Ryan White - My Own Story Read Online Free PDF Page A

Ryan and their cousins in the summer of 1988. Top row, left to right: Monica Hale, age twelve; Misty Joseph, age eleven; Andrea, age fourteen; Ryan, age sixteen, holding Lisa Joseph, age six months; Josh Hale, age ten. Bottom row, left to right: Sarah Joseph, age four; Brian Hale, age three; Matt Hale, age eight.
    Right about the time when we started using Factor at home and I didn’t have to rush off to the emergency room constantly, my mom sat Andrea and me down separately, and told us she was asking Dad to move out because she wanted a divorce. I can’t say I was real surprised. It already seemed like a long time since any of us had seen Dad. He was always out with his friends. He never seemed to have a couple of hours to stay around and hang out with Mom, Andrea, and me.
    After Dad moved out, he didn’t call us. When we asked him why, he said, “Well, you never call me .” A few times, he came to pick Andrea and me up to spend the weekend at his new place. But instead of staying with us, he would leave us with his parents, and go off with his friends. Staying with our other grandparents wasn’t so bad. They didn’t have a dog, like my mom’s parents, but Dad’s father did have an antique car. Sometimes he’d go to a rally with other old cars, and we’d see him in a whole parade of them, going down the street in Kokomo.
    Actually, staying with Dad could be a whole lot worse than when we were left with his parents. Once Andrea and I were sleeping over with Dad at his new place. Dad got us a frozen pizza for dinner, which was fine with us, and put it in the oven to heat up. Meanwhile, he decided to take a short nap on the couch. Well, the pizza heated up, all right—in fact, it was burning up. The living room was filling up with smoke, and we couldn’t wake Dad! Remember, Andrea and I were only five and seven—a lot smaller than Dad. Finally, we got him to get up, and we all stumbled out of the house.
    After that, we told Mom we didn’t want to stay with Dad anymore. Andrea said, “It’s boring. He’s never there, and there’s nothing to do. I don’t want to see him.” I agreed with Andrea about the boring part, but I did miss Dad. One evening he said he was coming over. I sat out on the front porch waiting for him until about eleven o’clock, when Mom finally made me go to bed.
    If my hemophilia was hard on Andrea, maybe it was hard on Dad too. Or maybe there was something else that bothered him. I’d like to ask him about that sometime, just so I know.
    I’ve always been smaller and weighed less than other kids my age. That’s why I’m careful about clothes—I try to wear loose jeans and sweatshirts so I don’t look so skinny. I’ll never play football or basketball or baseball—any of the sports that kids my age play. Once I even asked my doctor for steroids. He explained that they weren’t very good for me and he wasn’t going to give me any. We live in a place where sports are important, but I’d like to remind Dad that there are plenty of other things I can do. And I could tell him that once I got to be famous, and started meeting stars, I found out that most celebrities are short.
    The strange part is that Dad didn’t dump us completely. You hear about fathers who abandon their kids and never send them any money. We hardly saw my dad, he didn’t seem to want to know us at all, but we had enough to live on because he always paid child support. And when I’ve gotten sick, his insurance has paid my hospital bills. That counts, as far as I’m concerned.
    Most of the time I can’t be bothered thinking about the past. I figure, if things have been bad, that means you have something to look forward to, right? But sometimes I wonder what would have happened if the other Wayne had gotten through to my mom first, before she married my dad. Maybe I never would have been born, but maybe I could have had another father and a whole different life. In Georgia, or someplace else.
    I know my sister