Baby Alicia Is Dying (13 page)

“You’re really worried, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Desi’s voice was barely a whisper.

“I’m sorry I have to go back to school and leave you to get through this by yourself. I thought that Mom and Dad might have been different now that Alicia’s sick. I can’t believe they never even want to talk to you about it.”

“Dad’s busy with work, but I think he cares in his way. I’ve learned not to expect him to get overly involved with much of anything. His attitude doesn’t bother me so much.” Desi shrugged. “But Mom’s hated the whole idea from the first. She’s a smart person, but she’s still nervous about AIDS, and no matter how many times Aunt Clare and I tell her I won’t catch the virus from Alicia, she won’t believe us.”

“You could really use Mom’s support,” Val acknowledged, patting Desi’s shoulder.

“I have Aunt Clare and all the people from ChildCare. Tamaras dad too. He’s a minister.” Desi
turned toward her sister. “You’ve been great also, Val. Thanks a lot.”

“You’ll call me if something changes?”

Desi promised she would.

On New Year’s Day Val loaded her luggage back into her roommate’s car and left for college. The next day Desi returned to Grady. She told Brian what was happening, and at lunch she also told Corrine. Both were sympathetic, and their concern about her—as well as Alicia—was heartening.

After dinner Desi was dialing Aunt Clare’s number from the kitchen phone when her mother came up to her. “Don’t call your aunt,” she said. “I’ll drive you to the hospital. I won’t go up to see the baby, but I would like to take you.”

Afraid to risk losing her mother’s offer by asking questions, Desi grabbed her coat and dashed out the door. They drove in strained silence, and when they got there, her mother said, “Call me when you want to come home.”

Desi told her thanks and hurried inside the hospital. As she got off the elevator, she saw Gayle talking to Alicia’s physician. “Alicia’s been moved into isolation,” Gayle said, when Desi approached.

“Why?”

“Pneumonia.”

Desi caught her breath. “That’s much worse than bronchitis.”

“Yes, it is. Specifically, it’s
Pneumocystis carinii,”
the physician explained.

Desi felt as if all the oxygen had been sucked from her. Alicia had developed the type of pneumonia most associated with AIDS. No one had to spell out what the diagnosis meant. Only a miracle could save baby Alicia now.

Desi absolutely refused to go to school the next day. “I’m going to the hospital,” she told her mother defiantly. “You can make me go to school, but I’ll skip and go to the hospital. Alicia’s dying.” Just saying the word made her sick to her stomach, but her aunt had been brutally honest with her the night before. There was little medical science could do for Alicia at this point except ease her suffering.

“You can’t let your entire life revolve around this child,” her mother insisted from the doorway of Desi’s bedroom.

Desi slammed her bureau drawer. “And why can’t I?”

“It isn’t healthy.”

“Look who’s talking!” Desi exclaimed, not caring how her mother reacted. “That never stopped
you
from hanging all over Valerie’s life. From turning her into your perfect clone.”

“What are you talking about?” Her mother looked shocked. “What’s your cutting school got to do with Valerie?”

Desi was instantly sorry she’d brought up her sister and her long unspoken feelings about her
mother’s attitudes. She threw up her hands in frustration. “You don’t understand anything! You don’t understand me and maybe not Valerie either. You don’t care about anything outside these four walls! Alicia’s going to die, Mom. Doesn’t it bother you at all?”

“What’s all the shouting about?” Desi’s father asked, coming down the hall, still knotting his tie.

“Desi’s refusing to go to school. She’s insisting on going to the hospital instead.”

Her mother had ignored Desi’s plea for Alicia. Desi ran to her father. “Make her understand, Daddy. Alicia’s so sick. I just have to be with her.”

“Maybe a couple of days won’t hurt, Eva.”

“Not you too? This baby is
dying.”

“Babies die, Eva,” his voice grew solemn. “We both know that, don’t we? There’s not much we can do about it. I think Desi needs to go.” His look was inscrutable, but Desi saw her mother’s expression go stony. Without another word her mother walked away.

