T R I S T A N
Someone had left a flyer by my bedside table. The title read, facing blood cancer together. I could have laughed but didn't, mostly because I didn't have the energy for it. I didn't have the energy for anything.
I had faced my cancer a lot of times before. Growing up, I'd had the same dream every night. It was having conversation with my leukemia.
"I will never leave you", it would say to me, again, and again, and again, and again.
I had grown out of those dreams, just like I had grown out of trying to find a cure in colorful infographics about chemotherapy. Richard had read all the flyers there were on it as soon as I was diagnosed. Sam had read them as soon as he knew how to, so he could fix me. Linda didn't care for any of it. The flyer had to belong to Zoey.
Zoey came in every day with Sam because school was out, and Sam refused to stay home while I was in a hospital bed, probably dying. Every day they would come in, and go about their days inside the walls of my sterilized room, leaving only to go have lunch in the cafeteria, or at the end of the day, when Richard came in, straight from work, always with an excuse for why Linda wasn't with him. I didn't need an excuse â I actually thought it was very nice of her not to show up, given that I didn't like her at all â but I didn't have it in me to tell Richard about it. Most days, all I did was sleep or pretend to.
The world dragged on, and I watched. Zoey came in her knit sweaters, big scarves, bigger jackets, a book in her hand, and Sam close behind her, ready to jump on my bed to hug me while she opened the curtains to let the sun in. He would never do it if he thought I was awake, so I always pretended to be asleep.
Sometimes, because it was so early when they came in, Sam would stay in bed with me, and go back to sleep, and Zoey would sit on the chair in the corner, and read. When Sam wasn't snoring next to me, he was working on his comic book, or doing homework with Zoey, or watching nature documentaries on the small tv hanging from the wall across from my bed. I didn't know how the nurses knew I liked a good nature documentary, but somehow when they came in to turn on the tv, that was always what they put on for me.
Some days, Zoey brought an old computer from home and worked on her college application, and so some days, I couldn't help myself.
"College's a scam," I said.
She looked up at me, knees pulled in, an oversized sweater on, her shoes off, the computer heating up on her lap, and her hand in a cast.
"You're up?"
I said, "No."
She made a face, "How are you feeling?"
"I'm not." She made another face, so I said, "I'm on painkillers."
She seemed like she needed them too. Then said, "Did you tell Richard to pay for my medical bills because I â"
"I did," I stopped her before she could go on. Richard said Zoey had broken her hand falling down the stairs. I had no idea why, because the truth was, I had broken her hand when I closed a door on it the night I had to be rushed to the hospital. I hadn't done it on purpose, obviously, but I had done it, and so I should pay for it. Not her.
She went on, "You had no right to â"
"I'm not having this conversation with you."
She took a deep breathe, and said, "You're already going through enough â"
"Just stop."
Sam was sitting cross-legged at the end of the bed, watching a hippo fight a crocodile on tv, but he turned around to look at us.
"Zoey doesn't think she's real," I told him.
He looked confused at her, and she looked confused at me, and they both asked, "What?"
I shrugged, "You act like you don't exist."
"No, I don't."
I looked at her computer, "What's your top choice?"
"For college?"
"Yes."
"I don't have one."
"Why not?"
She leaned back against the chair, "What's your point?"
"My point is that you act like you don't exist," I said again. "You were so afraid of being an inconvenience that night, you didn't even ask for help. You were already at the hospital. What were you thinking? That it wasn't about you?"
"You were bleeding out â"
"And you had a broken hand!" I said. "And I just know you're going to some shit state college because you don't think you deserve to go anywhere better, and you'll get some shit degree that will have you work some shit job for a shit pay so you can have a shit apartment in the city and go on holidays every year to the shit cabin your shit husband has by the lake, and you'll just go through life like that, won't you? Hoping no one notices you're there becauseâ Why are you smiling?"
She shrugged, the smile still on, a strand of hair falling in front of her face, "No reason."
I looked at Sam for answers, "What's wrong with her?"
He had his back to us already, but he still shrugged, and said, "Nothing."
