‘Ruth?’ She was wrapped in a soft blanket, waxy pale and horribly slight.
Ruth looked up, and after what felt like an agonizing pause, she smiled. ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘This I did not expect.’
‘Ruth!’ Reuben bounded over to hug her.
‘Careful,’ Ruth said quietly. ‘Apparently my bones are brittle. You don’t want to snap me in half or anything. You know how fond Mom is of a lawsuit.’
Reuben hugged her gently; then I joined in.
Ruth had been one of our first patients, back in the day when it was just Reuben and me and we’d barely heard of Clowndoctors. She had been a tiny baby, in and out of surgery, and we’d always known that her life expectancy – if she survived at all – was very limited.
But my God, that girl had fought. And so too had her single mother, who had raised the money to go to the Children’s Hospital LA for her neonatal care because a doctor there was a world specialist in Ruth’s rare genetic condition. Their we-will-not-take-no-for-an-answer attitude had repeatedly compelled Reuben and me to push on with our own work.
I did not make a habit of meeting the kids. I found it far too painful. But there was something about Ruth I couldn’t resist. Even when my job had ceased to involve hospital visits, I still went to see her, because I couldn’t not.
Now here she was, aged fifteen and a half, wrapped in a blue fleece blanket with a moon print on it, an IV stand next to her armchair. Tiny and scrappy; her thin hair brittle. For a moment I stood still as shock curled around my throat.
‘Well. This is a nice surprise,’ I said, sitting down next to her.
‘What, to find me looking like a dead chicken in a hospice?’ she asked. Her voice was thin. ‘How do you like my hands? See? Like chicken feet. Oh, comeon,’ she said, when I tried to disagree. ‘You’re not going to try to tell me I look like a hot babe, are you? Because if you are, go away.’ She smiled through chapped lips and I felt a savage tearing in my heart.
‘You came back home, then,’ Reuben said. ‘To sunny Fresno.’
‘Yeah. I felt that the least I could do would be to check out somewhere close to home,’ she said. ‘Poor Mom’s exhausted.’
And without warning, she started to cry. She cried silently, as if she no longer had the energy to produce noise or tears.
‘This sucks,’ she said. ‘And where are your guys? Where’s a red nose when you need one?’
‘That’s what we’re here to talk about,’ Reuben said, blotting her tears with a tissue. ‘But even if it doesn’t go ahead, we’ll try to have a Clowndoc come visit you. As long as you don’t think you’re too old.’
‘I don’t,’ she said weakly. ‘Your people have never talked to me like I’m a kid. Last time I saw Doctor Zee, he said he was going to help me write a poem for my wake. He’s a great wordsmith when he’s not being a dick. Can you send him?’
‘We’ll make it the first thing we talk about in our meeting,’ I told her. ‘I’m sure Zee’ll be up for visiting.’
‘I love those guys,’ Ruth said. She leaned back against the chair, the effort of talking to us leaching energy fast from her body. ‘They’ve been the only constant, all these years. The only people who are bigger assholes than me. No offence,’ she said in Reuben’s direction. ‘I know you started out as a clown.’
He smiled.
‘Do you want us to help get you back to your room?’ I asked Ruth. I tucked the blanket more tightly around her. There was a hard swelling in my throat. How was this possible? Funny, smart Ruth, with her ginger ponytail and those parsley-green eyes. Why was her life ending just as it was beginning? Why wasn’t there anything anyone could do?
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I need a nap. Damn you, making me cry.’
As we left her room a few minutes later, I brushed away an angry tear and Reuben took my hand. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know.’
After our presentation to the board we broke to a sunny terrace for coffee. The hospice’s VP of Care Services took me to one side to ask further questions.
I should have seen it coming; I should have known from the questions he’d asked earlier. We often came across people like this man, who couldn’t see past the red noses, refused to differentiate our practitioners from party clowns.
‘The thing is,’ the man was saying, with his pebbly glasses and wobbly chin and thunderous hauteur, ‘my team have years of training among them. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with them having to work around . . . well, clowns.’
The passion that had driven our presentation had now dissipated. I felt an overwhelming need to escape.
‘Your staff will always be in charge of the children’s medical care,’ I made myself recite. I watched a bird in the tree above him. ‘Just look at our practitioners as you would any other visiting entertainer. The only difference is that they’ve been through months of specialist training.’
He frowned into his coffee and said that his own staff were also highly trained, actually, but they didn’t need to wear silly clothes or carry musical instruments. Andsuddenly – even though years in this job had taught me never,everto take on people like this man – I found myself doing just that.
‘You can focus on the playful side of what they do, if you want,’ I said. ‘But we’ve had countless doctors and nurses tell us they’ve learned helpful tools from our practitioners.’
