Triggers

In a casual conversation last week with a group of friends, someone mentioned MIT. As in, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A school that every lower middle class kid from New England has heard of, next to Harvard and Yale. At some point, starting at a very young age, we have all been lectured by our elders on the importance of securing a scholarship to attend one of these schools.

MIT was a school I had absolutely no relationship to, except the relationship of knowing I would never have a relationship because I could barely add two numbers together without first drawing a picture of the numbers. Somehow in grade school, I already knew MIT wouldn’t accept someone who drew five dots and seven dots and added each dot together to make thirteen dots. Or twelve or whatever.

Now when I hear the word MIT, it’s like some latent virus rearing its ugly head. I didn’t know it was there, working around the clock, binding to my cells. Now I am symptomatic, and the symptoms are expressing themselves as flashbacks of the MIT campus. Not because I ever made that scholarship and attended MIT, or even had friends that attended MIT. Instead I had a drive-by relationship with MIT at the age of thirty-six. I drove through the Cambridge campus every day, several times a day when June was being treated at Boston Children’s Hospital on the way to a hotel for a bit of reprieve.

I now know the way to the hotel in Cambridge from Boston Children’s by heart. This is the second time I have stayed here. It’s June’s first time. We were here only a month ago for several weeks during her tumor resection. The first time I drove by myself to the hotel there was bumper to bumper traffic. After I crossed the bridge into Cambridge, I sat in traffic and watched kids with backpacks walking in groups, crossing the street. Must be a school, I thought. Moments later I saw a sign that said “MIT”.

Triggers come in all forms. Prior to this day I had no idea the mention of MIT would cause me emotional dysregulation. Driving through the campus was as meaningless to me as someone mentioning I’d needed a scholarship to attend it when I was ten.

Now, here I am. Someone has mentioned MIT and suddenly I’ve secretly and politely withdrawn from the conversation. I continue to nod my head. The person doesn’t realize I am no longer listening. I’ve become very good at this, but not because I want to be. I’ve checked out and I am in my brain, in my car, driving across the Charles River, to a hotel that exists just beyond the MIT campus. I drive past a little bagel shop that sells bagel sandwiches named after things only MIT students understand. A place on many mornings I’d pick up a coffee and bagels for me and husband before heading back to the hospital. A place where I’d sit on some oversized leather chair and enviously watch all the kids joyously socializing over lox and lattes, while I waited for our food, to-go. They reminded me of when I was a kid. A period of time I never desired to return to, but now felt more appealing than ever. A time that existed in the before. The before pain. The before anxiety. The before June’s diagnosis.

Every time I arrive to the hotel my mind takes inventory of the obstacles separating me from the hospital. MIT, the Charles River, various restaurants and bars, Massachusetts College of Art and Design and several tunnels, in that order.

At any given time, the main lobby of the hotel is crawling with people in suits. In the morning business people drink coffee in white paper cups and mingle. I wonder if they all actually know one another or are meeting for the first time and are just that friendly. The thought of traveling for work and having new, unfamiliar, encounters seems like an utterly alien existence to me.

Just in front of the elevators is a large restaurant which has no walls, except one tiny divider separating the elevators from the restaurant. A bar wraps around the room and is the focal point of the restaurant. It turns an electric blue at night. In the evening, business people sit at the bar in blue tinted suits and drink martinis after conducting business. They look important and sexy. I see my reflection in them, small, frumpy, exhausted.

I attempt to push June in her stroller, feed bag pumping, tube running into her nose, as quickly as possible past the restaurant, to behind the divider, and to the elevators. I have bags crammed under the stroller and a big suitcase I’m dragging behind me. I’m four months pregnant and besides the growing fetus, I feel completely void of life. June’s just finished a fifth round of chemo. She’s spontaneously throwing up. We made several stops on the way down to sop up throw-up out of her carseat. I envy the people in suits, and I try not to stare. We don’t fit in, so I cover June in her stroller to protect her from things like Covid and the wandering eyes of happy, busy people. I pray she doesn’t throw up in the lobby. I imagine sitting at the bar and drinking a martini.

My body aches to go home, but we are here for June’s transplant workup which consists of two daunting days filled with back-to-back appointments. At the end of it, we will have seen fifteen different specialists. Each specialist is going to deliver me news about June’s organ function. After five rounds of chemotherapy, do her kidneys still work? Is her heart still sufficiently pumping blood? How much hearing loss have her tiny developing ears suffered? We wait in fifteen lobbies spread out on the sprawling Boston Children’s campus. In each we are surrounded by kids and their parents. I wonder if any of them have cancer too. I fight back tears and hold my breath every time a nurse comes out to the waiting room to call our name. Soon, a doctor would read me the list of irreversible damage the chemo has caused. Soon, the feeling of never being the same would be confirmed in these new diagnoses. Soon cancer wouldn’t be the only chronic ailment on the list. I didn’t want to know. I was afraid of knowing. I cried when the news was bad. I sobbed when the news was good. “Great news, June’s eye sight is perfect,” the optometrist said.

