*
*
Two weeks after Cece is born, I begin the second round of radiation treatment. The drug cocktail that follows every session leaves me completely numb, unfeeling—lifeless. I am utterly exhausted and my eyelids open and shut against my will. The only good to come out of this is that Cece also spends over seventy percent of the day asleep. You can usually find us in the confines of my bedroom slumbering the day away.
And Pam? There are no words to describe her. There’s this quiet strength in her that’s so palpable, I feel it too. It’s what propels me daily, never letting a bad day overcome me. And the mother in her? Incredible. She’s the most amazing parent Cecelia could ever have. She’s a natural, so attentive and loving and my heart swells seeing this side of her blossom.
It’s late one afternoon and I’m awakened by my stomach twisting and churning. By now I know way too well how this will end. Cece is sprawled over my chest. She’s warm and limp. I try to prop myself up, but can’t. I need to at least move her to the bed. I place both my hands under Cece’s tiny arms and attempt to lift her, but she feels very heavy. There’s no way I’ll be able to safely move her onto the bed.
“Pam,” I call, but not loud enough. Two weeks of being a dad have taught me you never wake a sleeping baby. Because trust me, you never wake a sleeping baby.
“Pam,” I call again, slightly louder.
This time she answers, “Yeah?” from somewhere downstairs.
My stomach continues to stir and I begin feeling the familiar burning sensation ascend my throat. I begin to panic.
“COME…” I blurt out.
I hear her footsteps quicken their pace up the stairs, but when she finally appears in the doorway, it’s too late. I turn to the side, shelter Cecelia with my hands, and whatever I’d managed to keep down spills onto the pillow and oozes onto the comforter. When I stop heaving I feel like crap
Pam sighs, bites her bottom lip, tacitly, but I hear a lot from her silence. Cecelia stirs on my chest and begins to whimper. I gaze down at her little form and she’s fine, the noise and movement woke her up from her slumber.
“I’m sorry… Daddy’s sorry.” I try to soothe her, rubbing circles on her back.
Pam walks up to us and lifts Cece off my chest and I immediately miss her warm weight on me.
“Shhh, S’okay…” Pam says to our whimpering baby and places her in the basinet. She walks back to me and helps me sit up. Meanwhile Cecelia’s cries begin to increase in intensity.
“Hey umm…. Go get her,” I say, motioning to the basinet. My heartstrings pull tighter with every shriek Cece makes. “I’m fine now.”
“She’s okay. Just…” She says, her voice with a tinge of annoyance. She pulls the seam of my shirt carefully up. “Let’s get you to the bathroom first.”
Cece’s shrieks pierce the air in quick repetition and I blame myself for it.
“No…” I say shooing her hand away. “I can manage from here. Just… get her…”
Pam hands fall to her sides and she shuffles to the basinet and lifts our now, red-face, grief-stricken babe out of the basinet. She rocks Cece in place while I begin slowly pulling my own shirt and shorts off. I feel completely gross and I just need a shower right now. I keep an eye on them, though, until Cece’s cries subside to soft moans and she begins rooting around Pam’s shirt.
“You hungry, baby girl?” Pam asks in her sweetest voice and looks at me, “You good?”
“Yeah,” I say, but it’s furthest from the truth. I feel as if someone pulled my internal strings and lacerated every organ in my body.
But I carry on with striping down until I’m only in my underwear. The repulsive acidic smell from whatever I just purged over the pillow and sheets begins to fill the air. I take the pillow out of its case and add it to the small heap of clothes I discarded to the floor. I begin pulling off the bed sheets as well, but Pam stops me.
“I got it, Babe” she says juggling Cecelia while tugging the sheet off my hands. “Go on… go shower.” She offers me a crooked smile and pats my bottom. “I was going to change them anyways.”
I sigh, turn on my heels and pad to the bathroom, suppressing a savage urge to push my fist through the wall. I turn on the water so that it’s so hot to the point I almost can’t stand, but it feels good. I breathe the steamy air and relax my body under the scorching water. This is what my life has become. I’m almost as helpless as a child. I bet Pam didn’t count of having two kids to take care of. For the millionth time, I wish things were different.
When my skin is crimson red and pruny, I gingerly dry myself, put on sweatpants and a sweater. I shuffle down the hall and find Pam in the nursery, changing Cece, who’s covered in her own spit up. She sees me in the doorway and says that Cece also spilled her lunch. I smile. Pam always knows the right things to say.
“Sorry about…earlier,” I offer. Even though she’s seen me do that before, it’s still embarrassing. She smiles kindly, as if saying, ‘it’s okay.’
I walk over to her, where she’s undressing Cece and wrap my arms around her. She leans into me somewhat, but I know she’s restraining herself. I feel her muscles tense under my fingertips. I kiss the top of her head and tug at the diaper she’s holding. “Here, let me do it.” I know my way around a diaper.
“You sure?”
I know it’s just a question, but it stings a bit. When it comes for me to do anything nowadays it’s always, ‘You sure?’ or ‘Be careful,’ or even, ‘It’s fine, I got it.’ I’d be the first to admit I’m useless most of the time, but sometimes I just want it to be normal. A normal dad changing his daughter’s diaper. I know Pam is just trying to help, but the questions are a bit wearing on the nerves.
“Yes,” I say curtly.
She picks up on terseness of my response and says, “Just asking, Babe,” and moves to the closet.
I'm an asshole.
“Sorry, it’s just that—“
“I know,” she says desolately and places an onesie and tiny polka-dotted socks on the side of the changer, “Dress her in this.”
“Kay,” I say, downcast.
