Installment Fourteen

Taylor was on the last day of his second round of chemotherapy, but something, to this day I don’t really know what, went wrong.  We were all in the family room, it was a Sunday after church, and we had just come home about twenty minutes earlier.  Taylor had come with us, and he had gone upstairs to change at least fifteen minutes ago, but no one had thought anything was wrong.  When he came back downstairs, he was changed, but he had gone milk-white, and he was sweating and shivering.

“Oh my God,” mom said quietly, “Taylor, what’s wrong?”

“I… don’t know,” he said quietly and swallowed hard.  He looked to Sarah.  “Turn it off; make it stop.”

“What do you mean?  Turn what off, Taylor?” She asked, standing up, and going over to him.  His knees almost buckled and he reached out for her, using her for support.  “Taylor, are you all right?”

“No… I don’t know…” he whispered, closing his eyes momentarily.  “Take this out,” he said quietly, placing his hand over the catheter in his left arm.

“Taylor, I can’t until tomorrow morning; just wait until tomorrow morning, and you’ll be done with your treatment until the next round.”

“Take it out, Sarah,” he whispered.  “It’s making me sick…”

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked the question we all wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.

“Turn it off…” his right hand was right at the tubing in his left arm.  “Take it out.”

“Taylor, come on, let’s sit down – “ His knees gave out, and dad rushed forward to help Sarah support his weight.  “Easy, easy…” she said quietly.   Without warning he just pulled; the catheter and tubing ripped from his arm, and blood suddenly began to flow down his arm.

“Oh my God,” mom said quickly, standing up.

“Oh geez, Taylor…” No one had rubber gloves, and Sarah broke a lot of rules, but she grabbed his bleeding arm with a free hand a clamped down hard on it.

“I couldn’t do it anymore,” he whispered; I think he was ready to pass out.  “I felt too sick; something wasn’t right…”

“Taylor, you’re really bleeding; please, sit down,” Sarah said, and before they could actually sit him down, he went limp in their arms.  I watched him collapse right in front of me, and it was horrible.

“Taylor!” There was a chorus of shouts of his name, everyone crowding him at once, and Sarah telling them all to step back and give him some room; she sent Jess to call an ambulance.

You’d swear I was his mother and not his sister, other than the fact I was way to young to be his mother.  We followed in the van behind the ambulance, Sarah riding with Taylor.  There were so many things running through my head on the way there, and when we got there they wouldn’t even let us see him and that only made matters worse.  We were all worried as it was, but for them to not let us see him… something had to be really wrong, right? It was a good hour or more before we were allowed to see him, and that was only after hospital security had to force reporters and their stupid cameras out the doors.  When we saw Dr. Peterson we assaulted her with questions, resulting in her giving a piercing whistle.  We all stopped talking.

“One at a time, please,” she said softly.  “Mr. and Mrs. Hanson, you first.”

“God is he ok?” Mom asked immediately.

“He’s stable for now,” she easily danced around the question.

“What happened?” Dad asked.  “He was… ok… for the whole week, and then this.”

“In short, the chemo did a lot of damage to his healthy cells as well.” She answered.  It didn’t look like she was going to tell us all anything more.  “If you want details,” she said quietly, “we’ll talk later when you don’t have young family members with you.” They both nodded.

“When can he come home?” Zoë was the first to ask that question, and it was a good one that I had planned on asking myself.

“Not for a while.” That answer wasn’t what we wanted to hear.  If she was making him stay something had to be more wrong than she was letting on.

“Why?” Zac asked, sitting in a chair beside Jessica.

“Taylor is incredibly sick,” she said.  “I don’t think you all realize what a sick young man he is.  With all the chemo, and the intensity of his last treatment compared to the first, putting it simply it’s depleting his immune system.  In order for Taylor to start getting better now, we need to fix the problem.”

“What’s the solution?” I asked.

“Well, it’s important that Taylor’s immune system be built back up, and in order to do that he needs healthy cells.  Unfortunately, he’s losing many of those.”

“In his whole body?” Jessica asked, creasing her brow.

“No, no, just his blood.  Leukemia is a cancer of the blood, and agents of the blood.  The chemo helps eradicate the cancer, but it also has consequences which are damages to healthy blood cells and agents.”

“So, Dr. Peterson,” Isaac said, “how do you help him?”

