Chapter 10
Nathan holds my hand as we silently ride to the hospital for my first group therapy session after school.
Doctor Barker recommended I go, as a second-time cancer patient, because she thinks it will help me come to terms with what is happening in my body.
Which, to be completely honest, is fair, since I’m still deep in denial that I even have a tumor. Mostly, I just pretend it isn’t there.
I’m also still not sure how I’ll hide my surgery and recovery from Tucker and Grace, but I’ll be damned if they find out sooner than I want them to. Plus, I still have another week till the surgery, and once it’s all over, I can tell them about it. It’s not that much time.
Thinking about Tucker makes my palms sweat, but in a good way, I think.
After we kissed on Saturday, I ran away and we haven’t talked since beyond a handful of heart emojis.
I haven’t told anyone yet. I want to tell my brother, but I don’t really know how to say it.
Shawn ended our fake sort of almost relationship and then I went and let Tucker kiss me immediately after that?
I know Nathan and Grace won’t judge me in any way, but I’m not ready for the “oh you two are perfect together” that I know we’ll get from Grace.
I just want to enjoy this for as long as I can.
I just want to be us—Rosie and Tucker—without anyone else knowing about whatever we are.
Without having to tell him the truth about what’s happening to my body, and maybe for just a few days, that kiss can be just ours.
Dad walks into the clinic with me, while Nathan stays in the car. Mom didn’t come; she had classes at the studio. Dad will have to sit in the waiting area or hang out in the car with Nathan, but he stays with me until they are ready to take me back.
“You’ll do great, kid,” he whispers in my ear as he gives me a hug.
I follow the nurse to a large room full of chairs in a semicircle. There’s one girl my age sitting right in the middle and she grins at me as I walk in.
I swallow hard; today is not a day for tears.
Today I can be brave, plus Doctor Barker said I didn’t have to talk if I didn’t want to, so hopefully I can just listen today.
But being here feels like I’m embracing this reality, that I do have another tumor, and my last appointment wasn’t just a bad dream.
I walk toward the girl, pausing for a half-second when I realize she’s in a hospital gown. They didn’t give me one, but do I need one?
She catches my pause and smiles. “It’s okay, I’ll probably be the only one in a gown.” She’s got a bubbly voice that could rival Grace’s.
“Oh,” is all I say as I take the seat next to her before I can change my mind.
“I’m Lucy,” she says. “I’m here full time right now. In the hospital, I mean. I’m doing chemo but my mom doesn’t really have the capacity to help me when I’m at home. She’s got the money though, so I just stay here.”
I shift nervously. “I’m sorry,” I say, but that doesn’t feel like the right thing to say. I’m just not sure how to respond.
Lucy smiles again. “It’s alright. I’ve got a brain tumor that keeps getting bigger right on my brain stem, plus one that’s growing by my lung, but they’re gonna take that out this week. You?”
I glance around, wishing that someone else would enter the room so I didn’t have to talk about my cancer with this girl who seems so calm about the tumors in her body. How can you be so carefree while your body is growing things that could kill you?
“I’ve got a tumor near my liver.” I frown; that’s the first time I’ve said it out loud since Doctor Barker gave us the news. “Not on my liver, though. My doctor is sure that surgery will take care of it and I can get back to my normal life.”
“Which is?” she asks, curious.
“Dance,” I say. “Ballet. I just auditioned for a studio in Paris, and that’s where I’m planning to go in the fall.”
“Wow, that’s amazing. I’m a senior this year—well, I would be if I’d been going to school for the past two years. I’m almost done with all the work to finish my GED.”
I nod, unsure of what to say. Doing homework feels like a waste of time when you’re sick, like, what’s the point?
I said that once, the first time. It made Mom cry and Dad sat down next to me, with his face all serious, telling me how even though it felt like it, the cancer really wasn’t going to last forever, that I needed to keep my brain sharp because when all of it was over, I’d be going back to school.
Now, though, I wish there was some way for me to keep dancing, to help me keep those skills up, so that I’ll be ready for the Paris Academy when all of this is over.
But with where the tumor is plus recovery from surgery, it’ll be a few weeks, if not a month or two, before I can actually dance again the way I want to.
