In Another Universe

Sheryl opened her eyes to another bonus morning. She could hear the rain running off the sides of the roof. It must be really pouring! No matter — it’s not like she need to travel to her meeting. 

Over the past several months, she had become accustomed to the short commute from her “cozy” bedroom, past the kitchen to pick up some coffee and coconut yogurt, to her desk that she had moved into the window nook as soon as her job went virtual. She’d been in the same apartment since 2007 but she still surprised herself when, clutching her coffee, she looked out to the busy street below. Her friends in Seattle used to joke that she must be a New Yorker with all the black in her wardrobe. Was it ironic that it was in New York that she learned to play more freely with color?

In this new life, she never married.. you know, after the twice in her first life. It was all the same to her. Her child, Al, had suggested that maybe she was asexual? or grey romantic? Maybe. Anyway, Severus, she often said, was all the man she needed now. Severus was curled up in the morning sun after a long night of, probably, hunting roaches. She tried not to imagine his evening adventures. One in a long line of black-cats-named-after-witches-whose-names-start-with-S, Severus charmed her immediately at the animal rescue she had been dragged to by a friend trying to jolt her out of a month-long mourning of a week-long relationship. 

—

Just before her final long-term stay in the hospital, Sheryl told her child—just starting their senior year of high school—that she would move out to Boston to be close to them when they started college the following year. Al convinced her not to move then  but after Al’s freshman year at college, they came home defeated, heart-broken, disappointed, and with the symptoms of some bad habits into which Sheryl wasn’t sure whether to pry. 

Sheryl hadn’t faired so well that year, either. She had never thought their house big before but, all alone with 14 chickens and a black cat named Pablo (one of two exceptions to the tradition), the walls had begun to echo. Around the same time, her friend Diane-from-New-York was pestering her about a job opening at ACS. 

She took it as a sign when ACS rushed her through the interview process so she gathered all the gumption she could muster and made the move. Moving to New York allowed her to be closer to Al and continue her work as a patient advocate all while volunteering at the original Gilda’s Club — such a delight for someone who fundraised the Seattle clubhouse into existence. Plus, she got to pull out her Rosanne Rosanna Danna impression from time to time. 

—

Al would be happy about the rain. Sheryl had been so pleased when they chose a graduate program in New York. It was only meant to be 2 years long but 9 years later, Al was still only a subway ride away. To no avail, the two of them had been trying to get her son out this way for years. I suppose that’s what you get when you raise your children in the PNW — adults who seek rain.

Sheryl had elected to contribute to virtual program at the clubhouse and was helping to assemble patients for ACS remotely. She worked with Gilda’s to find funding to issue tech to cancer patients so they wouldn’t have to compromise their safety to get support and treatment.  This also meant that she didn’t have to be so careful about her child who would be coming to stay the night.

—

They called it her second birthday. Tonight would be her sweet sixteen. The anniversary of the miracle that saved what remained of her life. A seven year fight — yes, fight — against cancer, debilitating treatment side effects, sudden weight gains, harrowing weight losses, loneliness, heart ache, depression, relentless nausea, health insurance gaps, the loss of her husband, her dog, isolation from her two children culminated in a two month stay in the hospital until, on this day, 16 years ago, after considering removing her life support, her father and two children watched her breath slow to a stop. 

When the nurse entered to mark the time of death, so Sheryl had been told, she took a sharp, sudden sip of breath. No one has been able to determine exactly what happened but, after her body stabilized, it appeared to all scans that the blood clots had dissipated. Scans in the subsequent months would show that organ tissue was beginning to repair and tumors had stopped growing.

She found her way to Tibet, following some suggestions she’d received in China years earlier. When she came back, she got connected to treatment at Bastyr. Over the course of the next couple years, the tumors reduced in size so much that she hardly noticed them whether she was sitting at her sewing machine for hours or hiking up a mountain. She was no longer a good test subject for the trials she organized patients around, but a combination of Eastern medicine, Western monitoring, and her aggressive optimism (which had returned over the years, bit by bit) were keeping her in the flesh.

—

Al arrived that evening with a dozen bright pink roses and one more in their hair.  “Lovely weather we’re having!” they grinned, shaking out their umbrella.

“How was acupuncture?” After years of not-so-subtle prodding, Sheryl had finally convinced Al to give it a try a few weeks ago. They had been going every week since.

“It was okay. I was face down, though, and I couldn’t really breathe.”

“Then don’t do it face down.”

“Well, yes, I know that now.” 

