Chapter 78 Georgia
Georgia
When Junie walks back into the Clementine, relief floods me. Objectively I knew she was probably fine, but she hasn’t driven
herself in weeks, let alone jetted around running errands. She’s been chaperoned and generally lying horizontal.
Junie goes right to the couch and curls up.
I squeeze in beside her and pull the blanket over her. “Where you been, Bug?”
She looks up at me and grins. “I wanted to see the swatches in the shop, you know, with the light there.”
“I could’ve taken you,” I say. “I’m here for that kind of stuff.”
“I’m not so sure with the way you slept in today,” Junie says, grinning. “I was starting to worry, in fact. Georgia Louise up later than 6:00 a.m.? Not in my lifetime.”
I laugh. “Honestly, I think it was finally being done with Atlanta. The job, the car, the apartment. Closing the door on it
and coming back here is such a weight off. It was like the sleep you get on the first night back in your own bed after a long
trip away.”
“Like coming home,” Junie says.
I nod. “But enough of that. How was the doctor? Do they have a new miracle drug to put you back together in a day or two yet?” I look at my little sister and smile. She is so precious, and now I get to be here for the foreseeable future, not a single plan to leave.
Junie shuffles up to a sitting position. “Look, it might not be the news you were looking for. And now that I’m acting like
the grown-up I am, I’m not going to try to joke my way out of it.” Her hands emerge from the blanket, and they feel bony when
they wrap around mine. “I’m not doing well, health-wise. The scan was not good. It’s spread, bigger in some places. So the
chemo I’ve endured this far hasn’t worked. I told him, the doctor, how I’m feeling, how the pain continues to come and I’m
leaning heavily on those meds I know are the big guns.”
I resist the urge to jump in. To argue her points. But I trust her. I do, so I will sit quietly and let her speak.
“I’m supposed to do chemo again in a couple days.” Junie swallows, then meets my eyes earnestly. “But I don’t want to. And
not because I don’t want to fight or I’m trying out the whole denial thing again. But because when I’m honest with myself
about what’s happening with my body, I don’t want to waste what’s left. I barely make it to the garden. I can’t even take
Puds around the block. My heart and my soul are still so good, though, and this life that I’ve got, I want to live it. I don’t
want to spend a week in bed from this treatment, only to barely have a couple days of eating something before doing it again.
And he said it again—the doctor said chemo is no guarantee.”
The pain starts in my chest and shoots out from there to the very tips of me as I realize what she’s telling me. My body aches
as it braces for what’s to come. “So this means . . .” My voice catches.
Junie nods. “My body has already made the choice. I don’t think it’s really up to me anymore. Not that part at least.”
The choice? No, this isn’t a choice; it’s not a choice if there’s only a single outcome. Angry tears prickle my eyes, and I curse the
world for dangling this love, her, in my life only to wrench it away. This miserable science for doing something but nothing of value. For wasting our precious time and letting me down, letting all of us down. For failing Junie.
For being so very human in light of a person so extraordinary.
Is nothing all we’ve got for the most remarkable among us?
My arms are around her, and I pull her in so tight. I scramble to memorize every bit of hugging her. The shape and weight.
The smell of her.
“I can’t lose you.” Even before the words are out, I know they’re as powerless as a sieve holding sand. My demands won’t change
the truth. Sobs start in the depths of my throat and erupt in sounds I’ve never heard myself make before.
I will lose her.
“Forgive me this one, Peach, but I might have to die a little to live what I’ve got left,” Junie says.
She is asking for mercy, for a gentle hand. For permission to rest.
I pull back and look into those eyes that are desperate for my agreement, and I am torn in half. How can I agree? How can
I say, “Yes, let’s stop the chemo,” when I would settle for fragments of her? I would settle for the scent of her on a breeze
if that’s the best I can do. When every part of me wants to keep something of her.
Junie lifts the corners of her mouth, a suggestion of a smile, and even now, weeks into chemo, and in the face of devastation,
she is beautiful. Not beautiful like a supermodel or even a well-designed beauty shop, but beautiful like a human who can
see the world in its very best light from inside her own worst case. When she’s losing. When she’s ending. Junie has always
been magic, precious, like the truly beautiful things of this world. And much like them, much like hope and holiness and the
promise of a repeatedly rising sun, she cannot be owned or kept or held.
All I can do is nod as tears stream down my cheeks.
“Ok.” The word is a wisp.
Maybe part of me wondered as we’ve watched her decline if the treatment wasn’t working, but another part of me knew to expect her to get sick and then sicker.
I desperately want to fight and scream and claw to get her life back.
I don’t want to give in to this. It’s never been my style; I would kill for her second chance.
But it’s her. It’s Junie, wonderfully herself. And at least for a while longer, she’s here.
I take my baby sister’s face in my hands. I look into her eyes intently. “I promise I will follow your lead.”
Junie’s face cracks into a smile and lights up in a way I now realize has been absent over the last few weeks. Being so unlike
herself must have taken its toll on her too. Her relief, now painted across her face, cuts to the core of me, and I cannot
help but realize in this very moment that she will be the greatest love story of my life.
Nothing will top her.
I wouldn’t allow it.
I pull her into me, and she makes no move to go. Eventually, she wriggles, and even though I keep my arms in place, Junie
extracts herself and looks at me.
“Thank you, Peach,” Junie says. “You always were the best big sister. Now—first order of business: I need some wheels.”
My brow folds in confusion.
“A wheelchair. I need one if I’m going to be out on the town. And if we can get one with flames down the side, that would
be best.”
There she is.