If you’d asked me before June got sick, I could never have told you how to get to Cambridge from Boston. I didn’t realize the Charles River separated the two. My father once lived in Cambridge. I remember him quizzing my sister and I as we passed water, “Name that river!” and without hesitation I’d try to beat my sister to the punch and yell, “the Charles!”. I remember thinking it looked brown. I remember disliking it. I also disliked the city. The loud noises, the heat, the people. I felt like a single grain in a fifty-pound bag of rice. The city felt as if it could swallow me whole. Every time I’d visit my dad, the Charles River was the first reminder that I was no longer home.

The first time I left June and husband at the hospital to return to our hotel room in Cambridge, I was alone. I didn’t want to leave her, but there wasn’t room for us both to stay. I was nine weeks pregnant with our son. Husband suggested we alternate nights in the hotel so that at least one of us was getting rest, every other night. Before the sun started to set, despite it not being the end of our day, husband and I took turns gifting one another an end to the day. On my days, I’d reluctantly leave the hospital room after rehearsing the notion that it was probably best for me, for June, and for the growing baby in my belly. Care for June didn’t end when the sun set, therefore sleep when possible was important. When most people are placing their babies and children in their cribs or beds at night, and retreating to their own bedroom to relax, we were often just beginning our night. There were medications and fluids to be administered. Vitals had to be taken every four hours. The nights echoed beeping pumps and alarming monitors. June’s heart rate would drop and the monitor would scream. June’s oxygen would dip and the monitor would scream. I’d jump out of bed. Concerned. Delirious. Barefoot on the hospital floor. Trying to see June in the light of the beeping machines. The nurse would hurry through the door, assess June, and turn off the alarm. Relieved she was okay, I would hush her back to sleep, rub her bald head and say, “It’s alright, close your eyes and go back to sleep baby.” She would close her little eyes and roll to her side. She’d pull her pink blanket up over her head which was my cue to return to my bed. A half hour later, the same thing would happen. All night long, the machines screamed, and I ran to June, heart pounding, half-asleep.

For several weeks, every other day while we stayed for June’s recovery after the tumor resection, I’d drive to the hotel in Cambridge. The first stretch of the drive took me past a beautiful strip of restaurants with outdoor patio seating. Big lit up signs hovered above beautiful people who were standing on sidewalks in skimpy summer attire, smoking cigarettes or vape pens, mingling with friends. I’d always think, “Maybe when June is better, we can come back, just the two of us and enjoy a carefree weekend here.” Me and husband. Although, living carefree was a distant, unattainable way of life. I imagined I’d never feel carefree again as long as I lived. I’d reach for the box of tissues that lived on my passenger seat. I’d wipe my eyes until they were raw. I’d arrive at the hotel, park, and sit in my car, take deep breaths, cry the last of my tears, then make my way to the hotel lobby.

In the hotel I’d walk past beautiful people, feeling haggard and broken. My eyes cast down because I don’t want them to see that I am a thirty-six year old woman and I don’t know who I am anymore. Their suits, again remind me, they know who they are. I quickly enter the elevator and press the button. I stare at myself in the unforgiving elevator mirror and curse God, and then beg him to take me directly to my floor without any other stops. I can’t bear to see one more person. I finally reach my floor and dart in the direction of my room. I find my door and fumble for the key. I swipe the key. I enter the room and collapse on the inside of the door as I bolt the top lock. I turn and look at the room. It’s empty. My bag is on the floor where I had left it the night before last. Clothes are strewn out of it. The curtains are open, which I immediately go to close, but before I do I stop and stare at the people on the street. I look out to the other rooms across the way. I wonder if they too have locked themselves in. Probably not, they all seem relaxed, almost carefree. I’ll never forget how that once felt.

I flip the bathroom light switch on. I take off my dirty, bile stained hospital clothing and drop it on the white tiled floor. I turn on the shower and catch myself in the mirror. I examine my growing belly. It feels much bigger when I am wearing pants, but it doesn’t appear that much bigger now that I am looking at it. I stare at my bloodshot eyes and wonder, how will I get through this? How will I survive? How will I keep a baby alive inside of me while trying to keep my baby alive inside the hospital? I decide I don’t need all of the answers right now. Just a hot shower and a bed. I allow the water to burn the skin on my back. I scrub my body like I’m scrubbing stuck burnt spaghetti out of a pan with a Brillo pad. I can wash off the hospital, but I can’t wash away the anguish. I try anyway. I rub a little bottle of hotel lotion on my flaming red body so I don’t crack, and put on clean pajamas. I slip into bed and it’s only six o’clock, but my body tells me it’s done. I see a mini fridge next to the tv, and suddenly, I have an appetite. I open the fridge and there’s one half-full mini can of ginger ale husband must have brought back from the hospital last night. I close the fridge and feel cold water splatter my feet. Yuck, I think. I don’t have the energy to figure out where the water is coming from. There’s no puddle on the floor, so I forget it. I lay back down and close my eyes. I toss and turn all night long because my body and my mind cannot be at peace. They won’t settle. June is in the hospital. June has cancer. June has had a major surgery that she may never recover from. My brain and body won’t let me sleep because they are trying to solve all of life’s problems. They are trying to figure out how we are going to overcome all of this and survive. I tell my body it can’t figure it out tonight and to go to sleep, but my mind won’t listen. All night long, I am running to alarms and being swallowed by the Charles River.