Jacob
October 26, 2011
I guarded up on Edward's right elbow as he dribbled the basketball and stepped side-to-side and back-to-back. He's going to fake left. I predicted as I watched his green eyes scan around, his breathing coming in hard as we played two-on-two with Embry and Quil at the courts in the park near our house.
He went left - like I thought - but instead of going back to the right, he kept going left. He nimbly maneuvered around me, his feet never stopping, and threw the ball. I watched in horror as it deftly landed through the chain basket.
"Yes!" He celebrated with a clap on Quil's shoulder and then pushed his long, corn silk hair that was the same red as copper pennies off of his forehead. "We won. Again." He gloated, his green eyes flashing.
My temper flared in me, hot and red in my face as I replayed how he could've gotten around me like that. He cheated. He had to. I watched him carry the ball. He failed to dribble. I crossed the short space between us, grabbed Edward by the elbow and shoved him to the ground. "You cheated!"
"No," He retorted, his face going red with anger too as he jumped back to his feet. "You're just a sore loser."
I crossed my arms and stepped forward in challenge. If he wanted to fight, I'll fight. I wasn't afraid to wail on my brother. He had grown a little, so we were almost the same height now and could match me nose-to-nose. "You wanna go." I felt my shoulders and chest pop forward in challenge.
"You're being stupid." He rolled his eyes and pushed me back. "It's just a game."
"Guys," Embry snorted and tried to separate us. "Stop."
I got in one more good shove, forcing Edward back down to the ground, his butt hitting the pavement. He just popped back up again, like one of those clowns that you could punch down and would bounce right back up, ready for more.
Edward sneezed and I watched as red drip out onto his palm. I rolled my eyes and smacked the ball out of Quil's hand, watching it bounce. Edward always got nosebleeds during the dry season. "If you get blood on your shirt," I warned as I watched him tip his head back. "Mom's going to be pissed."
"I know." He said all nasally as he pinched his nose to get it to stop. "I won't."
I looked out at the beach that we lived next to. It wasn't a fun beach. It was only swimmable about ten days out of the year and too cold and choppy the rest of the time. Not like the beaches in California, where they're warm and pleasant. We camped at ours occasionally and that was kind of fun.
Our curfew was the sun halfway over the horizon and it was getting to be about that time. Twilight. We didn't have enough time for another game. Damn. I cursed and threw the ball back to Quil. "We should get going."
Embry sighed and looked out at the water as the sun started to make its descent, his black hair blowing in the sea breeze. He had the same curfew. Twilight. "Yeah, me too."
"You guys are pansies." Quil said and bounced the ball to me.
"I gotta get Nosebleed Nelly over here home." I said and threw the ball back. "Before he looks like murder victim."
"Shut up." He groaned and righted his head, carefully unplugging his nose. "Look, it stopped. See?" He smacked the ball out of Quil's hands, starting to dribble it around me. "One more to one and then we can go home."
I felt my competitiveness flare up. "You're so on."
October 26, 2011
Thwack!
"Ow!" I screeched as Edward wailed on me – a surprise attack. His pale fists pounded on my back, his face flushed red. I had taken the remote from the living room TV and turned it on to Cartoon Network in the middle of his anime show. "Stop it, Redward." I tried shoving him away, all while keeping the remote at a safe distance above his head so he couldn't grab it.
"Stop calling me that!" He said and snatched my arm and twisted it back. "And give me the remote back!"
I yanked myself out of his grip and ran off, giggling like a hyena the whole time. We played a game of chase around our small house. I somehow ended up cornered, standing on the cup holder of our green couch, my hand pressed against the wall so I didn't fall off the cushion. He picked up our coffee table book on Quileute history and threw it at me. It hit me on the hip. "Ow!"
Okay. My vision turned red around the edges as my temper flared. That's enough. I jumped off the couch directly in front of Edward and grabbed one arm in a vice grip and the other went around his neck. I spun around, shoving his head under my arm in a headlock, the remote to the television set still in my other hand. "Say it!" I demanded.
"No!" He said and tried to wriggle away, slippery like a damn fish. I tightened my grip on him.
"Say it!" I squeezed his head with my bicep, hearing him choke under the grasp.
"No!"
All of a sudden, there was a smell of charred wood and then I felt the iron grip of fingers on my neck. I was jerked to the side, forcefully separating from Edward.
"Boys," My dad warned as he pushed us away from each other. "If you're mother sees you roughhousing like this, she'll have both of your asses."
I was spun around to face our dad. He was a man of many lines, his features looked like they had been honed from an ancient tree - like Treebeard in Lord of the Rings. His long hair was tied behind his head in a knot.
"Why will I have their asses?" Mom asked with a playful smile as she stepped through the front door, her old purse on her arm and her keys in her hand.
