The Middle Man

Cappucino

An italian cappuccino. A bag of Lay's oven baked chips. A "good-sized portion" of tilapia with mango salsa. A dove chocolate bar.

It was weird, sitting here. Not too long ago I was on my couch watching Netflix. Then, my aunt and uncle arrived so I went upstairs to my mom, who'd had a migraine for a week straight. We'd just moved and there was things that needed to get done- the new refrigerator needed to get working, the old one had to get moved to the garage; there was pictures and shelves and pictures and shelves to be hung about the condominium. They were here not much longer than five minutes before we were out the door and on the way to the hospital.

Insurance, I thought. What's our co-pay and does she have her identification card. Right arm- she can't get blood taken from her right arm because of the lymph nodes because she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer last year. Clothes, I thought, a change of clothes to make her comfortable. Water, tissues. This was one of the many reasons I was staying close to home for college. 45 minutes away. Less than an hours drive back to Newark, no planes or trains necessary. In state, low cost. A cost I could bear on my own, a debt and loan that were an easy undertaking for a CS major who was practically guaranteed a high-paying job straight out of college. Starting salary was over 20k more than my mom ever made in her 52 years. A creative writing degree from a liberal arts college was over 40k a year and the payout was far and few in between.

You had to be the next JK Rowling to get anywhere. To place food on your table. And that was without paying back the thousands upon thousands for your underappreciated degree. I didn't deny that I wasn't good- I thought I was. But any talentless hack could sing karaoke at a dive bar and say they were a singer. Didn't matter if the bartender plugged their ears or if every drunkard in the place booed for some peace and quiet. So who was I to say that I'm a writer?

I'd recurred praise over the years, but a mother's love is unconditional and friends build each other up and it's a teacher's job to support their students. I'd once gotten an email from the Director of the Creative Writing Program at a liberal arts college I'd applied to. She'd really liked my work and the message had made me smile. But it was a fortune to go and so, it was an opportunity missed.

I'd been accepted into my dream school, top 11% of applicants. My portfolio and packed with rich stories; little did they know the truth behind them. How the Ralph Lauren Polo and salt-and-pepper hair were reminiscent of my childhood. Little did they know how true the words were, about breaking in two. I was a writer of experience, a writer of the moment. Only my moment was well-preserved in an almost photographic memory that liked to replay my trials and tribulations in technicolor; a vivid motion-picture memoir of my life.

I'm sitting here in a chair in the corner of Room #4. It's not the first time we've been to the ER but it's the first it's been such an impact. My mom's on a bunch of fluids and the IV pumped them into her as she sleeps. This notebook is from the giftshop- perhaps the best two dollars and eighty-nine cents ever spent- and this pen is from the bottom of my Aunt's purse. My cappuccino is just a styrofoam cup with the chalky remains of the coffee from a press button dispenser and my dry tilapia is long gone. My mom can't eat anything until she has her CAT scan. The small bag of Raisinets we got her sits on the table next to her bed.

Her blood work is okay. It's a relief, but she still has the scan. My head hurts as well, just like it has for over a week, and I know the problem is hereditary. I just don't know what it is. I'm doing everything I can to take my mind of life's other burdens- like the fact that I go to college in seventeen days or that my ex-boyfriend is an asshole or that I have work at 9 o'clock tomorrow or that I have health forms and insurance waivers and financial papers to get sorted out. It's a relief I have the majority of the items I need for my dorm.

My phone won't send messages. I can't text my boss about coming in tomorrow, or my friends to talk, and I can't google the requirements for pre-med or a biology major. That's been on my mind for nearly 2 or 3 weeks. I haven't told my mom yet. I want to text my roommate, or my high school friends, who have been there for me through thick and thin, through the cancer diagnosis to my parents' divorce to the cinematic dramatization that is my home life. But my phone still won't text, wifi on or wifi off. I blame it on the awful carrier. There is one person that will never heard of this hospital visit. My dad. He lives in Edison or Franklin or Piscataway with his job-hopping girlfriend who he's accused multiple times of being an addict and an alcoholic. I haven't spent a weekend with him in years. I'm thankful I'm 18 because should anything happen, he isn't who I'd want to be my guardian, no matter how short of a time it is.

Sometimes I'm ashamed to even carry his name, but I've always hated it regardless of who gave it to me. I'm a feminist, but I'll take my future partner's name just to not be connected to my father. And if I end up alone, I'll take my mom's. I would have liked to take his, my ex's, but at this point he'd probably rather bathe in lava or stick needles in his eyes than ever even speak to me again. I find this ironic, because it's been almost ten months and for eight of them he had no problem seeing all of me still. Its highschool drama I wish I could get over. Firsts and onlys that I wish could be undone, that I wish never happened. I'm sure he feels the same. He tells me that I have "single-handedly fucked him emotionally." That I ruined him. I don't understand how, when he's the one who led me on for eight months and then insisted that he did no such thing. That he stopped loving me a "while ago" when it was just two months before that he said he wanted to be together again.

The IV continues dripping and flowing through the tube. I'm fidgeting and my hand is cramping and I haven't showered today. My phone still won't send anything but it's 6 o'clock on the dot and I'm wondering how late we'll be here. My aunt says it'll take three hours to get the results of the scan and my mom hasn't even gone in yet, so 9 pm or later. I want to do something with my hands, I want to draw, I want to blast music and eat macaroni. I want to sleep, to talk to my ex, to finish an episode. I'm fidgeting too much. My mom is taken into the exam room, her bed wheeled out, catching on the curtain lightly. It's a ten minute walk to the cafeteria. Another cappuccino later and I am back in room #4 again. My mom is back, and awake, and okay. We wait for results as I sip my dollar twenty five cappuccino.