Read Online Ryan White - My Own Story by Ryan & Cunningham White - Free Book Online Page A

The thought of Christmas had kept me going. Without the tons of presents we always got from Mom, today wouldn’t be like Christmas at all. I didn’t want to talk about who might have robbed us or why or what the cops could do—it was too depressing to wonder who had my computer now. All I said to Mom was, “Let’s forget about it.” I tried to think of our burglary as that book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas , come to life.
    The story of what had happened to us got around the hospital. My neighbor in the next room was a five-year-old girl named Jennifer. Jennifer had Reye’s Syndrome, a disease that makes your brain cells swell so there’s terrible pressure inside your skull. She was one of the other children who helped me remember that I could be in much worse shape. Most of the other kids had been allowed to go home for Christmas, but Jennifer and I were stuck.
    My grandparents arrived with Uncle Tommy and Aunt Deb and my cousin Monica and her brothers. Tommy and Deb and their kids were like Grandma and Grandpa: They stood by us no matter what. Everyone jammed into my room with Mom and Andrea, and sat on my bed and even the windowsill, handing out cards and presents. With all the packages my relatives had brought, I hardly noticed that anything was missing—though a computer certainly would have been nice. I liked math and science, and really wanted to learn to use a computer. It would be a big help with homework.
    Even Dad dropped by with some Izod shirts for me. Mom had put them in layaway and had asked Dad to pick them up for her. I appreciated that present: I always liked to wear my own shirts in the hospital, and now I had some new ones to put on when I left for home.
    All of a sudden Jennifer’s relatives walked in carrying several big brown grocery bags. They’d found a drugstore that was open on Christmas, and they’d bought Andrea and me a bunch of little presents: a metal model car that ran on remote control, Care Bears, comic books (yay!), a miniature basketball game, a set of oil paints. Nothing was wrapped, but who cared? Even Andrea began to cheer up. She and Mom and I even got little extras from the hospital staff. It was a pretty great Christmas, after all.
    We never did get any of our presents back, even though we found footprints in the snow leading from our house to the druggy neighbors’, and Andrea saw their little girl wearing my jeans and carrying a Cabbage Patch doll Mom had bought me! You know those dolls are only one of a kind, so there was no mistake. Still, the police claimed they couldn’t arrest anyone. The worst part was the robbers knew I was in the hospital with AIDS. Word was racing around our neighborhood and our Methodist church in Kokomo.
    The day after Christmas Mom arrived with Andrea and a surprise visitor, our minister. Mom had been struggling to get her courage up all week. She could see I looked pretty good—nothing like a few presents to perk me up—so she decided the time had come.
    “Ryan, you know you’ve been real sick,” she started out. She was surprised at how calm she sounded.
    “Uh huh,” I said. “What’s the matter?”
    “They’ve done a lot of tests on you,” Mom went on.
    “Yeah,” I said. “So?” What was all this?
    “Ryan,” Mom said, still very calm, “you have AIDS.”
    I stared at her. Everything, everyone seemed frozen still. All I could think was, Laura. What about Laura? Did she know she’d been looking after someone with AIDS? Would she stay away from me now?
    “Does Laura know?” I asked. I didn’t realize Laura was listening in on the nurses’ intercom and trying not to cry.
    “Yes,” Mom assured me. “Laura knows.”
    Whew. If she’d known all along, she’d probably stick around. I would get to see her again.
    The other giant worry I had was whether having AIDS meant I’d have to spend the rest of my life flat on my back in a hospital bed.
    “Am I going to get out of here?” I wanted to know.
    “As soon as Dr.