Similar incidents happen until the second radiation session and its extreme side effects come to an end. I’ve learned that I don’t live, but vegetate during those awful weeks. It’s like I’m watching the movie of my life roll on a 3D screen. I feel like I’m part of it, but if I try to touch the important objects in my life my hand goes right through them.
The doctor begins talking about surgery and removing the tumor. I freeze. My heart tightens. I knew this day would come and I know it’s something that has to be done. But now that it’s here…It’s just… hard to let things go. He puts everything on the table, asserting that it is my sole option. Therefore, I must dive in head first—‘no pun intended,’ he says. My only request was that he schedules the surgery a month from now—a month that is to be radiation free. (I also asked that he not mentioned it to Pam. Surely she would think otherwise).
We shake hands and I have one month.
It takes me a week to regain myself completely back. I now feel present, of substance—flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—overall, alive.
I need to make the most out of my time with my girls, but I also have to make sure they are taken care of if the worse happens. I don’t want Pam to worry about mortgage payments and bills or college tuition. So, I double check our insurance policy, increase the premium and do other, more dismal errands that I don’t want Pam to think about it after.
I also write my will, which Pam finds a week a later. It was hidden away from her view, away from anything she might touch. I guess I should’ve known better.
I’m giving Cece a bath and she’s squirming, kicking her legs and flailing her arms. I support her head and turn her on her belly, holding her very carefully, while pouring soapy water down her back. She’s very good about the whole process of me turning and moving and rubbing her clean.
When I finally envelop Cece in the bunny towel and turn to leave the bathroom, I see Pam, motionless, eyes glazed and red. I immediately swallow dry and my first instinct is to ask her what’s wrong, if she’s okay. But without speaking, she lays folded pieces of the will in front of me and I'm lost and for a moment there is an eerie quiet.
I stand transfixed, unable to move. She gives me a searching glance and there’s a tear in the corner of her eye. It hurts to think that she’s read it because I know what this implies to her. She just…. She shouldn’t have. I pull Cece protectively to my chest and enclose her bare, little feet in my hand.
There’s no way around this.
“It’s just a precaution,” I try explaining. “It’s nothing…”
Pam bites her bottom lip and her expression is so broken that I can’t read her. Is she angry? Mad? Sad? I can’t tell. She still doesn’t say anything, but squeezes her eyes shut and tears roll down her cheeks. Her body shudders and she begins to sob. It’s too much for me to take. My hearts breaks.
“Pam… C’mere,” I say extending her a hand. She doesn’t move.
Instead she peers up at me and says in a tears soaked voice, “You’re giving up?”
“No… Pam…It’s just..” I stretch a hand in her direction, but she doesn’t take it. I try to tell her that I was just being overly cautious and wanted to make sure she would be okay if anything happened to me.
She asks me, “What else you being ‘overly cautious’ with?” as though my thoughts have alerted her. Defenseless, I tell her everything, the life insurance, Cece’s college fund, and all the other covert planning I’ve been doing.
At one point she can’t handle it. She turns on her heels and marches somewhere upstairs. Why can’t she see that I might not be okay and just understand that all I do is with their best interest at heart? I’m not giving up. How could I? How could I leave my best friend and soulmate? Or this little one, who I’m so in love with?
Silence spreads and I go into the nursery to dress and diaper Cecelia, who’s been quiet through all this, and begin to cry myself. This is supposed to be the happiest moment of our lives. We have each other and now we have Cecelia. She’s healthy and beautiful. Why does it have to be so hard?
I hold Cece tightly against me and go find Pam. I can’t just ignore what just happened. I’m a fixer. I find Pam curled on our bed, clutching tightly to a throw pillow. I lay Cecelia in the bassinet and lay next to her. She doesn’t move.
“Pam… I just want to make sure you’re taken care of…” I let my hand trace lines along her arm. “I was just thinking—”
“I know,” she interrupts and I'm stumped. I had planned on explaining and reminding her how much I love her and how I’ve been fighting through the radiation and the medications, the headaches, the nausea….How I’ve been doing it all for her, for them because they are all I’ve got.
She's silent again, so I pull her so we’re facing each other. I look at her, listening to her, and yet realizing I am listening to something within myself and for a second I hear the shattering stroke of my heart. I pull her to me and she unwinds a bit, but is still hesitant. I just hold her, loving her the best way I know how.
She clutches tightly to my shirt and traces the checkered patterns on it. I regard her miserably, like a child, naive and vulnerable. “Jim,” she says in her smallest and most fragile voice. “I can’t do it alone.”
My heart tightens another notch inside my chest. Everything seems to be slipping away from me and I can’t find any quick absorbing action that will get it under control. “Pam, you… you can… you’ve been so strong…. You’ve…. You’ve been my rock…”
“You can’t go, you just…. Can’t. Cece needs you, I need you.”
“Pam,” I cup her chin and lift her face so she’s looking directly into my eyes. “I’m not giving up. I love you and I want to be here, but just let me do this for you, for Cece.? Just…. Please? We have to be prepared. What if I’m in the hospital for a long time? I need to make sure you’ll be good, okay?”
She nods and we melt into each other. She sobs into my shirt and my own tears escape and roll down my cheek. “I just want you to be okay.” I whisper and she nods again.
She knows.
The following day when she finds a list of things I need to do before the surgery, like write milestone letters to Cece, she writes her own list and leaves on the bathroom mirror while I shower.
Things to do after the surgery:
1. Take Cece to the Zoo
2. Get matching tattoos
3. Watch bad television
4. Prank Dwight
5. See the Pacific Ocean
But he last one catches me by surprise.
6. Grow old together.
Author's Chapter Notes:
EmilyHalpert helped with EVERYTHING!
I own nothing
Chapter End Notes:
Thanks for reading! Let me know if you guys are still with me! :)
-D
