Page 4 of Past the Broken Bridges

Sawyer

2018

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.They say bad things happen in threes, but I don’t want to believe that. Because the more you worry about when the other shoe is going to drop, the less you let yourself live. And if there’s anything I’ve learned over the past five years, it’s that life is too precious to be wasted on fear.

Nurse Katherine beams as she caps off the last test tube and sets it back in the holder, breaking my focus from the ugly round clock on the wall that tells me I’m minutes away from well-deserved freedom. “So what now, Sawyer?”

I look from the middle-aged woman I’ve come to consider a friend over the last six months to the woman I got my red hair and baby blue eyes from, who’s sitting quietly in the chair by the examination table. She looks nervous because we’ve had this conversation plenty of times over the last year, but she’s never discouraged me from what I want to do.

Not after the long battle I faced.

Turning from my mom to Katherine, my favorite nurse in the oncology unit, I smile. “I’m going to college. Anactualcollege.”

Katherine’s eyes brighten at the news I’ve only told a few close family members. Dad is proud of me. Bentley, my little brother, told me he wanted my room when I left, and Aunt Taylor insisted on hosting a going-away party. If my grandparents were still alive, I’m sure they would be as happy for me as Katherine. Or maybe as nervous as the look on my mother’s soft face. “I think that’s wonderful! You’ve taken online courses for credits, right?”

Giddiness takes over, making it hard to sit still. I’ve told her about the courses I didn’t find challenging enough and how badly I wanted to go on campus somewhere. For obvious reasons, namely my lack of immune system thanks to the chemicals being pumped through my body, I had to push those dreams away. Temporarily. “Yes, and I already double-checked to see that they transfer to the college I’m attending so I won’t start as a twenty-one-year-old freshman like some weirdo.”

Katherine pats my knee and peels her gloves off, tossing them into the trash bin by the sink and turning on the faucet. “Where did you enroll?”

Licking my chapped lips, I peek at Mom again. Her eyes glisten with concern and pride. I know she’s happy for me, but it’s not easy for her when we spent so long together bonding over something so tragic. “I got accepted at Louisiana State.”

Katherine’s eyes dart to my mother before coming back to me, as if doing the mental math of the distance between New York and Louisiana. “LSU, huh?”

She’s a mom, so I’m sure she sympathizes. It isn’t like mine can come with me to school, and I doubt she’d want to even if she could. I’ve missed the Bayou State since we left it thirteen years ago, but I know she feels differently. They lost everything when the levees failed after Katrina.

I only lost Paxton.

Despite Mom’s hesitancy toward my determination to move down south and escape New York’s cold weather, she says, “We’re very proud of Sawyer. She’s worked so hard for this.”

Katherine must know how difficult that is for her to admit, so after she dries her hands, she brushes Mom’s arm. “If there’s anybody who can handle college, it’s our girl. Isn’t that right?” She turns to me with a wink and grabs the tube holder off the counter. “By the way, I’m loving the blond. Are you going to keep it or try something fresh for your new adventure?”

Touching the ends of the wispy hair tickling my shoulders, I smile at the woman I’ve grown so close to. “I’m not sure yet. I kind of miss the red.”

Mom laughs at the statement that I’ve made plenty of times before in my head. “You used to hate your natural color. Remember how you’d beg me to let you dye it? You wanted the most God-awful colors too.”

Okay, the black I wanted would have been a terrible choice against my pale skin. I probably would’ve resembled one of those creepy porcelain dolls they make horror movies about. “We all had an emo phase, Mom,” is my grumbled defense.

That phase also included thick eyeliner that I still don’t know how to apply correctly, plus My Chemical Romance–and Avril Lavigne–inspired punk-rock outfits. I’d like to think I pulled it off.

Sometimes.

The thin pieces of hair around my finger don’t compare to what my desired red locks, not quite orange but a mixture of dark red and copper, were years ago. I’m glad Mom didn’t let me destroy the healthy strands. They used to be so thick that hairdressers had a field day layering them during haircuts and telling me how pretty they were. I’d hear the same thing every time I sat down in the spinning chair and got the cape draped over me:Be lucky to have what some women pay hundreds of dollars to get.

My lips twitch downward.

Haircuts used to be so mundane—just something I did every six weeks with my mother and grandmother in North Carolina. Maintenance cuts, really. Mom would complain about how expensive it was but would fight Grandma Claudette whenever she’d try to pay for each of us. I miss those days.

I miss having people play with my hair and massage my scalp. I miss the ego stroke that came with the unique color people said made my eyes pop.

I miss life before I was sick. Before all the treatments and tears and hard days, when all I had to worry about was eating my vegetables so I could go outside and play.

That life feels like it was ages ago, and I don’t even remember who I was before the cancer. Who knew one little trip to the doctor’s office for what we all thought was a cold could change so much?

Whenever I start feeling sad about the things I can’t change, I think of what Mom always told me when I’d look into the mirror at my bald head and start crying.

Better your hair than your life.

And she’s right. So right.

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