The Legacy: Making Wishes Come True (6 page)

He said nothing, giving her the courage to continue. “You shouldn’t have to ruin your summer running back and forth to the hospital. It’ll be all right if you call me. I still want to keep in touch. I want to hear about your job and things like that.”

“How can you ask me to stay away? I don’t want you going through this all by yourself.”

“Grandmother will be with me. And Mrs. Kelly.”

“But not me.”

He made it sound like an accusation. She struggled against a flood of emotions. She wanted him with her more than anything, but she couldn’t tell him. “When it’s over,” she said carefully, “when I go into remission and go home, then I’ll make plans with you. Then you can take me sailing.”

Richard’s insides felt cold and hard. She was shutting him out! He kept seeing her as a little girl by
the side of her parents’ graves. He had been the one to persuade her to leave the cemetery and go with her grandmother in the black limousine.
“I don’t want to leave them,”
she had cried when he’d knelt down beside her.

“You can’t stay,”
he’d told her.
“Come on with me. We’ll be friends.”
Now, it was she who was telling him he couldn’t stay. “Jenny, please don’t do this. I want to see you through this thing.”

“I’d rather you see me after it’s over.” She gave a small laugh. “I made a joke.” The smile faded, and she stared at him. “Please, do what I ask.”

“You’re not being fair.” He backed toward the door, angry, agitated. “This isn’t over.”

“Call me,” she said as the door swung open. “Call me,” she whispered as it shut behind him.

Alone in the huge private room, Jenny trembled. She’d sent Richard away.
It’s for the best
, she insisted. Wasn’t everyone doing what was “best”? Her grandmother thought it best to protect her by holding back the truth. The doctor’s best was an attempt to heal her by pumping her full of chemicals and drugs. She was trying her best to handle what was happening to her without falling apart.

The aching emptiness inside her felt like a bottomless well. All her plans and dreams drifted away like smoke. And worst of all, she felt utterly and completely alone. Sure, Grandmother and the doctor would help her. But she was the one who had to endure the pain, the treatments, the loss of all her dreams. How could they truly understand what she was going through? How could anyone?

Jenny curled up on the bed and wept, not only for what she was losing, but for what she might never have.

N
OTHING PREPARED
J
ENNY
for chemotherapy—not the reading material the nurses gave her, not descriptions of it from the nurses themselves. The chemo room was located several floors below Jenny’s private room. It was painted a soft green color and contained several contour chairs, each with a metal IV stand beside it. There was a TV set in the room, racks of magazines on the walls, a toy chest, and a fully stocked pantry. She noticed that there were no windows, and wondered if windows had been eliminated for fear that someone might try to crash through one in an attempt to escape.

Jenny stretched out on the curved chair, and when a nurse offered her an assortment of magazines, she experienced a sense of melancholy. Some of the titles were for small children, and it struck her profoundly that little ones, kids much younger than she, had to face this same ordeal.

“Ready?” a nurse named Lois asked.

“I guess so,” Jenny mumbled, although her brain screamed,
Never!
She was glad that when her grandmother had asked to come to the session with Jenny, Dr. Gallagher had said, “Jenny’s an adult. This is her disease. You’ll be needed later, after she returns to her room.” Instinctively, Jenny knew this was something no one could help her do. She must go down this road alone.

Lois prepped Jenny’s arm for the needle that would be inserted into her vein so that the powerful chemicals could drip slowly into her bloodstream. “The treatment takes about forty-five minutes,” Lois said. “If you need anything, just holler. I’ll be right over there at my desk.”

Jenny nodded and swallowed a lump of fear. She felt the tip of the needle slide into her flesh, and Lois tape it down. Her heart hammered.
The worst is over
, she told herself, attempting to relax.

Lois adjusted valves on tubing leading from two plastic bags on the IV stand and patted Jenny’s shoulder. “This will regulate the flow.” The nurse stepped away.

Panic seized Jenny as the first dose of medicine hit her system, for it burned like liquid fire. The sensation was so intense that she stared at her arm, certain that it would burst into flames. Suddenly, extreme nausea gripped her. Her stomach heaved, and she choked back bile.

Instantly, Lois was at her side. “Feeling a little shaky?” Lois handed her a beige plastic basin. “Don’t hold back. If you want to throw up, do it.”

Horrified, Jenny grabbed the basin, struggled in vain against the relentless waves of nausea, and finally gave in to them. She vomited over and over. Each time, Lois emptied the basin, washed Jenny’s
face, and handed the basin back to her. Soon, Jenny was trembling and shaking from head to toe. Tears ran down her cheeks. How could she endure this torture?

“You will adjust,” Lois said softly.

All Jenny could do was silently beg God to let it be over—even if it meant dying right that moment.

Jenny didn’t die, but when the procedure was over, she was so weak that she had to be lifted onto a gurney for the return trip to her room. Once she was back in her bed, Mrs. Kelly and her grandmother fussed over her, and even though Jenny could see how pinched and white her grandmother’s face appeared, she could offer no words to comfort her.

“Don’t think about the bad parts,” Mrs. Kelly counseled as she placed a cool compress on the back of Jenny’s neck. “Think about how millions of cancer cells are dying inside your body because of the medicine. Think about how the chemo is hunting them down in your bloodstream and blasting them into oblivion.”

Jenny tried to focus on the positive, but had trouble. Yes, the bad were being destroyed, but what of her good cells? Weren’t they in danger too? How could she endure this kind of agony three times a week? She closed her eyes, certain that if the cancer didn’t kill her, the treatments would.

