“My dad was involved in it, since he was diagnosed so young. But you’ll see. In this group, forty-four is old.”
Forty-four? Old? In a group of cancer survivors?
Eitan skips up the steps of a cafe with yellow trim and a red door. “This is it,” he says, holding the door open. “After you.”
“What is…” I trail off and gape as I take in the room. It’s full to bursting with the exact opposite of my clinic’s waiting room: young people. It seems like they came with friends and family, and a name tag table at the front has a color dot system to indicate if you’reSurvivor,Friend,Family,orHealthcare Worker.I write out my name in slow loops and stick a yellowSurvivordot next to it. My chest buzzes at the amount of yellow dots I see. I’ve never been around this many survivors my age.
Eitan makes his own, sticking a blueFrienddot on his.
We join the crowd. It’s the first time being in a gathering like this where I don’t feel like a sore thumb. I see a couple girls wearing bright pink; they must be breast cancer survivors, like me. Other people wear ribbons pinned to their collars and blouses. I recognize some of the colors—white for lung cancer, teal for ovarian—and others I’ve never seen before. Purple, gray, orange.
On one side, a woman with pale skin and a headscarf sits at a window, sipping from a thermos. There’s a large orange ribbon pinned on her shirt. She can’t be much older than me. It’s like looking in a mirror. Instantly it sucks me back to a time when I was bald, pale, and sick. There’s a weight on my chest, like someone is sitting on it.
I spin before she catches me staring.
“You should go talk to her.” Eitan nudges me.
I rub my chest. “What would I say?”
He shrugs. “You could start withhello.”
“Right.” I blink rapidly, clearing the unsettling memory.You are better now, I say to myself, over and over until it alchemizes into the truth.
Eitan grabs my shoulders and turns me, leaning in to whisper, “You go over there, and I’ll get us drinks.” Just like that,he walks away, and I’m left alone in a room full of people I don’t know. I have about two minutes before my social anxiety makes me implode, so I do the only reasonable thing I can: I slowly approach the woman in the headscarf.
“Hi,” I say, pulling myself onto the stool across from her. “I’m Ruby.”
She looks up at me with large brown eyes. I feel bad for avoiding her. “Hi, Ruby.” Her eyes crinkle with her smile. “I’m Lucy.”
I reach out my hand, and she just stares at it for a second.
“Sorry, I can’t shake hands. No immune system, et cetera.”
“Of course!” I smack my forehead. “That makes sense—sorry.”
Lucy shrugs and sips from her thermos.
“So.” I squeeze my leg to get myself to relax. “Have you gone to one of these events before?”
She shakes her head. “This is my first one. I just finished up my first year of treatment, so I’m finally feeling up for stuff like this. What about you?”
“I didn’t even know this existed until five minutes ago.” My gaze finds Eitan, a beacon in the dark. “My friend found it. I finished chemo over a year ago, and immunotherapy about eight months ago.”
“Congrats,” she says, genuinely meaning it in the way only someone who’s been through treatment of their own can. “What kind of cancer did you have?”
“Breast. What about you?”
“Leukemia.” She takes a sip from her thermos, not missing a beat. There’s something refreshing in talking about this to someone who knows better than to feel bad for you. “A.L.L.”
I tilt my head, not familiar with the different types of leukemia.
“Acute lymphoblastic leukemia.”
“Ah. How’d they find it?”
“Leukemia is actually easy to diagnose, since you can see something is wrong with a simple blood test. I—of course—had every symptom, but I thought I was just really, really tired.” She laughs. I laugh, too. “I finally went to the doctor, and by the time they did the bone marrow biopsy, it was calcified to heck.” Lucy mashes her lips together. “I had to start chemo immediately.”
“That’s tough.” A question nags at me, something I’ve never been able to talk to a young survivor about. “Do you, um, think life will ever go back to normal?” I ask.