Lucy continues, “My tumors won’t ever go away. We do surgeries when they get too big, mostly with the one on my brain. And the chemo helps slow the growth.”
“Oh.” I do not know how to talk to this girl.
“Yeah.” She gives me another smile, which makes me feel slightly annoyed, because how can you be so happy when you have cancer?
“They removed as much as they could two years ago when we first found it. Then last year, it started growing back, just like they said it would, and they did another surgery once it was big enough. But they won’t ever be able to remove all of it because of the nerves it sits on.
I’d become a vegetable. And I’d rather have a million surgeries than not be able to live my life. ”
I don’t say what I think, which is that it doesn’t sound like much of a life if you’re stuck in the hospital all the time, trying to control a tumor that won’t ever actually be cured.
“I just finished my first round of chemo, since on my last scan the tumor had started growing again. They’re hoping that this helps slow it down.”
“Wow.” The word slips out of my mouth before I can think of a better response. “I mean, I’m so sorry, that does not sound fun.”
Lucy nods. “I guess it’s not exactly how I thought my last few years of high school would go. But, I believe there’s a purpose for everything, so there’s some purpose in this.”
“Right,” I say, but I don’t believe that. How can all the bad things that happen in the world actually have a purpose? Couldn’t we learn some of those lessons or whatever without all of the hard stuff? Or maybe different hard stuff that isn’t quite so hard?
“So what about you?”
“What about me?”
Lucy is staring at me with an intensity that I’m not quite sure how to explain.
“What kind of cancer do you have?”
Oh. Just jumping right into this. I glance around the room as if looking for someone to save me from this conversation, but I’m stuck because no one else is around. “Lymphoma,” I answer. “I had it when I was little. I was in remission for almost nine years.”
“I’m so sorry,” Lucy says, and then she surprises me; she reaches across the small distance between us and takes her hand in mine. “The diagnosis this time? Sorry if that’s rude or nosy. I imagine we’ll see each other a lot around here in the therapy group, but it helps to have friends.”
To have friends who know what it’s like, what you’re going through.
It’s what she doesn’t say, so I tell her again that it’s just one tumor and that surgery should fix it.
That I’ll probably only be here once and that I’m not allowing myself to think of any other options.
Which makes me feel a little selfish, now that I know her diagnosis.
When I finish, I blurt, “My best friend kissed me on Saturday.” I wasn’t ready to talk about that, but I am ready to be done talking about cancer.
Her eyes go wide in delight. “Oh, tell me all the details!”
I can’t help but smile with her.
“Well,” I say, unsure of where to start exactly.
“I was kind of trying to date this other guy because I needed to focus on dance and my mom didn’t want me to date Tucker—that’s the guy I kissed.
But she wanted me to date this other guy because I think she knew I didn’t really like him, so he and I have been pretending to kind of date for half of the school year. ”
She giggles. “Wait, you fake dated another guy? And didn’t fall in love with him?”
I let out a small laugh. I should have expected her to ask me questions about every single thing.
“Sort of fake dating, or fake whatever it is you are before a relationship. And I didn’t fall in love with Shawn, he isn’t the greatest guy. Plus…” I trail off.
“You like the other guy, the one you kissed?” she guesses.
“He’s my best friend’s cousin. We met a few years ago when he moved to be closer to LA; we live down in San Clemente. But anyway, he kissed me for the first time during the firework show on the Fourth of July last year and?—”
Lucy interrupts, “How was that kiss?”
“Um, the best I’ve ever had?” I say it like a question, and she just laughs. And technically at that point, the only one I’d ever had.
“Go on,” she urges.
I nod, biting my lip to hold back a grin.
“So he kisses me last summer, right before I’m about to go to Paris for a six-week dance program at the school of my dreams. The whole first half, I couldn’t stop thinking about him or about our kiss.
It was so much of a distraction that even the instructors noticed.
So I promised myself, and my mom, that I wouldn’t date him. ”
“Wow, your life is so exciting,” Lucy says.
I laugh. “Or incredibly dumb.” I take a breath, and another person enters the room. Right, this is group therapy, I forgot. The boy sits at the edge of the semicircle and pulls out his phone, putting earbuds in his ears.
Lucy laughs, too. “Or maybe that.”