Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
NYLA
I stop at the pedestrian light and look up. The Halifax Harbor Hospital rises in front of me like an unconquerable rock. Clouds are piling up ominously in the sky. I feel sick, I can barely breathe. My legs feel weak, just like my whole body, which is weak and tired and not ready for what’s ahead.
Music makes everything better. At least that’s what Jaden claimed yesterday at the fair when he talked me into buying the pink glittery headphones that I now pull out of my handbag.
Cars shoot past me, people crowd around me while I connect the headphones to my phone and put them in my ears.
A little later, the first song from the playlist Jaden sent me out of the blue in the middle of the night starts to play.
Don’t forget to smile, his message said, nothing else.
I listen to the refrain of Don’t Worry, Be Happy. Smiling to myself, I turn the music up louder and picture the delighted expression with which Jaden would be looking at me if he were here with me now.
He would be dancing, and my smile would turn into a grin.
The pedestrian light switches to green. I set off in time with the melody, feel as if I’m in a bubble—just me and the music—and I even manage to breathe more or less evenly, which is more than at any checkup before.
Five minutes later I cross the forecourt of Halifax Harbor Hospital. Katrina and the Waves are belting out Walking on Sunshine, and in my desperation I hum along.
I hum along and think of Jaden, for whom there would only be this moment with the music. He would soak up the mood, inhale the sea breeze, ignore the clouds, and delight in the narrow strip of light that has just won the battle against the gray.
‘This right here is a damn good moment and you’re missing it,’ he would say. In a way he’s right about that, and at the same time he isn’t.
Because it isn’t that simple. Yes, whether I worry about my test results or not has no effect on the outcome.
But far too often he distracts himself when conversations or topics make him uncomfortable.
As if he just wants to block them out, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re there.
And who knows, maybe in his case there are even solutions.
No matter how much I’m enjoying the music right now, my checkup appointment doesn’t just vanish into thin air because I’m not thinking about it. My illness, the risks, the responsibility to take care of my body—all of that is real. In every moment.
Ignoring something because it’s uncomfortable is wrong. Not just for me, but for Jaden too.
As soon as the opportunity arises, I’ll speak to him about his strange behavior—and I won’t let up until I know what’s behind it.
Taking a deep breath, I pull the headphones from my ears and enter the clinic. Without the music, the fear of the appointment immediately starts creeping back up inside me, and by the time I sit down twenty minutes later on the visitor’s chair in my oncologist’s office, I’m drenched in sweat.
Dr. Becker smiles at me kindly out of his light blue eyes and adjusts his glasses. ‘How are you feeling?’
With trembling fingers, I pull my notebook out of my bag to hand it to him. ‘My levels are okay, I think, at least I couldn’t find anything serious.’ With the methods available to me—and those are by far not enough.
He doesn’t take the notebook. ‘We’ve already discussed the last two times that it isn’t necessary to keep a record of your state of health.’
Yes, that’s true. Still… how could I have… I fix my gaze on him, searching for help. ‘There’s been a lot going on with me lately, getting ready to go back to work, the first days on the job. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.’
Now he leans across the desk toward me. ‘Not missing anything is my job,’ he replies emphatically. ‘And your job is…’
‘I know what we agreed.’ And I want that too, but it’s not that simple. He has to understand that; after all, he deals with seriously ill patients every single day.
‘I want you to say it out loud.’ There is gentleness in his voice. ‘What is your job?’
My fingers tighten around the notebook. ‘To live my life,’ I answer, and I automatically think of Lilly, who wasn’t as lucky as I was. I can do what was denied to her, and what am I doing instead?
Being afraid. Limiting myself.
That is anything but living my life.
Dr. Becker nods in satisfaction. ‘Good, then let’s see what your body has to report,’ he says, reaching for my medical file.
My heart beats faster, my chair feels as if it’s wobbling.
‘Let’s start with the blood values.’ He opens the documents with the test results and looks at me over the rim of his glasses. ‘Your hemoglobin level is normal, the leukocytes are stable, no abnormalities in the lymphocytes.’
I exhale shakily and cling to my earrings as if they were lifelines, yet I still can’t shake the tension.
‘The inflammation markers are also unremarkable, and your LDH level is within the normal range.’
My gaze darts to his hand as he turns the page. The decisive words are still missing.
He gives me an encouraging smile. ‘If anything worrying had shown up, I would have mentioned it long ago.’
I know that. Still, I can’t relax. Not yet.
‘All good so far. We’ll just do a quick ultrasound of the lymph nodes.’ He gestures toward the examination couch.
