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Leukemia…leukemia…leukemia…The word reverberated through my head. He can’t have leukemia, I thought desperately, he can’t die. Why him? He’s the good one. Why not me? No one would miss me. I can’t lose him…I need him. I have no one else.
I didn’t know how much Nicky knew about leukemia, but I could see by the terrified look on his face that he understood enough. I tried to look reassuring but knew I failed miserably. Searching my memory, I located and retrieved the little I had read on leukemia. It was not encouraging. The death rate for ten year olds was very high.
Trying to refocus on the doctor, I caught the tail end of the conversation he and Mrs. Ramirez were having.
“…check in tomorrow,” he was saying. “I’ve already called the hospital and they will be putting him on the fifth floor. You will need to stop in at the registration desk to fill out some paperwork and then someone there will take you to where Nicky will be staying. Dr. Thompson will drop by as soon as you’re settled in. He’s one of the top oncologists in the state.”
“Thank you, Doctor Sanders,” Mrs. Ramirez was valiantly fighting tears, unwilling to let Nicky see how upset she was. “Let’s go boys,” she said with forced cheerfulness.
I hated to tell her she was putting on as poor a show as I was.
Nicky didn’t say a word all the way out to the parking lot. After Mrs. Ramirez started the car, Nicky leaned over towards me and whispered, “Am I going to die?”
“NO!” the word exploded out of me before I could stop it.
“Jack?” I could see the worried look on Mrs. Ramirez’s face as she glanced at me in the rear view mirror.
“We’re fine,” I muttered.
She nodded silently and backed out of the parking space.
“Don’t even think that,” I hissed furiously. “We’re going to get you to a doctor who can fix you.”
“Really…?” Nicky asked doubtfully.
“Really,” I said with more confidence than I felt.
“I’m scared,” he ventured in a shaky voice.
I am too, I admitted silently. Out loud I simply said “You’ll be fine.”
“I love you, Jack,” Nicky said as he reached for my hand.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I had trouble voicing my emotions, but Nicky knew me better than anyone and understood.
“I know,” he sighed, leaning back against the seat in exhaustion and closing his eyes.
A moment later, he was asleep.
1973
Standing in the rain, ignoring the huge drops that fell on my head and ran down inside the ill-fitting, borrowed suit I was wearing, I stared at the casket as the man closed it for the final time, unable to move, eyes glued to Nicky’s face until he was totally obscured from view.
Everyone else had headed for shelter the moment the service concluded, but I had nowhere to go, no place to be, no one to care, no one waiting for me to come home. My only family lay cold and still in the closed casket and it was more than I could bear.
As my eyes glazed over, in my mind it was 1968 again. Nicky was grasping my hand tightly as we stood under the tent, rain pouring down, listening to the preacher praying over the two caskets containing the gristly remains of our parents that had been so mutilated by the accident a closed casket funeral was the only alternative besides cremation. Nicky’s hysterical reaction to the bodies of his parents reduced to ashes by fire had been enough to nix that idea. To Nicky, fire and hell were equivalent.
Then, too, people had run for cover as soon as politely possible, but the difference was that Nicky and I had still had each other.
…and then there was one.
Nicky, I anguished silently.
I had failed him once again—failed to protect him from the evil that had conspired against him ever since the accident; from the Shaws, from the bullies, from the horrid insidious cancer that had in the end killed him—failed him miserably.
Nicky, accepting his fate with the same smiling face he had worn his whole life, attempted to comfort me in the end, worried about me, and determined to make sure I would be fine.
“Be happy, Jack,” his whisper was practically inaudible as I sat by his hospital bed, holding his hand.
“We’ll be happy,” I had returned vehemently, squeezing his fingers gently.
“Do you remember when Daddy used to take us to the park to teach us how to play baseball?” his eyes had taken on a faraway look.
“I remember.”
“You always pretended that I hit a home run,” he reminded me “and that the ball was too hot for you to catch.”
I nodded, unable to speak.
“And I would run around the bases while you and Daddy kept throwing the ball to each other and missing it just to make me feel better because I wasn’t as good as you.”
“You were great.”
“Jack, you don’t have to try to make me feel better any more. I know I’m dying…and it’s okay,” he smiled weakly.
“No!” I jumped up, practically yelling at him. “You’re not going to die,” I denied in a choked voice, as I turned towards the window, unwilling to let him see the tears in my eyes. “The doctors are fixing you.”
I heard him mumble something and swiping at my eyes with the back of my hand I slowly returned to my seat and picked up his hand again.
“Sorry,” I muttered, “I couldn’t hear you.”
