I comb through my message, looking for anything I said that would require needing to ‘make it up’ to Penelope. Before I finish, Pen has sent a picture of a handwritten to-do list, filled with things likeMake escort cards (I want calligraphy)andFinal tastingandCurate wedding music.
Thanks again, Rubes!Pen says.
I don’t reply.
chapter
fifteen
The Department of Hematology Oncologyand I go way back. Twenty months back, to be precise. There’s nothing quite like treatment. The rush of benadryl hitting your bloodstream, submerging your mind in cotton candy and turning your stomach into one of those tubes of liquid glitter that kids like to squeeze until they rupture. That hit of dexamethasone that makes you feel like a bodybuilder for eighteen hours before waking up at five the next morning, ready for a day of persistent nausea and a week of hormonal acne. The chemo agent that gets pumped in through a port in your chest, taking one sharp turn into the jugular, and shooting directly to the vena cava—the big vein that feeds directly into your heart. And from there it’s open season. Look out, rapidly growing cells! No one is safe when the big bad chemo comes to town. Least of all your blood cells, all the moisture in your body, and your dignity as a human being.
Needless to say, I don’t love my visits to the clinic. For starters, I have to hike from the city up to the hospital in Evanston that is close to my parents’ house, lest I have to switch oncologists. And moreover, once I get to the hospital, a poorR.N. has to watch me unbutton my pants and shoot me in the belly with ovary suppressors.
Every four weeks.
The things we do for our tumors.
“How are you doing?” my nurse, Bethany, asks as she logs into her computer.
“The same.” My hands sweat in my lap. The treatment rooms are sterile and haven’t been redecorated since the nineties. At least the treatment armchair is comfortable.
“Well, we should have you out of here real quick.”
I hum vaguely.
Unbidden, Eitan’s voice interrupts me, giving me goosebumps in a silent room.Go outside. Talk to someone random. Interact with the world.
“How are you?” I spur myself to ask.
Bethany looks surprised. She’s been my nurse several times, and I’m not the most talkative patient. “I’m good, thanks for asking.” She speeds through work on her computer, talking slowly as she goes. “I think the last time I saw you, you said you were going to a wedding, right?”
“Yeah.” I clear my throat, still trying to rid myself of the memory of Izumi’s wedding.
“How was it?”
I suck on my upper lip, my brows pinching together. “Uneventful?”
“Well.” Bethany sighs. “Enjoy wedding season while you can. Before you know it, all your friends will be having kids and you’ll be knee deep in diapers, wishing you had a black tie event to go to that didn’t end in a toddler jumping on your face the next morning.”
“I’ll…keep that in mind.” I laugh.
Bethany smiles at me. “Let me grab you an ice pack and I’ll come back in ten minutes with the shot.”
“Thanks,” I say, even though I don’t feel grateful by any stretch of the imagination.
The shot is painful, as usual, despite icing the area. Within fifteen minutes I’m shoving my way out of the treatment room, ripping my medical bracelet off as I go.
The waiting room is the worst. It’s full of sick people. Don’t look at me like that, I’m allowed to say it. Not too long ago Iwasone of these walking corpses. A lot’s changed now. I’m not shivering in two turtlenecks, and I don’t have a catheter in my chest. Not to mention, I’m the youngest person here by about twenty years. My only peers in age are helping hobbling parents and grandparents in and out of wheelchairs. I could get away with just being a bystander too, except they put a medical bracelet on me at check-in. A nice white beacon that gives me away instantly: here lies Ruby, cancer patient.
I’m so focused on blazing through the waiting room without making contact with any glazed chemo eyes that I almost run into a bright cloud of hot pink.
“Oof!” Something wheels over my foot. “Ow! Sorry—” The blast of pink clears enough for me to see a matching headscarf. “Louise?” I ask, dumbfounded at the coincidence.
“Huh?” Louise grunts indelicately. “Oh, it’s you.”
I wait for her to say my name. I may as well remind her. “Ru?—”
“Gem,” she harrumphs.
