That sort of talk had become their ritual - half joking, more than half serious.
‘When can we go to the water park, Mom?’
‘Not yet, Ben, not yet.’
Every morning he came up with something different - a football game, the movies, rock climbing, even going to see a ballet, which they’d done a few years ago for his sister’s sake and he’d hated it. Now the thought made them both laugh.
Benjamin had always been that rare type of kid who almost never asks for anything and when he did it was always with a sense of guilt in his voice, like maybe it was too much to ask and he was being a bother.
He knew he was sick, but you cannot expect a boy not even eight understand just how sick. At least that’s what she hoped and she did not dare to pry for fear the truth might be too ugly to bear. The when game gave them hope even as he lay there on his pillow, too frail to get up most days. The treatment was brutal and all that kept them going was that distant light at the end of the tunnel, when there will be football games and ice-cream and the summer camp.
Things were different in the dead of night. As she lay on her pillow, Liz could feel the pain growing in her chest, threatening to rip her open and expose the void where her heart once stood. She’s place both her hands firmly between her thighs to keep them still for one more night. She’d lay there for hours shivering, her skin begging the nails to do their job and start stripping it of the bones in thin strips of bloody meat. The howls in her throat begging to be let out. ‘Not yet, not yet’, she’d hush herself. Ben would be waiting to see her first thing in the morning, ready to smile and talk of beaches and horse rides. And the nurse would be there to urge her to stay strong and Ma would call to urge her to have faith, father Douglas was praying for them. Sometimes she cursed herself for giving up on Ben, if she didn’t believe all will be well who would? If she could get him through the next round and the one after that, they would reach the light.
Ben dreamed of the light too. A cold ice-blue light of an empty room, where he was all alone. The room in his dream was always quiet, no monitors beeping and buzzing around him. No nurses in white coats to make him sick with their needles. No pain, finally. A soft rustle of a woman’s skirt and he’d turn his head to see his mother just outside the door. Funny why she should just stand there waving good-bye instead of walking in with a smile on her face. Suddenly, the room started to grow, white-tiled walls rushing in all directions, taking the door with them, until he could barely see her anymore. When the door started to close he’d wake up yelling ‘Not yet! Not yet!’
He never told her of his dreams and he spent the early hours thinking of something funny for their game. Always something new - going to Egypt to see real crocodiles?
She’d see the joke, of course. Everybody in the family remembered that one time when his sister tricked him into believing she’d learned a magic spell to turn the stuffed crocodile with a huge grin into a live one. And little Benny wet his pants and started to wail. If he can beat this, surely he wouldn’t be afraid of crocodiles anymore.
As long as he was quick enough in his dreams, the door wouldn’t shut and the game would go on forever.
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