Chapter 8: Root Beer
Day 4
Sunday, May 23 – 8:17pm
Hey, I know you’re staying home with the girls tonight, but they’re going to extubate in a little bit. Betsy is up and wants you here. I can text John to see if he could sit with the girls for a little bit while you come up.
Olivia bolted upright on the couch. She and the girls had just settled in with popcorn and a movie—The Wizard of Oz, their most recent obsession as a trio. Nico thought the flying monkeys were scary, so they’d waited and waited to share the movie with the girls. But they watched it at a friend’s house and came home raving.
They’d been watching it at least once a week for the past four months and the Oz costume planning for Halloween was intense. Not that we’ll be celebrating. Olivia was increasingly unable to brush away the prickly voice, the one that ruined any future plan, no matter how big or small. The voice used those moments to gain a foothold. Will we be trick-or-treating this year? Will we be in the hospital for chemo? Will Betsy be strong enough for all that walking? Will we need a wheelchair? The questions came like bullets, and it was exhausting.
“Girls,” Olivia said, her eyes still on her phone as she typed out a text to John. “I have to go back to the hospital for just a little bit.”
Gabby groaned and Sophia’s face crumpled. “But I thought you were going to stay with us tonight,” she said, her voice shaky.
“I am, I promise,” Olivia said, putting down her phone and looking each girl square in the eyes. “It’s good news. They’re taking the tube out of Betsy’s throat because they’re hopefully done with the dialysis. It also means that soon she gets to go back upstairs, and then home for a few days before they start the real chemo. Which,” she said quickly, recognizing alarm on Gabby’s face, “will not be as scary as this first one was, okay? There were so many cancer cells to clear, girls. So, so many. Too many. But even though they can grow back quickly, they can’t grow back that quickly, so it won’t be like it was this time. No more dialysis. No more PICU. Just chemo. Got it?”
Sophia and Gabby looked at each other, their eyes and bodies communicating in a way Olivia was used to but could never grasp. She had read about how twins often develop a secret language all their own; the book insisted that only twins developed this, not other multiples. Maybe so, but there was something to the secret code between her girls. Always had been. If Betsy were home, she’d be right there with them, talking without talking.
But if Betsy were home, Olivia reminded herself, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all.
Gabby turned from her silent conversation with Sophia and launched herself at her mom on the couch, burying her head into Olivia’s chest. She could feel Gabby’s shoulders shake before the warm tears soaked through. Sophia settled delicately on the other side, wrapping her arms around them both. A wave of emotion—grief? despair? sorrow?—rose and crested, threatening the dam Olivia had built for her tears.
“Girls,” she said, taking a deep, ragged breath. “What is still true about God?”
Gabby pulled away to look into Olivia’s face. She sniffled. “What?”
“What is still true about God?” Olivia repeated.
“I don’t know,” Gabby whimpered and put her head back down on her mother’s shoulder.
Sophia started to stroke her sister’s arm, gingerly, the way Olivia rubbed them when putting them down in their cribs. “He still makes the sun rise,” she whispered.
Olivia nodded, the dam inside holding. For now. “He does,” she agreed. “What else is true?”
Both girls were quiet. Racking her brain for just the right words, Olivia was quiet, too. How do you tell your kids that God is good when their world is falling apart? And right behind that thought came another, without prompting: he is good still, right?
Gabby clucked her tongue. Olivia knew that sound, could practically hear her daughter’s eyes rolling somewhere beneath all those curls. “Everything is still true about God,” she said, her tone just as impatient as when she finished her homework and had to wait for her sisters. “He didn’t change just because Betsy got cancer. Why do we even need to talk about this?”
The salty words fortified Olivia’s dam, even as she tried to keep a grin from spreading on her face. “You’re right,” she said. “God doesn’t change when we go through hard things. But sometimes, in hard times, lies can feel true. It’s good to remind ourselves of what is true. The truth drowns out the lies.”
“The truth drowns out the lies.” Olivia heard Sophia murmuring, felt the vibration of her vocal cords. “The truth drowns out the lies.” The darling girl went silent for a moment, still stroking her sister’s arm. “Mama,” she said after a while. “It’s true that God can heal people.”
Olivia nodded. “Yes, that is true. What else?”
Gabby sank down into the couch, pulling away from Sophia’s touch but leaning her head on Olivia’s shoulder. Pulling away but not far. When she spoke, her voice trembled slightly. “It’s also true that he lets people be sick and broken their whole lives. Like Mr. Doug in his wheelchair, or even all those people Jesus healed in the Bible.”
“That’s also true,” Olivia whispered. She didn’t dare move and break the spell of deep conversation happening here. It felt like holy ground. She had to get going, had to get to the hospital for her baby—but here were her other babies, needing her. How long, O Lord? she thought, the phrase from Isaiah 6 now a forever loop in her heart. How long will I have to choose between which of my babies to care for moment by moment?
She pushed the worry aside and cleared her throat. “But what did Jesus say about those people and their illnesses and struggles?”
Sophia popped up, away from Olivia and into Sunday School mode. “Well, with that blind man he said that he was blind to show the power of God.”
