Kristopher Jansma - Why We Came to the City

“It’s hot,” she said, surprised.

“Hang on. I’m going to carry you,” he said.

“The hell you are,” she whispered, but he wasn’t listening. He reached down with his free arm to the clammy space behind her knees and eased her up off the ground. She was lighter than a book bag. He could feel her bones through her legs and her white dress, which he was careful to make sure didn’t ride up as he came toward the line of yellow cabs at the bottom. One at a time, slow and steady, he carried her down the steps.

“Hey!” someone yelled. “These two kids just got married!”

Jacob didn’t have the wherewithal to answer, much less to explain.

“Look, he’s bringing her to the car!” someone else shouted.

Just a few people at first, but then more and more, with each step they went down, turned and raised their phones to snap a picture of the young newlyweds. The barbershop quartet looked over and transitioned, sweetly, into a new tune. An old Elvis song.

“‘Wise men say…’” the four men sang in splendid harmony. “‘Only fools rush in…’”

Jacob looked down at his would-be bride, blond hair flowing over her face as her eyes locked onto his: afraid, exhausted, resigned, indignant, confused. She threw her head back and began laughing.

At the bottom of the sidewalk, the crowds parted and clapped. Irene reached up and kissed Jacob’s sweaty, stubbled cheek. A cab pulled to a stop at the curb, and the driver rushed out and came around to open the door for them.

Jacob eased the beaming Irene onto the cool leather seats inside, the air-conditioning on sweet and loud. She clasped her hands over her sweating chest.

“Where to, lovebirds?” the driver asked.

“Mount Sinai Hospital,” Jacob said, “and step on it.”

SEPTEMBER

Sara hurried down the middle of a Duane Reade pharmacy, her empty New York Journal tote bag dangling from her right hand, the cheap gray linoleum squeaking beneath her worn ballet flats, and an Internet coupon folded in her left hand. Hosiery, Shaving Needs, Incontinence. Greeting Cards, Tacky Crap, Well-Picked-Over Back-to-School Supplies. Fun-Size Bags of Candy Out Way Too Soon for Halloween. Her shoes, like twin missiles, guided her to the same aisle that she went to every other day, just after giving Irene her afternoon dose of Prednicen-M at four o’clock. It knocked Irene out for one hour, allowing Sara this small window to pick up the supplies that she didn’t trust William or George or Jacob to obtain properly.

Adult Diapers, Orthopedics, Dietary Supplements . As she came into aisle two, she saw immediately that the store had not gotten in a new shipment of Assure high-calorie meal-supplement milkshakes since her last visit. Dr. Zarrani had said Irene needed to keep gaining weight or she’d end up back in the hospital. Getting her released had been hard enough the first time. After Jacob had literally carried her to the emergency room, the nurses had treated her for dehydration and malnourishment as if she were just one more idiot off the street who had forgotten to drink water despite the heat wave.

“Didn’t you tell them she’s a patient here?” Sara had demanded of Jacob when she’d finally gotten there. When a nurse finally wandered over, Sara asked, “Doesn’t it say in your system that she’s got cancer?” The nurse stared down at the chart. “Who? Her? ”

It had then taken two hours to get her charts sent down from oncology. Nobody could find the paperwork that said Sara was to be treated like family and allowed to know what was going on. Not that she didn’t ask Irene to call her father twice a day. Then three more hours before Dr. Zarrani had been able to get her transferred upstairs to the twelfth floor east — not the nice, peaceful Zen garden part where they did the chemo treatments, but the other side of the building where there were beds for patients who needed to be admitted. Admitted . That was a joke.

Irene was still insisting none of this was at all serious. “Sara, relax. Jacob overreacted. I just keep forgetting to eat.”

An RN had come to tell them that the doctors (invisible, apparently) wanted to run a litany of new scans. A nurse manager came by, listened gravely to Sara’s concerns for less than three minutes, then disappeared. No one but the nurses came by all night, and Sara stayed, if only to make sure Irene didn’t get up and walk out. Finally around seven a.m., five doctors all buzzed in at once while Sara was half conscious. They chirped about scan results and potassium levels and speaking to researchers in Georgia.

“When is Dr. Zarrani coming in?” Sara asked.

“He’ll be here at ten a.m.,” one said, and then they all vanished before Sara could explain that Dr. Zarrani was a she. It took five more hours to run the paperwork to clear and release Irene, on the condition that she stop the long walks and the heavy lifting and eat three square meals a day.

Irene had lost six pounds in the two weeks since the last chemo treatment. And it wasn’t like she had that much weight to lose in the first place. She was five foot ten and 107 pounds. Sara had hoped she would be scared enough to not want to be carried to the curb again. She’d trusted that when William brought her back to his apartment, he’d make sure she ate something once in a while, even if the chemo nauseated her and nothing seemed to taste right anymore.

Well. Those were mistakes Sara wasn’t about to make again.

Irene had made it exactly one week on her own recognizance. She’d promised William she’d stay in his apartment while he went out on interviews, relaxing and watching movies and eating takeout. Instead, she’d waited in her pajamas until William left, then changed into a T-shirt and jeans and gone to the gallery. She’d sculpted there until a half hour before William was due to return, then rush back, change into her PJs, and nuke the same three half-empty moo-shu pork containers that she fished back out of the trash every morning. What had she thought was going to happen?

One day Irene collapsed at the gallery. Of course, nearly ten minutes had passed before Abeba realized she wasn’t meditating. “In a heap on the floor?” Sara had shouted, when she got to the ER again. “Please tell me someone told them this time that she’s already a patient here?”

Different nurse, same story. “Cancer? This girl?”

Irene had lost eight more pounds. Sara couldn’t recall the last time she herself had weighed only ninety-nine pounds — middle school? Dr. Zarrani’s examination revealed that Irene’s mouth and throat were peppered with stinging canker sores — a common side effect of the chemo and a likely reason Irene hadn’t been eating. Why Irene hadn’t mentioned that she was having trouble swallowing was entirely beyond Sara’s comprehension. Probably a hundred times a day, Sara asked her how she was feeling, and every time all she would say was “Fine!” Why did she have to make it so difficult for everyone?

It was too much, Sara had said. They needed some backup. At least one real adult besides herself. Irene did claim to be trying to reach her father but said she wasn’t getting through to him. Where the hell was he? Mongolia? Not as if they didn’t have phones there. But no, of course, when Irene nodded off and Sara checked her phone log, it showed no outgoing calls to Mongolia or anywhere.

So it was still only Sara in charge when Dr. Zarrani insisted on inserting a “percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube” into Irene’s stomach — the only way to make sure she got vital nutrients. Four full days at the hospital this time, getting the surgery, recovering, while Sara learned how to rig an IV bag full of Assure milkshakes so that it would drip slowly through the PEG tube and into Irene’s stomach. What else could she do? The boys were too obtuse to handle it, and Irene couldn’t be trusted to do it herself.