Unprotected (6 page)

Amanda waited until Jake had been inside for at least five minutes before she went in. Michael and Trix were sitting at the table eating ice cream cones from Dairy Queen, and Jake was helping himself to a blizzard they had saved for him in the freezer.

“Join us, Amanda!” Trix yelled, hopping up. Amanda was going to have to get past all of them in the kitchen to get to her room and her bathroom to clean herself up. Trix would freak if she saw her bloody welts.

“I’m um, not going to … um, don’t worry about … uh, I uh need something downstairs.” Amanda ran down the stairs to Jake’s bathroom and shut and locked the door. The bathroom smelled like his deodorant and coconutty shampoo. He was pretty high maintenance for a guy.

Amanda looked in the mirror and was shocked. Her face was filthy with sweat and smudges of dirt, and her hair was wild. She had three large mosquito bites on her face including the one by her eye that made her right eye looked half closed. Her neck was blotchy and red. Her arms and legs were dirty and bloody. She had done this to herself, and it scared her to death.

Knowing she had to get in the shower, Amanda turned on the water as quietly as possible. The cold water was a relief for her stinging skin, and it felt good to wash away the muddy sludge all over her body. She stepped out and dried off using a towel that Jake had obviously used before because it smelled strongly like him. The laundry room was connected to the bathroom, and Amanda knew she had a load of laundry in the dryer. She wanted clean clothes, so she wrapped herself in a towel to sneak out and get some clean pajamas.

But she couldn’t sneak far with Jake standing in the doorway to the laundry room waiting for her.

“Amanda, are you okay?” He was unflustered seeing her stand there in a towel. Amanda was so shocked she couldn’t speak. She stood shaking her head.

“What happened to you, Amanda? You look awful. Did something happen with your mom?”

Amanda was ashamed to admit, even to herself, that thoughts of her dying mother were a thousand miles away.

“I’m fine,” she said looking down and trying to edge past him.

“Amanda, come on,” he said, grabbing her by her bare shoulders. “What’s wrong?’

“Did you get any studying done?” she blurted out, and instantly wanted to suck the words back in her mouth. She was getting more psycho by the second. Jake backed up and sat on the back of the couch in the rec room.

“What do you want me to say Amanda? Are you upset that I was studying with a girl?”

Amanda shook her head. “I just want to get dressed.” Jake nodded and backed away. Amanda carefully squatted in front of the dryer, holding her towel tight around her, and found a t-shirt and boxer shorts that she usually wore to bed. She ran back into the bathroom and got dressed. When she came back out, Jake was sitting on the couch watching David Letterman. She started to go upstairs, when Jake asked if she would stay and watch the Top 10 List with him.

Amanda stood for a second, but started walking back to him before she had even made up her mind to watch TV with him. She was going to sit on the floor, but he rubbed the cushion next to him motioning her to sit there. She moved to sit by him without a thought. Jake put a cushion on his lap and gently had her lie down with her head on the pillow on his lap. He rubbed her back and played with her hair until she finally let down her guard enough to drift off to sleep.

Chapter Four

Things seemed to move back into their summer routine after that night. Jake took his finals and was done with classes for several weeks so he was around home a lot more. Jake’s sisters—minus their significant others—visited for a long, fun weekend during which they played Trivial Pursuit, hearts, and Cranium until after midnight every night. Amanda insisted on sleeping downstairs on the couch while they were there, and no one argued with her.

Amanda worked most days, visiting her mom for an hour or so every day in the mornings. Amanda hadn’t spoken with her mom’s doctors for at least a month, so it startled her when the nurse on duty one morning pulled her aside and asked her to stay a while longer so the doctor could talk to her when she finished her rounds.

“Why does the doctor want to talk to me?” Amanda was frustrated because Trix had invited her to go to lunch at a restaurant on the lake just outside of town.

“She needs to discuss your mother’s condition with you.” The nurse was not a day over twenty-two, pretty, and snotty as hell. Amanda had seen her a few times this summer, but it was obvious she was new.

“I need to meet someone in an hour.”

