One
Everything’s different for girls like me.
My younger sister, Rena, would say I’m being dramatic. As in, “Stop being so dramatic, Jenna. Having CP doesn’t make you the star of a telethon.”
I always laugh when she says it, which is the whole point.
But right now, Rena and my best friend, Ben, are both at school, living their lives, while I’m lying on a cold MRI table, bare-assed and covered in a skimpy hospital gown. See? Different.
And also maybe a little dramatic. I get that.
The door swings open. I hold my breath, hoping for Gary as my nurse today. I cannot deal with my yearly MRI with anyone else.
“How’s my favorite girl?” Gary’s voice reaches me, and I let my breath go, turning my head to shoot him my best I’m-not-feeling-too-sorry-for-myself smile.
Gary’s tall and lean. Muscular, though. I can see those peeking out of his scrubs. He’s always changing his overall look, but now he’s blond with a soul patch under his lip. He is dressed in his usual blue-gray hospital scrubs—no dorky Disney scrubs for him, despite this being the pediatric wing. We’ve known each other far too long, Gary and me. He was there for most of my surgeries and even the time I smashed Mom’s Waterford glass into my forehead during a muscle spasm, effectively ruining Passover. So, all the good times.
He’s wearing a Tree of Life necklace on a silver beaded chain and some other charm I can’t make out. They clink together as he leans over me to prepare the straps they need to hold me in place. The sound is comforting, like church bells or something. I’ve always been a sucker for spiritual stuff. “You need anything?” he asks.
“I wouldn’t turn down a trip to Florida and a good book,” I joke.
“Let’s run away. We can leave out the back door,” Gary says. This is one of our things. “I’m thinking North Carolina. I’m sort of into mountains these days.”
“Good plan. I’m pretty sure my body would terrify the beach-goers.” I pull down my gown that’s ridden up from all of his fiddling with the table, uncovering the most recent scars from my surgeries. If I was here with anyone but Gary, I’d feel pretty exposed. With him I don’t have to worry.
Gary scoffs. “Girl, scars are sexy now. Totally in. Like tattoos and body piercings.”
I laugh so hard I snort. “Are snorts sexy now, too?”
My left leg starts to spasm, pulling away from the straps. Gary launches into a story about his current boyfriend, Bryan, as he runs my leg through its range of motion, massages it, and puts it back into place.
“Bryan is very pretty to look at, but is a diva to the nth degree,” Gary tells me as he adjusts a pillow under my arm and cleans the area for the needle. I barely feel the IV line going in.
“It’s bad enough he’s into all that new age, no-caffeine lifestyle for himself.” Gary pauses for effect, his hand over his heart. “But when he buys me coffee, it’s decaf!”
I fake a gasp.
“I know. You don’t mess with a person’s caffeine.” Gary tapes my IV line in place. “I’m just going to inject the sedative now, then the contrast; it may feel a little cold.”
This is one of the reasons I don’t want these stupid tests. For normal people, it doesn’t even hurt. For me, it’s liquid ice snaking through my veins, slow enough that the rebound pain is there at the same time as the first burn. I tense, and Gary squeezes my hand. I do not want to cry. It’s a deal I made with myself years ago, back when I pretended I was Daddy’s little warrior.
Gary loads up a new playlist that Rena made for me called Songs for Enduring Stupid Pain, and he catches my gaze. “Going to start now. You just close your eyes and go someplace better than this, baby girl. See you on the other side.”
He pushes the button, and I slide into the tube. I close my eyes and try to breathe easy. The drugs in the IV help my muscles relax, but they aren’t enough to make me sleep—which would make this entire deal easier.
As I wait for the first song to play, I try to guess which one Rena started with. Let’s see, pain as the motif? So many choices. But instead of a song, her voice pipes in. “Stay cool, Jenna. It’s going to be fine.”
That’s my sister being all Zen like usual.
Then my big brother Eric chimes in, “Go get it!” I’ve got no idea how they managed that with him away at college.
“Kick its ass,” Rena says.
“Stay out of the woods,” Eric adds. It’s an inside joke from when we were little—the three of us and our neighbor Julian used to go to the nearby woods to look for animals and trees and mythical things, because I convinced them all if they were around us, that’s where they’d be.
Rena laughs, and then the soulful sound of Michael Stipe singing “Everybody Hurts” fills my ears. I can’t help but appreciate Rena’s choice on so many levels. The MRI clicks and thrums as the sedatives start to unclench the muscles in my head. Everything feels softer. Gary told me to leave my body, and in this tube I feel like I can. And I do. Soon I’m flying through the air, through the clouds, feeling what it’s like to move free and easy, way above the hurt. Away from this body, to someplace better.
A familiar voice inside my head whispers, “It’s so easy.” It’s me, but it’s not—I call this voice person Jennifer, and she’s like the one I could have been. Free. Easy. Strong. Clear. I want to be her someday, and that possibility fills me until my head feels all light and my mind expands until I’m flying even higher. And higher. And then I get a little queasy. My stomach backs up in my throat, and I swallow to get rid of the taste.
“Jenna?” Gary calls through the speakers. “Stay with us, okay? A few more minutes.”
More clicks. More gongs. More time in the tube. I close my eyes and slow my breathing.
I wonder how he knows I feel sick—how he always knows. The rational part of me realizes it’s because of the monitors I’m hooked up to, but I also partly believe it’s because of our bond. A bond I wish I had with a boy.
And just like that, my focus shifts again. To Julian. Julian Van Beck. The kid I’ve had a thing for since kindergarten.
Almost like the universe hears me, the next song is “Fix You” by Coldplay. The first time I heard this song was at one of Eric’s rec hockey games. Eric was twelve. I was ten, but a very cool ten. Or at least I thought I was. I was sitting on the bench next to the hockey players—a perk of being Eric’s sister, since he was the captain of the team. I had one earbud in, and as the song started, Julian came off the ice and sat down next to me. The little smoke of breath that sprouted from his lips in the icy rink air was so soft, like a flower petal. If I closed my eyes now, I could still feel the puff of breath, could reach out and touch it with my fingertips, just before it dissipated.