Page 52 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
“Ready?” Chloe said when she emerged from her room.
Her dad laughed and cried at the same time. “It’s good to have you back, Lo-Lo.”
Later that year, her mom beat the cancer. Maybe it was just luck, but Chloe told herself it was because the cancer had been so daunted by the force of the family’s sunshine that it stayed in remission and never dared to return.
And even though Chloe still missed Oliver, she accepted a version of life without him. Rather than being half of “Clover,” she learned to be so muchChloethat there was more than enough left over to give to others—her family, her students, and now, even complete strangers.
Jocelyn
At 5:30 p.m., Jocelyn Nguyen locked the front door of Brooklyn Infusion Center. She had been a receptionist there for a decade, checking in patients for their chemotherapy appointments, helping their relatives with the maze of insurance paperwork, and holding hands with anyone in the waiting room who needed it. It was the kind of work you couldn’t really leave behind at the office at the end of the day, but Jocelyn wouldn’t want a job where she could. Since she was a little girl, she’d nursed her dolls to health. Working at the infusion center felt like a calling.
Still, today had been a particularly hard shift. Brandon, a five-year-old boy with leukemia, was looking worse and worse, the sharp juts of his bones visible now beneath his skin. His parents looked barely any better; the dark circles below his father’s eyes and the gaunt hollows of his mother’s cheeks almost broke Jocelyn as she led them into the treatment room. Jocelyn had a five-year-old son, too.
As she took the key from the lock, something scuttled across the sidewalk and blew into her legs. It was a yellow paper rose, slightly dirty where it had careened against the ground but otherwise in good shape. Jocelyn had seen people with them here and there, not enough to know where they came from, but enough that she knew there was always a message inside.
She scooped the origami up off the sidewalk. It was made with lemon-yellow paper with smiling dinosaurs on it. Jocelyn immediately thought of Brandon, and of her own son, Alex, who both loved dinosaurs.
The paper rose unfolded easily, the design chosen exactly for that purpose.
Inside, the note read:
Today has not yet been written. And you can choose how to tell that story.
Beneath the quote was a drawing of a miniature, heart-shaped rosebud.
Tears coursed down Jocelyn’s face before she even knew she was crying. But it wasn’t despair. It was because of the beauty of this simple truth.
Every day in her job, she faced bleakness. But every day, she also got to see extraordinary love. Sometimes it was parents sacrificing everything for their kids, like Brandon. Other times, it was friends there to support each other. And sometimes, it was the unexpected—like two years ago, when a Goldman Sachs investment banker accompanied his secretary to every appointment for her leukemia. She hadn’t had anyone else, and the man—who was nothing like the arrogant finance bros so common in Manhattan—had brought her in a nice black town car each time, as if they were going to a fancy event and not chemo. He’d been a taciturn one, but whenever his secretary looked at him, his moss-green eyes had softened. He had truly cared.
Jocelyn had stopped seeing them when the secretary went into remission, and she hoped all was well with both of them. Now, as she looked at the paper rose, she realized how the flowers could also help her patients, just like the families and friends—and even bosses—who lent their strength during treatment sessions.
If Jocelyn could find the flowers’ source—if she could bring a handful of them every day to offer from her desk at reception—it could make a difference.
Every small bit of love did.
Chloe
Chloe whistled as she got ready to leave; she was going to help out behind the register at Giovanni’s bakery. Later, in the afternoon, she had a stint that Ricky had gotten her doing some clerical work at the garage. Little by little, she was scraping together funds to pay her rent, as well as to buy more origami paper and pay for that extravagant dress. But best of all, she was falling in love with New York, because she was no longer a lonely island. She was building her own little community, stemming from the paper flowers, from Astoria to Manhattan to Brooklyn to Staten Island to the Bronx.
As she grabbed her purse, her phone rang. It was Zac.
“Good morning,” Chloe said. “You’re calling awfully early.”
“Yes, unfortunately, a bit of bad news.”
She frowned and sat down. “Oh no, what is it?”
“I was just told that I need to go to San Francisco for an emergency business trip, leaving in a few hours. I’ll be gone a couple days, and I’m afraid I won’t be back in time for the start of the gala. My flight lands on Saturday evening.”
Chloe’s eyes went to the ethereal blue gown hanging in her closet. An eddy of disappointment and relief swirled in her stomach. She’d never worn anything so beautiful before and had been looking forward to it; at the same time, the tags were still on the dress and she could return it and erase the six-thousand-dollar charge on her credit card. That would be the smart thing to do.
“However,” Zac said, “Iwillbe able to make it late to the gala and be there for most of it. I’ll bring my tuxedo with me and wear it onto the plane. I’ll head straight to the event from the airport.”
Chloe giggled at the thought of someone wearing a tuxedo on a plane. But if anyone could pull it off, it was Zac. That James Bond–British accent thing really did change something like this from ridiculous to debonair.
“So I should just meet you at the gala?” Chloe asked. It made sense; her apartment was not on the path from the airport to the hotel where the party was being held.
“Yes,” he said. “In fact, you should get there at the start, so you don’t miss anything. It’s a fundraiser for the arts. There will be a showcase by a featured painter, too. I think you’d enjoy it.”
