I stood alone in the front entry, staring at the black hole created by the front door. Yellow lamplight made triangles on the walls, but I could hardly see them. Images from the day flashed through my head: my family standing around the piano singing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” my dad’s favorite Easter hymn. Picking the dried cranberries out of hot cross buns with sticky fingers because I liked the bread more without them. The mountain of whipped cream on top of the chocolate pie we ate for dessert. My sister, usually the picture of health, slumped on the hard wooden bench by the door, her face the color of chalk. My mom rushing into the cold with her coat unzipped and her snow boots untied. My dad pounding the door of our minivan with his fist, tearing his skin on the ice binding it shut and not noticing the pain or the blood dripping onto the snow. How had the evening gone downhill so quickly?
In the next room, eleven-year-old Sam was distracting five-year-old Peter by telling him a silly story with dramatic antics and faces. I should have been in there, comforting my brothers, but instead I was unable to move. I was fifteen, the oldest daughter. I thought I was better than this.
I tentatively dialed the phone number my dad had given me as he left. “Hey Mr. Johnson, this is Ellen. Dad said you have to come over and be with us, he and mom had to take Ann to the ER, I don’t know what’s going on . . .” I cursed my voice as it wavered like a bird in a storm. I don’t know what’s going on. Please come fast, I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to be alone.
Sam came down the hallway and I asked him what had happened.
“Ann came out of the bathroom after she finished brushing her teeth,” he said, speaking so quickly his words tripped on each other, “and th-then she passed out, she turned white, and fell on her knees. And she threw up blood, and Dad called Grampa, and he told them to go to the hospital.”
Could he be wrong? He’s just a kid, after all. Is he sure it wasn’t just red vomit? But we hadn’t eaten anything red, or any bloody meat. It should have been chocolate pie in the toilet.
What sort of things caused internal bleeding? I had recently heard about a friend of a friend whose daughter was dying from cancer, and my mind jumped to that. Is Ann going to die too? As I stood by myself, I pictured her funeral. The front door was still open, letting in the cold, and I shivered.
It felt like ten years passed before Mr. and Mrs. Johnson came. They stood in front of the door in their winter coats, the fur on the edge of Mrs. Johnson’s hood speckled with snow. Then Dad came up the steps. He sat on the bench with his head in his hands. Why was he home? Was Ann okay? Did he know what was wrong?
He shook his head. Because of Covid he wasn’t allowed into the hospital, so he had watched through glass doors as nurses rushed his daughter away in a wheelchair.
I stayed up most of the night. By the time I fell asleep, the cuffs of my sweater were soaked through from wiping my eyes. The next morning my mom explained that Ann had been severely dehydrated. That’s why she fainted and threw up, which in turn probably tore her throat and it bled (though we thought we would never know for sure what caused it). As long as Ann drank enough water in the future, she should be fine.
***
But she wasn’t fine. Two years later, her internal bleeding and faintness returned. On Saturday night she vomited blood again. So Mom made a doctor’s appointment for Sunday morning.
The next day, Dad and my brothers and I went to church in Custer, forty-five minutes away. When we started driving back to Rapid City, I called my mom to let her know. But she didn’t answer. The phone rang and rang and rang and then went to voicemail where an unfamiliar male voice announced, “You have reached six, zero, five . . .” Startled, I hung up. I must have called the wrong number, and I didn’t want anyone to know.
I dialed again, double checking the numbers. I waited while the phone rang, willing someone to pick up. But no one did, and I got voicemail, where the same strange man greeted me. This time I listened, and to my surprise, it was our phone number he spoke. This was us. I left a message telling my mom we would be home in forty-five minutes. She was probably watching Hamilton with Ann and couldn’t hear the phone.
When we arrived home, four hours after Ann’s appointment, her half eaten breakfast still sat on the table. My message was unread on the answering machine, as well as one from Grampa requesting we give him a jingle when we had a chance. My dad called him back and he told us that Ann’s iron levels had dropped dangerously. She needed an endoscopy, but no one in town would scope a child. So she was put on a life flight to the children’s hospital in Sioux Falls.
It was late that night that we finally learned Ann had an ulcer in her stomach, which was bleeding. She was put on five medications and given a blood transfusion while she slept.
The next day, she came home.
A week later, my siblings and I got the flu. Ann’s faintness worsened, and we were told she needed another blood transfusion. She was admitted to the hospital for the night.
My dad decided to bring Ann dinner. It wouldn’t take long, he said. About forty-five minutes. My brothers and I stayed home. Peter was asleep, so Sam and I sat alone on the squishy brown couch and talked. As time went by, I brought up the fact our voicemail had a weird dude and asked Sam if we should make a new recording, with us in it. “Sure,” he said. He picked up the phone, which was sitting on an end table nearby in case anyone called. What if we did a funny one? “Knock knock. Who’s there? The Sheehy’s. The Sheehy’s who? The Sheehy’s are currently unavailable, but we might get back to you before the end of the world.”
We didn’t want to think about how Ann should have been all better after they figured out what was wrong with her, and after her first blood transfusion. We didn’t want to think about anything. It was easier to pretend that everything was normal. We were alone, and Dad had been gone for an hour longer than he said he would, and he was in a hurry, and the roads were icy.
***
There’s a well known Bible story of Jesus calming the sea. I hear people speak all the time of how with two words–“be still”–he turned dark waves like mountains into a calm, glassy sea that reflected the night sky. But before that miracle, a handful of men were in a shallow boat that tumbled around like a volleyball, smacked back and forth by the waves in a cruel game. The wind blew rain into their faces and it stung and got in their eyes so they couldn’t see. Their clothes were wet and stuck to their skin. The bottom of the boat was full of water, and they kept falling into it. Soon the boat would flip, or be crushed.
And Jesus was asleep. Despite the swooping of the boat in the water, the crashing noise, the cold wet of the storm, he was sleeping. The disciples woke him up and asked, are you crazy? Why on earth are you asleep? Can’t you see we’re about to all get killed? One more wave and we are all going to die!
Jesus, the creator of the world, simply asked them a question: “Why are you so afraid?”
***
This summer, my sister got a job at a retirement home serving meals to the residents. The place is near where we live, and every day she rode my bicycle to work with her black uniform and green metal water bottle tucked in a backpack. Sometimes she had to stay late, and did not make it home until half an hour past her normal time. I would start to wonder–is she coming home at all? Or is she lying on the sidewalk somewhere, tangled in the bicycle, her face white? Will I have to go through it all again? Maybe someday. If that day comes, the storm might be terrible, the waves might feel as tall as Mount Everest, and the rain and wind might be so hard I cannot see clearly, but I will never have to persevere alone.
Featured image Looking Back on the Outer Banks, graphite on paper. Drawn by the author.
Ellen Sheehy 