it still does. But part of me wanted to hurt her, to make her pay for abandoning me. Now I don’t know what to think. It’s too much for my brain to handle. I’m relieved I’m not alone, though, so I’m kind of glad that Angela is here. Yes, I’m definitely glad that she is here.
“Good night, Adam,” she whispers.
“G’night,” I say, the word mom almost coming from my lips, but not quite.
Soon she’s breathing rhythmically, and I know she’s sleeping. I’m desperate to sleep too, to escape from here. But the mattress is too hard and the pillow is too soft. I toss and turn. I try breathing deeply, but nothing helps because my mind won’t switch off. It wanders back to Track and Field Day at Father Mercredi, just two weeks ago. I have to run the final leg of the boys’ 4 x 100-metre relay, because I’m the runner. It’s who I am. Or rather, it’s who I was. But I’m not a sprinter, and I tell them that. I’m a distance runner. There’s a big difference! But they don’t listen. My team is in first place as I take over the baton for the last leg. The crowd is roaring, and my legs are pumping, but they refuse to fly like they normally do, and my lungs are burning. One boy passes me, and then another. I throw myself across the finish line and collapse on the grass, gasping for air. My team curses me. I’m ticked that everyone is blaming me for losing. “I’m not a sprinter,” I repeat. “I’m a distance runner. I told you that. It’s your own fault.”
Mr. Seeton, the Phys. Ed teacher, is disappointed in me too. He says I need to work harder, that I’ve lost my drive. Just because he arranged for me to train for free on the indoor track at Mac Island, he thinks I owe him something. All through the winter I’d pounded that track, telling myself I was going to be the best cross-country runner, not only in Fort McMurray, but in all of Wood Buffalo Region. But as winter dragged on, running wasn’t the fun that it used to be. I told myself that the indoor track was the problem. I wanted winter to end so that I could run under the sky instead of the grey metal roof that made me feel trapped.
The ice was gone from the trails by mid-April, and the mud dried quickly in the warm sun. Gemma and I started running the track that carves its way through the ravine down to the river. It didn’t help. I was still tired. She would take the lead with a spring in her step, changing her stride from the sandy gravel of the main trail to the spongy moss in the depths of the forest, and then to the boardwalk over the marsh, while I’d struggle just placing one foot in front of the other.
Angela noticed how tired I was and said that I was going through changes, that I was in a growth spurt, and that tiredness is a normal part of growing up. She said that boys especially can get sore legs when they’re growing fast. They even have a name for it: growing pains. She said it would pass. She was wrong. She always is.
The kid in the bed next to me is crying. He’s about six years old, and his mother isn’t with him. I feel sad for him. A nurse comes, drawing the curtain with a soft swish. I wonder if I will ever get any sleep here. I’m so tired but my mind won’t stop spinning. It returns yet again to the track meet at school….
I get that loser feeling again of knowing that I’d let the others down. I hate it. I’d desperately wanted that day to be over so I could get out of the heat, lie on the sofa, and watch TV. Instead, I’d flopped on the grass under the trees, swigging from my water bottle and pouring the rest over my head in a futile attempt to re-energize. The announcer called for long-jump competitors to make their way to the pit. I dragged myself up, happy at least that this was the last event of the day.
When I finally got home, I staggered through the front door, throwing my gear aside. My running shoes were laced tightly to my feet. They wouldn’t kick off, and I didn’t have the energy to untie them, so I stumbled to the family room and collapsed face-down on the sofa.
“Adam!” Angela scolded.
I rolled my eyes at the thought that my mother was already home from work. At the same time, I realized why my grandfather was not at the door to greet me — he was up in his room, keeping out of Angela’s way.
“Oh, my goodness! What happened?” she exclaimed.
I had no idea what she was talking about.
“That bruise on the back of your leg?”
I swivelled to where Angela was pointing. There was a dark bruise all over my thigh. I yanked my shorts up higher. The bruise went right on up to my backside. “What the …?”
“What happened?”
I had to think for a moment before it came back to me. “Oh, yeah, I did long-jump. I covered a good distance with my feet, but then I fell backward and sat down in the sandpit. It didn’t hurt, though.”
“There’s no way you could have gotten a bruise that bad, that fast … unless the long-jump pit has rocks in it. Is anyone pushing you around?”
“No!”
I remember the look of concern on her face. “If someone was bullying you, or being mean to you, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course I’d tell you,” I said, thinking that Angela would be the last person I’d tell. “I guess I landed harder than I thought.”
She unlaced my running shoes, prying them from my feet. “You look exhausted. Go on up to bed. I’ll bring you a snack in a few minutes.”
But it was like my body had moulded itself into the sofa so that we were inseparable. Angela brought a pillow and a blanket and told me to stay there and sleep. The words were barely out of her mouth when I felt myself slipping away.
When I woke up, I was face-down on the pillow in a warm, wet puddle. I remember swiping my hand across my mouth, figuring it was drool. It was damp and sticky on the side of my face, and my hair was matted. It smelled a bit like metal. That’s when I realized it was blood!
I yelled, and Angela came running. Within seconds she was dialling 911. The paramedics got the bleeding mostly under control, and by the time we arrived at the emergency department of the hospital, I felt like a fake. “It was just a nosebleed,” I said sheepishly. But the doctors didn’t treat me like it was just a nosebleed. They asked questions and took vials of blood. Then they parked me in a corridor on a rolling stretcher to keep me under observation for the evening. Nothing else happened, so they sent me home.
Two days later, we were back at the Northern Lights Hospital, waiting to see Dr. Miller. The receptionist didn’t make eye contact when she asked for my health card. I got a bad feeling. We sat down. We waited. Angela had a magazine on her lap, but she wasn’t reading it. She never turned the page, even though she stared at it for ages. I tapped my foot and drummed my fingers. But before long I was too tired to tap, or drum, and it seemed just fine to sit and do nothing.
Finally, the doctor invited us into his office. There wasn’t so much as a hello, how are you? At least not that I remember. He just dropped the bomb.
“It’s leukemia.”
On the drive home, I was speechless. That was when Angela had started her one-sentence loop: “It will be okay, it will be okay.” Occasionally she threw in: “We’ll get through this.”
I remember walking into the house. It was still the same house I’d lived in for more than six years, no different from how it was when I’d left it three hours before. But it was different. Everything was different. It was weird, like my body was walking around, going through the motions of behaving normally, but my brain was a few steps behind