I sit down on the couch and stare at the framed certificate on the wall while Dr. Becker walks around the desk and comes over to me.
The next few minutes are like a fever dream.
I feel the cold gel on my skin, the pressure of the transducer before the blurred black-and-white shapes appear on the screen, shapes I ought to be able to interpret.
I hear his words, which I ought to understand.
Then he hands me some paper towels and looks so satisfied as he does it that I dare to return from my fever dream.
‘No swelling? No enlarged lymph nodes?’ I ask, out of breath.
‘Nothing abnormal.’
Nothing abnormal. Thank God.
Without thinking, I fall into his arms, feeling for a moment as free as I used to. And when, in the subsequent conversation, he also announces that the follow-up examinations can now take place at longer intervals, it is only too clear to me what that means.
I am healthy.
For now, warns a voice inside me.
‘One thing is important to me,’ Dr. Becker now says earnestly. ‘I’m sure you know about the power of our thoughts.’
I nod.
‘Letting go of an illness like this is not easy.’ Dr. Becker places his hands on mine. ‘You’ve done a great job so far.’
Well aware of what he’s getting at, I lower my eyelids.
‘I’d like you to leave your notebook here with me,’ I hear him say warmly. ‘You don’t need it anymore.’
I immediately look around for it. It’s lying on the desk, where I put it down before the ultrasound examination. Now I pick it up and trace the edges with my index finger.
For months it has been my constant companion. It was my anchor, my partner, my life insurance—at least in my imagination.
If Jaden knew about this notebook, he would probably call it something else: my ankle shackle, my prison, my killjoy. He would cheer for me if I left it here with Dr. Becker today. He would kiss me, on the spot and without asking, because it would make him so happy and proud.
‘You are healthy,’ I hear my doctor say in the midst of my thoughts.
I nod, because I know he’s right. I am healthy and even if I will never again be a one-percent person, I am alive.
Not alive for now. Just alive.
Every part of me is trembling. ‘Yeah, I’m healthy,’ I say anyway and hand him the notebook.
The first few hours without my notebook felt strange. And even now, as I’m sitting with Olive, June, Sonora, and Autumn in a cozy bar on the Halifax Harbor waterfront, it’s as if an important part of me were missing.
‘Cheers, girls.’ Olive raises her cocktail.
We clink our glasses.
‘So great that we finally made it happen.’ Sonora sips her white wine, her mane of curls falling into her face.
With the sea breeze on my skin and the sound of the waves in my ears, I let my gaze wander over the colorful wooden houses on the pier and the lights of the city on the opposite side of the channel. There’s positive energy all around, and I want to be positive tonight too.
At Sonora’s urging, I even ordered an alcoholic cocktail. Now the Malibu Beach is sitting in front of me, and I’m ready to drink it. At least a little of it.
‘Okay, guys, I’ve got a suggestion.’ I pull the little umbrella out of the pineapple decorating my cocktail and set it down on the napkin. ‘Tonight we’re not doctors. The Halifax Harbor Hospital doesn’t exist. We’re just having fun.’
Wow, did I really just say that? The words that had become so foreign to me lately, but were apparently still hidden somewhere inside me, echo within me: We’re just having fun.
Like we used to.
‘We’re just having fun!’ My heart races with anticipation as I throw my friend a challenging look.
Without thinking, I kick off my shoes and run barefoot down the jetty.
I don’t need my T-shirt, any more than I need the skirt.
Every few steps another piece of clothing slips to the ground until I’m completely naked and there’s only water in front of me.
The wood is warm beneath my feet, the summer evening smells of salt and freedom.
‘Nyla, wait!’ My friend doesn’t get to finish the sentence, because I dive under. Just like that. Headfirst into the dark water.
When I surface again, I laugh out loud.
‘You’re crazy,’ she mutters, stepping up to the water’s edge.
‘Then be crazy too!’ I splash water in her direction. ‘Or are you scared?’
She snorts. Slips out of her dress. And jumps.
‘We’re just having fun,’ I repeat so quietly that my friends can’t hear it, and feel the faint smile forming on my lips.
‘Girls’ night? I’m in.’ That’s Olive, whose gaze now wanders around the circle. ‘Who’s got something exciting from their private life to report?’
Autumn quickly lowers her lids, I shake my head just to be safe.
Because talking about Jaden would inevitably lead to the question of what exactly is going on with me right now.
Then the girls would want to know where this new Nyla is coming from, the one who’s fighting more and more for her place in my life.
And there’s only one answer to both questions. One I still don’t understand. One I sense has come to stay. One that makes me jittery and happy and desperate and powerless.
Jaden.