"Jake stole the remote during Dragonball Z." Edward tattled.
I punched his shoulder and he winced and rubbed it. "Snitches get stitches." I muttered.
My mother sighed as she dumped her things on the table next to the door. "You guys need to stop fighting so much." She said and kicked off her shoes and then started for the kitchen to start dinner. "Did you guys take the fish out of the freezer like I asked?"
I sucked in a deep breath, vaguely remembering a conversation about that during breakfast this morning. It was quickly replaced with how fast I could ride my bike down the 101.
"Yes, Mom." Edward said. He always remembered to do stuff like that.
"Momma's boy." I snickered.
It was his turned to punch me in the shoulder. I recoiled at the sensation. "Ouch."
"Stop with the violence." My mother groaned. I could hear the old hinges creak as she opened the cupboards. "I swear those video games…"
"Aw, Sare, they're just-," My dad's eyes flashed at Edward and his bushy eyebrows pulled together, who had picked up the lower hem of his shirt to wipe his face. Ooh. You're going to get it. I thought as I watched my dad pull the shirt from Edward's grip and yank up, revealing his bare torso.
"Dad, what are you doing?" Edward asked in confusion.
On Edward's chest and stomach was an island chain of bruises. Some were palm-sized, some were smaller. They were all in different shades of purple and red. I got bruises like that sometimes when I got hit too hard with a ball or something. But, not that many. He looked like a dog who just got his spots.
"Jacob William Ephraim Black," My dad said, his normal humorous tone gone. His voice went low and menacing, meant to strike fear into my heart and make my hands and feet go cold and still. "Did you do this to your brother?" He motioned to the bruising.
"What's going on?" My mother came out of the kitchen to investigate why my dad wasn't laughing with his boys – or argued with us over who had control of the television - like he usually did while she cooked dinner.
"No," I squeaked, my eyes going wide. He thought I put those bruises there? Edward and I roughhoused, but I was careful not to hurt him, you know, badly.
My dad didn't like that answer. I could tell in the way his black eyes flashed angrily. He dropped Edward's shirt and grabbed me roughly by the shoulder. I cried out in pain from the grip. "Tell the truth, boy, or you're going to get the belt."
"I didn't!" I insisted, panicking over getting the belt. Dad's belt was old and leather and forged by Satan himself to deliver the perfect whip of pain to my bottom.
Dad gripped my shoulder again, his fingers driving into the bone. I yelped like a kicked puppy, anticipating being shoved outside to the backyard to be made an example for the neighborhood - for something I didn't even do. I casted a longing, begging glance at him. Help me. I thought, looking at his deer-in-the-headlights-expression. Do something.
My dad froze when my mother entered the living room, her apron on and her arms crossed. We both watched her move to Edward.
"Show me your chest." She said lowly to him.
Edward hesitantly pulled his shirt up, revealing the cluster of bruises again. "Jake didn't do anything." Edward said in defense of me to my mother, who could actually listen to reason when she got mad at us, unlike Dad who only believed his version of the truth.
"Then where did you get those, baby?" My mother asked.
Edward shrugged. "I don't know. They just appeared one day. I thought maybe I slept funny."
Mom frowned and ran her fingers over Edward's pale skin. "Do they hurt?"
He shook his head no, his eyes still wide and his fingers still gripping the edges of his shirt up. He was so white he could blend in with the plaster of the walls, making the bruises look way worse than they probably actually were.
"Billy," My mom turned towards us. "I don't think these are normal bruises from roughhousing."
My dad unclamped his hand from my shoulder at that. I rubbed the sting out of my skin where his fingers pinched into me. "Then what are they?" He asked.
"I think Edward might have mono or something." She said and rubbed her fingers over the spots again, like she could diffuse the patches of red back into his body.
I cracked a smile at that, my almost-punishment completely forgotten now that I knew I was safe from the belt. "Edward has the kissing disease." I started to make out with the side of my fist, making loud slurping noises.
He dropped his shirt, his face flaming crimson with embarrassment, and pushed my shoulder. "I do not!"
"Stop it, Jacob." My mother scolded and I froze. She turned back to Edward, her eyes intense on him. "I'm going to make an appointment at the clinic for tomorrow after school." She said and touched Edward's cheek before turning back towards the kitchen, an unsettled expression twisting her eyebrows together and the corners of her mouth turned down in thought.
October 27, 2011
I stared at this stupid poster for diabetes in the clinic exam room that barely fit one person, let alone three. There was a silhouette of this super fat guy – his belly distended and round, different arrows pointing to different parts of his body as they pointed out how eating McDonald's for every meal was super bad for you or something.
