TWO
That Monday I received my first chemo treatment. I had to report for duty at eight after which I had to go through all kinds of tests first, then they put a central line into my neck (which hurt like hell) through which the lovely poison called chemo would flow. I'd tell the name of my personal poison but it was a difficult one to remember and it didn't matter anyway, poison was poison, wasn't it?
Once everything was installed bags of chemo were hooked onto the central line and within a matter of seconds the fluid was rapidly making its way into my system. All the while I was sitting there in that bed where I'd be spending the next four weeks (if this first round of induction therapy actually worked), all I could think of was that I had made a mistake. It wasn't even the doctors and nurses fussing over me, trying to make me feel at ease, which I didn't obviously. It was the fact that the decision I'd made after the movie was one that might very well save me. What if I lived, what in the world would change then? Was I supposed to start doing extreme sports just to make me feel alive, like those girls had in the movies? Was I supposed to take weekly walks in the park just to make me feel at peace with the world. That wasn't me. Never had been, not even while growing up. I wasn't even sure what I had done for fun before I'd reached adulthood, except for writing movies of course. Writing was my life, I was writing, what else was there about me that was even remotely interesting, I had become my work over the course of the years.
The moment I called my mother was the moment I had first woken up while almost choking on my own vomit. It had taken me three chemo treatments before the puking began and I had been in such a panic that not even the nurses could calm me down. So I called my mother, crying my eyes out and telling her that I needed her to come over. At first my mom thought I’d gotten into a fight with my best friend or that my heart somehow got broken (where in the world she got that idea I didn’t know, it was widely known that I didn't date or like anybody, ever!).
I told my mom I’d tell her what had happened but that I wanted to tell her, and preferably my father, in person and at the same time. She told me to come over and that she would try her best to make sure my dad would be home as well. I told her to come to the hospital instead and insisted that she had to bring my dad as well. That did it, panic crept into my mother's voice as she demanded to know what had happened. Again I promised I'd tell her but I needed to do it in person.
After I hang up the phone I spent an uncomfortable period of time waiting for my parents to arrive. It took them shorter than I had expected. While lying in my bed with a new bag of poison hooked to my central line I had made a mental timeline. My mom rushing out of the house without her bag, racing over to my father's work where she needed some time to convince my workaholic father to go with her (seriously, it runs in the family). Then my father took over the driving because my mother was too much in a panic to drive a straight line for more than a hundred meters. My father was a slow driver so it would have taken him around twenty to thirty minutes to get from the suburbs into town, to park and find my room. In my calculations it took them fifty minutes. It actually took them thirty-five minutes of torture, during which I kept on picturing my parents crying and screaming and crying again at the news that I would share with them once they arrived.
The moment they arrived my mother looked at my face for one second before knowing something very bad was going on. They said nothing as they took a seat beside my new bed. I couldn’t look them in the eye with a straight face so I just sat there in my supposed pajamas, fingering the hem of my sweater nervously. Both my parents appeared to make a guessing game of the situation because they shot optional issues at me but I shook my head at every guess.
Eventually I confessed, rather guiltily, about going to the hospital for testing a couple of weeks back because I’d been afraid of having Lyme disease or Pfeiffer (feeling tired and shit) and then about the doctor telling me that I had cancer instead. I just blurted out the entire story, somewhere deep inside me feeling relieved that I could finally tell someone. Without having realized it, the weight of my secret, no matter how short I'd carried it around, had been heavier than expected. I actually felt lighter after telling them.
So I explained that I needed chemo therapy in two phases, induction and post-remission. The induction phase existed currently of ten days of chemo, a three-week waiting period in the hospital, after which, on the twenty-first day, they would research my bone marrow. If the cancerous cells were low enough, I'd start the second phase, if not, I'd get another session of induction chemo. During the second phase, which resembled the first one but had another purpose, to maintain the progress made during the induction phase. I'd start with several days of chemo therapy after which I would have to wait a couple of weeks, these weeks would be terrible, my physical resistance against diseases would be terribly weak, which in turn could lead to complications. Besides that, by then I would not resemble myself any longer, I’d be bald, I’d sweat practically all day long, I’d have little to no strength in my body which would mean I’d want to sleep most of the day, but I couldn’t, I also had to work out regularly, to keep some sort of physical condition. The stronger I was, the better I would fare during the entire treatment that was, after all, a terrible blow to the entire body.