Gabby sat up, too, rolled her eyes. “But isn’t that too much to ask? Like, that guy lived a hard life his whole life just to be a demonstration? Why would God do that to someone? It just seems cruel.” Her lips pursed in irritation, and she crossed her arms hard.
Olivia sighed. “You’re right, it’s a hard thing to understand. Jesus was showing the Pharisees something particular there: they wanted to know who sinned to create the blindness. But Jesus wanted them to see brokenness instead of sin—and more importantly, he wanted them to see that God’s power is greater than that brokenness. And we can trust in that even now for Betsy.”
Olivia’s phone buzzed. Another message from Nico:
Hey, I still haven’t heard from John. Do you want to call my mom or just bring the girls with you?
She glanced up at the girls, staring at her expectantly. Her heart broke all over again at their worried face. “Girls,” she said, “do you want to come with me? Do you want to see Betsy wake up all the way?”
Even Olivia could interpret their Triplet Language as they exchanged a look. In a flash, they were barreling toward the door, arguing over who got to wear which shoes and hollering questions back to Olivia as she remained glued on the couch.
She texted Nico back, and he told her Betsy had managed to sloppily write “Burger City root beer” one more time after they lowered her sedation, preparing her to be extubated. Olivia smiled, and promised she’d run through a drive-thru on their way over.
She flung herself into her shoes and grabbed the keys from the bowl as she and the girls darted to the van. Questions flooded her mind, worries for the future, as she steered toward the nearest BC. The girls would want drinks, too—claiming fairness—and then they would be up half the night. Olivia sighed. But maybe it would be good to have more time to talk; their conversation about true things had been cut short. Time, Father, she prayed. Give me more time to speak to them, to pour into them. They’re not prepared for this. I’m not prepared for this. How will we get through this?
How long, O Lord?
Three root beers, lemonade for Nico, and a giant diet cola for herself later, she parked in the now all-too-familiar Children’s Hospital parking lot. Olivia had to remind herself that the hospital wasn’t so familiar for the girls, urging herself to be patient as they gawked their way through the lobby. “Girls, let’s keep moving,” she said, just shy of snapping. “They’re ready to get Betsy’s tube out of her throat.”
She rushed them up the dreaded orange elevator that led to the PICU, different from the calming blue elevator that led to the cancer ward. She pushed them to scrub their hands thoroughly outside the PICU doors as she signed their names in as guests and hurriedly washed her own so she could signal the attendant to buzz them in.
The girls stared at the bright lights and bustling hallway, so different from where they last saw Betsy, but Olivia pushed them on, desperate to have all three of her girls together again where she could see them all. If she could just see and touch and hold them all at once, they would be safer. She would feel safer.
A hush fell over the girls as they stood in the doorway to Betsy’s room. Olivia watched their eyes scan the giant gray mass behind Betsy, like a plastic switchboard with tubes leading in and out of it, down to their sister’s body and away from her bed to machines and her IV pole.
Gabby and Sophia were like frogs tossed into a pot of boiling water, silently panicking. But Betsy had been in this pot all along, and when she looked up and saw her sisters, her whole face expanded; Olivia could see her smile around the tube. Instead of trying to speak, she lifted both hands, beckoning her sisters toward her.
Sophia plunged forward, grabbing one of Betsy’s hands over the bed railing. They both looked back at Gabby. She hesitated just a moment longer and tromped to the other side of the bed—loudly, but she was gentle when she squeezed Betsy’s hand. In that moment, Olivia was more thankful for Triplet Language than she ever had been. Even with a tube down her throat and her face half obscured by the tape and mounting, her girls were still able to converse in a deep way.
Gabby and Sophia started talking about what they had done that day, and Olivia swung the nurse’s chair around by Nico, each taking turns debriefing. Olivia reported that yes, she had handed off all of the wedding plans, as Nico had asked, and he caught her up on the medical team’s choices.
“They are going to keep the central line in her neck for now,” he explained, pointing to Betsy’s neck. “They want to do one more blood draw before midnight to make sure they don’t want to do any more dialysis, but the machine is off for now, so they feel good about taking the tube out. She’s been awake most of the time, anyway, so why make her more uncomfortable?”
Olivia nodded, silently praying that the central line would be out by morning. She was more than eager to get away from this place, even if she wasn’t the one staying the night tonight.
A nurse popped into the doorway and smiled at Nico. “I see you have visitors. I’m Shari, and we are just about ready to get that tube out.” She had just finished explaining what was about to happen when three people in scrubs walked in, a balding, older gentleman followed by a young woman. She was dressed in scrubs but seemed out of her element; by now, Olivia knew this likely signaled she was a medical student.
“Good evening, I’m Dr. Barnes,” the older gentleman said. “I see we have the whole family here tonight. Good, good. My student here hasn’t seen an extubation yet, Shari. Mind letting her stay for the show, since you’ve already got an audience?” He winked, clearly in his element. He asked his medical student several questions about extubation while Shari moved things around, adjusting the ventilator and putting a plasticky blue mat on top of Betsy’s blankets.
