32. Hunter
32
HUNTER
Then
T he last person I watched suffer through the hell of cancer was my mother.
It took her quickly, so the battle didn’t last long, but that doesn’t mean that the days went quickly. Every second felt like an hour, every hour a decade, every breath a struggle. I’ve never seen time go by that slowly. If I hadn’t lived it myself, hadn’t sat by her bedside holding my breath and watching her chest, not breathing until she gasped and sputtered for air, I wouldn’t have believed it could.
I used to look back at the short time between her diagnosis and her death and think God was cruel for not giving her time to truly fight, to show the disease what she was made of, but after the last few months of watching Will be decimated by the most aggressive forms of chemo and radiation, I’ve changed my mind.
This is cruelty.
The lingering and prolonged suffering. The volleying between hope and despair. The constant appointments, filled with poking and prodding and infusions that leave him weak and frail for days. And the fatigue isn’t even the worst side effect. No, that’d have to be the nausea that guarantees he’ll vomit on the way home or the dryness that leaves sores in the roof of his mouth, or the darkened skin on his hands that make me feel like I’m watching him decay in real time.
But perhaps the cruelest thing of all is his smile because it hasn’t changed even though he’s dropped fourteen pounds in the last month. It’s still as wide and awe-inspiring as it was the first day I met him. He likes to smile at me all the time, even when he’s too weak to talk, and I take it as his way of letting me know he’s alright, so I can pass the message along to everyone who calls to check on him because in-person visits stopped being a thing after a runny nose turned into pneumonia, which almost killed him.
“How is he?” Rae asks, her voice distant and far away, just like she’s been for months. She came home to visit for a weekend right after Will got the diagnosis. That was back when things were more hopeful, when we could still go to meetings and our world hadn’t shrunk down to include nothing but each other and the host of medical professionals trying to keep him alive.
“He’s alright.” I stretch out on the couch, my back aching from sleeping in the recliner in Will’s room all night long. There are plenty of beds to choose from in this house, but I prefer to stay close, to make sure he doesn’t need anything. “Sleeping right now.”
“How many more treatments does he have left again?”
My jaw clenches. I don’t know how to tell Rae that there is no number in mind now. That the doctors told me today that the infusions are the only thing staving off the cancer that’s invaded everything, including his lungs.
“They’ve changed the protocol, so I’m not sure.” I hate lying to her, but Will told me I had to. He made me promise to keep her in the dark about how bad things have gotten because, by some sick twist of fate, Rae’s life is improving while his health is rapidly declining. Her successful debut as Juliet has led to her being promoted to a principal role, which has made her a shoo-in for the lead in other company productions. It won’t be long before other, larger companies are looking to poach her, which means she’ll have the world at her feet any day now.
Will told me he didn’t want anything, not even him, to stop her from focusing on her dreams, and I’m not in any position to deny a dying man his last wishes.
“Oh, could you send me the new schedule?”
“Of course, Sunshine.”
She goes quiet, and I listen to the hustle and bustle of the city through her end of the line, missing people more than I thought I ever would. It’s hard being here alone with Will day in and day out, especially when he’s sleeping most of the time and sick the rest of it. Before this little stint in quarantine, I thought I preferred to be alone, but now I’m desperate for human connection.
And I need a meeting, badly , because, as it turns out, watching someone you love die is triggering as hell.
“How are you doing?” Rae asks, pulling me out of my head. “I know spending all day, every day, catering to someone else’s needs isn’t easy.”
There’s a hint of guilt layered in between her words, and I hate it. I hate hearing it, hate the way it seems to be calling me a failure. When Will got the diagnosis, I swore to Rae that I would take care of him. I told her she didn’t need to worry, but every time I hear that guilt, it feels like she is worrying, that she’s concerned that I’m cracking under the pressure.
I am, but I won’t tell her that.
“I’m fine, Rae. Finally got all my equipment delivered, so I can start working out again.”
The equipment got here a week ago, and everything is still in boxes on the porch, but I don’t mention that. I also don’t mention that the urge to work out left me a long time ago, that ordering the equipment was a Hail Mary meant to jump-start the desire again, but now all the shit is on the porch, and the money is gone from my already dwindling bank account, and I can’t bring myself to touch it, which just makes me feel worse.
“Good!” I can hear the smile in her voice, and it makes me smile. It’s the first time I’ve smiled since we last talked. She’s the only bright spot in all of this, and our conversations are few and far between, which means I spend a lot of time in the bleak reality of her childhood home that feels like a hospice wing.
