Her jaw tics, and I can’t hear it, but I know she’s grinding her teeth. “Call me or need me?”
“Both.” It’s a shitty thing to say to your mom. I know that, especially given my situation, but I’m not lying. I need space. I need to feel like she’s not always there, holding my hand. Or, more importantly, I need her to know my hand won’t always be there to hold. It’s better this way.
***
When I walk into theoncology ward, Carissa is leaning against the nurses’ station. She’s a badass black woman with a wicked sense of humor. She’s also overworked and underpaid. I know because she constantly tells me she doesn’t get nearly enough money for putting up with me.
I like Carissa. She’s probably the only adult in the world—scratch that—the only human in the world who doesn’t treat me like I’m going to blow away with a strong breeze because I have cancer.
She looks up from the patient’s file in her hand and purses her lips. “You can’t be in here without your parents.”
“Pfft.” I tuck my hair under my knit cap and screw my mouth up to show my disbelief. “No one else here has their parents with them. Did you tell Jan that same thing?”
Her brow arches and a humorless laugh escapes her lips. “Honey, Jan is almost a hundred years old. I doubt she’d hear me even if I did say it.”
“I can hear you assholes just fine,” Jan mutters from her open cubicle, flipping us the bird.
“Of course you can, Jan. Good for you!” I shout, though I know she can hear everything just fine. It’s what we do. Give each other shit to avoid the reality of what we’re doing here. “God, Carissa, you’re such an insensitive bitch.”
Carissa snaps her file closed, throws it on the counter behind her, and crosses her arms over her chest. I grin like a madman.
“I’m the bitch who’s pumping you full of drugs for the next six hours so if I were you, junior, I’d be real nice to Carissa.” She pushes me toward the cubicles. I always get the very last one ... so I don’t annoy all the old people in the room. “Now go sit your ass in the booth.”
“Nope.”
“What do you mean nope?”
“I mean today”—I throw my arms wide—“I’m sitting in the middle.”
“In the middle?” Carissa asks in disbelief. “The middle of what?”
“Let me ask you something. We have all these cubicles sectioned off by thin little curtains to give the illusion of privacy, but no one reallyhasany privacy. We all have a disease that’s trying to kill us. We come in here to get pumped full of shit, but we gotta do that in private? It’s not like we can’t hear everything anyway. I know Jan has mucinous carcinoma of the breast, Garry—two rooms from the end—has pancreatic cancer, Shaniqua has that thing with her eye, and Wan has shitty lungs. Oh, and they all know I have ARMS.”
“What, are you goin’ around reading everybody’s bags?”
I twist my lips up in a half smile. “Pretty much. Wait,” I say, as a man with long hair like mine and the kind of looks you only see on an Abercrombie & Fitch commercial enters the oncology ward. He walks up to Carissa and I, one hand in the pocket of his jeans, the other clenched at his side. “Fresh meat. Who the hell are you?”
The guy raises a brow and glares at me. “I’m Harley Hamilton”—he glances at Carissa—“The new patient. Who the hell is this kid?”
“I’m Styx.” I grin. “I’ll be your chemo buddy.”
Harley grimaces. “No one told me there’d be children present.”
Carissa rolls her eyes. “Styx is also known as our resident pain in the ass. Don’t worry; you’ll get used to him. It’s nice to meet you, Harley. Why don’t you go take a seat in cubicle five, and I’ll be with you in just a moment?”
“Thanks,” Harley says, and walks down the line of curtained off cubicles as if he’s slowly trudging toward death.
Carissa turns her angry gaze on me. “Look, kid, you sit wherever the hell you wanna sit, just be sure you and your pole are happy to be there for the next good long while, ’cause I ain’t moving you when you’re puking up your guts.”
“Then hook me up, sugar mama, ’cause I’m staying right here.”
“Call me that again, and I might just whoop your ass into an early grave before your cancer does.”
I chuckle. “Oh, Carissa, you say the sweetest things.”