Something from You
by Stefanie Demas
The doctor told me that she would be bloated.
“After surgery,” he said, “the body gets dehydrated, so it starts retaining water. That makes it get puffy. It’s perfectly normal for your mother to look larger than she really is, but it will go away soon.”
His blue scrubs sagged around him except for where they stretched at his belly. He crossed his arms and rested them over his belly when he came out to talk to me every few hours, after each of the surgeries.
“My job’s done,” he said the first time he came out. “Everything’s removed and now Dr. Economos is doing the reconstruction. This is what will take the longest. Essentially, my part was easy.”
In my head I saw my mother’s breast lying in a metal pan.
“I have another surgery now,” he told me, “but I’ll go in and check on her after.”
The waiting room had cream walls and red cushioned seats. There were big green plants in the corners and black and white photographs spaced evenly along the walls. My grandparents didn’t want to leave. They sat together on the stiff couch across from the chairs my aunt and I were in. Grandpa set his felt hat on his thigh and read the Times, working methodically through each section to pass the nine hours. Grandma didn’t read—she spent most of her time looking at the pictures of actors I was sketching from magazines.
“His eyebrow arches a little more,” she’d say, or, “Don’t get angry, but I think you have a little too much space in between his nose and mouth.”
Aunt Carol went out to use a pay phone and I went with her. She took a disinfectant wipe out of her purse and rubbed down the phone before she used it.
“Once,” she said, “I went to use a pay phone and the receiver was covered in shit.”
I laughed more than I should have.
˜
She brought me into a pharmacy. She said she needed gum but she walked down the aisle of tampons.
“What do you use?” she asked.
“What?”
“Get what you need.”
“Oh.”
I looked at the rows of boxes. Slowly I took a package with a picture of a big red flower on it off the shelf.
“Is that what you use?” she asked.
“I guess so.” It looked like the box Mom had given me.
“Here,” she said, picking out another box with no pictures on it. “Try these, too. They’re better. I’ll show you how to use them.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Aunt Carol held both boxes for me and we walked to the register.
“Your mother told me this morning,” she said. “You got it yesterday?”
“Yeah.”
I had asked Mom not to tell anyone. She said she wouldn’t. I knew I shouldn’t have believed her.
“For the first time?”
“Um hmm.”
“Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“No cramps?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Lucky.”
No. Lucky had to be the wrong word for this.
˜
Back in the waiting room the doctor came out again.
“The reconstruction’s going well,” he said, “but it will still be a few more hours.”
It was before noon—I would need to wait until three to call my friends for homework. I had my schoolbooks along with a change of clothes in my backpack with me.
We went out to eat. We sat in a booth in the diner. My grandparents both ordered burgers. I was thinking about a grilled cheese and fries but Aunt Carol told me that salt was not good—it would make me feel bloated.
“Spinach,” she said, “you want iron.”
I got a spinach omelet that I didn’t eat.
I had to take my bag with me into the bathroom. I took a pad and then hung my bag from the hook on the back of the door. There was so much blood on the old one. I didn’t want to touch it but I had to wrap it up to throw it out. The smell of the blood made me nauseous. I wondered if Mom’s blood smelled like this. How did the doctors keep working? I realized I knew nothing about the surgery. I had no idea what was happening to Mom while I was stuck in the bathroom fumbling with sticky strips on the back of the pads.
I heard someone come into the bathroom.
“Are you all right?” Aunt Carol asked.
“Oh, yeah, I’m fine.”
Under the door I could see her black leather shoes walking towards my stall. They stopped just outside it.
“Do you need help?”
“No.” Why was she even in here? I didn’t want her help. I didn’t want her to know so much. “I’ll be out in a minute.” My voice was shaky.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
I heard her leave. My hands shook so much that I dropped the new pad on the floor before I could put it on. I had to throw it out and reach into my bag to get another and I just started crying. The tears flowed down my face quickly. I tried to be quiet but little noises happened in my throat. I had to use toilet paper as tissues and it stung my eyes. I washed my face before I left but my eyes were still bright red. Aunt Carol hugged me, but I pulled away and she didn’t say anything.