A mutual, exaggerated rolling of eyes. 

Gesturing around at the yards of pink tulle pinned to frame all the windows and doors, “Super cute!”

“Thank you, I think your brother will like it. Did you send him the party favors?”

“Yep, early last week. It should have arrived by now.”

—

A couple weeks before the blood clots in her lungs miraculously dissolved, Sheryl was walking laps around the hospital ward with Al. They were planning for their life together once she was discharged the following Tuesday (the day when the new blood clots would ultimately be found). They committed to spend more time together, regretting the past years where they began to fall apart. “Individuating,” Sheryl’s therapist had called it, as though having a name would make it less painful.

For the first couple weeks after her second birthday, Al and Sheryl stuck to their commitments. Usually diligent in their school work, Al took a few days off school. Sheryl was so grateful to be reconnecting with her daughter but she eventually acknowledged that “individuating” was important for both of them. 

—

After dinner, they put on their party hats and video-called her son back on the West coast. 

“Hi Bubba!” Al threw their arms up when Aaron answered. It was a relief to Sheryl that Al was always just as excited to see their brother as they were as a baby when they first gave their older brother that nickname. 

“Hey Al, Hi Mom.”

“Did you get your package?”

“Yeah…” he trailed, reluctantly putting on his party hat, “but what am I supposed to do with this?” pulling yards of pink and gold paper out of the box.

“It’s a banner! You put it up! What??”

Sheryl listened to the reassuring, familiar banter of her children, now 41 and 33. Gratefully, they had both learned how to take themselves a little less seriously than they used to and she didn’t have to “REGULATE” as she called it (in her head to herself). 

“So Mom,” Aaron started, dryly, “good work still being alive. Keep it up.”

“I’m doing my best,” she replied — less nervously than she used to. Playfully, out of an obligation to embarrass, “Any news on when your girlfriend becomes my daughter-in-law?”

—

Sheryl considered herself good at maintaining tight networks of friends but at Sheryl's sickest, Al had become downright wrathful towards people who came by the house to help out. Al had always been an emotional child but Sheryl felt deeply unprepared for the anger of Al's late adolescence. It wasn’t until recently that she learned Al was autistic and that the tantrums they had thrown would have been as much about the change in routine as anything. 

Back from the hospital, Sheryl and June-from-up-the-street sat Al down and drew a line. Sheryl had always felt a little embarrassed that she couldn’t have that conversation on her own but, truthfully, it was only in recent years that she had any real practice in being direct with her grown children.

Sheryl’s gentle suggestion that Al go to therapy became a requirement as June reminded Sheryl that she was still the parent and Al was still a minor. Sheryl and Al never talked about what went on in therapy — it was helpful to both of them to learn the difference between secrecy and privacy — but it seemed to Sheryl that it helped Al manage their anger.

Back in New York, Sheryl and Al had each earned themselves a handful of mental health diagnoses. Recently, Al accused Sheryl of using humor to diffuse tense situations too frequently when they were a kid. Sheryl wasn’t sure that was wrong of her but she had learned how to say, “I’m sorry,” without qualifying or questioning her own version of the story.

—

P.J.’ed, showered, and brushed, Al and Sheryl pulled up the blankets and turned off the light, making time for the words that only meet ears in the shadows.

“Mom?”

“Yes sweetie?”

“Sometimes I have nightmares… that… you didn’t live. That your breath didn’t start back up and you never came home,” they sniffed. Sheryl could just see Al’s thumb brush a tear from their cheek in the yellow glow spilling inside from the street lights. 

“Hmmmm,” Sheryl sighed. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know but she asked anyway, “What is it like in the dream?”

“It’s awful!” Al gasped. “I mean… my life is basically the exact same. I’ve done all the same things, more or less, but you weren’t there. You weren’t at my track meets.” Incredulous, “I played this horrible accidentally-sad solo version of a Charlie Brown Christmas song with the Jazz Band. You weren’t there at my dance recitals. You weren’t there in college when my health started failing and my professors couldn’t understand me and I didn’t know what to do.” In angry whispers, “I moved to New York without knowing the city at all. I never got to come out to you — I had to come out to the rest of the family without you! Most of them don’t even try to use my pronouns without you! You didn’t meet any of my partners after Seth!! That thing you said to me when you were in the hospital? About you and Grandma? About Skittles in Paris!! That was the last thing you ever said to me! Mom, it’s terrible!”

“Oh sweetie.” Sheryl pulled Al close, “even if I had died I would never have left you alone.”