My mother had busied herself with the contents of her purse as she sat next to me in the little chairs for family members. She balanced her checkbook, she marked things off in her calendar, she pulled out old receipts and threw them out, she checked the expiration dates on coupons. She always got on me for fidgeting, but she literally didn't stop moving since we got into this office.
Edward had turned sighing into a work of art as he laid back on the exam table. Every about four and half minutes, he would sigh through his nose, squint at the ceiling, and then make the paper cover crinkle under his butt.
We had been here for about an hour now. A nurse or assistant or whatever (they were wearing scrubs) took us back and asked a bunch of questions to Edward about his medical history, if he was feeling funny, general stuff like his appetite and whatnot. My mother told them about the bruising, which they looked at, took his temperature and his blood pressure and then left.
"Hello, everyone." The assistant/nurse person came back with a package in her hands. "We're going to take some blood samples."
Edward sat up to a sitting position, his eyes going to Mom in concern. "I thought I was just sick?"
It was a little weird that he was being poked. Usually, when we got the flu or whatever, we were herded in, go through the rigmarole of temperatures and blood pressure, had our necks felt up and then given a prescription of OJ and antibiotics.
"We just want to run some basic tests, rule out anything funky." The nurse said, her nose stud glinting in the light as she snapped on some gloves.
Edward's face twisted with anxiety as the nurse prepared the crook of his left elbow with an alcohol swab and a tourniquet. She jammed a stress ball with a medication logo in his fist. "Squeeze." She ordered and I watched all of his blood vessels pop up through his pale skin.
She stuck him – his eyes going tight around the edges with pain and his mouth flattening in a thin line - and filled up a tube of blood. "Be right back." She said after she snapped off her gloves and Sharpied something on the tube.
"I think we'll pick up dinner tonight." My mother announced once the door was closed. "What should we get?"
"Sully's!" I said. We were in Forks. Might as well take advantage.
"Pizza." Edward said at the same time.
We glared at each other in challenge.
"Boys," She said, her hand sifting through her purse again. "Stop it."
"We can get pizza." I said and crossed my arms, slumping so far down the seat that I my spine was basically on the back of the chair. I went back to staring at the fat guy on the poster, trying to mentally calculate how many Double Cheeseburgers he stuffed in his gullet to get that way and educating myself on the symptoms of Type II diabetes.
After, like, a million years, there was finally a soft knock and an old guy in a lab coat stepped in. "You must be," He glanced at his clipboard. "Edward?"
Edward nodded, his shoulders slumping. He looked tired.
The old guy doctor took a seat on the little roll stool that I tried to occupy when we first got into the room and was promptly told to get off by Mom. He pulled up Edward's chart on the computer. "Well, Edward doesn't have mono."
"I could've told you that." I smiled. "Edward doesn't kiss girls."
"Shut up." He blushed.
The doctor looked at my mother and then Edward. "There were some problems with the test. Specifically, the white blood cell count. It's really low." He glanced at Edward. "Too low for a healthy young man like yourself."
I felt my lips purse as I tried to remember what white blood cells did. Were those the oxygen carrying dudes or the ones that beat up germs?
"What does that mean?" My mother took her hands out of her bag, her eyes wide on the doctor.
The doctor shrugged and pulled something off of his clipboard. "It could mean an autoimmune disorder. I'm gonna refer you to a hematologist so they can take a closer look." He handed the paper to Mom.
I leaned over to look at it as my mom's eyes traced over the whole page. Refferal: Emmett McCarty, Olympic Medical Center, Hematology/Oncology. "What's oncology?" I looked up at the doctor, whose eyes just tightened around the edges.
"That's a doctor that specializes in cancer." He answered lowly.
October 28, 2011
Edward stayed home from school and since Dad was back at work for the next two days, Mom decided I should too so I wouldn't be home all by myself later that evening. "Port Angeles is a long way. We'll probably be there all day." Mom said.
I was just happy to get out of school. Didn't matter the reason to me. I called shotgun and bounced up and down as I watched the Olympic national park zoom by us as we drove in Mom's Buick. Quil and Embry would be so jealous. I thought as I watched the tree line out the window.
Edward slumped against the car window in the back, not saying much as we drove the hour and a half to Port Angeles, the biggest town in the Peninsula. He didn't even sing along with Bohemian Rhapsody on the radio with me. Loser.
When we got to the medical center – which I figured out was just a fancy name for a hospital – we had to go past the ER and up a floor to a section with a tiny waiting room and a television in the corner playing Rachael Ray's talk show.
"You want to play Pokemon?" I offered to Edward, pulling out my Nintendo DS out of my jeans pocket.
He pulled out his too and we got about halfway through a duel – my charmander annihilating his ekans – when his hands fell in his lap. "Mom," He said to our mother who was sitting on the other side of him, filling out paperwork. "I don't feel good."