“He needs a bone marrow transplant.  And I hate to make you all worry more than you are, but he needs it soon.  We have to allow him to recuperate from the last treatment, but he won’t really get better until the transplant has been done.  What we need right now is to find a donor.”

“Who can be a donor?” I asked.

“Any number of you could be,” she said, indicating us – his siblings.  “We run special blood tests, and take a sample of your bone marrow to see if it matches Taylor’s as close as possible.”

“Can you test me?” Zoë offered.  “I wanna help Tay.”

“If your Mommy and Daddy say it’s ok, we can test you too.” She answered, smiling a little at my eight-year-old sister.

“How many of us can be tested?” Dad asked.

“The whole lot of you,” she answered.  “The chances of parents being donors aren’t usually too high, but the chances of siblings being donors are usually much higher.”

“How soon can this be done?” Mom asked.

“Well, the transplant has to wait.  First, we have to do something called conditioning, or preparative regimen.  Taylor wasn’t happy about it, and protested, but the ultimate decision was made that this was for his own good in the future.” She took a breath and gestured to the seats, taking one herself.  “Taylor needs to recover from this round of chemo before we can move on to anything else.  Once he’s recovered enough, before the transplant, he has to undergo a rigorous chemotherapy treatment.  I’ll warn you now; he’s going to be too sick to even have visitors ninety percent of the time.

“There’ll be a catheter, like the one that was in his arm, inserted into a large vein in his chest, just above his heart; that way drugs can be administered and the many many blood samples needed can be taken without constantly having to stick needles in his arms.  Now, concerning the chemo; it’s much stronger than dosages of patients who aren’t going to undergo a bone marrow transplant.  You have to understand that he’s going to be very weak, and irritable, and nauseous, and he may not want visitors.  Don’t be upset with him for that.”

“We would never be upset with him for that,” mom said, almost sounding offended.

“When do you start the chemo again?” Dad asked quietly.

"As soon as Taylor has built up enough healthy cells on his own to continue.” She answered.  “So it shouldn’t be started until sometime next week, but I am keeping him here.  I’ve already had him signed in as an in-patient this time.  I think it’s better he stay so we can monitor him; he’s going to need constant care once the intensive treatment starts, and even more after the transplant.” She looked down at the floor and then back at us.  “He’s going to need tremendous support from all of you,” she added softly.  “I’m just his doctor, so I don’t expect him to just open up to me, but it’s my impression he’s trying to deal with this all on his own, but you can’t let him do that.  He needs all of you right now, even if he can’t admit it.  You’ll need to be there for him.”

“We will,” Isaac said softly.

“Dr. Peterson, can we see our son, please?” Mom asked quietly.  I wanted to see him too!  I wanted to see him so badly it hurt.

“Just the two of you for now, all right?  And you’ll need gloves and gowns; the last thing he needs now is an infection to hinder his treatment.”

“All right,” dad said quietly.

“Go on to the nurses’ station and they’ll set you up with what you need.” They thanked her after that and she went on her way, to whatever other patient she had to help save.  I just hoped that with everything she was putting my brother through “for his own good” was actually going to do something in the long-run.  I hadn’t forgotten what Taylor told us his prognosis was, with treatment, and the thought was terrifying that he would go through all of this for nothing.  That couldn’t happen to him.  He had to be ok.  This treatment had to work.  And one by one, we started the testing for his bone marrow donor.

Mom and dad weren’t a match.  It was disappointing, but not unexpected.  We each had the blood test done, and one by one we started getting the results back.  Over a period of three days we had found out that Zoë wasn’t a match, Mackenzie wasn’t a match, and Isaac wasn’t a match.  That left me, Zac and Jessica.  I know this is the part where you all expect me to say that I was a match, that I would be Taylor’s donor.  It would have been very poetically just, but that wasn’t the case.  I wasn’t a match; I couldn’t be a donor.   Even though we were told that if one of us was a donor, we’d be put under for the procedure – I think she told us it was called a bone marrow harvest – it would hurt afterward, but nothing unbearable – she would give Tylenol for the pain – I was devastated that it wasn’t me.  It meant that I wasn’t the one who could help possibly save Taylor’s life.

