A Superhero Gets Sick

Tim Manley — A Superhero Gets Sick

When I was six years old, I was tiny and I was so sickly pale that I was the kind of white that’s so white that it’s more like a light purple. [audience chuckles] I looked like a frail albino Oompa-Loompa. I was sick. And for months, I’d had a fever and I’d been coughing like a coal miner. I probably looked or sounded like I was smoking like two packs a day or something. But the problem was that we didn’t have any money or health insurance to take me to the doctor. My parents had just gotten divorced. My mother moved into a little house. So, I was just a sick kid sitting there. But then, my aunt says to my mom, ​“All right, I’ll give you the 70 bucks. Take him to Dr. Houtman.” So, we go to Dr. Houtman.

Dr. Houtman’s a terrifying man. He has a face of stone and a voice like a dragon. But I, as a six‑year‑old, read a lot of stories that were fantasy stories. So, I knew that scary things happened to the hero. But if the hero was courageous, he would be okay. [audience chuckles] I also knew that heroes had sidekicks, so I was very excited to have my mother with me at the doctor. [audience laughter] 

And we go to Dr. Houtman, and he breathes fire on me, and I knock it away with my shield. And he also runs some X‑rays and blood work and stuff. He says to my mom, ​“Tim has complications of pneumonia and a collapsed lung.” Yes. [audience chuckles] And my mother says, ​“What are the complications?” And Dr. Houtman says, ​“We’re not sure. So, we would like to send him to the hospital.” And so, we go into the car. I am fearless. And the reason that I’m fearless is because I’m with my mother. I know that with my mother, we’re in this together and I know that we’re in this together, because she said it to us all the time. 

Because me and my older brothers, we shared a bedroom, my oldest brother on the top bunk, my middle brother on the lower bunk, I’d be on a pullout mattress. Some nights, our mother would lay a blanket next to that, and she’d come and hang out with us, and she’d be like, ​“Tell me embarrassing stories about your father’s new wife.” [audience laughter] We would be like, ​“Oh, she’s got the most absurd laugh in the world. It sounds like there’s a cartoon ambulance in her throat.” [audience laughter] And it was true. It was completely absurd. 

And our mother would say, ​“Oh, you guys are so sweet. Please don’t tell anyone I ever asked you to do that.” [audience laughter] And then, our mother would– I swear, our mother would say– Because things were tough for us, we had just left our father, and she would say, ​“But don’t worry, you guys. We’re all in this together. So, whatever happens, don’t worry, we’re all in this together.” So, going to the hospital. I’m like, ​“I’m fearless. We’re all in this together.” And then, we get to the hospital, and I have my own room like a king. [audience chuckles] I look around the room, and there’s all these tubes and things everywhere. 

And suddenly, I’m like, ​“Okay, actually, Mom, there’s one thing I’m scared about. It’s these tubes. I don’t want them to put any tubes in me.” And my mom says, ​“Don’t worry. They won’t put any tubes in you.” And then, the nurse comes in, and she says, ​“Okay, Tim, it’s time for your first shot.” And I say, ​“Ma, that sounds like a small metal tube.” [audience chuckles] And my mom says, ​“What if I give you a dollar every time they give you a shot?” And I say, ​“Okay, yeah, a dollar, that’s fine,” because I’m a hero, but I’m also a shrewd businessman. [audience laughter] And so, they run some tests. 

Me and my mom have a ton of fun in the hospital. We play Hangman, and I beat her in every single game. We also play a game called Shoot the rabbits on the wallpaper with a water gun, which I invented. Child genius. [audience chuckles] And in between all these fun games, me and Mom are doing, they’re running a bunch of tests on us. And at some point, the doctors come in and they say, ​“Okay, we’ve run some tests, and we found a mass in Tim’s lung.” And my mother says, ​“What is the mass?” I think they finally found the source of my superpowers. [audience chuckles] And the doctors say, ​“We’re not sure. That’s why we’d like to send him to Schneider’s Children’s Hospital. They specialize in diseases that happen to children.” My mom says, ​“What diseases that happen to children might you think that Tim might have?” And I think, the ability to fly. And they say, ​“Leukemia.” 

So, we get in the car, and we drive over to Schneider’s Children’s Hospital. And we get there, and my mom says, ​“Look, the whole first floor is this whole playroom for kids. It’s just kids here.” I see that there’s a kid in a wheelchair, and her feet are curled inward, and she has a scarf on her head. I look to my mom and I say, ​“Mom, why does that girl look like that?” And my mother doesn’t answer me. We go upstairs. Again, I have my own room, but for some reason, it feels more like a cell and less like a king’s chamber this time. The doctors come in and they say, ​“We would like to biopsy the mass in Tim’s lung.” 

I don’t know what a biopsy is, but I assume it involves tubes. So, I’m frightened. I look at my mother, my sidekick, and my sidekick looks at me, and she turns to the doctor and she says, ​“Is there anything you can do besides biopsying?” I swear I have no idea, and I’ve asked my mother, neither of us understands this, but the doctor says, ​“Well, the only thing that might prevent us needing to biopsy it is if Tim can cough up a large enough piece of mucus for us.” [audience laughter] So, my mother and I now have our mission. In the next 24 hours, [audience laughter] they’re going to biopsy me in the morning if I can’t hock up a giant loogie. 

So, we set up. We decide we’re like, ​“Okay, we have a secret password. If I have a loogie in my throat, I’m going to go, [makes sound]and then she’ll know. And so, all night, I’m dreaming, please let there be a giant loogie in my throat. But the morning comes and I don’t get one. And then, I can hear the doctors’ feet coming down the hall, and I can hear their tubes for the biopsy. And then, I look at my mom, and she looks at me, and I go [makes sound] and she goes, boom, smacks me on the back, and I hock up a giant brown and green loogie. She literally will scream and she cries and she hugs me. And the doctor comes in, takes away the loogie, they run a test on it. It’s negative for whatever they’re looking for. Yes, thank you.

They don’t have to biopsy anything. They don’t have to do anything. Within a few days, my fever and cough are gone. The mass in my lung mysteriously disappears. I get to go home. And the craziest thing is, we never get a bill from the hospital. 

I have no idea. Okay. 15‑second epilogue, or I don’t know. So, I’m having wine with my mother recently, and this comes up when I ask her about it, and she says very solemnly. She’s very upset, obviously, and she says, ​“There was a black cloud following me in those years.” And I say to her, I say, ​“No, I disagree. Everything turned out fine. I didn’t have leukemia. Somebody paid all our hospital bills. It was like someone was carrying us.” But I realized, looking at her face, that actually, I have absolutely no idea what she went through thinking that her child might die while she was in the hospital.

And that my thought that actually everything was great is just the naive thought of a child who’s had such an incredible mother that even when there was a black cloud over them, that she was like an umbrella that protected her children, so that all that I would ever remember is all the great things and all the fun things, and that all that I could do is be so grateful for my mother today. So, thank you so much. Thanks, everybody.