Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep by Katie Flanagan (read novel full .TXT) 📖

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“Make cookies! Don’t you think we should eat dinner
first?” I press my forehead against hers.

She shakes her head with a mischievous smile. “No! Just make cookies! Lots and lots of cookies.”

“Lots and lots? What kind? Should we make them out of cotton?” I pull at the blanket crumpled on the corner of the sofa.

Bridget laughs at my silliness. “No! Not cotton!”

“Should we make them out of Barbies?”

“No, Daddy! Chocolate chip cookies! With lots and lots of chocolate chips.”

“Oh, I see. We’ll make chocolate chip cookies.” Keeping her locked in my arms, I make my way to the kitchen. It is separated from the living room by a counter. I set Bridget down on the fake-granite surface so that she can lean against the yellow wall easily. She lets her legs dangle off the edge, her jelly shoes still a good two feet from the linoleum floor. I consider making her eat an apple before I decide that it doesn’t really matter anymore.

Bridget watches me as I find the mixing bowl and search through the cupboards for the ingredients. It has been a long time since we’ve made cookies together, though it used to be a weekly event. I remember when Saturday afternoons had been reserved for baking. Bridget used to wake me up before the sun on Saturday mornings to beg me to make the cookies right away, but I always told her to be patient. Then as soon as the clock displayed 12:01, Bridget would jump up from whatever she was doing and clang around in the kitchen until I joined her.

That was before she was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. After that, most Saturdays were spent in the hospital as we tried every sort of treatment available: medicinal drugs, chemotherapy, and allergenic stem cell transplantation. The doctors assured me that most children survive the disease and there was nothing to worry about. And I believed them, because I spent the hours I wasn’t with Bridget reading up on the disease, and the statistics were in our favor.

“What’s wrong, Daddy?” Bridget asks. Her face is pulled into a frown, and I realize that my face must have betrayed my thoughts. I quickly put on a smile.
“Nothing, baby.” I can’t think up a good lie so I stay quiet, heaving the tools and ingredients onto the counter next to her. Bridget’s face is animated as she watches me begin the ritual. I am surprised that I remember the recipe so well. It seems like ages ago that we last made cookies.

Bridget leans against the wall after a few minutes. I glance up at her while continuing to cream the butter and sugar. Her face is slacker than before, and I realize that she is getting tired just by sitting up. I wonder how much worse she’ll get in the next three months. Her last three months.

“Daddy,” she starts. Her brown eyes are round and mournful. “Have you made cookies without me?”

I stop creaming for a moment to smile at her. “No, sweetheart. I never make cookies without you.”

She smiles widely at my answer, showing off the gaps in her mouth where teeth should have been. For a moment she looks like a normal eight-year-old. “Can we dance?”

“Right now?”

She nods eagerly. I decide not to worry about what
will happen to the cookie dough if I leave it and pick her up in my arms. Each of her feet rests on one of mine as I begin to waltz across the beige linoleum floor to unheard music. Her hands are wrapped around my index fingers the way she used to wrap them when she was a toddler. She is beaming with each step I take, and I let my heart soak up her happiness. After a few minutes, I lift her at the waist and swing her in the air. She giggles, but when I rest her back on the counter she looks fragile, and I am afraid I might have tired her out.

Bridget leans her head against the wall again and closes her eyes. I return to the batter, making sure it is creamy before removing the eggs from the refrigerator. As I crack an egg on the side of the mixing bowl, I remember when Bridget first learned that chicks came from eggs. She had examined the white oval with a studious frown before asking me if she had ever been an egg.

Her eyes open again and watch as I stir the egg into the creamy mixture. “Our cookies are the best, Daddy. The ones at the hostipal are too hard. They don’t break softly.” She still can’t say “hospital” correctly.

“That’s because I have a secret ingredient,” I whisper.

Bridget leans towards me, her eyes wide with expectation. “What is it?”

I pause dramatically. “My sweat.”

She pulls back and wrinkles her nose. “Daddy! That’s gross!”

Grinning, I return to the mixing bowl. Bridget watches me carefully to make sure that I don’t actually include my sweat. By the time I have turned the batter into a sticky dough, flour has floated all across the kitchen. I wipe some off Bridget’s cheek before distributing spoonfuls of dough across three cookie sheets. She sits up excitedly. Her role in the baking is coming up, the part that she always enjoys the most. The adding and mixing bores her, but the responsibility of putting the cookies in the oven and taking them out has been hers since the very beginning. I set Bridget down on the ground carefully, and I am about to reach for the cookie tray when she stomps her foot softly.

