Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [82]
“Who playin’ dat?” she asked again.
If I couldn’t take her home, I wanted to take her away from her troubles, if only temporarily. I wanted to joke around, make her laugh.
“It’s a phantom,” I said.
“Phantin?” Her face scrunched up in confusion. “Whazzat?”
“A ghost.” I waggled my brows and wiggled my fingers. “Spooooooky.”
I regretted it as soon as I said it. After all, I didn’t want to scare the poor girl. I waited for her eyes and mouth to stretch into a grotesque grimace, I waited for her to howl in horror and run back to the emergency room. “Maaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmaaaaaaaaa! Ders a ghost playin dat pee-an-ah!” I would have hurried in the opposite direction toward the west elevators before her mother could come after me. How dare I scare the bejeezus out of her daughter? Doesn’t she have enough hardship in her life without having to worry about piano-playing ghosts?
Instead, she cocked her head to the side and glared at me through her bruised eyes. “Duhhhhhhhhh. It can’t be a ghost.”
“Why not?”
“A peeanah-playin’ ghost? That’s stoopid.”
“Why is that stupid?”
She exhaled deeply because I was trying her patience. “It’s stoopid ’cause ghosts got better things to do than play peeanahs.”
“Like what?”
“Like gettin’ ready for Halloween.” She shook her head disdainfully.
She saw me for the patronizing, bleeding-heart liberal asshat that I really am. Even this girl could see right through me. The phantom in the room was me.
fifty-two
Rightfully chided, I dejectedly headed to the infusion room on the second floor, which is where I’m writing from right now. I was about to describe the infusion room for you, and how unnerving it is to roll back and pass through the privacy curtain and see my dad sitting upright in the hospital lounger, hooked up to the IV, looking as drained and tired and glassy-eyed as one would expect from someone who is “down four or five liters,” as the nurse put it. I was about to describe the nurse’s purple clogs and Hello Kitty scrubs and how these cartooniforms are probably meant to be cheerful but have the reverse effect on me. I was about to describe how difficult it is just to sit next to my dad while he’s intravenously rehydrated with salt water one drip at a time, pretending to watch a lame game show, as he strains to make conversation about the best game-show host of all time, straining to discuss Bob Barker, and how he will always be remembered as the host of The Price Is Right, but also for his mission to get all pets spayed and neutered, straining because everything I say is overheard by everyone else in the room because the privacy curtains provide privacy in name only, as proven by my unintentional eavesdropping, just now, of the conversation between the nurse and the patient on my dad’s right-hand side, a discussion that included clinical keywords such as antiemetics, alopecia, and anemia, but none as revelatory as adjuvant chemotherapy.
I don’t need to describe the infusion room for you, or what it’s like to sit silently next to your dad looking as pale and frail and mortal as you’ve ever seen him, because this is the same room in which your dad endured six chemo cycles between this past January and June.
I only know this much because I called your mother and pled for information. Because after your beachfront confession, you barely spoke of your father’s cancer again. And when I asked, even begged you to unburden yourself to me, the person you professed to love more and deeper than you ever thought was even possible, you repeated the same mantra over and over again.
“There are no words,” you said. “There are no words for this.”
fifty-three