Chapter 1
Chapter One
NYLA
Two weeks earlier
The probability of getting cancer twice in one’s life, depending on lifestyle, genetics, and bad luck, is between twenty and fifty percent.
The risk of dying from this second illness is thirty to fifty percent. For someone who has already been sick once, that means a lifelong risk of death of about six to twenty-five percent, even if they are currently healthy.
Twenty-five percent.
The number pulses through my head in time with the background music coming from the speakers as I watch the busy hustle and bustle in the mirror that covers the entire wall of the hair salon.
The woman next to me is probably about my age. She has a long blond mane, delicate features, bright red fingernails, and an easy, carefree laugh. If she has never been seriously ill before, her risk of dying is one percent.
The hairdresser who is currently highlighting her hair has a higher risk because of the chemical substances he is exposed to in his job. However, his toned body and radiant skin suggest that he leads a healthy life, which shifts the probabilities once again.
One percent, I decide for the hairdresser as well, smiling wistfully, and let my gaze wander on. In the mirror I see Lucy coming toward me. With a broad smile on her face, she positions herself behind my chair, our eyes meet.
‘Hey, how’s your mom?’ I ask.
Lost in thought, she loosens the towel that is wrapped around my head like a turban. ‘The doctors are optimistic.’
Oh, thank God. ‘That’s wonderful.’
She brushes my short strands, then pauses and looks at me in the mirror. ‘If you hadn’t pushed her to get checked out…’ Her hand finds my shoulder. ‘I don’t know how to thank you for that.’
Gently, I place my hand on hers. ‘I’m glad I could help.’
A brief nod, then she examines my hair with lowered lids. I look at myself for a moment: rosy cheeks, delicate skin, big brown eyes, a slightly upturned nose.
As healthy as the woman next to me.
Still – twenty-five percent.
‘Okay, what can I do for you today?’ Lucy parts my hair to the side. Then she arranges it into bangs that fall diagonally across my forehead. ‘We could leave it a little longer, that would frame your face nicely.’
Involuntarily, my gaze jerks to the woman in the next chair. Her mane reaches down to her elbows. Gorgeous. ‘I’m starting my new job tomorrow, so short hair is more practical,’ I say, ignoring the tug in my chest.
Lucy pulls the stool over to her and sits down next to me. ‘You’re working again?’
I feel my cheeks start to burn. ‘Yes, I’m starting in the ER over at Halifax Harbor Hospital.
’ Anticipation and despair, excitement and fear, hope and worry.
All of it surges up in me when I think about how tomorrow I’ll slip on my white coat, loop the stethoscope around my neck, face the hustle of the emergency room and, after almost a year and a half off, finally do again what means the world to me: save lives, increase chances, give time.
A watery sheen covers Lucy’s eyes, and she wraps her arms around me. ‘My God, Nyla, I’m so happy for you,’ she whispers in my ear. ‘This is the beginning of a new life.’
I close my eyes for a moment. ‘Yes, a new life,’ I repeat, my voice thick.
‘You know what?’ She lets go of me and reaches for the brush again.
‘This is the perfect time for a change. I’ll just trim the ends and give your hairstyle a few pretty contours so your hair can grow out nicely over the next few weeks.
’ Tugging now on one strand, now on another, she chatters away cheerfully.
‘In three-quarters of a year you’ll already have a cool bob. ’
‘I don’t know …’
‘And then you can let your hair grow longer over your shoulders again.’ She fixes her excited gaze on me.
‘It will take time, but you’ll get your wonderful long hair back.
’ I swallow hard. ‘Just imagine it.’ Lucy nods toward the mirror; I look at myself, and she talks about how my hair will grow, showing me with her hands how long it will be and by when.
Before my mind’s eye I gradually turn back into the person I used to be: a carefree one-percent person who has absolutely no idea what it’s like to be a twenty-five-percent person.
‘You could wear those elaborate braided hairstyles again,’ Lucy breathes wistfully.