“I’m sure you have things that feel like a priority to you, but it’s imperative to talk to your mother’s doctor today.” The nurse glared at her, and it was clear she thought Amanda was a selfish brat, too busy to be bothered with her mother in the hospital.

“Fine.” Amanda wanted to tell her off, but she wasn’t sure what she could say in her own defense. Amanda used to live at the hospital, but that had changed this summer after she had met Jake and his family. Her reality used to be dictated by her mother’s condition minute by minute, but Amanda had reached the point where she couldn’t stand to live her life around a sick person, even if that sick person
was
her mother.

Amanda went back into her mother’s room and sat in the rocking chair. She looked closely at her mother, and realized for the first time that her mother had changed drastically in the last week. It looked like her body had dried in the sun like a prune. Her skin was gray and looked thin as paper. Her lips were pulled away from her mouth, and her hands looked like they belonged to a one-hundred-year-old woman. Amanda usually came around 9:00 a.m. so she was not troubled that her mom was usually asleep when she got there and slept through most of the visit. But then Amanda realized she hadn’t seen her mother fully conscious for days.

The doctor walked in, another young, new face. She was Asian with long black hair in a low ponytail. She wore small, rectangular wire-rimmed glasses, and no make up. She looked businesslike.

“Hi, Amanda. I’m Dr. Sam. I don’t think we’ve met before.” Dr. Sam shook Amanda’s hand, and Amanda searched her face for signs of judgment on her absence. “Amanda, I want to inform you about your mom’s situation. I’m sure you’ve recognized that she’s slipping.” She paused, waiting for Amanda to respond, but there was nothing Amanda could say because she hadn’t really noticed the difference until today. “Your mom has an advance directive that she changed about two weeks ago. Her former orders stated that she wanted tube feedings and many other measures taken to prolong her life. Recently, she changed her orders to state almost the opposite. She wants no heroic measures other than minimal morphine for pain.”

Amanda couldn’t absorb what the doctor was trying to tell her. “My mom always wants lots of medicine, especially for pain. She’s always bugging the nurses about her pain and asking for something to help her sleep or make her more comfortable.”

“She receives morphine every three hours, and otherwise takes nothing. I’m sure you can see that your mother hasn’t been able to communicate clearly for at least ten days.”

Ten days?
Amanda thought. Had she been so wrapped up in herself that she didn’t even notice that her mother had been unresponsive for over a week? Apparently, this was what the doctor was trying to tell her.

“I don’t understand why you’re telling me all this.” Amanda stared at her mom, snoring quietly in her same hospital bed, wearing her same Harley Davidson t-shirt.

“I’m telling you this because the nurses feel that you don’t realize that it’s almost the end.” Dr. Sam looked at her intently but with kindness in her eyes and her voice. Amanda just nodded blankly. “She hasn’t eaten since Sunday, and even then she was only taking a few sips of broth at every meal. Today on rounds it appeared she had slipped further into a coma-like state. My best guess is that it will only be a few more days.” She reached out and patted Amanda’s leg. “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do? Do you have any questions?”

Questions? Definitely she had questions. How had her mother changed her advance directive without talking to her? How had she been unconscious for ten days without Amanda’s knowledge? What were the last words she had said to her mother? Have they had a real conversation in days? Amanda didn’t know the answer to any of this. What kind of daughter wouldn’t have noticed these things? She knew the answer to that.

Dr. Sam was still looking at her closely. “Is there someone I should call for you?”

Amanda knew she didn’t deserve any support. She shook her head no and sunk back into her chair.

* * *

That day passed in a fog. Feeling that she needed to be punished, Amanda sat by her mother’s bedside, watching the nurses come and go. She excused herself a few times when they needed to do the intimate cares that Amanda never wanted to observe. Her mother always preferred to have Amanda help her use the bathroom or bathe, but Amanda hated doing these things for her.

When April came home after her first hospitalization, she refused home health care and relied on Amanda for everything. Amanda was fourteen-years old and had to help her mom get to the bathroom to vomit, or even worse, dump out her buckets of vomit when she was too weak to get to the bathroom. She shaved her mother’s head. She managed her pills, and picked up her prescriptions. During one horrible spell, Amanda held cigarettes to her mother’s lips so she could get rid of her nicotine fits right after the surgery.

