did the doctor say?” my grandfather asked as soon as we got in the door.
“I’ve got leukemia!” I blurted out, trying the words on for size, seeing how they would sound out loud for the very first time. They sounded fine. But I couldn’t look at my grandfather. I stared dumbly at my feet and then climbed the stairs to my room.
“Try to nap,” Angela called out as I disappeared. “It’s been a tiring morning.”
She was right, but my mind wouldn’t let me sleep then, any more than it will let me sleep now. It kept replaying the scene in the doctor’s office. Unfortunately, it only replayed the few parts that I remembered. Gaping black holes had swallowed part of the story, leaving it like a partly finished jigsaw puzzle, or more like one that was just started. I wish I’d paid better attention. It was all so confusing. And unbelievable. It still is.
Later, I heard Angela go to her room and phone Frank. The door wasn’t closed. I heard her side of the conversation.
“No, Frank, surgery won’t help … No! They can’t cut it out. It’s not a tumour! The cancer cells float around in the blood. They don’t clump together to form a tumour … No! Listen to me, Frank … There’s nothing to cut out … He’ll have to have chemotherapy … Radiation? I don’t know. Right now they’re saying chemotherapy … It’s the only option. It works in 90 percent of cases … Please, Frank, stop! Don’t go there.”
CHAPTER SIX
The female fish hawk can still see the big river, but the thick forest that should have lined its banks and provided her with a nesting site for the summer is mostly gone. Only a narrow band of greenery remains, not enough to offer her protection and seclusion. Away from the scrawny trees, the naked earth ripples like the beaches of her winter home where the ocean ebbs and flows, tugging the grains of sand and rearranging them. But there is no ocean here to leave its imprint on the land. She loses her bearings. She doesn’t know how high she is flying. She doesn’t know what direction she is going. She is simply flying.
In that moment between being asleep and being awake, I think I’m at home, in my own bed, in my own room, surrounded by my own things. A marathon runner stares down at me from the wall, his bones and muscles showing as if he’s been opened up. Clean clothes spill out of the closet and dirty ones are all over the floor. When I was little, Angela tidied my room, but now I don’t let her set foot inside. She obeys the do not enter sign on the door. When the mess piles up too high, or when the mood strikes me, I grab up all the trampled clothes and dump them in the laundry room. They reappear clean and neatly folded.
There’s a smell I can’t place. I open my eyes. I’m in the hospital! My stomach lurches. I close my eyes again, hoping not to face it all, but I can’t go back to sleep. I can’t stop thinking about how much has changed in so little time. Just a month or two back I was fine. Or I thought I was. I thought I just had growing pains!
I remember the last Saturday in April, the day that the ice broke on the Athabasca River. This is always a big deal for everyone who lives in Fort McMurray. It happens each spring, but it’s still a shock, jolting us all back to what we were doing when the river broke the previous year, or the year before that, or in my parents’ case, fourteen years before. We’re in the truck, all of us: Frank, Angela, my grandfather, and me. We don’t do family outings, so this is unusual. We’re going to Energyse, where Frank works, because today is tree-planting day, and employees and their families have been invited to help in the final stage of a reclamation project. My grandfather says that this is a really important part of the mining process and that since the public is not normally allowed in, we should go check out what’s going on. I can think of a million better ways to spend my Saturday, sleeping being Number One on the list, but I allow my grandfather to convince me we’ll have a good time.
We head down Thickwood Boulevard to join Highway 63, Frank at the wheel of the new pickup truck, Angela next to him, and me in the back seat with my grandfather. Everyone’s in an okay mood, at least so far, but we’ve only been on the road for three minutes.
We swing around the bend, and the river comes into view. Yesterday it was flat enough to drive a snowmobile on. Today it’s something else, filled to overflowing with ice blocks the size of minivans. It looks like someone tipped way too many ice cubes into a container that’s too small to hold them — except it’s on a giant scale.
My parents, who rarely see eye-to-eye, both say, “It’s early this year — it must be global warming.” Then Angela gives me her annual warning about not running alongside the river, because ice blocks can explode onto the trail without warning — killing people! One day the river is frozen flat, and then the next morning it has buckled and cracked and is hurling up car-sized blocks of ice at unsuspecting runners. I don’t get it.
We leave the broken river in the valley and take the highway that curves up through the forest. On the sides of the road, under the lodgepole pines and poplars, there are still a few patches of old crusted snow, almost black from the traffic and melting fast.
The sun streams through the truck window, and I close my eyes, enjoying the warmth and the bright orange glow that shines behind my eyelids. The cold, dark winter is finally done. Summer stretches ahead. Despite the exhaustion of my growth spurts and my apathy for life in general, I’m happy to be soaking up the sun.
I’ve lived in McMurray for so long, but this is the first time I’ve ever travelled north of town to where Frank works. It feels good, like it’s the way I’m supposed to go. But that makes no sense, because there’s no way I want to return to the nothingness of the North. I can’t imagine life without the Sports Centre, without the climbing wall, the running tracks, the movies and the mall — without New York Fries and Boston Pizza.
“Is the traffic always this bad?” my grandfather asks, flinching away from the window as yet another transport truck thunders toward us. He still freaks out at things here — he’s a newbie. In Chip you’re more likely to see an ATV on the road than a car, and from what I remember, the word “crowd” means … let’s say five people.
“This is the busiest highway in Alberta,” Frank explains. “All the mines use it. It’s the only way in and the only way out.”
A transport truck roars up behind us and sits on our bumper, giving a blast on its horn that makes even Angela almost jump out of her skin. My grandfather looks horrified. Frank puts his foot down and we surge ahead.
The needle on the speedometer hits 130, and we leave the big transport truck behind. I see Frank’s smile in the rear-view mirror.
Angela hangs on to Frank’s arm as if her life depends on it, begging him to slow down. He gives in, and when the needle swings back to a hundred, he hits cruise control. The transport truck catches up, gives another blast on the horn, and passes on the inside lane.
Angela shakes her fist and glares at the driver as he passes. He looks down at her and gives her the finger. Frank loses it. He swears at the disappearing truck and jabs his foot on the accelerator. Nobody utters a peep. We know better than to escalate the situation, especially when Frank is behind the wheel. After a few seconds he eases off the gas and returns to his normal self — whatever that is.
We pass a string of buses labouring up the hill. They’re packed with shift workers going to their barracks and their jobs in the oil sands. Then we pass the same transport truck, which is also struggling up the hill. We pull alongside; my stomach is churning.
“Don’t,