“Why can’t I see her? Why won’t she let me be with her?” Richard paced on the fine Oriental carpet in front of the ornate Louis XIV desk in Marian Crawford’s Boston mansion. Marian sat ramrod straight behind the desk, allowing him to vent his
frustration. “I won’t upset her, Mrs. Crawford. All I want to do is see her. It’s been over three weeks.”

“Richard, please try and understand how physically and emotionally demanding her chemotherapy regime is. She’s really not up to having any visitors.”

“Visitors?” Richard fairly spat the word. “I’m not a visitor, Mrs. Crawford. I’m her friend. We’ve practically grown up together.”

“Then all the more reason for you to accept her wishes.”

“What about my wishes? Don’t you know how crazy it’s making me not to be able to even
see
her?”

Marian stood abruptly, pressed her palms against the top of the desk, and leaned toward him. “This isn’t about
you
, Richard. For the time being, you will not be allowed to see her.”

Taken aback by her angry tone, Richard stopped pacing and turned to face Jenny’s grandmother. “You can’t stop me,” he said carefully.

“I can, and I will. I will post a security guard beside her door, and no one will be allowed entrance except medical personnel.”

“You’d go that far to keep me away from her?” He’d heard his father say that no one ever opposed Marian’s will and lived to tell about it. Until this moment, he’d never understood the remark made in frustrated jest. “Why do you hate me so much?” Richard asked.

Her stony expression didn’t dissolve. “Once again, it has nothing to do with you. It’s what Jenny wants, and at this time, I can give her very little. What I can give her, I shall. And right now, she wants to see no one. She wants privacy.”

Marian sat down and began sorting papers on her desk. Richard realized that it was her way of dismissing
him. However, he was in no mood to be brushed off. “If I could just talk to her, I know I could change her mind about allowing me to visit.”

“Not at this time,” Marian replied, with obvious patience. “It’s nothing personal. It’s a woman thing.” She added the last remarks hesitantly, almost as if they might make amends for her harsh demeanor.

He struggled to sort out her meaning. “A ‘woman thing’?” he asked slowly. “Are you saying she doesn’t want me to see her because she looks bad?”

Marian gave him a sharp, penetrating look, but now that he had the opening, Richard barreled ahead with his argument. “I don’t care how she looks. All I want to do is see her, hold her hand, and talk to her. I know I can make her feel better. I’ve always been able to take her mind off her troubles.”

That much was true, Richard assured himself. That first summer, after her parents’ deaths and after she’d come to live with Marian, he’d taken Jenny under his wing and showed her all his secret places to play on Martha’s Vineyard. He’d taken her to the beach and shown her how to slip along a wall of seemingly solid granite to the narrow crevice that led to the cave. A cave full of pale blue light and shallow pools and mysteries from the sea. How he regretted not going there with her weeks before. Why had he lied about seeing some other girl? There was no one he wanted to be with more than Jenny.

Marian let out a deep sigh. “Richard, this discussion is getting us nowhere. You won’t persuade me to go against Jenny’s wishes. I will tell her how much you would like to come up to her hospital room, but I doubt it will change her mind.”

“Can I at least talk to her on the phone?”

“Even taking phone calls would tax her, so she can’t do that at this time.”

“You’re taking every opportunity away from me,” Richard argued. “That’s not right.”

“I have no control over what is happening to Jenny,” Marian insisted angrily. “Can you imagine how frustrating that is for me?”

Her candor surprised him. “I can imagine,” he admitted.

“Then you understand that I’m not being deliberately heartless.” He nodded. “Cancer is very cruel, Richard. What the doctors have to do to her to fight her cancer is very cruel. I know that her physical appearance is inconsequential to you, but for right now, how people think of her, and remember her, is most important to her.”

“But—”

Marian held up her hand to stem his protest. “I can’t take her illusions away from her. It would be callous of me.”

It wasn’t that Richard didn’t understand—he did. Marian was simply protecting Jenny from Jenny’s own fears. If only he could convince Jenny that he didn’t care how she looked. “Do you think she’d read a letter from me if I wrote to her?”

“I think a letter would be ideal.”

A letter was a poor substitute in Richard’s mind, but perhaps he could use it to somehow persuade Jenny to allow him to be with her. As if she’d read his mind, Marian added, “Only don’t make it a piece of propaganda—a tool for plying her with guilt in order for you to get your way.”

“I’m not giving up.”

“I don’t expect you to. All I ask is that you be sensitive and try to see her perspective.”

Richard clenched his jaw until it hurt to keep from saying anything he might regret.
It’s not her fault
, he told himself. Trouble was, it was no one’s fault, and so there was nothing he could do, no one he could blame. Richard whipped around, stomped across the thick pile carpet, and slammed out of the luxurious study.

F
OR
J
ENNY, THE
days passed in a long unbroken chain of treatments and illness. The radiation treatments didn’t hurt, but often made her nauseated, lethargic, and irritable. Her skin felt tight and sore. She was warned to stay out of sunlight without first applying sunscreen. Jenny found this advice laughable. She figured she’d never get out of the hospital, much less go to the beach again.

The combinations of potent drugs made her ravenous on some days, made it impossible for her to keep anything down on others. Sores formed in her mouth, and her beautiful long, black hair fell out in clumps. The cortisone medications gave her a “moonface,” a peculiar plumpness that had her resembling a pumpkin. She felt so hideously ugly that she asked for all mirrors to be removed from her room.