Some Kind of Normal (34 page)

One day, suddenly, after nothing for so long, her
blood sugar is down. Not all the way, but a good 100 points down,
and I stare at the meter. For the first time in two months, the
numbers really are going down.

"What's wrong?" Ashley is stronger now, and curious
about what's going on with all the doctors and injections and
testing. She's sitting straight up today, writing emails to her
friends because we got her texting bill last month and took away
the phone.

"I need to do it again. I think I made a mistake."
She offers her hand out to me without question and goes back to
typing, one handed. I wash her fingers off with a washcloth, dry
them thoroughly, and prick her again. The meter blinks. 5. . .4. .
.3. . .2. . .1. . .

281.

Five months ago that would have meant nothing to me.
Three months ago that would have been a bad number. Today it is so
good it makes me want to cry.

Ashley glances up and sees my face and closes the
laptop instantly. "What is it?"

I show her the meter, barely able to keep the smile
off my face.

"What was it last night?"

"395."

She searches my eyes, as if asking for permission to
believe what this seems to mean.

I nod. "It's working," I say, almost in a whisper
because I'm afraid that to say it out loud is to give us unfounded
hope.

"Could it be the insulin?" She takes out the pump
again and looks at it, as if it will blink the answer in digital
code.

"It's the same amounts of insulin you've been getting
for weeks."

"So. . ."

"So it's you." I give her a hug. At first she is limp
in my arm, but slowly the realization hits her, and she wraps her
arms around me. I feel hot tears hitting my shoulder. Without
sound, the tears come faster and faster until her entire body is
heaving.

"It's over, isn't it?"

I hold her tight, not wanting to say anything. I
don't know if it's over. I don't know what this means, but for the
first time I dare to hope.

A knock at the door interrupts us, and we both wipe
tears as Dr. Van Der Campen walks in. He stops in the doorway and
crosses his arms over his chest. "And I see we have another
success."

"Another?"

"It's day five after the first transfusion. The same
day both of the other two patients began making their own
insulin."

"So it's true?"

"Well, let's see." He asks Ashley to test her blood
again. Her hands are shaking so hard she can't get the tiny strip
into the meter, and it falls to the floor. I throw it away, take
out another, and put it in for her. She pricks her own finger and
squeezes the blood out. She hands the meter to Dr. Van Der Campen,
who holds it while it beeps five times, counting down.

278.

"I'd say that looks like success."

"I'm cured?"

Dr. Van Der Campen holds out his hands. "Let's not
get ahead of everything." He pulls a chair up beside the bed and
motions me to sit too. "This process isn't an instant thing. We may
not know for a long time what the final outcome of this is. It may
take a long time for your pancreas to totally take over regulating
your own insulin. And your own immune system might attack it again.
We can't know for certain what's going to happen."

"But. . ." I say, waiting for him to say something
positive.

"But, for now, this is very good."

"It's good?" Ashley asks.

"Very, very good." He finally smiles, one of the few
I've seen from him.

"So we can celebrate?" I ask.

"I'd say we should all celebrate," he answers.
"Where's the rest of the family?"

"They went to throw some hoops in the courtyard. I'll
call them." I take out my phone, but Ashley holds her hands
out.

"Let me." I hand it to her, and she hits the redial
button and waits for the ring. Her face is glowing, the faintest
hint of color in her cheeks: something I haven't seen in a long
time. I can tell when Travis answers because she smiles even wider.
"Daddy? I've got good news." I can hear him whoop through the
phone, and she holds it away from her ear, the sound of both Travis
and Logan coming through the phone.

"We'll be right there," he yells.

By the time they burst through the door breathless,
Dr. Van Der Campen has brought in a round of little plastic tubs of
sugar-free jello for each of us to toast. For Ashley this is truly
a treat: she's eaten almost nothing since our doomed campout except
for some broth. She picks the red jello and peals back the tin
foil, digging her spoon deep into it and watching it wobble. The
rest of us grab one and open it, even Dr. Van Der Campen joins in,
and soon we all have the slimy substance, holding the spoons out
towards each other.

"To you, Ashley, and a life free of diabetes!"

We all toast and eat, Logan and Travis huddling
around Ashley. The excitement in the room is almost as electric as
lightening. I watch Dr. Van Der Campen, and he seems like he might
just burst with pride. When he slips out of the room I follow.

"Dr. Van Der Campen?" He stops and turns around.

"Jack. You can call me Jack, Babs."

What do I say? How can I possibly put into words what
it means, what he has just done? In this constant shifting sand
that is our lives, he gave us something to stand on.

"You're welcome," he says, smiling as if he
knows.

"It's working for the others, too?" He nods. "Are
there others after Ashley? You said maybe twenty or thirty in this
phase of the trial."

"Not yet. The press hasn't exactly been flattering.
Sometimes that stops people from flocking to a new trial. But
they'll come." He smiles a kind of sad smile. "There will always be
people like you--people who need it enough to brave the bad press
because there are no other options."

I remember the newspaper articles and the rally
posters with the angry red slash across his face. I don't even know
the name of his little girl, but I know exactly how desperate he
must have felt.

"Like you did?"

"Like I did."

The hall is unusually quiet, no nurses rustling about
in their over-starched scrubs, no stretchers or visitors. Hardly a
sound except the sound of celebrating from the door behind me. His
eyes are a mix of emotions, and I realize what it is. Ashley's
life, this miracle today, came at the cost of his own daughter. If
she hadn't died, we wouldn't be here.

Suddenly, my heart is so full of gratitude and love
and relief it feels too heavy for my chest. I take a step, and then
another, and then another until I am within a breath of Jack. And I
put my arms around him.

"Thank you," I say.

