Page 83 of The Heartbreakers
As per the hospital’s usual crappy Wi-Fi, the page took a few seconds to load, but then I saw this:
Dear Ms. Samuel,
My name is Bethany Colt, and while we don’t have much in common (I’m a forty-two-year-old housewife from New Jersey), we do share one connection—the terrible knowledge of how it feels to watch someone you love suffer. Like your sister, my daughter Stephanie has cancer. She was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia last year at the age of twelve.
Like most thirteen-year-old girls, Stephanie is crazy about the Heartbreakers. The walls of her room are plastered with their posters (much to my horror), and she’s particularly fond of the blog you run called the Heartbreak Chronicles, as she enjoys keeping up with what’s happening in the boys’ lives. It was through the blog that I discovered your photography website.
I’m writing you this letter to express how truly moved I was by your gallery, especially the pictures you posted of your sister. The past few months have been very difficult for me. As Stephanie grows weaker, I feel like her cancer is claiming parts of me as well, and they’re all the important pieces I need, like my heart and faith and bravery. But seeing your pictures has helped me take those pieces back. Not only does your work reflect your sister’s inner strength, but it shows how loving someone so deeply is a source of courage. Courage to hope and courage to fight. Thank you for giving me my fight back. By sharing your experience, you helped make someone else’s more bearable.
Sincerely,
Beth
I read her message again and again. I kept thinking that if I studied the words long enough, if I read them just one more time, then maybe their meaning would finally click inside my head and I would understand. How could my pictures bring back what she’d lost, especially something as intangible as faith or strength? Was that really possible?
My question wasn’t whether art was inspirational or not. I knew it was, because I could never forget when I saw my own inspiration for the first time—a little girl covered in mud, eyes ablaze with glee. That was Bianca’s job though, to make people feel things. For me, photography was a personal endeavor. I’d never set out to re-create that spark for someone else, only to satisfy something inside myself. I never imagined helping a stranger, but assuming Beth meant what she said, that mademeher Bianca Bridge.
Maybe my dream wasn’t so terminal after all.
For the past four years I’d seen my camera as a crutch, my own personal way to deal with Cara’s cancer. But I was wrong. I wasn’t using photography to cope with her disease—photography was just something I was passionate about. I was using Cara to cope with my fear of the future. Suddenly I had all these choices to make, like whether I should continue working with the Heartbreakers or go to school, and that was overwhelming in a terrifying way. Coming home and leaving it all behind was my easy out.
I thought back to the conversation I’d had with Oliver, and how he’d said I blamed myself for her sickness. There was so much certainty in his voice, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. At the time, I’d thought he didn’t understand,couldn’tunderstand, the position I was in, but now it all made sense. It was Isaac Newton and an apple all over again, a sudden epiphany so strong it felt like I’d been struck on the head with a piece of fruit. All this time, I’d been paralyzed with guilt. Guilt for not noticing when Cara first got sick. As a result, I’d developed some weird, twisted psychological aversion to chasing my own dreams.
Oliver had said something else that night, something about absorbing the blow, and I’d brushed it off as nonsense. Reading Beth’s letter made me understand. Life is never going to give you a break. It’s a hard, unforgiving son of a bitch, and when it steamrolls you over, there are only two choices: stay down, or get back on your feet and fight. After Cara’s diagnosis, I spent my time on the ground, surrendering out of fear, but now I needed to stand up and throw a few punches myself.
I looked at my website and all the pictures that defined my life, and instead of erasing everything, I clicked on the search bar. Then, I typed in three letters:SVA.
I was going to save my sister, but first I had some absorbing to do.
• • •
When I returned to the pediatric floor an hour later, I found the door to Cara’s room wide open. My parents were nowhere in sight—they were probably at the cafeteria getting coffee or catching up on sleep in the lounge—but I found my siblings together. Drew had dragged a chair up to Cara’s bed, and the two were in the middle of a game of Rummy 500.
Neither noticed me, so I leaned against the door frame and took a moment to watch. It was Drew’s turn. He picked up the king of spades, which completed a flush, but he dumped the card in the discard pile like it was useless. I frowned and cocked my head.
“Really?” Cara said, setting down her hand. “Playing is no fun if you’re going to let me win.”
“Let you win?” Drew leaned away from her as if he was insulted, but there was a hint of a smile on his face. “I’dneverdo that.”
“Yeah, uh-huh,” she said and rolled her eyes. “If you didn’t take the jack at the start of the game, maybe I’d believe you.”
“He’s got the queen too,” I said, pushing away from the door and making myself known.
At the sound of my voice, Drew’s head swiveled in my direction. “Stella, hey,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Not much.” I stepped into the room. “I was just wondering if I could have a moment with Cara.”
“Sure, no problem.” He collected the cards, and as he crammed them back inside their flimsy cardboard box, he said to her, “Rematch later?”
She nodded, and then we both watched Drew stand up and cross the room. When he reached me, he gave my shoulder a quick squeeze before continuing out into the hall. Once he was gone, I looked back at Cara and inhaled a long breath through my nose, telling myself to relax. It wasn’t that I was nervous, but what I was about to say to her was important and I wanted my head straight.
“You came,” Cara said. There was something off about her voice.
“Well, yeah, dork,” I responded, making a face at her. “There’s nothing in the world that would keep me from you.”
That must have been the wrong thing to say, because Cara sighed and folded her hands in her lap. “Thanks, Stel,” she said. Her tone was dull, and I felt like she was speaking to an empty room because she wouldn’t look in my direction.
“You mind if I join?” I asked, gesturing at the bed. She nodded, still avoiding my gaze.