“Let me do it, Daddy. It’s my job.”

I back away. She reaches her hands above her head and curls her fingers around the sides of the cookie tray. She pulls the tray with her as she backs up, freeing it from the counter.

Her arms tremble in the second that she struggles to hold the cookie tray, and then it clatters to the floor with a dull crash.

I rush forward, momentarily grateful that the cookie dough did not splatter across the floor. Bridget stands motionless in front of the fallen tray. I pick it up and put it back on the counter before I realize that her lips are quivering. A plump tear rolls down her cheek as I fall anxiously to my knees in front of her.

“It’s okay, baby. Nothing broke. Everything’s okay!” I rest my hands on her shoulders in an attempt to comfort her.

She stares up at me as more tears escape from her troubled eyes. “I used to be able to do it!”

I freeze. My heart feels as if it is being slowly shredded as I watch Bridget realize that she is not better. Her eyes are glued on mine, waiting for me to comfort her, to tell her everything will be all right, that she will get better. I wonder how many times I will be able to tell her that in the next three months before she stops believing me. I wonder how much weaker and how much sicker she will get before she is finally freed from this disease.

I pull her into a hug, stroking her scalp where there should be hair, deciding not to say anything at all. Her hands weakly clutch the collar of my shirt, and she buries her face in my shoulder. I run my hand back and forth across her back as her wet cheek rubs against my neck. I wait to pull away until her breathing has calmed and her hands relaxed.

I give her an apologetic grin and pick her up. “How about bedtime now, huh?”

Wrapping her arm around my neck, she nods. I walk down the narrow hallway towards her room. The walls are lined with family pictures, most featuring Bridget. Against the pictures, it is easy to see how much weight Bridget has lost. Her skin hangs limply on her face, and the muscles on her arms and legs have all but disappeared.

We enter her dark bedroom. I place Bridget in the white metal bed without switching on the light, slipping her under the pink covers and tucking them around her body. She looks up at me questioningly. “Don’t I have to change into my pajamas and brush my teeth?”

Shaking my head, I wink conspiratorially. “Not tonight. All we have to do tonight is say our prayers.”

Bridget smiles with the thrill of breaking rules. I know that she especially hates brushing her teeth. When she was younger, I would let her get away with just running the brush over her baby teeth briefly before going to bed. The leukemia changed everything. The doctor warned me that during chemotherapy she had to brush her teeth carefully to prevent infection. Every night afterwards, we brushed our teeth together with a three-and-a-half minute song playing.

She sits up against her feather pillow and folds her hands, squeezing her eyes closed to show that she is ready to pray. I kneel down at the side of her bed and rest my forearms on the covers next to her body.
We start out together, her thin voice against my deep baritone. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to thee my soul to keep. If I should die-”

I haven’t allowed myself to consider the word “die” for months. A wave of panic overcomes me, and my voice breaks. Bridget’s continues, strong and brave, “-before I wake, I pray to thee my soul to take. Amen.”

I open my eyes with a haggard breath and try vainly to
smile. Bridget peeks at me from under her eyelids.
“Daddy, can I have a cup of warm vanilla milk?” Her voice is more timid now as she ventures to break yet another rule.

I muster up a grin. “Sure, sweetheart. I’ll go get you some.”

In the kitchen, I put the cookie trays in the oven to cook, noting the time. I pour milk, vanilla, and three teaspoons of sugar into a mug. Placing it in the microwave, I set the timer to forty-five seconds.

As I watch the mug rotate on the glass microwave plate, I remember when Bridget was three years old and discovered the microwave. Every afternoon for weeks, she would run to the microwave as soon as we came home from preschool. Standing on her bare tiptoes, the end of her golden braid in her mouth, she would watch the plate go round and round in circles.

Thinking about my daughter in bed now, I know things will only get worse. Now that none of the treatments have worked and the cancer has spread, she will be sick all the time. Her last three months will barely be worth living. She will be in more pain now, and there is nothing I can do about it. I remember the days when all I had to do was kiss her bruise to stop her crying. My baby is slowly dying, and a kiss won’t help her. All I can do is sit back and watch.

The microwave beeps to signal that it has finished warming the milk. Opening the door to stop the sound, I notice the glass plate is still stubbornly rotating. I reach out and touch it to end its movement.

If I should die before I wake.

It dawns on me that there is a way to help Bridget. There is something I can do to stop the cancer from eliminating her healthy