CHAPTER 1
Claudette
Dr. Rivera was still talking,but I’d stopped listening somewhere around “inflammation” and “inoperable.” The words kept coming: risk assessment, palliative options, quality of life—all of them meaning the same thing.
I was dying, and nobody could stop it.
My mother’s hand found my father’s across the consultation table. She’d already pulled out one of those embroidered handkerchiefs she kept in her purse, dabbing at her eyes like we were at a funeral instead of a Tuesday appointment. My father cleared his throat three times in a row, that sound he made when he was trying not to cry. I wanted to comfort them, but I couldn’t figure out how to arrange my face into anything resembling okay.
“Claudette?” Dr. Rivera’s voice cut through. “Do you have any questions?”
I had a thousand questions. None of them had answers that would change anything.
“How long?”
“It’s difficult to say with certainty. Given the progression we’ve seen over the past eight months?—”
“Weeks? Months?”
He hesitated. And that told me everything.
“We’ll monitor closely. Adjust medications as needed to keep you comfortable.”
Comfortable. As if comfort mattered when your brain was killing you. Every headache felt like it could be the beginning of the end. It didn’t matter when you were just twenty-eight and your body had decided to quit without asking permission.
I thanked Dr. Rivera because apparently that’s what you do when someone tells you they can’t save your life. You walk out. You get in the car and drive home in terrible silence.
Home was worse.
My mother showed up in my bedroom doorway every twenty minutes with increasingly ridiculous offerings. Tea. Soup. A throw blanket. She kept fluffing the pillows on my bed like the right arrangement might somehow fix the tumor in my brain.
“Mom, the pillows are fine.”
“Are you sure? You look uncomfortable.”
I was uncomfortable, but it wasn’t the pillows. It was the way she looked at me—like I was already fading, like if she blinked too long I might disappear.
My father was worse in his own way. He’d hover in doorways without entering, asking careful questions that all meant the same thing. “Need anything?” which meant are you okay. “Hungry?” which meant are you safe. “Want company?” which meant please tell me you’re still alive.
He’d started keeping a glass of water on my nightstand, refreshing it every hour whether I drank it or not. The condensation would pool on the wood, and he’d wipe it away with his sleeve, and I’d watch him pretend he wasn’t checking to see if I was still breathing.
They were trying to love me. I knew that. They were terrified and helpless, watching their daughter die, so they were doingthe only things they could think of—building walls around me, making my world smaller and safer with every worried glance. Protecting me from a danger that was already inside my skull.
But I felt like I was suffocating under the weight of all that love.
My phone buzzed. Pauline.
Thank god.
“Please tell me you’re calling with something ridiculous,” I said instead of hello.
“Oh honey, do I have ridiculous for you.” Her voice was bright and familiar and blissfully, beautifully normal. “Remember that guy from the coffee shop? Vintage band T-shirts, impeccable music taste?”
“The one who’d been offering you free coffee?”
“That’s the one. So we finally went out last night, right? Dinner, very cute little Italian place, everything’s going great. He’s funny, he smells good and laughed at my jokes?—”
“Shocking.”