Her arm wrapped around his shoulders. "I know, baby." She said and pressed her cheek to the top of his head. "We'll get you fixed up, okay?"
We were called back and then it turned into basically an encore of the clinic from yesterday – same questions, same temperature and blood pressure readings, same blood pull. The only thing that was different was that they filled four different vials instead of just one.
I groaned petulantly and writhed in my chair. "Why did we come all the way to Port Angeles if they're just going to do the same things they did in Forks?"
"Hush," My mother said as she filled out a packet of Edward's medical history. Pages and pages of checking off different surgeries and symptoms and whatnot. She got to the page where it had you fill out your parents' medical history. I watched my mother write a big N/A over that page and then in capital letters write ADOPTED at the top.
I glanced at Edward, who just slumped on the exam table, dark circles forming under his eyes. He looked like he was in desperate need of a nap.
"Baby," My mother asked. "Have you been having nosebleeds?"
"No," He answered flatly.
"Yes, you have." I argued. "You had one the other day."
"Oh," He said. "Yeah. Right."
Another hospital person came and took even more blood from Edward and then we were sent back to the waiting room. Rachael Ray on the television had turned into Ellen. I watched a tiny Asian girl demonstrate inhuman flexibility and let Edward rest his forehead on my shoulder. Usually something like that would bug me, but I let it slide this time around.
Mom played with Edward's hand on his other side – rubbing small circles on the back of it, her thumb running over the freckles that made up 90% of Edward's complexion.
We were summoned by another hospital person, but instead of an exam room, we were led to an office of some sort. Or well, I think it was an office under the Chicago Bears merchandise that covered almost every square surface.
A huge, burly guy stood up from behind the desk when we walked in. He had curly black hair and wasn't wearing a lab coat, but was wearing a button down shirt and tie. "Hello, Edward." He greeted, his smile nice and friendly as he shook all of our hands. "I'm Dr. McCarty."
I looked at his gigantic hands – he could play baseball without a mitt, they were so large - and the ring that sat on his pinkie finger. Chicago Bears. World Champions. 1986. My eyes widened as I realized that was a Super Bowl ring. "You played for the Bears?" I asked in disbelief.
He glanced at his hand, his smile widening. "Tight end for three years. At least, until a bad tackle slipped a couple of discs." He laughed – a thunderous sound that ricocheted off the walls - and then turned his attention back to Edward. "How are you feeling, buddy?"
"I'm tired." Edward admitted, forcing a small smile.
Dr. McCarty flipped open a folder. "Well, we got your blood tests results back…" He launched into a full scale assault of words that I didn't even know existed in the English language.
Both Edward and I's faces twisted into confusion as he threw words like hemoglobin and platelets around. I glanced over at Mom to see if she was tracking, but her eyes were wide as ours. Her hand snatched Edward's at a word – leukemic – and I watched her face pale. "What are you saying, doctor?"
His eyes moved from Mom's to Edward's. "I want to get a bone marrow aspiration to confirm, but I'm pretty sure you have a cancer called acute myeloid leukemia, Edward."
"Cancer?" His voice hitched up and his fingers that weren't laced with Mom's nervously played with the edge of shirt. "Like, cancer?"
The doctor clapped his large hands together and then leaned forward like he was about to call a play. "It's not a typical sort of cancer for kids, but yes. It's a cancer of your white blood cells – you know the little soldier guys that fight off diseases and germs?"
Edward nodded, his green eyes wide on the doctor.
"Well, they form as baby cells first call stem cells, but if they're cancerous then they get all weird and funky and become these little monsters called myeloblasts. These little monster cells crowd out the healthy cells and make it harder for your body to fight off germs and sicknesses like the cold."
There was a silence as we all ingested this news. It was thick and almost touchable. A living thing, breathing on our necks as we all reeled ourselves back in. I tried to imagine little monster cells bullying the good guys in Edward's body: knocking heads together, giving German suplexes like WWE fighters to the scrawny guys that were just trying to do their jobs.
Edward couldn't have cancer. Like, only people on television and like, old people get cancer. I looked at my brother. Like, cancer puts you in a hospital bed and make you bald. Edward was healthy – like we just played basketball the other day and spent the morning arguing over the bathroom like we always did. This football-player-turned-doctor was wrong. He had to be.
"Is Edward going to die?" I blurted, feeling my mom tense up and stop breathing at the question.
"Well," He pressed his fingertips together. "I want to run some more tests to see if its been spread to other parts of your body. But, the five-year survival rate is sixty-five to seventy-five percent. That's a lot better than it was five to ten years ago."
Sixty-five percent. I did the math. That meant that out of one hundred kids with this thing, only sixty-five survived. I looked at my brother, who had his eyes trained on his hands, trying to figure out which side he was on.
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