Fifteen was tough.
It started out, at least from Vanessa’s perspective, muddled. She was home and then she was in the hospital and then she was back home. Her team – she had to have a whole team of doctors? – grew bigger, and then things were discovered by one test or another, and the team grew smaller. At fifteen, she was forever seated in some doctor’s office, mother on one side and father on the other, listening, or trying to listen, and not really understanding much of anything. Yet every minute of fifteen was memorable. Was that a blessing or a curse?
Feeling poorly, she would examine little details her memory coughed up. She would replay conversations she’d heard: her parents talking to each other, doctors talking with nurses, nurses talking with each other. Smells were recalled: a dinner in a hospital, the office of a specialist, her own bedroom at home. Sounds? Sounds too. The sigh and buzz of the machines in her ward, the murmur of people in public, the hum of tires on the road as she was going where she needed to go at the time she needed to be there. What about where she wanted to go?
She could remember emotions and remembered trying to read the emotions of others around her. Were these memories simply keeping her mind busy, or were they important? She thought about that at times and thought it curious to have such thoughts.
Feeling better, interestingly enough, was the opposite. Feeling better, she worked on her listening. It was as if she’d suddenly become aware of a favorite sense, and it was hearing. What was that all about? Was she more alert? Maybe. That’s what she thought. There was this world of sound around her, and it seemed to have a rhythm. It was informative … she wasn’t quite sure why she would think that … but she found the world of sound around her to almost have a narrative. The listening fascinated her, and the sounds she heard while listening fascinated her, and the being fascinated was soothing, and feeling better, she found herself wondering why listening and hearing were so soothing. Maybe it meant she was there, amongst the living, and the sounds were proof of life. How many times had she heard, ever since she was a little girl, “pay attention.”
In the hospital, feeling sick or not, after doctors had gone for the day, after her parents were gone and when it was just her and the diagnosis and the nurses (who called her Van and Vanny and Nessa and honey and sweetheart), she would look backward with accurate recall. She would look forward too, and looking forward, she felt something was there. She felt it. She didn’t see it. Whatever it was, it was waiting, and that could be intimidating. But forward was hope, wasn’t it? That’s what everybody said.
The nurses, who insisted she call them by name (which she thought was sophisticated), would stop by, peek in, come in to touch her forehead and gaze at some machinery she was attached to. They always smiled. They were reassuring. Everything they did was reassuring. Their inquiries, their comments, their questions were always simple and gracious. She thought to herself: I should become a nurse.
She connected with Hannah Madison in a profound way.
Who was Hannah Madison?
Hannah Madison, her brother Taylor’s serious girlfriend, had been around for years. Two years, actually. She was the first of any of her two brothers’ girlfriends who’d sat at the Hoffman dinner table, who watched TV with the family in the Hoffman living room, and who was (according to inter-family gossip, outer-family rumor, and some careful eavesdropping) slated to become a certified family member at some indeterminate point in the future.
Hannah sat and talked with Vanessa, in hospital or at home. They talked about everything, like girlfriends do. Hannah, in grey gym shorts and a white top and tennis shoes with pom-pom socks. Hannah, skin all satiny, the big sister Vanessa didn’t have. Hannah, who had a college scholarship to play soccer, was always wearing a smile and was always a joy to talk with. Hannah wore a pixie cut.
Vanessa could say things to Hannah she couldn’t say to her mother and wouldn’t say to her brothers or her father. Who was Hannah Madison? That’s who Hannah was.
After one stay in the hospital, Vanessa told her mother “I need a new hairstyle.” Her mother raised her eyes, signifying okay, there’s more, right?
“I want a pixie cut,” Vanessa said. “Hannah has one. It’s easy to care for.” When Vanessa asked that, she was bald, the cancer had taken her hair, leaving her only thin eyebrows. She was thinking ahead. Her hair would return. Hannah told her it would.
About the Author:
Victor Kreuiter’s stories have appeared in EQMM, Halfway Down The Stairs, Bewildering Stories, Tough, Frontier Tales, Del Sol SFF Review, Literally Stories, and other online and print publications.