A week was almost up and we were finally told that Zac was the closest match; it wasn’t perfect, but it would do.  The only way they could have had a perfect match was if Taylor had a twin, but he didn’t, so Zac was the next best thing.  I had been in to see Taylor a number of times that week, decked out in a gown and gloves so I didn’t spread any germs on him – she almost made us wear face masks, but didn’t.  Taylor was nervous, and scared, he’d cried that out once while I was there; he had just been crying that day and that was one of the things that had come out.  Shanna had called him almost everyday to see how he was doing.  If you want the truth, I think they never stopped loving each other – he just made a big mistake and she was having a hard time getting past it.  Once over that week, before the intensive treatment, there were two reporters that somehow managed to get into Taylor’s room, and he had to call for security to get them out.  He didn’t want tabloids to get this all over; if he was going to be interviewed it was going to be done the right way, with a credible reporter, not some muck-raking air-head.

There was one day I went in to see him, and for a change he was actually sitting up in bed.  He wasn’t himself lately, and I wasn’t sure what was going on inside his head.  I knew he was scared, but he was sort of pushing everyone away, almost like he was keeping them – us – at arm’s length.  I made my way over to his bed and sat down on the side.  The blue bandana had somewhat become a part of him, a part of who Taylor Hanson was now; his hair was gone, all of it, and he never too that thing off.  He was fitted or a wig a week before he ended up back at the hospital, and I only knew that because I had to listen to the messages on the machine when we got home the night before.  I never thought Taylor wouldn’t have hair…  As stupid as it seems, I got emotional over that.  Their hair was very much a part of who my brother’s were; granted, Zac and Isaac’s were much shorter than it was in 1997, Taylor had had the same hair style since 2000.  It was a part of him – his persona – and now it was all gone, and it was almost like we were grieving for it because it wasn’t gone by choice.  It made me realize what little things about people I take for granted.

“What’s up, Tay?” I asked quietly.

“Nothing,” he said softly.  “Just thinking.”

“Hmph.  You?  Think? Ha-ha.” He looked at me and I was pleased to see him smile a little.

“Hardee-har-har,” he said sarcastically.

“What were you thinking about?” I asked quietly, looking up at him.

“A lot of things,” he answered quietly.

“About Shanna?” I knew it was sensitive territory, but he didn’t know that I knew what I did, so I figured it was safe to tip-toe.

“Maybe,” he said quietly, finding a spot to stare at on his blanket.

“Are you in love with her, Taylor?” The question had been on my mind, not because I was nosy, but because I cared about my brother.

“Maybe,” he answered again quietly.

“What’s it feel like to be in love?” I asked him, resting my chin on my hand, looking up at him.

“I don’t know, Avie.”

“You’ve never been in love before?”

“Yeah, I have, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been loved back.” It seemed like there was a story to this, and I wanted to know, but I wasn’t going to pry because it was obviously a sore subject.

“Oh… I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

“Don’t worry about it; I had to face my demons sooner or later; I guess it was just sooner.”

“What… happened?” I asked cautiously.

“I fell head-over-heels for someone, right in this town, and she didn’t care about me in the least – only what I could buy her.  She was running around with some guy from the city, and when I found out… I was a little bitter for a long time.”

“Is that why you were the way you were with girls?”

“Somehow I don’t think I should be having this conversation with you, but for what it’s worth, yeah that was part of it.”

“I almost thought I was in love with JR,” I said quietly.  “But I was really wrong about him.”

“You’ll find someone better, who you deserve.  Not a jerk-off like him.”

“What was your first time like?” The question was out, and I don’t think I would have had the guts to ask anyone but him that.

“Uh, Ave, I think this is ground you shouldn’t be covering with me…”

“I know about sex, Taylor; I don’t need the birds and the bees talk, I just want to know what it was like your first time.” I replied.  “Because I thought about it with JR once…”

“It wasn’t what I expected,” he answered quietly.  “I wasn’t ready for it, or mature enough to handle it; I thought I was in love with her, and I thought she loved me too, but I was very, very wrong.  I was the one who got used, and it hurt a lot…”

“I almost did with JR,” I said softly.  I felt ashamed somehow.

“Well I’m glad you didn’t.  Your first time should be something special, Avery, with someone you love with all your heart and soul, who loves you back.”

“I’ll wait for him,” I said quietly.

“Good.  I don’t want you to get hurt the way I did.”

“Taylor?”

“Hmm?”

“Let’s keep this between us, ok?”

He smiled a little; we really understood each other.  “Okay,” he replied softly.

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