Dear Nobody (21 page)

Dear Nobody,

I knew long before it happened—that I would have to go into the hospital again. I had been sick for weeks and I wasn't getting any better—I was just getting worse and worse. I could really feel it this time; it took so much energy to even sit up. If I took a shower, I'd have to sit down to catch my breath. Everything I did reminded me that I was dying. Piles of tissues filled with green-brown bloody mucus covered my bed and the floor by the couch. In my room, if I couldn't find any tissues or clothing to use—I would just spit it out on the floor. My mom thought it was really disgusting, but I didn't care. When you wake up at four in the morning choking on horrible tasting shit, I don't care where it goes as long as it's out of my body.

This most recent hospitalization was one of the most painful episodes. I thought I was going to die this time—I was sure of it. It will be the sixth time this year that I've had to be admitted. My mother and I drove to Philly in silence.

After being admitted, I tried to fall asleep—even though I wasn't sure if I'd ever wake up. I wanted my mother to be aware of what was happening but I also just wanted to be alone. It was weird—I wasn't scared at all. Even though I was in pain and exhausted, I felt like, I don't know—content?

I just lay there, waiting. I didn't pray to live or die. I didn't try to barter with God the way I usually do, promising to stop using drugs and abusing my body. I knew it wouldn't work—and I didn't want to die a liar. I was really just praying to thank God and everyone for the life I'd had.

I turned on the Religion Channel and listened to a group of people praying. I couldn't talk, but I said the prayers in my head, mostly Hail Mary's and the Our Father prayer. I tried to whisper the bedtime prayer I used to say to myself when I was little: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my Soul to keep, and if I die before I wake, I pray the lord my soul to take.”

It felt like someone else was in the room with me then—more than the machines beeping and oxygen hissing—I just felt like other people were there. I thought of the other people I knew with Cystic Fibrosis and prayed some more. Now I know how they felt when they were dying…

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Dear Nobody,

You can learn a lot about life while being surrounded by death. I'm kept up almost every night by my roommate's excruciating screams of pain. Some of these children's screams can wake you from a deep sleep—but others, like my roommate—have enough vigor inside them to put the fear of God into you. Maybe it's just knowing how it feels to be the one screaming, and then having to listen to someone else being put through the same thing? It's not that I'm scared she is dying. I know that when you're in the very WORST pain, you can't even scream out.

Earlier today when I was asleep—nodding out from the morphine—my roommate went into convulsions. I woke up from the sound of her bed shaking and rang for the nurse. Later that day, my roommate's mom came in to visit her and brought her younger brother and sister. They looked about eight or nine years old. They were sitting around her bed talking. I saw her lean forward to grab something, when suddenly she shot straight up into the air and her eyes rolled back. Her tongue was sticking out and wagging from side to side. One rail on the side of her bed was up, and I thought she'd bump her head on it or something.

Her mom started to scream, “No! No! Taha! Taha! My baby! No! Not again! It's too much for my baby!” Then she yelled for her son to go get the nurse. He stood gaping and wide eyed—as I must have been. Her mom started screaming again and flew on top of the bed, trying to restrain the girl's head. I grabbed my bell and called the nurse. A bunch of nurses came running in all at once and rolled down the head of the bed—then put the rails up. They wheeled her out of the room very quickly and her family followed.
I haven't seen her since.

I can't say it's ever dull around here.

Dear Nobody,

A friend of mine from the hospital came to visit me today. She's one of those “miracle” cases. One of those few people I know who took care of herself and is in an almost perfect, healthy condition, despite having been born with Cystic Fibrosis. When I first met her she was sicker than I was. She was eighteen and they had given her seven months to live. Now its five years later and she's perfectly healthy.

Seeing her for the first time in so many years was amazing. Without even speaking, she managed to convince me of her dignity. She had an awe-inspiring strength. After seeing so much tragedy, after bearing such pains, and facing the dread of such mournful losses—her strength was still there. Her intoxicating smile, even if only halfhearted, reflected such radiance and spirit. Unlike other people who had seen only half of such tragedies, she had not become ravaged and haggard from life. Instead, her suffering seemed to proclaim her will, strength and vibrancy. I feel like she is a hundred times better than any other human being I know. Even though she is fairly young, she is as mature as many sages. Even though her beauty is not much a cosmetic, physical one, she is always the most attractive person in the room.

She inspired me to stop drinking and try to take care of myself. I want to live to see twenty-three, like she has. I want to look beautiful and wise and strong. I want to visit people I had known from my time in the hospital—people who were worse off than me—and tell them that it was going to all be okay. That we could fight this.

That I was fighting it—and I was winning.

Dear Nobody,

At night, when most of the patients are asleep, me and some of the other sick kids all congregate and sneak through the halls together. We have to push our beeping IV poles in front of us or roll around in broken child-size wheelchairs—but at least it's quiet and we can talk. Sometimes we talk for hours—all night. We talk of how most of the people that used to visit us don't anymore, just because it had gotten so common to hear that we were in the hospital again.

I remember once when I was in the hospital for fourteen days and only my mother came to see me. Yet for the duration I was in the hospital, my cousin had broken her leg. So while I was dying in a hospital with chronic disease, she was the one being comforted by our family members. They were not coming to see me, but they were bringing her flowers, balloons, cards. After a while, I guess, people just don't want to deal with you anymore. They don't want to see you getting sicker; taking more medicine than grandma does. After a while, people don't even call to ask how you are—because they don't want to hear that your sputum tested positive for blood—or that you've lost more weight. Yes, after a while—those cards and flowers and phone calls fade away, much like your health. And the other lonely, sickly freaks become your new family because to the rest of the healthy people we know, we have already died.

It's haunting to think that my family members will not drive an hour to come and visit me while I am in the hospital and yet I know they would drive two hours to attend my funeral.

Me and the other kids here talk about death a lot. I remember the last time I was here, Jennifer was asking me what I heard it felt like to die with CF? Jennifer learned how before I did. She died here.

We talked about how it felt to be mocked because of our coughing—how being made fun of could hurt more than the actual pain of coughing.

One girl I know told me about how when she was diagnosed, her mother dropped her off at her father's house—and never came back. She told me how much she had cried and how she had held a gun to her head, ready to kill herself. I asked her why she never did it. She stared at the tubes in her arm—made fists out of her fingers and looked straight into my eyes—but never answered me. She knew I already knew the answer. We all felt that way before. We've felt enough despair, enough guilt—even just physical pain. So many reasons to do it. But we aren't built that way. We've become machines. We're used to the pain.

Needles in our arms, tubes running through our noses and chests, equipment shoved in our mouth or down our throat. Probing examinations and embarrassing questions. Terrible loneliness day in and day out. If that didn't kill us, maybe nothing could.But the one thing I noticed we never talked about was our future. I don't think we saw much of a future for ourselves. Besides, what use was there talking about the future? We all knew what the future meant for us.

And it starts with a D.