Page 22 of Things I Wish I Said
St. Francis Hospital is a beautiful facility, but they’re not known for their food.
Nurse Anna laughs. “Still the jokester, I see.”
“Always.” Mom sighs.
“But who knows? I might be back yet.” My smile falters, betraying the false bravado I’m so good at wearing. “If this doesn’t work, anything’s possible.”
“Hush now.” Nurse Anna reaches out and clasps my hand in hers, careful not to mess with my IV. “Not another word, darling girl. I won’t have that kind of negative talk in here. You’re going to crush cancer, leave, and never come back. One day, you’ll think back on this and barely remember me.”
I nod, a shaky smile the best I can manage.
That’s the thing about cancer. No one ever wants to acknowledge what happens if the treatments don’t work. Everything is all “take one step at a time” or “we’ll cross that bridgewhen we come to it,” but I’m not built that way and never have been. I’ve always looked to the future, while reaching for the stars and planning the way my life would go. Not discussing what comes next, whether I beat this fucking thing or not, feels a little like the elephant in the room. It’s glaringly obvious that it’s a possibility, yet we ignore it. Like if we don’t recognize my treatment could fail, the chance of failure doesn’t exist.
But I can’t will cancer away with my fucking mind. If I could, I would’ve done it already, so this has to work.
After Nurse Anna adjusts the flow of the IV, she picks my clipboard up and marks something down in my chart. “What are you doing once you get out of here? Anything fun planned?”
I lift a shoulder. “Does sitting at home in my pajamas count as fun?”
She scoffs. “You’re young, and it’s summer. You should go out, have fun. Soak up some vitamin D.”
She’s right. It is what I should be doing. And I would if circumstances were different. Instead, I’m here, and the only friends I have already left for college where they’re preparing for their freshman soccer season.
I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been fucking lonely since school finished. Everyone’s moving on to bigger and better things while I’m just . . . stuck.
The thought hovers over me like a storm cloud, darkening my thoughts, and Mom must notice because she smiles and asks Nurse Anna a question about her children, effectively changingthe subject. We’ve been around the block enough times to know she has two, one of whom’s just had a baby.
After a few minutes of chitchat, Nurse Anna sighs and turns to me with kind eyes. “You all set?”
“Yep. I’m good.”
“Well, settle in, we’ll be back to check in on you later.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I mumble under my breath as she leaves the room.
The second she’s gone, I catch Mom’s eye, and she glares.
“What?”
She stands and crosses the room, placing a kiss on my forehead. “Do you have to be so incorrigible?”
“Yes?” I grin.
“I’m going to grab a coffee from the cafeteria. Do you need anything before I leave?”
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something,” I say, because it’s now or never.
“Oh?” She sits back down in the vinyl hospital chair, and I almost feel bad keeping her here. “What did you want to talk about?”
Nerves tangle in my chest. There’s no good way of telling her I have a “boyfriend,” but maybe if I give her time to digest the news now, then when she meets him in a few days, she’ll be more receptive to the idea.
“I met this guy at a Community Healing meeting a few weeks back, and we’ve been talking . . . a lot.” I pause to let that sink in.
Mom flops back in her chair, her mouth a round O. Based on her expression, dropping a bomb would’ve been less shocking, though I don’t blame her for being suspicious. I hate those meetings, and she knows it. Everyone’s always whining and crying, carrying on about their hopes and fears when it’s so much easier to just power through. And somehow, it’s always the people with super curable forms of cancer that are the worst. It’s irritating and insulting to the ones who are terminal.
I went to approximately one meeting with Mom before I refused to go back unless I could go alone. Now, when Mom thinks I’m at the meetings, I’m really at the soccer fields, staring out at the wide expanse of green and imagining myself blazing down the turf, kicking a ball, and scoring a goal.
“You’ve been talking to a boy, and you’re just mentioning it now?” Mom glances around us, pointedly indicating that there’s a better place to bring it up than here.
