non•fic•tion 10 The Hospital Visit by Catherine O’Donnell, Arlington Heights, IL It was the day before Rosh Hashanah, but I wasn’t Jewish. I was heading into the hospital, but I wasn’t sick. The lobby was like the starting gate at a racetrack: a line of wheelchairs filled with former patients, a group of healed people with their blinders on, chomping at the bit to go home. Many of them had balloons, teddy bears, and family members for their entourage. Lucky ducks. My back pocket buzzed; I paused in a corner neatly arranged with cushioned chairs to take the call. It was Mom: “Honey, she’s not in the best shape right now. She may be asleep the entire time you’re there, but, you know, that’s okay.” After a few sighs and a goodbye, I managed to move my cinder block feet toward the elevator. “Oh, he’s just doing so much better. It’s unbelievable! I mean, just yesterday he was practically comatose and now he’s up and walking,” a young woman with a colorful paisley scarf said into her cell phone as she exited the elevator. Lucky duck. My fellow elevator riders were an older woman and two kids, presumably her grandchildren. The woman pressed the button for the third floor; I was going to the eleventh. I did the usual routine of gazing at anything but the other people in the elevator. Finding nothing terribly interesting about the certificate of inspection, I threw a quick glance toward the children. Their eyes glimmered with excitement. One hugged a teddy bear and the other grasped a construction paper card, complete with stick figures that, as children, we thought <strong>Teen</strong> <strong>Ink</strong> • APRIL ’09 comparable to “Mona Lisa.” The elevator crept to a stop, the doors opened, and the kids bolted; the sign for the floor read “OB-GYN.” “Let’s go see your baby sister.” Lucky ducks. The elevators opened with a ding on the eleventh floor. I walked to the nurses’ station and asked for directions to Room 1155, her room. 1151 … 1153 … 1155. I waited outside for a few seconds, becoming my own coach for a pep talk. “We have to be strong for her,” my dad had told me the last time we visited. “She’s going through a lot right now, so we have to keep smiles on our faces.” With a quick exhale, I entered the room. The woman on the bed had white hair and wrinkles. Her eyes slowly noted my presence and then lazily drifted back to the ceiling. The whiteboard next to her read, “Smith, Evelyn.” She wasn’t my grandma. I stepped to the other side of the curtain. The woman on the bed was sound asleep, her mouth agape, her head tilted to the side. The cancer treatments left a halo of curly hairs on the pillow. Her nails were manicured, but her hands were swollen. She was hooked up to a menagerie of machinery and had a growing collection of bracelets on her left arm. A picture of the Virgin Mary and a rosary sat on her bedside table. Her whiteboard read “O’Donnell, Adonai” with a lopsided smiley face underneath. She wasn’t my grandma. My 5'2" grandma had the heart of a lion and the fight of a tiger. She would tell stories about Boobie and his sister Boobette, troublemakers in the same Outgrowing “Titanic” by Isabel, New York, NY My brother, George, has a tendency to get obsessed. He becomes sickly entranced with people, movies, and even random things like Crocs. When I was seven, he became infatuated with the movie “Titanic,” and this obsession was unlike any other. He ordered it on Pay Per View. He watched it nonstop. He had the shirts, the music, and had memorized every line of the movie. It was all he talked about. He became angry and violent when my mom forbade him to watch it anymore. Coincidentally, the Christmas after the movie came out, my family and I embarked on a Disney Cruise to the Bahamas. At first I was in heaven. I was among gods like Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck. Life, in my opinion, had reached its peak. However, on the third night, something happened that didn’t fit in with my fairyland dreams. At dinner George was upset with my parents because they would not let him watch “Titanic” in our cabin. Finally, after yelling, “I hate my life and I hate you,” he stormed out. My parents sighed and started whispering that George was out of control, George was anxious, George, George, George. I sullenly picked at my Mickey Mouse-shaped cake. We finally finished, to the relief of My grandma had the heart of a lion and the fight of a tiger the baffled waiter, and decided to walk along the