When Dr. Barnes seemed satisfied with his student, he nodded to Shari.
She nodded back and directed Betsy to take several deep breaths. “You need to start doing the work yourself,” she explained. “Now, Betsy, when I say ‘go,’ I want you to take a big breath in and then cough as hard as you can. Can you do that?”
Betsy nodded, though Olivia noticed a tinge of fear in the way her cheeks pulled toward her eyes. She opened her mouth to comfort her daughter, grasping for a Bible verse or some nugget from her conversation with Gabby and Sophia, but she hesitated a millisecond too long.
“And go,” Shari said, her hands gripping the tube. Betsy took a deep breath and let out a cough that sounded more like choking. Olivia had to clutch her hands together, had to stop herself from leaping into action—the way she did when the girls were learning to feed themselves and made that sound. The sound meant they needed help. Her help.
To not jump to the rescue was agonizing.
But the tube was out, spittle and blood spattering droplets on the plastic mat. Shari wrapped the tube in the mat and pulled the whole thing away. Like it was never there. And aside from some tape residue on either cheek, nothing about Betsy hinted that a machine had been breathing for her: her color was good, and her beautiful smile was visible again. All I could hope for, Lord, Olivia prayed silently.
“Good work, Betsy,” Dr. Barnes said. “How do you feel?”
“A little—” Betsy started, her voice raspy. She put her hand to her throat.
“Yes, you may feel a little hoarse, and your voice may sound a little funny for a bit. And Shari’ll get the respiratory therapist in here in a minute to check you over and see how much oxygen support you’ll need, but you seem to be breathing fine on your own for now. I hope you get back upstairs soon.” He squeezed Betsy’s hand and shook both Nico’s and Olivia’s, thanking them as well.
“Will our sister need one of those tubes ever again?” Sophia piped up.
Dr. Barnes sighed and smiled wearily. “Well, I can’t say that for sure. Fighting cancer has a lot of ups and downs, and I don’t know much about your sister’s case—or about cancer, if I’m honest. But it seems more likely than not that this won’t happen again. As we say often around here, ‘It was nice to meet you, and I hope we never meet in here again.’” He winked again and left the room.
“He’s right,” Shari said, leaning over the bed with a wipe that flooded the room with orange scent. “I’m going to get that respiratory testing done just as soon as I wipe up Betsy’s face.” Olivia wondered if smelling oranges would forever make her think of these adhesive-removing wipes.
“Can Mama stay with me tonight?” Betsy asked, looking past Shari.
Olivia worked hard to keep her face neutral—because inside, she was terribly conflicted. If her sick baby wanted her, she wanted to be there, regardless of how much sleep she had already lost in this endeavor. On the other hand, what about Gabby and Sophia? And sleeping in a real bed?
“Of course,” Sophia said, awkwardly leaning over the bedrail to hug her sister. “If I were in the hospital after all this, I would want Mom, too. No offense, Papa,” she added quickly.
The corners of Nico’s mouth turned upward. “Oh sure, everyone wants Mom when they’re sick,” he said, his voice teasing, “but you’ll all come running to me when it’s big stuff like changing a tire or fixing your computer.”
Gabby put an arm around him. “Yeah, Pops, cancer is no big deal compared to those things.” She slid into his lap. “But seriously, I would want Mom, too, Betsy. We’ll just make Pops here finish The Wizard of Oz with us.”
Nico groaned and looked at Olivia, his face pitiful. “Again?”
They all laughed, and the girls promised to bring the DVD to the hospital the next day so Betsy could watch it. “But not until Papa gets here,” Gabby chimed in. “That way he gets to watch it again.”
While Gabby and Sophia giggled, Betsy barely smiled. Olivia frowned, wondering what was going on in her head.
“Oh, here,” Gabby said, pulling the root beer from the drink carrier.
Betsy smiled. “Thanks,” she whispered. She put the straw to her lips, sipped, and sputtered. She coughed, and soda trailed down her chin. “It burns,” she whispered, her voice defeated.
They got her some water, which went down more smoothly.
Everyone was quiet, just watching Betsy. “I guess I’ll try again?” Her voice was a little stronger, a little less scratchy, but still so subdued compared to her old self.
But Olivia tried to put that from her mind. She’s been through so much today, she told herself. We all have. She nodded. “Maybe you just had to clear things out for the bubbles.”
Betsy took another sip. “It’s not as bad, but I think I’ve had enough. I think I’m ready for bed, too.”
There was a flurry of hugs and kisses as Nico and the girls left. In the wake of their exit, the room felt cold and lonely.
Olivia kissed Betsy on the forehead. “Ready to brush teeth since we can actually get to them now?” she asked, waggling her eyebrows several times.
Betsy shrugged but took the single-use PICU toothbrush that Olivia offered, pre-doused with toothpaste solution. She worked methodically, brushing one region to the next, her eyes dead ahead. Olivia felt pierced by her daughter’s stoicism, though she couldn’t put her finger on why. All that came to mind were those words that wouldn’t leave her be from Isaiah: How long, O Lord?
Need to catch up?