DEATH’S FLOWER

Isla Roen

5th Grade • Saxe Middle School

“We’re going on a field trip!” Mom cries. Lucy is sulking in the back seat, for she hated going to the doctor. I give her a nudge and she turns her head away from me to hide a smile. I roll my eyes and pull her ponytail.

“Stop it Iris!” she whines.

“Both of you, CUT IT OUT!” Dad yells. That shut me up.

“But Daddy, Iris did it, not me!” Lucy kicks the seat in front of her.

“Lucy,” Mom says, annoyed. “That was my seat!”

Sam kicks my shin, and pretty hard. Me and Sam are twins, both 14. That feeling when you want to scream but you know you have to be the bigger person came rolling inside of me. We had been seeing strange things happening with Lucy along with a bump on her neck. Last week, the doctors had taken a small sample of that and since then, we have been on the road to quite a few labs. Today, we hoped would be the day that we would get the results of what has been going on in Lucy’s 6year-old body. Ever since this process has started, my family has been a magnet to fights.

Finally, we arrive at the doctor's office and I pull out my phone ready to drain out all the screaming that Lucy was going to do. I plug in my earbuds and turn on “Today’s Hits” at its

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loudest notch. I start listening when Sam grabs one of them right out of my ear.

“My phone is dead!” he screams, competing with the music. Everyone looks at him and his face flushes bright red. This happened to him quite a lot.

When Lucy is done, we turn off our music, anxiously waiting for a word. Instead, Mom and Dad get called back into the office. They want Lucy to stay in the waiting room with us. I hear a gasp. I look at Sam. He’s heard it too. I tell him I’ll go in, while he watches Lucy.

“Where ya goin’?” she asks. I ignore her and walk in. Everyone looks wide eyed.

“What is it? I ask. I feel my legs start to fail. Mom looks at Dad and he nods as if giving her permission to speak.

“Iris, Lucy is very sick.” I feel confused. “We have caught this very late and we cannot remove it from her body safely.”

“No.” I say. “No no.” Grandma had it too. I remember too clearly. Cancer has taken one of my favorite people in the whole world. Grandma was like my go-to person. She always was there for me. Then, cancer just wiped her out. She died within months of getting it. I clutch my phone in my hand so tight, I feel like I will shatter it.

“We want her to stay at the hospital for a while to take some tests,” the nurse says. The first tear streaks Mom’s face. She nods.

I clear my throat to get the nurse’s attention. “Will she survive?” I ask.

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“It all depends on how strong her body is.” With that, she walks past me and takes her mask off. I shook my head with disbelief. Ugh. I could already tell this was NOT the summer that I was hoping for.

Mom, Dad and Lucy all head out to the car, but I stay in with Sam. I repeat what Mom had said to me just before.

“Sam, Lucy is very sick.”

“Cancer?” he asks, as if reading my mind. I purse my lips. His eyelids flutter a little and he takes my hand.

“Hang in there Sam. We’ve got each other.” Then, we walk out together. I forgot for a while how much I loved and needed Sam.

When we reach the hospital, Lucy licks her lips. “What’s wrong with me?” she asks casually.

“Oh Lucy,” Mom cries.

“Tell me!” she shrieks.

“Lucy, you’re a little sick, so the people here are going to help you.” Mom understates a little.

A couple weeks later, nothing changed. Even the morning call. My least favorite part of the day. “Good morning!” the nurse says cheerfully. She’s always there to remind us that we are still in the hospital. Still waiting and hoping for the clearance for Lucy.

I look at Sam. He rolls his eyes with feigned annoyance but quite unexpectedly for both of us, a tear slid down his cheek. I wrap my arm around him. He tries to dodge me but fails and puts his head in my chest. I give him a wonky smile with my

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braces face. His eyes light up a little, and it feels good knowing I was the cause for it. Sam was always sad lately. Weeks ago because of Grandma who he also looked up to, and today, because of Lucy. Of course we all were, but Sam seemed as if something had punched him right in the gut. It was so unfair. Nothing seemed fair at this point in time. Grandma had passed just before Lucy got sick. Our family had been broken ever since.

Sam picks Lucy up and brings her to the couch in the office. She was going to have to leave soon, though. When Mom motioned “out,” Sam took her back to her room. I offer to do so, but he insists, I think because he himself couldn’t bear to hear what the doctor had to say.

“Hello. Good to see you all.” Dr. Tilidich says. She pursed her lips, and gave up a sad smile. A tear rolled down Mom’s cheek. “As you know, we just took a body scan of Lucy and we have gotten the results.” She shook her head sadly, giving away any hope of Lucy’s small chance. Everyday, Lucy’s chance seemed just to narrow. It had been two weeks. I crossed my legs under my chair and tried to relax but whenever Dr. Tilidich talked, I felt my elbows prop up my back and started to squirm again. “There is nothing we can do.” She spoke carefully, almost scared. “We have dealt with many cancer children before, but only some make it through treatment.” We all wait. “Lucy will not be one of them.” That narrow chance that I had just been thinking of, was now out of our reach. Mom squeezes my hand and I cry into her shoulder. She puts her arm around me and whispers,

“All we’ve got is each other, Iris, so we need to make the best of it. All we can do is watch the clock and spend as much time

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with her as we can.” I feel my throat go dry.

Sam is waiting in the hall when we come out. He is biting his lip. Unleashing a little bit of the breath that I had been holding in the office, I say “just worse.” I barely make that out. He squints a little, almost like he is trying to make it seem real. “Lucy is going to die.” He nods almost as if he knew what was going to happen in the future. We stand there face to face for a while. I try to smile, to change the mood a little, but his face stays dead serious.

