Page 100 of Wild Flower

I blink and watch my friend pacing on the other side of the room, still talking on the phone. I blink again, not catching anything they’re saying. My eyelids flutter and this pillow feels like heaven, sort of like Archer’s voice, deep and comforting and exactly what you want to lull you to sleep.

58

ARCHER

Ihate these machines.

I hate wearing paper dresses and being pumped with radiotracers. Not to mention, lying on a table and being pushed inside a narrow tube that feels like I’ve been recruited to test out a futuristic space capsule that the doctors will wake me up from in three-hundred years when they’ve found a new planet for us to live on.

Technically, I’m not claustrophobic, but being back inside one of these machines for my PET-CT scan has my heart racing. The last thing I want is to lie here for over an hour and not move. The doctor’s voice keeps filling the capsule like the voice of God, telling me I’m doing great and to focus on my breathing. But all that does is fill my nostrils with the acrid smell of the room. It makes me want to vomit because it triggers all of my past visits to the hospital that I want to forget.

I grit my teeth and tell myself to get over it.

A scan is one of the easiest parts of the process. It’s waiting for results that’s hard and not knowing the outcome. Overthinking. Spiraling. But if I want a future, then I have to stop being a dick and get this done.

Valeria has given me an earful since she landed at the airport. She flat-out refused to hop on a plane to Hawaii if I didn’t agree to get a screening. “Don’t make me come over there only to have you break my heart with how careless you’re being,” she said on the phone. “If you want to dig yourself an early grave, don’t invite me to Hawaii to watch you throw your life away.”

I made an appointment.

She got on a plane.

So here I am inside this machine—overthinking everything. There’s a reason I didn’t want to step inside a clinic ever again: too many doomsday scenarios, too many what-ifs chipping away at my sanity.

I told Valeria about Becca and Finn and what went down between the three of us. She laughed, telling me Iwouldcreate a throuple as some backwards no-regrets self-fulfilling manifesto. Plus, she likes the idea that there are two people I’m accountable to now. She proceeded to steal my phone for both of their numbers, pointing out that there’s power in allies. If there are three of them to nag me to go to the doctors, I might actually do it.

Later tonight, Val will get to meet Becca and Finn. Which I’m dreading. Not the introducing them to my sister part, but everything else. I’ll be a wreck from lying in this tube all morning, plus I have to explain why I lied and beg for forgiveness. And I’m not sure I actually deserve it.

Fifty minutes later, I’m wearing my own clothes and sitting next to my sister who’s writing down everything doctor Renner says. It’s all the typical lines.Five to ten days for results ...regular scans help us catch new cells early … here’s a list of yadda yadda yadda.

It’s not until we’re sitting on the beach, staring at the ocean, that I even begin to feel human again and not like a vegetable of fear and guilt jammed inside a bag of skin.

Valeria’s hand rests on my elbow as we sit side by side, our matching dark hair catching the wind. The afternoon gusts are strong, reminding me of the other night when I stood at the precipice of that cliff with the storm gripping the surf.

I called Valeria instead of jumping in the water that night. She’s the one person that’s always held me steady when the world feels like it’s caving in on itself. She’s the one person that will never give up on me, even when I’m always running away.

“Tell me about her,” Val says, resting her head on my shoulder. She means Becca. Every time I start panicking inside my head, Val asks about Becca and it calms me.

“Becca has this tiny white tattoo under her ear,” I say, imagining it in my mind. “It has white lines instead of black and is a tattoo of a ghost orchid. It turns out those are quite rare.” I laugh. “Actually most of the flowers Becca takes care of are uncommon or poisonous.”

I keep talking and Val smiles. Our afternoon is nothing more than a regular day, sitting in the sand and staring out at the horizon. No thrill. No wild adventure. No temper or passion. Just a calm afternoon in the sun. It quiets something in me that I’m always hiding from: that need to stay ten steps ahead of the dread with a thrilling distraction.

For the first time in years, I want to sit in this quiet and not run. Face the fact that time and sickness could be nipping at my ankles. I dig my fingers into the sand. I’ve been rushing forward toward some unknown, but now all I want is a thousand afternoons just like this one, sitting quietly with what’s left of my family and feeling thankful.

“I’ve been an ass,” I tell my sister, and she squeezes my elbow as we look at the ocean. “I thought if I didn’t have to face you every day, I could forget that anyone cared about me. I could just run away and have fun. I thought if I was in Hawaii, I’d be far enough away you wouldn’t have to worry. Out of sight, out of mind. You know? Things would fade with the distance.”

I’ve wanted to be that ghost orchid on Becca’s skin: light and almost invisible, easy to not notice. But like that tattoo, I’m permanent. Val will never forget me no matter how far away I am. We’re family.

“It’s ironic, Arch,” Valeria says. “You used to complain about how your ex-girlfriend and your friends all abandoned you after your diagnosis. But you didn’t learn from your own pain, and you still abandoned me.”

I hang my head. I didn’t want to be a burden. Val already spent enough of her twenties heartbroken after my parents and me. Didn’t she deserve some time to herself? But that’s not how she saw it.

“You abandoned me when you were gettingbetter,” she adds. “And every time I called you, you made me feel like I was a jerk for caring.”

“I know,” I whisper. "I wanted you to give up on me."

“That’s never going to happen,” she says with a stubbornness that reminds me of our mother.

“You sound like Mom.”

---