It takes a moment for him to hug me back, but when he
does it's as full of pain as it is with happiness. He lets go and
turns quickly, walking away before I can say anything else.

~~~~

We test Ashley's blood every fifteen minutes. She
can't wait, hoping to see it plunge, but it's a gradual process.
The nurses bring her food, little things mostly, liquid foods to
get her stomach used to food again, and she crosses her fingers
when she tests afterward. The numbers go up slightly, but they come
back down, and in five more days, they are remaining steady around
95.

The difference in Ashley is amazing. She's up and
around again, most of the IVs removed, and she insists on taking
showers and wearing her own clothes. We take walks around the
hospital halls, slow and short at first, her legs weak and her
breathing hard until they gradually grow longer. When Dr. Jack
approves it, we take short walks outside. Her immune system is
slowly building again, and we shed our masks, then the gloves, and
finally the scrubs we have come to feel as comfortable in as our
own skin.

During the days, Logan and Ashley sit on her bed and
work on schoolwork. This is the compromise I've worked with the
schools. Before we came out I explained to the principals that we'd
be gone for the beginning of the school year, that Ashley was
terribly sick and that Logan wanted to be with her. They organized
a sort of home-schooling/ internet option for him to cover the
weeks we'd be gone.

So now that Ashley is stronger, they study together,
and Dr. Jack even sometimes comes in and sits for a few minutes to
look at the math and science and offer help. He's taken Logan out
for lunch several times, and I think they're forming a great
relationship that is just as good for Dr. Jack as it is for
Logan.

I leave them on the bed studying and head out to the
snack machine. A woman is already there, banging her palm against
the glass and swearing.

"Can I help?" When she turns around there are tears
on her face. She wipes them off, embarrassed. "I can't seem to get
it to come out."

I ask which ones and put in more money and push the
buttons. The spiral moves and drops two bags of chips. I reach in
and pull them out for her.

"Thanks," she says.

"Are you new here?"

She nods. "Son or daughter?"

"Father," she says. "Alzheimer's."

"You're not the first to wrestle with that machine.
The one on the first floor works better. But the coffee on the
third is better. I think it's their attempt to keep you from
getting too flabby from sitting in hospital rooms all day
waiting."

She smiles a little, and I'm glad I stopped to
help.

"Thanks," she says. "I'll remember that. You been
here long?"

I shrug. A lifetime, it seems. Was there life before
this? "A couple months."

"Wow. That's a long time. Why are you here?"

"My daughter has diabetes." I say this but then think
of her sitting on the bed right now, the last of the IVs taken out
this morning, Max the pump packaged back in the box, the blood
tests showing normal insulin production. "She had diabetes, I
mean."

"But now she doesn't?"

"No. Now she doesn't." I watch these words take
effect. I see in her eyes the possibility of her dad regaining his
memory of her, of their past together. A few months ago I wouldn't
have known what it was I saw in her eyes, but today I know what it
is, because I have found it too.

It's hope.

~~~~

One Year Later

After an oppressive summer, the air tonight is cool
as we sit in the football stands. I lean into Travis, and he puts
his arm around me to warm me. A few people stop to chat with us,
and then move on as the game begins.

On the track Ashley bounces around with the rest of
the cheerleaders, a sight that still makes me laugh.

"For true? A cheerleader?" I asked when she brought
the form home and asked to try out.

"It just looks like fun."

I find it hard to say no these days, so I signed the
form. She went to tryouts and jumped and yelled and flipped her
hair and now is the proud owner of a blue and yellow skirt short
enough to give her dad a heart attack.

She waves her pom poms along with the rest of her
freshman squad as the football players run onto the field. I look
for Brian Lee and find him easily, waving his helmet in her
direction and smiling through his black striped face. Ashley is all
lit up, her cheeks rosy, her finally thickened blond hair pulled
back into a ponytail with blue and gold ribbons and glitter
sparkling under the stadium lights. She looks magical.

Logan sees us and climbs the stands and offers us a
tray of hot chocolate. Girls walk by and giggle, but he seems not
to notice. His hair is short now, and all brown, but he sports a
tattoo on his shoulder instead, a small red staff with two snakes
circling it. He calls it a caduceus. It's the symbol of doctors. In
January he will enter Johns Hopkins University as a pre-med
major.

The air smells of fall, that smoky, leafy smell that
brings back memories of my own days as a kid. It's the smell of
beginnings and endings. It's anticipation.

This weekend I take the GED. I'm not nervous. Logan
tutored me for a while, but it turns out I'm not too bad at
learning on my own. In the practice exams I've scored nearly a
hundred percent. When I showed them to Logan, he just gave it back
to me with a smile and said, "See? You were right after all."

"About what?"

"We're two peas in a pod."

Travis thinks I should go to college. Logan suggested
UT in Austin, but I may start closer to home in the community
college. I'm thinking of being a nurse.

Last year seems a long time ago, and just a minute
ago at the same time. We're not the same people, the same family.
We can't bring ourselves to say that this whole experience was a
good thing. The thought of how close we came to losing Ashley . . .
it still stops my heart. But we can't say it was bad either.

I lean my head against Travis, and he leans his head
on mine. Logan holds his Styrofoam cup out to us in a toast. Ashley
beams.

Someone once said faith is standing on a cliff and
knowing that if you jump, someone will catch you, or you will be
given wings to fly.

I am flying.

###

Thank you for taking the time to read this book. If
you enjoyed reading this work of fiction, please tell your friends
about it

~~~~

Heidi Willis graduated from Penn State with degrees
in Education and Communications. She taught junior high English in
Texas long enough to develop a tolerance for country music but not
long enough to speak with an accent. As a type 1 diabetic, she has
plenty of experience in poking herself with needles and eating
jelly beans and considers herself an expert in carb counting. Heidi
is an avid photographer and loves to travel. She currently lives in
Virginia with her husband and three children.