“Did you make it to the studio yet?”
“Just got here,” she breathes, the smile in her voice fading right along with the one on my face. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
“I’ll wait by the phone.”
Rae giggles, but I’m serious. My phone has become a lifeline, one that only operates correctly when she’s the one on the other end.
“Bye, silly. I love you.”
“Love you too, Sunshine.”
After we hang up, I close my eyes, intending to rest for a second before going to check on Will, but ending up falling asleep. When I wake up, the house is eerily quiet, silent in a way that makes my blood run cold. My heart drops as I rise from my spot on the couch and creep down the hallway toward the bedroom to confirm what I already know to be true.
I know this silence.
I felt the weight of it sit like a brick on my chest when I came in from getting the mail and found my mom dead in the living room. Her eyes were still open, gazing out the window, wide and unseeing. I had to close them. God, I hope I don’t have to close Will’s too.
Tears have already gathered in my eyes, and my heart is pounding with fear and anticipated grief as I push the door open. Will is still. He’s so fucking still, and his eyes are closed. If it wasn’t for the absence of the rising and falling of his chest, he’d look like he was sleeping.
“Will?” I call his name even though I know he won’t answer, and my voice breaks when I’m met with silence. My knees give out, and I hit the floor hard, which leaves me with no choice but to crawl over to him, sobbing as I put my fingers to his neck to confirm that there’s no pulse.
He’s still warm.
That’s the thought that keeps playing in my mind over and over again as I dial 911 and explain to the operator that this isn’t an emergency. It’s what’s on my mind as I open the door for the coroner and the police and go through the motions of gathering his medicine and doctor’s information and everything else they need before they take him away. It’s what’s on my mind when everyone, including Will, is gone, and I’m left with nothing else to do but call Rae and let her know.
It’s been hours since we spoke, which means she’s probably at home now. Resting. Relaxing. Unaware that her world has changed forever.
“Hey, baby,” she says, all cheer and ignorance. “What’s up?”
“Rae…”
I can’t say anything else. I don’t need to. She hears it in my voice—the truth of her loss and my failure—and she doesn’t respond. Not verbally, at least. She just wails. The sound is loud, long, and broken, and I slide down the wall across from the hospital bed that’s all she has left of her brother and cry with her. We cry together until Rae drops the phone and someone else picks it up, until the chorus of voices I’ve come to associate with her roommates fills my ears, and one of them, a girl named Zoila, comes on the line.
“Hunter?”
We’ve never spoken, but I recognize her voice. She’s the one always cooking for Rae. I wipe my eyes, trying to pull myself together. “Yeah?”
“When did it happen?”
“A few hours ago.”
“Oh,” she says, her voice soft as someone else shushes Rae and murmurs that it’s going to be alright. It’s a lie, but I should be the one telling her that. I should be the one comforting her right now.
“Can you put Rae back on the phone, please?”
“She’s pretty upset,” Zoila says. “Let me calm her down and have her give you a call back.”
“No, I—” I start to protest, but the call has already ended. Bringing the phone down from my ear, I stare at it, letting all the rage of this loss and the abrupt dismissal build and build until I can’t hold it anymore and send the phone flying across the room. It slams into the rail of the hospital bed and bounces off before clattering onto the floor and sliding underneath it.
For a moment, I consider leaving it there, thinking it might be for the best, but then it starts to ring. The light from the screen illuminates the underside of the bed, drawing me in like a moth to a flame. Realizing it might be Rae calling me back, I army crawl across the floor, lying on my stomach as I reach for the phone. I find it in seconds and coax it out with my fingertips, frowning when the move results in the sudden appearance of a bottle of pills.
It comes rolling out slowly, the round, white pills chiming lightly as they bounce off the plastic walls. The welcoming notes of destruction. I grab the bottle and sit up, bracing myself against the side of the bed while the phone lies forgotten next to me. I don’t even know if it’s still ringing. That’s how focused I am on the bottle. How entranced I am by the white pills that were my introduction to addiction.
How fitting that they would appear now when I’m at my lowest.
Will refused to take any of the pain pills he was prescribed. He actually made me flush them every time his palliative care doctor would send us home with them, insisting that he’d need them, that his sobriety was the least of his concerns. I’m not sure how this bottle escaped our notice, but right now, when the pain is a blazing fire burning in my chest, and all I want is to be numb, I’m glad they did.