Wally World Trip...Part 2

She takes us through every in and out of my dad's cancer and treatment options. Stressing that he doesn't allow any treatment to drop off the table. This conversation makes it very clear she wants him to have the stem cell transplant not once but twice. Back to Back.

About every twenty minutes her pager starts dancing across the table. Four out of every five times it goes off she looks almost discusted that somebody had the odasity to call on her. But that fifth time, she boltS for the door like a underaged kid at a party the cops just busted.

Those two things in themselves are not really interesting at all, but it is what she did apon arrival. She has the ability to pick up at the exact word she finished with.

"Who does that?" I wounder. "My dad's Doctor, that's who!"

The hour appointment, lasted just under two and a half hours. She left by showing the tests my dad has already preformed, followed by a list of the thirty or so more she wanted him to take in order to set a true baseline.

That's when it hit Dad. He is no longer in retirement, cancer is now his full time job. Overtime is often required. With no extra pay. I believe this to be the moment Dad went from ONE person with cancer, to the ONE with cancer.

Back out in the lobby Dad struggled to set up the appointments he needed. Clearly worn out and just beginning Hell Week for his new fraturnity, it was obivous this was going to be a long week for him.

As he hammered away at the appointments the three of us slumped into some hospital furniture. The furniture was the kind where you could easily wipe up "residual" chemo.

Mom is on speed dial to Pure Joy at this point. Anything that could allow her thoughts to escape even for the briefest of seconds is a luxury on the cancer floor. Colette started to organize the notes she had taken with the doctors. After watching her be so maticulas with the information we recieved, I no longer wounder if she has ever for gotten to cross either T in her name.

I sit and people watch.

An old man stuggles with a cane. The cane he is using is as flimsy as both of his legs and I wounder why he is using it. Life always looks different if you give it some time. Apon second glance, I made out "We Love U Grandpa" near the handle. All of a sudden the cane was strongest thing in this place.

Cancer hits every type of person. It doesn't care if your a boy ar girl. Maybe it prefers older, but either way will do just fine. Oh this sickness is equal oppertunity in every way. My mind keeps wanting to catorgorize how much time people have left.

Colette says, "I don't care how tired I am, I could never fall asleep in a public place like this." as she looks at a man whose skin reminds me of a baseball mit my dad once had in the toybox at home. He had three days of salt and pepper scruff. Truth be told, he looked like that just might have been the last time he soaked in a steamy shower. You could tell his cloths didn't know the heat of an iron. His shoes looked as tired as him. This man, that second, was beaten.

It was his wife next to him that had cancer. She wore a scarf on her head that looked like the one the lead guitarist fom Bruce Springstein"s band wears. She was a living Xray. So gaunt was her face, you could see the holes in her skull that expose her temples. Her hands were covered with spotty skin that if pulled away from her knuckles might never return.

I watched her for several minutes. She never noticed I watched her. She smile once, and only once. When she placed her hand in his. Her thin lips crinckled up ever so slightly. This man that appered to have completely given up on himself still takes care his woman even when he sleeps.

After two more hours of blood tests we were given are dismissal for the day.

I walked ahead to get the car out of the parking garage. I said I was doing this for everybody else, I was doing it for me. Standing on the street waiting for the traffic to ease enough for me to slip through, the tears started to toumble. I have no interest in holding them back. My cheeks are soaked and I refuse to wipe them away. Maybe I want everybody to see I hurt, too. I don't know. I found comfort in those tears drying right off my face.

I guess everything passes.

I don't rember anything from the ride home. Maybe everybody was talking, maybe they were not. I was in the car, but I wasn't there.

We pulled into the driveway early in the evening. Colette went to pick up Merritt and planned on meeting us for dinner. Dad went upstairs to decompress. Mom pretended to work on a timer for the front lights. I found myself shuffling my feet through the freshly cut lawn.

The last part of the lit sky looked like a pack of Starburst exloded. The bright yellow of the sun still hung above the houses in the front yard. The yellow gave way to orange burst that reached for the few wimsy clouds in the sky. Where the orange failed to reach the clouds, the soft red didn't. The red made the clouds looks as if they have been kissed.

I closed my eyes and listened for a lawnmower. All I heard was the laughter of a younger me. That boy knew nothing could ever happen to his Dad. I miss that me.