Poison in the Bones

In a that cold, gray hospital hallway, she watched her mother dab at the corner of her reddened eyes with a folded over, lipstick-stained napkin. Dressed in a gaudy, sunny yellow, she was like a warm beacon out there in the cold and unforgiving hall. Coral tinted lips pressed together, obviously trying to suppress the quivers and twitching that came with crying. Artemis reached her hand out tentatively, touching her mom’s elbow. Her skin was a dull blue compared to the bright sleeve it rested against. 

“Mom, what’s wrong?”

Her face pinched and contorted into a profane smile. Lipstick smudged across her cheek when she tried to wipe at the snot that was falling. Her mouth opened and closed and repeated that same nervous routine until she finally gave a hard blow of the nose into the same napkin. 

“Oh baby, oh baby, I’m sorry,”

Artemis reached out to her again, holding her by the shoulders, more confused than ever. She should be happy; they had a chance now. He had a chance now. 

“What is it, Mom? What’s going on?”

She shrank into her daughter’s touch and let out a wail. “I did the math!” 

“What-“

The older woman leaned yet further into her and pawed at her child’s chest. “You- I fucked up,”

“What are you saying?” She tried holding onto her mother as she slipped deeper towards the floor. 

On the floor now, came the shaken response, although much quieter than the initial sobs. “Baby, you might not match-“

“But the doctor said that family would be best suited to-“

“I know, sweetie, but you- you might not be his,”

Artemis dropped her mother completely to the hard marble floor. She stumbled back, raven hair waving in front of her face as she neared the AC vent. “What?”

Her mother smudged her makeup more with a brutish wipe of the soggy paper across her face. “I made a mistake a long time ago, a mistake, a one-night stand… I’m so sorry, baby, I’m so so sorry,”

She couldn’t bear to look at the disheveled woman on the floor. Her eyes darted frantically to the swirling, shining patterns on the ground. “But if I’m not-“ The girl forced her eyes back to the other. “If I’m not he dies, mom, he dies,”

She waited for a response. A denial. Something to quell the anxiety that had just boiled until it overflowed. Maybe- in some infantile, immature and hopeful corner of her mind she thought- Maybe it’s a prank. But the sobbing continued. The woman had curled into herself. 

The clicking of heels rounded the corner, a nurse, probably. A nurse and a sobbing woman in the hall, under that cheap, dainty flower painting. Artemis clenched her fists, and some primal instinct took over and she turned her heels and walked to the cafeteria.

She shoved her trembling hands into her pockets and took deep breaths. This place was cold enough that the air bit back leaving your nose red and numb, and drippy. She wiped her nose hurriedly and made a beeline for the line. Behind a row of drably dressed people, she wondered what she was doing there.

She picked at the corners of her nails, trying to wrap her mind around the situation. As much as she tried the noise in her head was too repetitive, too violent to let coherence through. Long-term escaped her entirely, only repeating the whispery, loud chorus of he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead.

 Time zoomed with the shuffling of the feet of people in front of her. At the top of the line, when the scowling cafeteria worker asked her what she wanted, she only managed to blurt out “Chai tea!” To which \she was handed a big foam cup and shoved out of the way, towards the hot drinks dispenser in the corner of the room. 

Once there, she dully noted, no chai tea available. Ignoring the stack of little cardboards cups that echoed her dumbness at her, she clicked on the button for French vanilla. The cup was so large she had to click on the machine three times to get up to the fill line. It was scalding, nipping even through the Styrofoam. She had to wad up some napkins to act as a protective barrier. 

She held a quick debate with herself on whether to return to her mother, but who knows where she’d gone. She glanced up at the clock, five forty-two. Visiting hours were coming to a close. She had to see Dad one last time. The fact that it might be the last time she saw him struck hard and fast, cutting through even the protective layer of shock that enveloped her. She scurried off to him, thankful for the plastic lid that kept the molten coffee from splashing on her chest as she ran. She could only really manage a half-run down the halls before security would halt her, so that’s what she did. She only chanced a little faster going down that nasty gray hallway that swallowed her mother up.