˜
We found a florist between the diner and the hospital. Grandpa handed the florist some bills and asked her to make something big with calla lilies. Mom likes calla lilies. Aunt Carol found a rock with the word hope carved into it and insisted that it be included in the arrangement somewhere, and asked if it could be delivered by five o’clock. It would all be over at five o’clock.
“Do you want to send her anything from you?” Aunt Carol asked me.
“I don’t have any money.”
“Don’t worry about money.”
“No, I’m okay. Thanks, though.”
“Are you sure? I think your mother would like to have something from you.”
I chose some pink snapdragons and a short sunflower.
“I like these,” I said.
“They’re beautiful,” Aunt Carol said.
˜
The waiting room was cold. Grandpa wrapped his scratchy brown sweater around me.
“Why don’t you try to rest?” he said, “You must be tired. Stretch out on the couch.”
He rolled up his jacket like a pillow and put it at the corner of the couch. I didn’t want to lie down. The pad wouldn’t work if I was lying down and then my blood might get on the cushions.
“I’m okay,” I told him, “I’m not tired.”
I took entertainment magazines and drew a different actor on each page of my sketchbook. I started with their eyes and worked outward, and shaded desperately so that my fingertips were black with pencil. Tonight, whenever we got home, I was going to go sleep at Dad’s. Aunt Carol wanted me to stay with her, but Dad said I should stay in my own bed. Dad didn’t know about my period. I didn’t want to tell him, yet. I wished he could just know and I wouldn’t have to say it. I wondered if Dad would ask about Mom. He already told me he wasn’t going to send flowers.
Aunt Carol looked at the picture I was drawing.
“He’s hot,” she said.
I laughed a little.
“I think he kind of looks like a girl,” I said.
“What? The long hair and those lips?” she asked. “That’s what makes him hot.”
“Oh.”
The doctor came out again. He had a chocolate bar in the shirt pocket of his scrubs.
“It’s all finished,” he said, “Everything went perfectly.”
“Thank god,” Grandma said. She turned to Grandpa. “It’s all finished,” she said. Grandpa put his arm around her shoulders.
“She’s being moved to post-op now, but she’s still asleep,” the doctor said. “Don’t expect her to be completely conscious when she does wake up—her body’s been through a lot in these past nine hours.”
Aunt Carol moved her head up and down just a tiny bit. She pushed her left palm on her cheek. “How long before treatments?” she asked in a really quiet voice.
“Two weeks,” the doctor said, just as quietly.
He looked down at me and saw my dirty fingers. “You’ll have to wash your hands before you go see her,” he said.
I nodded. It felt like my stomach was missing.
I stood at the sink in the hallway bathroom. The room was bigger than it needed to be and there were dull silver bars along every wall and a red button next to the toilet. I ran my hands under the hot water, and scrubbed them with the antibacterial hospital soap. It smelled like wet cardboard and fake roses. They hurt when I finished washing them. I saw myself in the mirror. If I pushed my shoulders forward it looked like I didn’t even have breasts. When they told mom she would have to get hers cut off she cried. She said she wanted them to fix it right away—she wanted to wake up looking normal. I don’t think I’d be as upset. Boys were lucky—no breasts and no periods.
˜
We took all our things with us out of the waiting room and followed the doctor down long white crowded hallways. Nurses in brightly printed scrubs were everywhere. They held clipboards and had stethoscopes draped around their necks. Patients in gowns hobbled close to the walls and clutched their IV towers which wheeled along beside them. A dark-haired woman walked out of a room crying. She stood with her back to the wall and held her hands over her face. Her arms were wet with her tears.
There wasn’t any waiting room for post-op; there was just a bench outside the door. The doctor told us to sit there while we waited for our turn.
“Who’s coming in first?” he asked.
