Chapter 28
The bright sun peeking through the blinds in my room makes me blink as I open my eyes. I’ve spent the past three weeks in this room, getting poison pumped into my body. Yesterday was my last round of chemo before Doctor Barker will see if it’s working and if the tumor has gotten any smaller.
My room is quiet—Dad’s asleep on the couch and I can see Nathan and Grace in the hallway. Where’s Tucker? I want to ask, have you heard from him? But no one even knows I’m awake yet.
My head is throbbing, but other than that, I feel almost completely normal. “Dad,” I whisper, and his eyes fly open.
“Hey, Rosebud.” He leans over me, touching my cheek, and I lean into his hand.
After he helps me drink some water, Nathan and Grace come into my room. Grace won’t meet my eye, and Nathan looks sad.
“What’s going on?” I ask. I want to know why everyone seems so solemn. Mom enters the room, followed by Doctor Barker.
“You’re up,” Doctor Barker says, in a way that reminds me far too much of Lucy, and my stomach clenches.
“Yeah?” I ask. Why wouldn’t I be up ?
“You’ve been asleep for almost three days,” Doctor Barker explains, and I look at her, confused.
“But, chemo…” I start, and then I remember. I remember getting chemo started, and everything feeling heavy and dark.
“What do you remember?” Mom asks quietly.
“It was dark…” I offer and Doctor Barker nods.
“You had a seizure in the middle of your last round of chemo. We had to sedate you to make it stop,” Doctor Barker says. “But, once your brain activity was normal, we took you off those meds, and now you’re awake.”
I nod. It’s a lot to take in. This feels too soon, too sudden.
I knew Lucy had seizures, but I never asked her when they started.
Maybe she had them the whole time they’d known about the tumor, and not just at the end.
Or maybe they were only at the end and I have less time than we originally thought.
Mom gives me a small smile. “They’re going to keep you here for a few more days, but things are looking good.
” Things are still tense between us, but I can tell she’s trying.
We might never be okay, her and I, but maybe things can get better.
But, after that day in the studio when I saw her crying, things have been a little different.
“Well, not good, exactly,” Doctor Barker corrects and we all look at her. “Your tumor hasn’t gotten any bigger, but it also hasn’t gotten smaller.”
“We didn’t know if that would happen though, right?”
Doctor Barker shakes her head.
I think part of me knew from the moment I heard the cancer was back that this would be a losing battle; one that I was willing to fight, but one that my body wouldn’t win.
I swallow. I ask the question I know everyone is thinking, “How long?”
“Still hard to say. If we continue to do chemo, we can keep the tumor from growing, but we can’t do that forever.
There will be a time when the chemo and the side effects aren’t worth it, and there won’t be much time after that, I’m afraid,” Doctor Barker says.
The words zip through me, as if I was just struck by lightning, but no one else moves. They already knew.
“How did it get this bad?” I whisper.
“Sometimes these things just happen,” Doctor Barker says, sadly. She lets my dad know she’ll be back to check on me, but that I should rest if I can.
If I can. I just found out I don’t have much life left. How can I rest?
“Any word from Tucker?” I finally ask. It’s as if the room fills with ice—no one moves or talks. “Can I have my phone to call him?” I ask this question to Nathan, since he’s been in charge of my phone while I’ve been at the hospital.
Grace comes to the other side of my bed, her eyes full of tears. “I’ve tried, his cell must be off.”
My heart clenches. “Any word from his mom?” Grace reached out to her as soon as Tucker left.
“We haven’t heard from her either,” she says.
“Can I still try to call him?” I ask, and Nathan hands me my phone.
I hit Tucker’s name but it goes straight to voicemail.
“Um, hi,” I say into the phone. “Things aren’t great over here, um, with the cancer, I mean.
Not that I’m doing great either. I, uh, come home, please?
I need you here.” I hang up and sink back into my pillows.
“That was not the best message,” Nathan says jokingly.
“I…” I begin, and then I start to laugh, too. “Apparently I can’t talk right now.” That seems to be all that everyone else needed, because then we’re all laughing.
“Why are we laughing?” Nathan asks, wiping away his tears.
“Maybe we’re all just in denial?” Grace offers.
“Or maybe it’s like in Grey’s Anatomy, when they’re at the funeral and everyone can’t stop laughing, even though it’s a totally inappropriate time to be laughing,” Dad says from the corner, which for some reason makes us all laugh harder .
When the laughter finally runs down, I ask, “Maybe he went to the cabin?” Tucker has to be somewhere.
“My dad checked on Monday and it was empty. He’s going to go up again tomorrow,” Grace tells me.
“He was worried that he’s like his dad,” I say suddenly.
“What?” she asks.
“Once, he told me that one of his fears is that he’d just grow up and walk away from the people he loved, just like his dad.
That music would become so much of his life, he’d walk away from everything else.
He was worried he had the running gene in him,” I say, and the words feel heavy on my tongue.
“He’s not like his dad,” she assures me. “Get some sleep, we’ll find him.”
“You get to go home,” Doctor Barker announces.
Mom bursts into tears and Grace collapses on the bed beside me and says, “Thank you, God.”
I’m glad I’m going home. It’ll be nice to be in a place that isn’t this white, sterile room, surrounded by all the beeping, though Doctor Barker assures Mom that some of the equipment will be coming with me so the nurses who are coming home with us will be able to monitor me.
This isn’t the end—not yet—but the end feels suffocatingly close.
And we still have no idea where Tucker is.
I fall asleep before the conversation is over.