“What’s wrong?” Don said.
“I’m a universal donor,” Minna said. The doctor flicked his eyes over her. She dropped her voice. “I was screened recently.”
The doctor shook his head. “You must sign a release. If she dies here.”
“Oh, no.” Mrs. Girbaldi started crying.
“Why didn’t you tell me—” Don yelled at Minna.
“Shut up.”
“I’ll never forgive myself…” Mrs. Girbaldi moaned.
“Let’s do it,” the doctor said.
* * *
Hours later, Claire was lying in a queen-size rattan bed, watching the sunset over the ocean, a regular faux-vacation. Minna sat next to her.
“How is my doudou?”
“I was wrong to make you do this.”
“Now we have the same blood in our veins.”
“You saved my life.”
“We saved each other’s. Don will sit with you while I make arrangements for a hotel. Mrs. Girbaldi is exhausted.”
Don came in, sheepish, and Minna passed him without a word. His hands shook when he touched Claire. “You scared us.”
“It was all my fault. Not hers.”
“Thank God nothing happened.” His face showed strain, the usual veneer worn off.
“Minna’s my angel. You don’t deserve her.”
“I don’t.” Don sighed. “I’ve never met anyone who didn’t care about the bullshit, you know what I mean? Even with the lies.”
“Lies?”
“You know. Her stories change all the time. I tell her she can trust me.”
“The details change. Her actions speak for her, don’t you think?”
Claire fell asleep, and when she woke, the windows were dark. She was alone. The lights were dimmed, and an unfamiliar nurse stood in the corner, head bowed as she ironed Claire’s dress, mumbling, “Padre nuestro … ahora y hasta la hora de nuestra muerte.”
The next morning, Claire asked a new nurse for her dress and shoes, as well as watch and earrings, but they were nowhere to be found. More lost things. The doctor, eager to get rid of them, wheeled Claire out in her cotton hospital gown and plastic flip-flops to the front entrance.
“When you are stronger, come back. We have a new therapy with fetus cells.”
Claire nodded.
When Don’s car pulled up, Mrs. Girbaldi and Minna sat in the front seat with him as if they were sightseers.
“Such a shame,” Mrs. Girbaldi said. “I liked the view here.”
“It’s a bad place,” Minna said. “They are a sham: ripping you off with their miracle cure.”
The drive home was a blur, as if Claire were being pushed by a tailwind of mistakes. She pictured old black-and-white movies where the hands of the clock fly around the dial.
Minna reached back and put her hand on Claire’s knee. The nurse’s words kept echoing in her ears, la hora de nuestra muerte … nuestra muerte … muerte, as if she were telling a truth no one else was willing to admit. Claire clung to Minna’s arm, would not let go, as you would cling to life if you loved it, as if Minna were her air and light and blood.
* * *
Don called the oncologist, who arranged to meet them in the emergency room.
“I will not treat you if you do anything like this again,” the doctor said.
“It was my choice to make this mistake,” Claire said. “I earned it.”
She spent the night hooked up to IVs. Don drove Mrs. Girbaldi home while Minna, bare feet curled up under her, slept in a chair in Claire’s room. In the morning, Claire felt a tingling on her chest and arms and looked down to discover sunburn.
Their trip into the exotic changed many things. Changed Claire’s fear and Minna’s roving. She no longer left evenings. Claire didn’t know if Don’s car no longer waiting at the end of the driveway was cause or effect. For her, the trip somehow had a liberating effect. She no longer felt unequal to her medicine. She went to the hospital by choice rather than sentence. Outwardly her world contracted, but experienced from the inside, life on the farm grew richer and more precious in ways she’d never imagined.
* * *
Her truancy was duly reported to Gwen, who phoned with the studied coolness Claire was sure her children received when caught red-handed at something forbidden. The delicious secret was that no punishment was possible, or rather the most severe punishment possible had already been meted out. As if that weren’t enough, she had almost caused her own demise. What could Gwen do to make her suffer more than that?
Exorcised, Claire returned to treatment. Well-behaved, she listened to music through her earphones and nodded to the oncology nurses in their funny cartoon T-shirts. She would follow the treatments to their natural conclusion. Minna, chastised, stood in the doorway, checking on her, in the unlikely event Claire would try to bolt for another escape. But Claire had lost the desire to flee: like a bird too long domesticated, she would stay in her cage despite the wide-open door.
Chapter 10
As with all things forbidden yet tried, the trip was not without repercussions. At the next chemo session, Claire’s white cell count still hung stubbornly low. The doctor, still smarting over what he considered the betrayal of her trip to the clinic, decided to stop treatment for the time being. An undercurrent of blame was palpable as he filled out her file, as if her rebellion would be the cause of her demise rather than a reaction to it. Claire was to stay at home and receive daily injections of a drug to build back up her blood.
Chastened, Claire played the part of obedient patient and tried to self-inject, but she could not stand to watch the needle plunge under her skin. The nurse sighed at this squeamishness and instructed Minna on how to give the injections. Already in the hot seat for her part in the “runaway” trip, as it was referred to by the girls, as in, “Mom ran away from home,” Minna was grim about the job, her usual playfulness gone. She practiced shooting water into oranges for hours and hours, until she felt comfortable with the procedure, until she reached the point at which Claire could not feel the bite of the needle when Minna fed it under her skin, performing the procedure as a kind of sleight of hand.
The other effect of the rogue trip was that Gwen decided they should have a family gathering over the Fourth of July. They hadn’t all been together for a holiday since their teenaged years, and it was long past time.
* * *
Claire couldn’t deny a certain excitement in watching Paz scour the house clean, the feeling that things could be returned to normal at least for the long weekend. The house had fallen under a kind of a luxuriant torpor during the last months, Claire so distracted by her illness and Minna’s dramatics that she had failed to notice that Paz had indeed become lax as Minna complained, that dust was in the corners and cobwebs in the windows. Bald-headed and frail, Claire readied the bedrooms, set up cots and sleeping bags in the sunroom for the grandchildren, while Paz washed floors and windows, scrubbed toilets and showers. When Claire commented about the state of the house, Paz said, “There is only so much I can do one day a week. Minna tells me, ‘Leave this, leave that.’”
Claire brushed it off, not willing to let anything get to her. She felt a new determination to overcome her illness, felt maybe it was time to make amends.
During all of this, Minna was more morose than usual. “Everything okay?” Claire asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. She had grown familiar with what she called Minna’s blue periods, times when she was so silent and sullen that Claire learned to stay away. Minna had requested a full month’s pay that morning.
“What do you need all this money for?”