Amanda’s life was always about cancer. Her mom asked about Amanda’s high school career when it suited her, but Amanda had learned long before that the pleasure that April took in Amanda’s life was always related to how it impacted April. She watched Amanda’s softball games when it seemed like fun, like on parent’s day when Amanda would give her a rose and a hug in front of a crowd. But when Amanda was pitching in the state tournament in previous years, April didn’t go because she hated driving in the Cities, or she didn’t like to sit with the other parents, or she had something more interesting going on at home. Amanda and April had always lived like sisters or girlfriends. Amanda figured out early, before she had words for the feeling, that she had never really been mothered.

But seeing her mother being cared for by others stirred up a new emotion that she didn’t have words for either. It was like the feeling that she had a few weeks before when she had let herself be preyed upon by a swarm of mosquitoes. It was the sense that she didn’t even exist at all. It was the knowledge that when everyone else in the world had a family tree, she had a dandelion with two blooms and no roots.

“Mama had a baby and her head popped off.”

The childhood rhyme rang in her head as she remembered how she and the other kids in the trailer court used to pick dandelions, sing the rhyme and pop the dandelion flower off with a flick of the thumb.

She was totally, utterly alone.

* * *

By early evening, Amanda was starving so she ate a bag of chips, a granola bar, and two bags of peanut M&Ms from the candy machine in the basement of the hospital, not allowing herself to leave the hospital to get money for anything more substantial. She was drifting off into a bored sleep when Trix and Jake walked in.

“Hi, sweetie.” Trix said, squeezing her shoulders. Jake hung back in the entryway, obviously uncomfortable.

“What … what are you doing here?” Amanda stood up and stretched, surprised to see anyone other than nurses.

“When you didn’t show up for lunch, we figured something had happened with your mom,” Trix said. Amanda had completely forgotten about lunch.

“Sorry, I, um …” She motioned to her mom and her voice trailed off.

Trix got tears in her eyes and nodded. “I know, sweetie.”

Jake had not looked up from the floor since he entered the room. Amanda wanted him to leave, knowing how hard it was for him to be back in this hospital watching someone die.

She walked them into the hallway. “The doctor said she’s not going to make it much longer, so I thought I should stay …” Her throat tightened. She hadn’t said the words out loud yet.

Trix pulled her into a tight hug. A sob came up from the bottom of Amanda’s stomach, and she actually thought she might vomit she sucked it back so hard. Amanda pulled away stiffly, but Trix wouldn’t let go of her hands. Trix was crying, and she wiped her eyes with her shoulder sleeve and let out a big sigh.

“Since we’re going to be here for a while, let’s grab some of those nice soft chairs from the family visiting room.” She squeezed Amanda’s hands tight, and then let go and grabbed Jake. “Help me carry, will you, Jakey?”

Amanda was stunned. “What are you doing?” she asked, following them down the hall.

Trix opened the door to the family room and popped the door stand down with her foot. “Let’s take both chairs and that big ottoman. They’re all vinyl, but we can grab those nice blankets from the ladies auxiliary.” Jake picked up a chair that was surprisingly light, and carried it into the hallway and into her mother’s room. Trix picked up the ottoman and headed down the hall.

Amanda went back into the hallway and found Trix digging in a large cabinet behind the nurses’ station. The nurse on duty was gone, but Trix made herself at home. She came up with a pile of folded quilts and knitted blankets.

“Aren’t these homey?” Trix said as she passed Amanda. Jake was carrying another chair out of the visiting room, and Trix went back into her mom’s room. Amanda followed them slowly, not realizing her mouth was hanging open.

Trix was tucking blankets into the chairs. Amanda realized then that she had brought a book bag with crossword puzzles, magazines, snacks, and bottles of water. “Can you track down some spare pillows, Jakey?”

Jacob left, and Amanda turned to Trix. “I don’t get it,” Amanda said. “Who are all these chairs for? It’s just me. I don’t have any other family.”

“Sweetheart, did you really think we were going to let you be here alone?” Trix asked with a watery smile.