I looked back at Zoey, who was still smiling, her eyes back on her computer screen.
"You think it's funny that you're setting yourself up for all that shit?"
She shook her head and put her feet up on my bed.
I opened my mouth again. She made no sense to me.
"Then what?!"
She took a deep breath, and finally said, "I just think it's nice that you care about â"
"I don't," I stopped her. I was a fucking liar.
She looked up at me with the same smile as before, "You're lying."
I put my hand on her leg, "I would never lie to you."
She looked down at it, then at me, as if proving her point. I didn't move my hand away.
"I just think you deserve better."
She leaned her head back, "I thought you didn't even like me."
"And I don't," I said.
My hand was still on her leg, her eyes still on me. She asked, "Why?"
"Because you're what's left in the Pandora box."
"Shut up," she said, and I did. She went back to her college applications. I closed my eyes again, but I didn't move my hand.
Later that night, when everyone was gone, Caitlyn came in so we could smoke a cigarette together. We did this every other night. I probably shouldn't be smoking at all, but what was a cigarette going to do to me anyway? Give me cancer?
I took a drag, "Have you been surfing again?"
She smelled like salt water, and her hair was still wet, barely tied up on top of her head. She had asked Ethan to take her surfing with him a few times already. I had no idea why.
"Are you jealous?"
"Of Ethan?"
"Yeah."
"Should I be?"
She blew out the cigarette smoke and watched the wind take it away before saying, "Absolutely, yes."
I took the cigarette from her, "Because he has abs? I could have them too if it wasn't for the cancer. You know that, right?"
"Fuck cancer."
"I'm pretty sure it's gonna fuck me first."
"Don't say that."
I frowned, "Why not?"
"You've gotten better before."
"I'm not doing chemo again."
"Why not? Some people â"
"And I'm not having this conversation with you," I stopped her. "I don't even understand why you, of all people, are saying this â"
"I'm just tired of expecting the worst out of life," she said.
I took a deep breath, "Well, life has given me nothing but the worst of it, hasn't it?"
"No," she answered, and she was serious. "You're just only seeing the â"
"Fuck you!"
The conversation was giving me a headache, and the cigarette was burning in my fingers, and I wanted to tell her this wasn't about her, that it was about me. I was dying. Not her. But I knew better. I knew what she was going to say before she even said it.
"I just don't know what I'll do if I lose you."
I took another drag, and said the truth, "You were always going to lose me. It was always just a matter of time."
She put her head on my shoulder, "That doesn't make it any easier."
I passed her the cigarette, "When has anything been easy for us?"
"It's not fucking fair."
I watched her smoke, her nail polish chipping away at the edges, a bruise on her bottom lip from biting it trying to get up on the surfboard. Ethan had run out to go get her ice.
"Maybe we're just not meant to be happy."
She shook her head, "I don't believe that."
"I don't think it matters if you believe it or not."
"I think it does," she said, giving me the cigarette. "What has cynicism ever done for us other than make us miserable?"
"So you would rather just lie to yourself?"
"Yes!" she said, a pleading smile on her face. "Yes! Please! Let's just fucking lie to ourselves! Everything is a lie anyways! We made it all up, remember? Let's be like the fish in the aquarium â"
"I'm sorry, but I can't," I said, blowing out smoke into the night. "If you can, that's fine, I don't mind. Do whatever you have to do to make this easier for yourself. Just don't ask me to do the same because I can't. I'm sorry."
She left after we finished the cigarette. I went back to bed. Sam had left his comic book on my bedside table, under Zoey's facing-cancer-together flyer. I threw the flyer away and grabbed the book.
The last thing he had drawn was Nat in a hospital bed, the smudge that grew around him, bigger, so much bigger, there was almost no Nat left. He had drawn Mas sitting at the end of the bed, watching tv, and Oez on the chair next to him, just like today. She was looking at Nat, and smiling, even though he was nothing but a smudge. In a speech bubble next to her, Sam had written, I thought you didn't like me. And in another one next to Nat, it said, And I don't. But in a caption at the bottom of the panel, Sam had written the truth:
He was lying.