 He was sleeping when she got there, but he’d been sleeping a lot lately. It was the only thing that really spared him the pain of the poison within his bones. She set down her drink on the night table behind him, and leaned over the metal railing of that thin bed. He was wrapped up in the hot pink comforter she had bought him to replace that scratchy, cardboard-esque blue blanket they gave all the patients. He himself had been bleached as white as the sheets beneath him and as thin as the pillow they gave him. 

He didn’t really look like Dad anymore. Dad was ruddy-faced and hairy, all smiles. This dying man was a skinny pale thing, reduced to looking like the very thing that was killing him; his bones. His skin was so fragile the millions of tubes and lines and catheters shot through him looked like they might break it off him completely if someone so much as tugged a bit too hard.

She reached for his hand, but thought better of it. Waking him would be obligating him to face the pain that plagued him head-on. Worse off, she knew that when he was to wake, she’d have to tell him. To not only tell him that her mother was unfaithful, not only to tell him that he spent all those years he was happily taking care of a daughter that might not carry an ounce of his blood, but to deliver him the news that- well, this was a death-sentence. The only person on Earth that might give him bone marrow soon enough to save him, might not match.

Tears welled in her eyes and rained down on the pink blanket, leaving bloody red splotches on it. She wiped her eyes, but the tears didn’t stop, if anything they grew in frequency. She stepped back, not wanting to wet him anymore, until she hit the wall and slid down. She cried a very ugly cry, all snot and twitchy lips. She didn’t want to have to think now, as selfish as she was, that maybe if he did survive and found out, he wouldn’t want her anymore. She should have been focusing on him, she knew, but the thought of being abandoned by the only father she’d ever known was too much. To stop doing all those things with Dad, to stop being spoiled by him or even the little things. No more baking bad cakes for each other on their birthdays, no more movies on Fridays or meals out on paydays, not even getting to wince at him while he told strangers embarrassing stories. It all culminated in a wet, tired out gasping noise from her throat and she obligated herself to get up and wipe her face. Thankfully, the nice nurse had left a box of tissues on the night table.

She washed her face in the now seldom used adjoining bathroom in his room, and returned to his side. She waited there, chastising herself for her own selfishness until the doctor came in. He was a pretty man in lilac scrubs and an Aussie accent. He came in and placed a hand reassuringly between her shoulder blades. He clicked his tongue at her. 

“Bad news, visiting hours are over, good news, we have time to test you tonight, so you can stay a little while longer,” He winked at her and she smiled more out of politeness than anything.

She swallowed hard, still tasting mucus in her sore throat from earlier. “Do I need my mom to sign a paper or anything?” She straightened herself out despite wobbly legs.

“No, she’s signed it earlier. You just have to come with me, and you can even have a cookie afterwards,” 

She gave a little laugh. “Isn’t that just for donating blood?”

“Yeah,” He said, “But you look a little sad,”

She followed him into a pediatrics room, covered in drawings and posters of anatomy, along with advertising good habits like the outdated food pyramid and brushing your teeth. He gestured for her to sit in a metal chair- the kind her school used at assemblies- while he went to the other shit of the room to rummage through cabinets. She tried not to stare at the huge syringe and blue band that he carried back. A nervous sweat started again. 

“Aren’t nurses supposed to do this kind of thing?” She broke the awkward silence.

He sat in his office chair backwards and slid towards her. “Yeah, but we’re understaffed today. Thankfully it’s not very busy, either,” He started tying the band around her arm and she forced herself to look away. 

There was a picture in particular, two purple stick figures on a big green hill, one was taller than the other and the sun smiled wearing sunglasses at the corner of the page. Scribbled in bright red at the bottom was a big heart next to the word DADDY. Her own preschool art pieces came to mind, one in particular that Dad had framed that was similar to this one. Her eyes began to water again, but luckily enough it coincided with when the needle pricked her.

“Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe,” chanted the doctor, the father, next to her.

He came way with the syringe nearly half full and looked at her, surprised. “Ah, did it hurt?” She nodded and wiped at the tears in her eyes.

He handed her a tissue and stored the blood in the fridge at the end of the room. She got up to leave, but he stopped her. 