“That’s right,” Desi’s father called after her. “Go ahead and pretend it isn’t happening. Just shut your eyes and walk off! That’s the way to handle the problem. Pretending won’t make it go away, you know.”

Desi felt confused and fearful. What was going on between her parents? “Dad?” Agitated, he turned back toward her. “Can I go to the hospital?”

“It’s all right for the next day or so, but you’ll
have to work it around your school schedule after that. You can’t stay away however long it takes until …” He didn’t finish his sentence, but rubbed the back of his neck wearily. “Will your aunt be there?” he finally asked.

“Someone from ChildCare is always there. Sometimes it’s Aunt Clare.”

“Then get your things. I’ll drop you off.”

She grabbed her purse and followed him out the door.

   It was almost four o’clock the next afternoon when Brian found her in the ICU waiting room. “You’re missing classes, and Mr. Redding isn’t feeling too sympathetic.” He leaned against the door-jamb, his arms crossed over his chest.

“I don’t care about biology. I don’t care about anything but Alicia.”

Brian shifted. “He said that if we did a special project, we could get extra points and that would make up for your absences.”

“Didn’t you hear me?
I don’t care.”

“Maybe I do.”

His sudden interest in a biology project made her angry. “When I wanted to do a project, you backed out. Now you suddenly want to do one because our grade is taking a nosedive. What gives with you?” Before he could answer, she added, “If we did anything, it would have to be about AIDS. I
don’t have the time to research anything else right now. Take it or leave it.”

He rotated his massive shoulders as if to release tension. “Desi, I want to explain about what I told you—or
didn’t
tell you, actually—about doing a project on AIDS.”

“I’m not in the mood.” She knew she was acting testy, but didn’t care.

Brian looked up and down the corridor, at the nurses’ station and the activity. “Is there someplace we can talk in private?”

“Talk about what?”

“I want to tell you something really personal.”

She was hesitant to leave, but he looked so determined, she couldn’t tell him no. “There’s a chapel downstairs.”

They went down in the elevator to a room where a stained-glass window cast blue light over a few wooden pews. They were alone in the tiny inter-faith chapel.

“Do you come here much?” Brian asked.

“Just when I want to take a break, or whenever I need to get myself together.” They walked to the front and sat in a pew that faced a painting of sparrows flitting through green trees. For some reason the tiny birds reminded her of Alicia. “You said you wanted to tell me something. I don’t want to be away from Alicia for too long, so if you could just tell me …”

He hunched forward, resting his forearms on
his knees. “I wanted to tell you why I didn’t want to do a project on AIDS.”

“It’s not important now.”

“I wanted to tell you that day at the park, after you found the message on your locker.”

She turned sideways in the pew, facing him, feeling impatient, wishing she were back upstairs. “You always act understanding and never seem to mind that I volunteer at ChildCare. I never thought the subject of AIDS bothers you.”

“Oh, it bothers me all right.”

“Since when?”

“Ever since my uncle died from it, two years ago.” Brian was staring down at his hands.

“Why didn’t you tell me? I would have understood.”

“Would you? My uncle was gay. He loved men. He caught AIDS from having unprotected sex, and he died.”

Despite everything she knew about AIDS, his news upset her. Partly because she could see how painful it was for Brian to discuss it. “You should have said something. I thought we were friends.”

“How could I? I’ve had a hard time accepting it myself. Not only because he was homosexual, but because he died.”

“Were you close to your uncle?”

“Yes.”

“I still don’t understand about the biology project.
If you know all about AIDS, then why didn’t you want to work on a project about it?”

He shrugged, causing the blue sunbeams to creep farther down his back. “Doing the project would only have reminded me of how badly I treated him.”

“How so?”

