Page 45 of Cava with My Colleague

I look away before she catches me watching.

I return to my notes. The updated slides she sent me last night were vague on the opening section. “Personal story—approx 2 minutes” was all the annotation said. When I’d asked for specifics so I could prepare proper translations, she’d simply replied that she wanted it to feel natural, unrehearsed.

It’s annoying, professionally speaking. I prefer to have every word mapped out before a presentation begins. Translating on the fly leaves room for error, for missing nuance. But Jade had been insistent, and after the disaster of the previous presentations, I wasn’t about to push back on something that might actually work for her.

The audience is filing in now, especially in the back. There’s also a representative from the patient advocacy network co-hosting today’s event—more attendees than usual, more survivors in the room.

They’re why we do this work. Not for the reps or the research grants or the speaking fees, but for them.

Movement draws my attention back to Jade—she’s throwing her arms around a woman, one of the ones from the photo. Tessa, I think. The hug lasts a long time, and I can see Jade’s lips moving as the two of them have a quiet conversation. When Jade finally lets go, she hugs the man beside her friend too, and then they separate, the couple taking seats by the front, and Jade climbing the stage.

Jade is doing a final check of her slides. I can see her shoulders rising and falling with deep breaths.

“Ready?” I ask.

She turns to look at me, and there’s something in her expression I can’t quite read. Fear, yes. But also resolve. “Ready,” she says.

We take our positions. Jade at the podium, me at the translator’s station slightly to the side and behind her. From here I can see both her and the screen, and can watch her delivery while monitoring the slides to stay ahead of her pacing.

The coordinator gives the signal. Jade steps up to the microphone.

“Bonjour,” she begins, her voice only slightly shaky. “Thank you all for being here today.”

I translate into French, the words automatic, my attention divided between her and the audience response.

“I want to start today,” Jade continues, “by showing you something.”

She clicks the remote.

The slide changes.

I freeze.

On the screen behind us, filling the massive display, is a photograph of a young girl. Maybe six or seven years old. She’s sitting in a hospital bed, wearing a pink gown covered in cartoon characters. She’s smiling at the camera, but it’s the kind of smile children give when adults tell them to. And she’s completely bald.

It takes me two seconds to recognize her.

The shape of her face. The set of her eyes. That smile that doesn’t quite reach her gaze.

Jade.

“This is me,” she says.

I hear the words in English, process them, and know I need to translate. My mouth forms the French but my brain is several steps behind, still staring at that photograph, still trying to reconcile the vibrant woman at the podium with the small bald girl in the hospital bed.

Jade has turned to look at me. I realize I’ve stopped translating. Her eyebrows are raised slightly, waiting, and there’s a vulnerability in her expression that makes something in my chest tighten.

I force myself back to professional mode. She’s still speaking.

“—and I was diagnosed with childhood leukemia when I was nine years old.”

The French flows from me automatically now but underneath the translation, my mind is racing. Childhood leukemia. Cancer. Treatment. That’s why she understands these patients in a way I never could.

“It’s quite traumatic,” Jade is saying, and I translate—traumatique—while watching her gesture to her long dark ponytail, “to lose all your hair at that age.”

The gesture is deliberate, drawing attention to her hair. To the fact that it grew back. That she survived.

She pauses, and I can see her gather herself for what comes next. “I know showing childhood hospital photos isn’t exactly standard pharmaceutical presentation protocol.”