When she sat up in bed and examined the catheter taped to the crook of her left arm, wondering if she might be able to remove it herself, Murphy went a bit nuts, seized simultaneously by tentative joy and trepidation, hands shaking and mouth trembling as he hovered, babbling, “You’re awake, you’re talking, baby, don’t get up, chill out, Beebs, you can’t get up, you’re talking, look at you, I love you, you’re scaring me.”
To Pax, Bibi said, “Hi, hunk. I love you more than oxygen.” And to Pogo she said, “You were there when I needed you, dude, loaning me your car. No, wait. I invented all that. But if it had been real, you would have lent it to me, wouldn’t you, sweet boy?”
“Mi jalopy es su jalopy,” Pogo said.
Pax and Pogo seemed to be riding with her abrupt recovery much better than were her mom and dad, almost as if they understood and had internalized a little of what had happened, though she couldn’t figure out how that could be possible.
In response to the EEG alarm, a nurse arrived. Recovering quickly from the shock of seeing her formerly comatose patient so animated, she tried to calm everyone and explain that the catheter could not come out until the doctor ordered it removed. “You still need to be hydrated, Bibi.”
“What I need,” Bibi replied, “is two cheeseburgers and a pizza. I’m starving. A glucose diet sucks. Sorry I smell so bad.”
“You don’t smell bad,” the nurse assured her.
“Well, see, I still have a nose, so while it’s kind of you to say I don’t smell, I really do. By the way, I don’t have brain cancer anymore. We need to do all those tests again, so you can let me go home.” She winked at Pax and said, “You look delicious. What are you grinning about?”
Just then a night-duty intern arrived, as did another nurse, and a discussion ensued about whether or not Bibi still had cancer, who had the authority to order the tests, and whether they would have to wait until morning. Technicians were on duty to do everything from X rays to MRIs; they had to be there for the ER, which never closed. Murphy and Nancy somehow got the idea that the problem was related to insurance-company reluctance to pay for off-hour tests, and they declared that they would pay cash, to hell with the insurance company. Pax said he would pay for the tests, and Pogo said he would sell his damn car to pay for them. But finally everyone was made to understand that the insurance-company thing was a misunderstanding and that no one would have to pay cash. The head nurse on that shift reached Dr. Sanjay Chandra by phone. He expressed doubt that Bibi could know that she was cancer-free, doubt that it was even possible for gliomatosis cerebri to go into remission, but he ordered the catheter removed and the tests performed after Bibi spoke with him and told him she was symptom-free.
When she got out of bed, her mother grabbed her, embraced her with the ferocity of a Realtor who never let a client get away. Nancy was crying and laughing, and her kisses were wet, and she said, “How can this be, how can this happen?” And Bibi said, “After all, it won’t be what it’ll be,” and into her mother’s confusion, she said, “I love you so much, Mom, I always have, I always will.” Murphy was there, it became a group hug, and he was a bigger mess than Nancy. In spite of all his thrashing the waves, lacerating and shredding and riding the behemoths with no fear, Big Kahuna of his generation, he was nonetheless a softie, all heart and as tender as a kitten. He couldn’t speak, except to say her name, over and over, as if he had thought he’d never say it again to her alive. Pogo, too, looking at her with those blue eyes that melted other women, but with a love as pure as any that anyone had ever known, her brother from another mother, adoring her as she adored him. “Beebs,” he said, and she said, “Dude,” and he held her just long enough to convince himself that she was as real as she had always been.
In sweaty and rumpled pajamas, hair wild and tangled from being scrunched under the electro cap, certain that her breath could put a coat of rust on polished iron, Bibi nevertheless fell into Paxton’s arms, and he folded her to him so that the hospital room seemed almost to disappear. She said that she was a mess, and he said that she was the best thing he’d ever seen, and she said she stank, and he said she smelled like springtime, and damn could that man kiss.
When an orderly arrived with the gurney and Bibi was transferred to it, along with her IV rack, she said to him, “I’m sorry I stink,” and he said, “No, hey, I’ve smelled a lot worse.”