“Mrs. Ramirez told me Mommy and Daddy will be waiting for me,” he said with a sigh. “I miss them, Jack, I miss them a lot.”
“So do I,” I managed to get out around the enormous lump in my throat.
“I’ll tell them when I see them.”
I didn’t reply, afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep my gut-wrenching emotions out of my voice.
“I need you to do something for me,” he whispered a bit more forcefully, lifting his head towards me.
I nodded.
“I need you to be okay,” his head, devoid of hair from the chemo he had suffered through without success, fell back weakly against the pillows. “You have to swear to me that you’ll be okay, otherwise I’ll feel bad about leaving you.”
“You aren’t gonna die,” I denied violently, unable to control my knee jerk reaction. “I won’t let you.”
“Superheroes can do a lot of things, but not even Jackknife can stop cancer,” Nicky shook his head sadly.
I looked into his tired, wise eyes and knew I had to accept it, for his sake. He deserved to be happy and I knew it was wrong of me to burden him with guilt for leaving me, but suddenly it was all too much for me.
“What will I do without you?” I anguished, laying my head on the bed in defeat giving into the tears I had tried so hard to suppress.
“You’ve always been the strong one, Jack,” Nicky gently removed his hand from mine and placed it on my head. “You have to look out for people like Benjamin who can’t do it themselves.”
“I’m not a superhero, Nicky,” I mumbled against the blankets.
“To me you are,” he contradicted softly. “You have special super powers.”
“The only thing special about me is you,” I lifted my head and gazed hopelessly into his dark, sweet, loving eyes so like our mother’s had been.
“Then do it for me, Jackknife, be a superhero for me,” he murmured as he drifted off.
“For you,” I whispered in resignation “I’d do anything for you.”
That was our last conversation.
He had been my reason for existing, the only thing that had made life bearable, and he was gone.
In a way I was relieved, he would no longer have to experience any more pain, and that was worth a lot. The last days of his life had been so incredibly agonizing for him that the doctors had pumped him full of morphine in order to ease his suffering and, while I could barely stand to see him that way, I was unable to tear myself away from him.
I sat by his bedside, refusing to lea
ve, unable to eat or sleep as I watched him fade away from me, alternating between begging God to heal him and pleading with Him to take Nicky and end his unbearable pain.
If I could have switched places with him, I would have in an instant, the agony of watching the anguish in his beautiful dark eyes as his small fragile body fought a losing battle against the horrifying enemy that relentlessly attacked it overwhelmed me.
A feeling of helplessness and hopelessness invaded me and I hated it. I hated not being in control…unable to expel the bullies in his body. There was nothing for me to fight, punch, physically punish and I felt like yelling and cursing and pulling my hair out in frustration.
Tony and Mrs. Ramirez tried to comfort me as he lay dying in his hospital bed, assuring me that he would be with the angels where he belonged, in a wonderful place, a much better place than the pain-racked planet we inhabited, and I desperately wanted to believe that they were right, because of all the people I’d ever known, sweet, innocent, kind, caring Nicky deserved to be happy and pain-free, but I wasn’t sure that God really existed.
Life was so rotten, so unfair…If there was a God where was He? How could He have let something like that happen?
The night Nicky died I ran out of the hospital with no thought in my head, just the feeling that I had to get away. I had no idea what I was trying to run from, but that didn’t matter, nothing mattered except escape; I just had to…go. I was like a wounded animal…crazed, uncomprehending, dazed, angry, and in unbearable pain.
I vaguely remembered aimlessly wandering the city, but much about that night was a blur. Tony found me sometime in the early hours of the morning, sitting on a swing in the park that Nicky had mentioned the last time I’d seen him conscious, where our father used to take us when we were younger and happier, when we still had a family. I had no memory of making my way there, but my being there made a weird sort of sense.
Glancing dully around the cemetery, I noticed Tony’s pickup parked about 50 yards away. I’d been wrong; someone was waiting for me, waiting to take me back to an empty house, to the vacant bedroom I had shared with Nicky. I wasn’t sure I would be able to leave Nicky lying there in the casket, alone in the rain—storms had always scared him even though he had determinedly pretended to be brave—waiting to be buried, put into the ground and covered with six feet of dirt.
“I can’t do it, I can’t leave him here,” I yelled at the heavens. “Don’t make me do it, don’t make me leave him! Don’t leave me Nicky! Come back! Take me with you!” I begged, sobbing as I fell to the ground on my knees.
I felt myself lifted by a pair of strong arms and enveloped in a tight hug, the sound of Tony’s grief helping me to deal with my own…his sense of loss mingling with mine as we cried out our pain.