“When we first found out about Uncle Mark’s AIDS, I was thirteen. Man, I torqued out. He was like a father to me—my hero.” The phrase sounded sarcastic. “He was thirty, good-looking, had a good job. And he played basketball with me, and racketball, and took me camping—did all the things my father never did because he lived so far away. I thought Uncle Mark was the greatest man alive.

“Mom was his sister, and the night he told us about being sick, I lost it. I called him a bunch of names and ran off. I know I hurt him—I meant to.”

“Didn’t you ever tell him you were sorry?”

“No. I wrote him off. Mom tried to help me understand, but I tuned her out. He moved to New York City so as not to be a bother to us. Mom kept in touch. Eventually he ended up in an AIDS hospice up there. He wrote me, but I tore up his letters. All I could think was ‘What if my friends find out?’ The whole time he was sick I never contacted him. I took the job in the health club so I could stay busy and not have to think about him.”

“You told me it helped you blow off steam.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “Yeah. I blew off a lot
of it over the two years he was sick. I felt like he’d betrayed me—lied to me about who and what he was. In the end he contracted pneumonia, went down to ninety pounds, and couldn’t swallow. He died at the hospice with no family around him. I’ll never forget the day they called and told us. Mom was a mess. She flew up for his funeral, but even then I wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”

Desi felt sorry for Brian. For his mom and for his dead uncle too. “I’m sure they took good care of him at the hospice.”

“It’s not the same as being with your family. And now that he’s dead, he’ll never know how sorry I am that I treated him the way I did.”

Brian buried his face in his hands. Desi wasn’t sure she could handle any more sadness; she’d had enough to last her a lifetime. “You can’t hate yourself forever.”

“I know. But even after all this time, I’m still angry with him for getting sick.”

“You never acted angry toward Alicia.”

“Because Alicia never had a choice. My uncle did. He knew the risk he was taking, but he took it anyway.” He stared down at his hands, stained blue by the light from the window.

“The way Alicia’s mother had a choice about using drugs. I know what you mean.” Desi nodded solemnly. What she also knew, but didn’t say aloud, was that Alicia’s mother also had a choice about having sex. Everyone did. But Desi saw clearly that sex
had consequences—especially for those too immature to handle the responsibility. Suddenly she understood that mature love, marriage, and having babies was truly a logical progression, a natural order that got all out of whack when people jumped into a sexual relationship outside of the framework. For Alicia’s mother the leap into sex and drugs meant forever changing the course of her own life, as well as saddling an innocent baby with a terrible burden. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.

Desi gave Brian a sideways glance, understanding his anguish over his uncle and the choices the man had made. “Sadie said that sometimes when you do something, you don’t necessarily think about its hurting someone else. You’re only thinking about yourself and what
you
want.”

Brian heaved a sigh and hooked his elbows over the top of the pew. “When I heard about Alicia’s being in the hospital, I felt that I had to tell you about my uncle. I felt I owed it to you. I’ve never told any of my friends.” He paused. “Anyway, if you want to tackle the project for extra credit—”

“It doesn’t matter to me. We’ll pass biology, no matter what.”

“That’s all I wanted to do anyway,” Brian admitted. “But you—well, you’re smart, and I shouldn’t hold you back. You deserve an A.” He reached out and tucked some of her hair behind one ear. His touch caused goose bumps to shiver up her arm. “Tell me what to do to help.”

“I can’t think about it today. Maybe later.”

He stood and pulled her up. “Fair enough, but when you are ready to think about it, let me know. If it’s okay, I’d like to call and keep checking on Alicia.” His kindness reached down into her heart, and she felt a gratitude she couldn’t express. “Look, I know you want to get back upstairs.”

“Alicia seems less agitated whenever I’m allowed to be with her,” she replied. “They only let me into ICU for five minutes every hour.”

“I guess you really are like a mother to her.”

They parted at the elevator door. When Desi arrived back in the ICU waiting area, she discovered Gayle pacing the floor. “Alicia’s taken a turn for the worse,” Gayle said, her voice quivering. “It’s just a matter of time before we lose her.”