“Ah, ah, ah,” he mimicked a chiding tone and slid off his gloves, tossing them to the trash and washing his hands. “Can’t leave yet,” he dug through the drawer at the top of his desk and pulled out a Tupperware container and handed her a cookie. “I told you, I keep my promises,” He smiled and shoved one into his own mouth. “Try ‘em, my wife made them,” 

She ate it and smiled, but said no when he offered her another one. 

“I can walk you back, if you want. Since we’re waiting on test results, you can stay with your dad for a while longer,”

“No thank you, I’ll go myself,”

He frowned at her as she left. She trudged back to her father’s room, and did something she had never done before. She prayed. She didn’t know to what deity, but she desperately wanted that blood to say “Hey! He’s your dad! Nothing has to change!” She leaned sat down beside him and hoped and hoped and prayed. The nurses, thankfully, hadn’t tossed her coffee while she was gone. She tried taking a sip but recoiled when it burned the tip of her tongue. She removed the lid to let it cool off more.

To her surprise, her mother entered the room alongside the doctor. Her mother now looked cool and collected, blond hair swept fashionably back, lips repainted in that nudie coral color, eyes hidden by massive brown sunglass lenses. It was like nothing had happened, like it had been a product of Artemis’ imagination the entire time. Her mother put her hand on her shoulder. She noticed how grim the doctor looked.

He rubbed the back of his neck and her mother’s grip tightened on her. 

“Uhm… I’m sorry to day this, really sorry,” Her mother buckled a little at his words. “But, Artemis, you… you aren’t a match to your dad.”

Tears began prickling again and her mother sobbed. “I’ll alert the oncologist- he’ll let you know your options on what to do next,” He pat her head before leaving.

Her mother held her so tight she could feel her sobs through her own chest. She found her voice. 

“So, this is it? He’s dying?”

Her other wailed. “We can- oh we can find another donor through the registry-“

“But the doctor said- he said this was it there wasn’t time-“

“We can pray-“ He mother said feebly, like she didn’t believe it herself.

“This is… this is your fault,” it came out like a question.

Her mother’s eyes popped and she let go of her daughter. “What?”

“If you had said something earlier, we would have found someone else-“

“The registry is already on it-“ The woman tried defending.

“But we weren’t prioritized because we assumed that I’d matched,”

Her mother let out a yelping sound and she got off her chair. Artemis’ heart was pounding, hard. So hard. Her blood ran hot, scalding. The blond woman fell onto the floor again, once more, curling into herself, spouting some excuse or other. 

Her eardrums pounded loud, making the other’s word more garbled than earlier. She only heard the wet, pitiable tone. Artemis reached for her cup of coffee. He mind shut off. The woman cried like a baby. Her fingers curled around the foam cup, the plastic lid gleaming under the fluorescent and ugly hospital lights. 

She… She hated that woman in that woman. A pulsing, sad hatred. She squeezed the cup a little and the molten liquid overflowed onto her fingers. The woman’s hazel eyes flashed fear and recognition. Then, her baby, her little girl, dumped scalding coffee all over her face. A hot splash to the face, steaming up into the ceiling and the woman screeched like a banshee. 

Security ran up and a flood of workers filled the room. The lilac-wearing pretty doctor looked so horrified, his face contorted into that of someone else entirely. Security officers saw her holding the messy, incriminating cup and rushed her. They shoved her to the ground and pinned her there. Another horrified bellow came from her mother;

“My baby! Leave her alone! Don’t hurt her! It was an accident!” 

Artemis was clumsily unhanded, but the blood rushed to her feet in this awful flurry of action. She was suddenly left alone on the floor, hands sticky from the freaking coffee. A gurney was brought in at some point and her mother was wheeled off. She looked up and saw the beady, sad eyes of Dad leaning over his bed. He looked so sad. She didn’t bring herself to explain to the dying man, she only lied there. 

She knew he knew the truth. His eyes showed it. They drowned in it. 

She started crying, like the little girl she was, crying pathetically on that hospital room floor. In that broken, useless tone she told him, 

“It was an accident Dad, I swear, I swear.”