deck, hoping to run into George. As we turned the last windy corner, I noticed someone climbing the tall railing at the front of the ship, head bent back, hair streaming. The figure was wearing a tie-dyed shirt just like George’s. The figure had spindly legs just like George’s. The figure was George. We ran toward him. “George! What the hell are you doing? Get down right now!” my parents yelled. I stood there in shock as my brother slowly climbed the railing. I was afraid to make any sudden moves because he might go right over. Then it would be my fault. “Stand back! Don’t come any closer. I’ll let go,” George responded, quoting “Titanic.” This wasn’t funny. He wasn’t Rose. There was no Jack to pull him back. I suddenly felt ridiculous in my bright pink Disney shirt. My dad quickly moved to pull George down, but he just climbed higher. We were stuck. Would he really jump? There was no time to think. My mom ran to get help while Dad tried to calm him down. Meanwhile, I started crying. I stood there in shock as my brother slowly climbed the railing George suddenly turned back, his braces flashing in the wind. He saw me with tears streaming down my cheeks. I yelled to him, “Georgie, please don’t jump, please don’t do it, Georgieeeeee.” As he stared, I kept crying and yelling. I even attempted to reason with him, saying, “Rose didn’t jump. You shouldn’t either!” I don’t know if it was seeing me crying or hearing that, but either way, George heard reason. Slowly he climbed down. He didn’t jump. He came back. My parents said that I saved him. I was really afraid this was true. I didn’t want to be the only one who made George want to be alive. I didn’t want that responsibility. * * * Since then, George has seen it all. He’s been on every medication under the sun. He’s seen doctors and therapists and everything in between. We’ve heard the words OCD, Asperger syndrome, bipolar. He’s gotten better. He’s gotten older. He’s more in control of his life. But I’m still afraid. Last summer we all went to league as Dennis the Menace, who always managed to cook up mischief. My grandma would sit us in front of her vanity filled with bottles of perfume and makeup, and brush our hair with her silverhandled brush, a makeover of sorts. She would run her manicured nails through our hair and ask my sisters and me who our boyfriends were. When we told her we didn’t have any, she would throw out a few names, her way of “giving” us boyfriends. Mine was Templeton. A cough roused me from my daydream. She wheezed twice and then settled back into her slumber. I rubbed her swollen, latex-like forearm. “You lucked out with your room, Grandma. You got the window seat.” The only response was a low grumble from her respirator. Dad said conversation usually helped her, so I kept the news coming: Major League Baseball, my classes and activities, the details of the homecoming festivities. Leaving the hospital, I felt slightly reassured. While I had been there, she hadn’t taken a turn for the worse, she wasn’t put on more medication, she didn’t develop further symptoms. She slept. With each of her breaths, each beep of the heart monitor, I felt more certain that she would pull through and be back to her normal storytelling self in no time. That Thursday, Grandma’s game of ping-pong between the hospital and her nursing home added a new destination: hospice. It was the day after Yom Kippur, but I wasn’t Jewish. We were saying good-bye, but I could barely speak a word. ✎ Art by Jose Hadathy, Marietta, GA Majorca. One day, we traveled around some islands on a small, private tour boat. The hot sun was beating on the sea. My parents had fallen asleep and George and I changed into our bathing suits and decided to take a dip. He wanted to swim laps; I wanted to float. “Izzy, let’s jump off the top of the boat,” he suddenly said excitedly. My stomach churned at this notion but I joined him. I told myself, There is nothing to fear this time. He gave me his huge, elfish grin as we climbed to the top. We held hands. I tightened my fingers. Then we leaped and embraced the cold, searing water together. ✎ COMMENT ON ANY ARTICLE AT TEENINK.COM USING THE ADVANCED SEARCH
Office of National Drug Control Policy / Partnership for a Drug-Free America ® I respect myself That is, until I saw myself get high It’s just an ugly side of myself I didn’t recognize Saying and doing things that were not myself I barely recognized myself
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