Grandma stepped forward.
“I will,” she said. She said it like it was one word.
“No, Mom,” Aunt Carol said. “I’ll go first. I’ll clean her up before you see her. You can’t go in there and cry.”
Grandma nodded and Aunt Carol followed the doctor into the room.
The three of us sat on the bench. Grandma cried. She covered her mouth with her hands. Grandpa took her hands away from her mouth and held them. I tried to picture what mom would look like. I imagined her flesh swelling around her. Her neck and face spread over her pillow. I wasn’t sure if her whole body would be puffy. Would her breast have stitches circling it?
Grandma took a packet of tissues out of her purse. She dabbed at her eyes with one and passed the packet to me. I held it softly in both hands and slowly took out a tissue. I handed them back to her. I folded it in half. Somewhere I heard that you could only fold anything in half eight times. I tried. They were right.
I put the tissue in a pocket in my bag. I thought I should take some things from Aunt Carol before Dad picked me up. He was probably waiting outside already. I decided I wasn’t going to tell him now. Before the surgery I had thought about Mom not being alive. I imagined living with Dad all the time. I had thought it would be okay.
Aunt Carol came out of the room.
“How is she?” Grandpa asked.
“She’s tired.”
“Is she okay to see us?”
“She needs to rest.”
Grandma stood up. “I’m going in to see her,” she said.
“Mom, not now,” Aunt Carol said. “She’s not ready for everyone right now.”
“Carol—” Grandma started, but Aunt Carol turned to me.
“Go in,” she said. “She wants to see you.”
“Oh. Are you sure, she’s not—”
“Go ahead. Leave your bag out here.”
Grandma sat back on the bench. Aunt Carol held my things and sat where I had been.
The door swung open quickly when I pushed it. The room was bigger than any room I’d been in that day. There were more people than I expected in there. Beds were lined up on the two long walls. I stood at the entrance. The doctor walked over to me.
“She’s over here,” he said.
I followed him to her bed.
Her eyes were barely opened and her mouth was not quite closed. Her hair was matted and damp and lay flat against her head. She was not as big as I thought she would be—her face was pale and blotchy but not too swollen.
I stood next to her but she didn’t see me. The skin on her neck and chest was flakey until it disappeared under her gown. Her breasts rose beneath the fabric in small even lumps. There was no blood anywhere—she was so pale it seemed impossible that there was any blood inside her, either.
“Mom,” I said.
She opened her eyes and smiled a little. Her lips were white and cracked.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
She moved her hand and I saw that she was pushing a button on something she was holding.
“Morphine pump,” she said, “I’m okay.”
I nodded.
A short nurse came over to the bed. She wasn’t any taller than I was. “How are you feeling?” she asked Mom.
“Thirsty,” Mom said.
The nurse took a dark pink kidney-shaped tub from the table next to the bed. She poured some water into it and rested it under Mom’s chin. She crumpled up a paper towel, dipped it in the water, and patted Mom’s lips with it.
The nurse looked at me. “Why don’t you try?” she said.
She handed me the towel. I moved closer to the bed and leaned over mom to steady the pink tub. I wet the paper towel and squeezed out the extra water. It dripped a little as I moved it towards her. Her lips brightened with the water. She sucked on the towel when I moved it between her lips. Her eyes closed but she kept her lips pursed. She could barely move her mouth to suck on the towel. I moved it away and she opened her eyes.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Do you want more?”
She started to nod but she couldn’t lift her head back up after she let it roll to her chest. I wet the towel again and brought it to her lips. She kept her eyes closed while she nursed the towel. Her mouth sealed firmly around it. The water seeped from the towel into my fingertips. They were cold and wrinkled but I held them steadily. The towel became cold and hardened, but I could not move it from her lips. She stopped drinking in the water and her head dropped further towards her chest. Her lips slackened and parted slightly. She had fallen asleep. I clung to the towel. I wanted to give her my blood and for her to swallow all that she needed to live.