Yes. I could.
‘That would be great, wouldn’t it?’ She folds her hands, her expression turning pleading. ‘Let’s do it, okay?’
Part of me is screaming such a loud yes that it drowns out even the music in the hair salon. But it does not drown out the memory.
Shaking, I let my fingertips glide over my parting.
On to the braid that begins at my left temple and then leads back behind my ear.
The strands feel silky soft and at the same time so strong, as if nothing could harm them.
At my neck the braid winds forward, just like the one on the other side of my head.
Centimeter by centimeter I follow its path until, level with my navel, the ends tickle my fingertips.
I’m sorry. That’s what Dr. Becker said, and also that it will grow back and that my health is more important than my hair.
He’s right. I know that, and yet I’m standing in front of the bathroom mirror with tears burning in my eyes.
Little by little, my hair will fall out.
This strong, thick hair that is as much a part of me as my heartbeat will gather in clumps on my pillow.
On the floor. In the shower drain. On the headrest of the sofa.
They will be everywhere, just not where they belong.
I don’t need it. Not the way I need my heart, functioning organs, and strong muscles. It’s ridiculous to be so attached to it, ridiculous, in view of the seriousness of my illness, to waste even a single thought on the question of who I will be without it.
A tear slips from the corner of my eye. Damp and cold, it crawls down my cheek, my nose swells up, I can’t really breathe anymore.
The bathroom starts spinning around me, I lean against the sink and reach for the scissors. I open the blades, place one braid between them, close my eyes.
I feel the cold metal against my neck.
I squeeze shut.
A bright scraping. A dull sound.
My own sobbing.
I grope for the other braid, place it in the open scissors, squeeze shut.
The desperate scream that leaves my mouth drowns out every other sound. Beneath my closed lids, tears force their way out.
Still, I raise my gaze, reach for Dad’s electric razor, switch it on and press it to my hairline. Its vibrations seize my forehead, the buzzing burns itself into my eardrums.
I hold my breath, press my lips together, grip the razor more tightly. Then I slowly move it backward and know that I will never, for the rest of my life, forget this buzzing it makes as it cuts my hair down to two millimeters.
I blink, feel my tears hurling themselves off my cheeks into the abyss. Feel that they can’t put up any resistance against the fall, feel how powerless they are, at the mercy of the laws of nature.
They fall and fall and fall. And I fall with them.
Hearing from a doctor that you’re suffering from a life-threatening illness is one thing.
But seeing it in the mirror and being able to touch it with your hands, knowing that you’ve just lost a part of yourself, that is something completely different.
And the thought that it could happen again—maybe in just a few days at my next checkup—makes everything inside me freeze.
‘What are you thinking?’ Lucy nudges my shoulder. ‘For my part, I think you should grow your hair out.’
Lost in thought, I stare into the mirror, wanting to see the woman with the hip-length braids, but all I see is the woman with the bald head.
‘I think it’s time,’ I hear my hairdresser say, as if from far away.
Fifty percent. That’s the probability with which I’ll lose my hair—if it even grows as long as it used to be—through another round of treatment. That’s how high the risk is that I’ll have to go through again what tore my heart apart back then in the bathroom.
My fingernails dig into the leather of the salon chair. ‘No, please keep it short again.’
An hour later I ’m standing with my freshly cut pixie cut and a stack of mail from the letterbox in front of the front door of the shared apartment where June, Olive, Sonora, Autumn, and I will be living together from now on.
I’ve barely opened the door when the voices of Sonora and June drift over to me from the room that will one day be our living room, along with the smell of fresh pizza and damp paint.
‘Got it. June’s heart belongs solely to her work, which she’s going to marry one day so she can be the best diagnostician in all of Nova Scotia,’ jokes Sonora, who’s starting her job in surgery at Halifax Harbor Hospital tomorrow.
‘In all of Canada.’ That was June. I can practically see her lifting her index finger and tilting her head to the side so that her Barbie-blond mane falls into her face.
