Don't Be Such a Baby

            It’s July 22, 2022, and I’m sitting in my doctor’s crowded waiting room, worrying about catching Covid, when my phone starts buzzing. I can see it’s my brother’s wife, Tammy. This can’t be good.

My brother John was diagnosed with Bone Marrow cancer at age 50 and was told he had 3 years to live. His response: “This cancer doesn’t know who it’s dealing with!” He meant what he said. That was 12 years ago.

Recently we learned that he also had stage 4 liver cancer, which sounded totally hopeless, but he still isn’t giving up. You see, this isn’t the first time he’s come close to death.

Seven years ago, he contracted the H1N1 flu virus and went into a coma for a month. We thought we’d lost him then, but by some miracle he came out of it, quickly got his strength back and went back to work.

John lives with his wife and two kids in Chicago, and I live in LA, so most of our communication is by phone. He often calls on Sunday mornings to see how I’m doing and to reminisce about our childhood escapades. We’re the youngest of four kids and grew up in a small town in Wisconsin. He’s always been a great big brother. When we were kids, he’d let me tag along wherever he went, and teach me cool things, like how to fish.

On the first day of our summer vacation when I was 9 and John was 10, he gathered all his fishing gear and took me to the closest lake: Little Lake Butte de Morts, where the local paper factories dumped all their waste. It smelled like rotten eggs and looked like pea soup, but we didn’t care because there were fish in it.  John showed me how to put the worm on the hook and cast the line, and within an hour we each caught one bullhead, which are like small catfish.

“I’m gonna teach you how to clean these,” he said. They were hard to clean because they had skin not scales. So, first, he chopped the head off, then with a pair of pliers he peeled off the shiny black skin, revealing the soft, pink flesh.

“Here, you try,” he said handing me the pliers. I took them, but my hands started shaking. “Come on Martha don’t be such a baby,” he said fully confident that I could do it. So, I took a deep breath and quickly pulled off the skin.

“Good job! Let’s cook these for dinner,” he said, packing up our gear. As soon as we got home, he started building a fire in the backyard so we could cook our catch. As we gathered newspapers and firewood John got another idea.

“You wanna see what happens if we pour gas on the fire? It’s supposed to be really cool.”

“Yeah!”

He ran to the garage, got the red gas can we used for the lawnmower, poured it all over the wood, struck a match and threw it onto the heap. Within seconds the flames flared, and we squealed with joy.     

“This is so cool!” John yelled.

“Yeah! Pour on some more!” John splashed on a bit more and the fire got even bigger. “I’ll get the fish!” I said, but before I got two steps away John let out a haunting scream. I quickly turned around and saw that his pants were on fire. He took off running toward the front yard, and the faster he ran, the bigger the flames got. I was terrified but didn’t know what to do.

            When he reached the front yard, he got down and rolled in the grass. When he finally got it out, he was crying. John never cried, so I knew this was bad.

Just then our older sister Rachel rode up on her bike. “What’s going on?”

“We were building a fire, and…”

“Where?”

“In the back yard.”

“Is it still burning?” Without answering I ran to the backyard and found it was still burning so I grabbed the garden hose and soaked it. When I got back out-front Rachel said she’d called an ambulance. She’d also called our mom at work, but couldn’t reach her, so she called Mrs. Sczepanski, our sometimes babysitter, who was on her way.

Mrs. Sczepanski was an older woman, and not the brightest bulb on the tree, but I was relieved when she arrived. She tried to remove John’s pants, but when she pulled, his burned skin started peeling off, revealing soft, pink flesh, like the fish we’d just cleaned. Next, she got some scissors and cut his pants off. The smell of his burned skin was so gross, I wanted to barf. 

“I told you kids not to play with fire,” she said angrily.

“It was an accident,” I said. Then she said something under her breath in Polish, but all I heard was “Jezus Chrystus,” so I figured she was either praying for John or cursing me out.

John was still awake but looked really pale.

“Don’t die John, I can’t live without you!”  

“Come on Martha don’t be such a baby. I’m not gonna die,” he said, then gave me a little smile. 

            Mrs. Sczepanki’s next idea was to put John’s leg in cold water. She helped him to the bathroom, had him sit on a chair near the toilet and put his leg in the bowl. It seemed kind of gross, but what did I know? Just then the ambulance came screaming up to the house and within seconds two big men came running inside. They strapped John onto a stretcher and carried him out to their red and white van. Worried neighbors watched from the sidewalk.

Just then Mom’s car pulled into the driveway and Rachel quickly explained what was going on. Mom got in the ambulance and went with John to the hospital, leaving Mrs. Sczepanski to watch us.

            When Mom got home later that night, she explained that John’s burns were so bad the doctors were going to cut skin off his unburned leg and graft it onto the burned one, and he’d have to stay in the hospital for three months to recover.

That sounded like forever, but when he finally came home, he proudly showed us his scars like they were badges of courage. And within a few weeks he was back to his old self, fearless and fully alive.

John has always been a survivor, and I was sure he’d outlive me, but this phone call from his wife wasn’t a good sign. 

“Hi Tammy,” I said, finally answering my phone. 

            “Hi Martha, I think we’re near the end, would you like to talk to John?”

            “Yeah. Hey, John, how ya doing?”

            “I’m really tired…” his voice was so faint.

            “I love you, John…John?”

            After a moment Tammy got back on the phone.

            “He’s on a lot of pain meds, so he’s really out of it.”

            “Thank you for calling, Tammy.”

After I hung up, I felt self-conscious because I was falling apart in front of a bunch of strangers in this waiting room, but then I looked up and saw their sympathetic eyes peeking out over their blue Covid masks, and I knew it was okay.

John died a few hours later at home. I cried a lot and felt really sorry for myself, but knew that moving forward, when life got scary, I’d remember his words of wisdom: “Come on Martha don’t be such a baby.”