wait for your test results before we knew for sure.”

“So what kind of things are wrong with Nate?”

“Well, uh, he's acting unlike himself. He's saying a few things that he doesn't normally say, for example.”

Grace gave me a funny look. I knew I was botching it, but I had no idea how to begin to tell a twelve-year-old about mental illness. How was she expected to grasp the concept when even grown adults couldn't?

“When you had scarlet fever, there was something wrong with your throat. And you took the right medicine to make it better.” I took a big breath. “In Nate's case, there is something that's not quite right in his brain. There's an illness there right now, just like there was an illness in your throat. And we're working very closely with the doctors to figure out exactly what is wrong, so that we can give him the right medicine and make him better.”

“Does anything hurt him? You know … like his throat or something?”

“No, I don't think so. He feels a bit nauseated right now, and tired too, but other than that he's okay. He just says some funny things sometimes, because his brain isn't working properly. Just like your throat wasn't working properly.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, is that it? You're telling me everything you know?” Grace asked.

“Yes. I'm telling you everything I know.” I watched relief pass through my daughter's face. It was like seeing a physical weight being lifted from her shoulders.

“You mean he's not going to die?” Grace asked.

“No, sweetie. Not at all! Why would you think that?”

“Well, you couldn't find him when he was out on the streets by himself. And everyone thought he was going to die then, so …”

“Who told you that?”

“Julia. When I slept in her room. That first night at Tay's house.”

My heart lurched, and I outwardly shuddered at the thought of my daughter being alone with Julia, thinking her brother was going to die.

“And then you found him. And that was good,” Grace continued. “But everyone at school is talking about how sick he is and that he will probably still die anyway.”

“They
are
?” I said, more to myself than to Grace. “Why would they say that?”

“I don't know. But that's what they're saying.”

I scolded myself internally for not being more open with Grace sooner. With all that was going on with Nate, I hadn't even stopped to consider the fact that she had been left to believe the poorly drawn, gossipy conclusions that she was hearing. I hadn't even realized other kids at school knew about it, much less talked about it.

“Well, I assure you, it isn't true. Nate isn't well right now, but we've started giving him medicine that we think is going to help him get better.”

“I'm glad he's going to be okay. And I'm glad you told me.”

At that moment, the waitress set down our dinners in front of us. She sprinkled extra cheese on Grace's pasta and pepper on mine. The big smile returned to Grace's face.