“How many ways can they say it?” he asks. “They’re just making it harder for us. I mean they’ve said it at least for the past week. We all understand now!” His voice breaks into a yell and I look to see if anyone is staring. “They said it once, and we know it's true. Yeah, she’s going to die. What I don’t understand is why they keep making us cry in suspense. They keep us all on the edge of the cliff, and when they know Lucy is done, that's when they push us off! They make us sit here every single day to just hear the same thing over and over again!” By the end of Sam’s meltdown, he’s crying. I’ve never seen a person in my life cry that hard. I didn’t know what to do.

“Sam,” I say. “You can’t react to something and try to solve a problem by blaming someone else for their faults and insult someone when you feel sad. It’s not fair Sam, but that doesn’t mean we can take it out on others.” He glares at me for a minute, but then his head drops and he falls to his knees. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Sam, people are counting on us to lift their spirits. To feel the joy they once had. Mom and Dad need us, and we can’t break now. We’re a team and we have to get through this together, holding hands the entire way.” I take a seat next to him.

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“They really need us?” he asks.

“Sam, we all need each other. That’s what a family is for.”

We sit there all night in the same spot. Sam falls asleep with his head in my lap, and I rest my head on his shoulder. My pants are wet from his tears, so I decide it's alright to cry into him too. When we wake up tomorrow, our clothes are going to be soaked to our skin.

Lucy is playing with her dolls in the morning. Dr. Tilidich said that because there was nothing we could do, she would be all right to go home. There, we would lose her, together. On the way home, Lucy sat in the back, in her little car seat singing the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” with Mom and Dad. Both were laughing and crying at the same time. Then she spoke in her little cute voice. “Mommy, Daddy, why are you all so sad?”

This just makes Mom cry harder. So hard that she’s shaking. Then, Lucy starts to cry, choking on snot and flailing around. This makes Sam and I cry too. We must have been a real strange sight, a car pulled over with everyone crying, even their bratty teenagers. Well, whoever is staring must not know what it’s like having a family member die, right in front of your eyes. Knowing that there's nothing that you can do, so little that you feel helpless. Like a baby without a mother. When you know something is wrong, you can feel it in the air. You can almost sense just because of what's going on around you. That's how it felt today.

Sitting up, feeling something not right about the house. That's when I realized. I didn’t hear the shallow breathing coming from Lucy’s room. I walked in and it was over. Just like that. Dad was holding Lucy in his arms, holding her like an

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infant and kissing her cold head. Mom was on the ground, her head tucked in her knees quietly crying. She was rocking back and forth with a rhythm. I blew my nose on a Kleenex and sat down next to Mom. She gave me a forced smile.

“It’s going to be alright Mom,” I said even though I had second thoughts about that. The world seemed to stand still then. My hand was on Mom’s back and I could feel her pressure on it. Dad had walked over now. He had placed Lucy back on her bed almost as if she was still alive, and this was still a day where we were still waiting and praying. His eyes were brimmed with tears and his face was as red as a tomato. Sam crawled onto Dad’s lap like a baby and Dad was stroking his soft chestnut hair. I could feel Lucy’s presence slowly start to fade away.

Later that day, I walked outside and saw the flowers we had planted with Lucy. She claimed each represented a family member. One for Ninnin, one for Mom, one for Dad, one for Sam, one for me, and of course one for her. But that was only six. I asked her why she planted seven. She said that if someone died, they deserved two flowers. I laughed at that, because it seemed like a silly thing then, but now I know what she was trying to tell me. Each flower had a tag on them telling who they represented. I ran inside and got a new piece of cardboard and wrote on it:

Lucy,

When you told me that you got an extra flower for someone who will die,

I didn’t know what you were trying to say.

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Now I do.

I made a joke out of reality and I guess I knew I was doing it.

I guess I didn’t want to face the facts

I understand now that this is reality.

I am sorry that it is no longer a joke

I just want you to know that I don’t think that there would be enough flowers in the world

To give you what you deserve. ~Iris

It was going to be hard to let such a great person go. But our neighbors, friends and family had our side. Never would life ever be the same, but the world was going to keep revolving, the sun was going to keep shining, and the flowers were going to keep blooming. That was all I could ask for, that was all I needed. Walking to the funeral, it was different. We were all there together wishing Lucy farewell, and nobody was wearing any black. We were all there wearing purple, the color of Lucy’s favorite flower.

I walk up, ready to make my speech. Ready to say my words that I hope would carry Lucy to heaven. Then I realize, though, who needs a stupid peice of paper to wish their own sister goodbye? I hand it to Mom, and stand when they call my name.

“This is to my sister,” I start. “Not to the sister who was lying in the hospital bed. Not to the sister who was barely able to make a sound. This is the sister who laughed and was always out going. To the one who always made us smile. My sister

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should not be thought of in the Emergency Room. She should be thought of the kind girl that she was. I refuse to forget her, even though life will go on. I refuse to even stop thinking of her. This is to my sister. The real person inside her that she was. I must thank everybody for coming because I know she’s looking down on us right now, and I know she’s smiling.”

This was the first time since Lucy’s death that I looked up from my dirty, white pair of Converses. I guess I never realized that the sun was still shining and the flowers were still blooming and the world was still revolving. If the people that I loved, the people that were going to stand by my side were there, I could be happy once again. This hadn’t been the summer that I had wanted it to be. At the same time, I wouldn’t be the person that I was without Lucy. I was so glad that Lucy’s life was a lovely chapter in my book and even more so, that my family was there to spend it with me.

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