Smiling, I set the mail down on one of the moving boxes that populate the hallway and decide to keep my shoes on. The apartment is still a wild mess and the floor is anything but clean.
‘If you say so,’ replies Sonora as I reach the living room.
The two of them are sitting amid paint buckets, brushes, and covered furniture on boxes that have been repurposed as stools. Sonora is wearing overalls speckled with dusty-rose paint stains, June a chic blouse, her hair tied up in a high ponytail.
June waves at me. ‘Where were you?’
‘Had to take care of something,’ I answer, eyeing the pizzas in the takeout boxes. They smell amazing. ‘By the way, there was mail in the mailbox. It’s on the stack of boxes in the hallway.’
‘Damn,’ grumbles Sonora. A piece of the spinach pizza she was just holding is suddenly stuck in her curls. ‘It’s always the same. I’ll be right back.’ With that, she disappears through the doorway.
Before I can join June, high heels clatter in the hallway. That can only be Olive.
‘Hey, Olive, we’re in the living room!’ I call out to her, and a second later she’s with us. Complete with her perfectly drawn eyeliner and elegant Marlene Dietrich trousers. No one seeing her like this would ever believe she’s an ICU doctor. She looks more like a model: too perfect to be real.
She discovers the improvised dinner. ‘I’ll get plates and cutlery,’ she announces, and June and I burst out laughing at the same time.
I gasp. ‘You’re seriously the only person who doesn’t eat takeout pizza with their fingers.’
Olive shrugs. ‘There has to be order. You’ll be thanking me soon enough when I make sure this flat-share doesn’t descend into chaos.’
She definitely has a point, but before I can tell her that, I already hear Autumn calling to us from the hallway.
A few seconds later she’s in the living room. Her book bag slung over her shoulder, a mild smile on her face, her fiery red hair glowing in competition with her green eyes.
‘Got it!’ She presents her employment contract for the specialist position in pediatrics, and the rest of us respond with jubilant applause. Her gaze falls on the pizza boxes. ‘Is there a Margherita too?’
‘What do you think?’ June signals for all of us to help ourselves.
But instead of reaching for a slice, I just eye the pizzas. White flour, saturated fats, hardly any vitamins or minerals, but all the more salt. High blood pressure, cardiovascular problems, weakened immune system, unnecessary strain on kidneys and liver.
Someone says something; I look up.
Sonora is back and is looking at me out of her dark eyes in a strangely searching way before she sits down on one of the cardboard stools. Does she have any idea what just went through my mind?
Probably not, because no one has for a long time.
I watch my roommates one after the other.
June, who loosens her ponytail with a grin.
Sonora, who is still eyeing me from the corner of her eye as if she were searching my expression for the answer to an urgent question.
Autumn, who lets herself sink cross-legged onto the not exactly clean floor and smooths her red bangs.
Olive, who pushes the plastic cover of the sofa aside and pats the seat cushion before sitting down.
They all believe I’ve put the worst behind me, and logically speaking, that’s true.
Not only as doctors but also as my friends, they know the path I’ve taken. They know about the hard nights, the heavy days, the anxious hoping and the ever-present fear that surrounds people with life-threatening illnesses like tenacious banks of fog that refuse to lift.
What they don’t know, however, is what it feels like to go on afterwards. How hard it is to feel free in your new life, how deeply fear can dig in its claws, how much it controls every step you take.
They all eat pizza without a second thought, run marathons, dream of their careers, of children, of a fulfilled life. There is nothing I want more than to belong with them. I want to dance and laugh out loud while I do it, eat fast food, climb mountains, lie in the sun, go to concerts.
I want to be kissed and feel boundless while it happens.
‘You know what?’ June lets her gaze wander around the circle.
‘Wha?’ Autumn asks with her mouth full.
A warm smile steals onto June’s face. ‘I think this is going to be amazing,’ she says, and there is nothing I want more in this world than to be able to look into the future as carelessly as she does.