Post-remission stage, also known as the consolidation phase would make sure the result we'd booked during the first stage would remain stable. That didn't mean that during those two but probably three chemo periods, I would become healthy, no of course not, to make sure that the stupid cancer cells would truly be defeated, my, by then, more or less healthy stem cells would be extracted from my body, frozen and later, after a beautiful case of high dose chemotherapy, which would be worse than the chemo during the previous two phases, injected back into my body. Then months of revalidation would follow. After all of this, the chance of the cancer coming back within one or two years, was gigantic, which would mean another long period of chemo therapy and treatments would be around the corner. All in all, I was one lucky gal with the brightest of futures.
My mother, as expected, started crying so hard when I dropped the C word, she sniffed and blew her nose (I think she used an entire pack of tissues) for the entire ninety long minutes I sat on the bed facing her, even when she started yelling. She was in denial about the entire thing, first about me having cancer, then about me needing treatment, so she cried, which is only normal but after denial (a whole hour of crying) comes anger. I've never been afraid of my mother, until the day I told her I had cancer. Of course she wasn't angry about me being sick, it was the fact that I had, first, decided not to have treatment, that I just gave up without trying, that I then, had decided to have the treatment and hadn't even told them about it. That it took my panic over choking in my own vomit was the reason that I actually called them.
Usually when my mother gets angry, she actually looks pretty funny, she is this tiny human being with red hair and whenever she gets angry, which isn't very often, her face turns exactly the same shade of red as her hair, which in turn makes her look like a tomato in clothes. I watched my mother stressfully walking from the door to my bed over and over again, seemingly trying to figure out how to get me out of the situation. By the time they'd left she hadn’t found a way for me not to have cancer.
While my mother had cried and yelled, my father had sat next to the bed as well, being uncharacteristically quiet. At a certain point he had put his big hand on my mother’s elbow and told her to sit and calm down. In the end there would be nothing she could do about it, the situation was the way it was and she had no say in it. When I looked him in the eyes I saw the tears in his eyes but I also saw apprehension. In that moment I figured his heart was probably broken by the news but at least he was realistic about the situation. In the end there was nothing they could do.
When my parents left they both gave me careful hugs, afraid of bruising me and in a way I wished they’d given me tight hugs that showed me how much they loved me. I didn’t care much about the bruises, I was one big ass bruise anyway. For the first time in years they both told me they loved me without me saying it first, which made me wonder whether they’d say it every single time I left them because it might be the last time they’d see me. They told me they'd come by the next day.
May crawled by very slowly and I spent most of my days in bed, the only variation in my hospital routine were the moments I was forced out of bed because the nurses had to take me to the hospital gym. It wasn't a gym really. It was more of a revalidation center where mostly old people recovering from broken hips walked between bridges while being gently encouraged by big muscled men. I thought it was funny, to see those big men who were supposed to be working at one of the many gyms in town, being all gentle and polite with the elderly.
They pushed me harder than the grandmothers and grandfathers and seemed to enjoy doing it. Every afternoon after my chemo therapy during the first ten days and then every morning after my induction phase treatment had ended, I had an appointment with my personal trainer, Art. The guy was all right, albeit a little firm when it came to working out. He was tall and muscled and flirted all the way through my sessions. I didn't flirt back once. I didn't have the strength. Having cancer had been tiring, but having chemo to fight the cancer was a whole other level of tiresome. It was exhausting.
Besides it being exhausting, there were a whole lot of other things involved in having chemo. Obviously there was the puking, which was gross and annoying. There was also a lot of sweating involved. I didn't know a person could sweat as much as I had during those four weeks. Pretty soon after the chemo had started soars had started popping up everywhere in my mouth, which made eating painful and difficult. Soon, I started to lose more weight. One of the things I wasn't looking forward to, obviously was the prospect of losing my hair. Still it was inevitable so I asked my mother to get in touch with an old friend of hers who was a hairdresser specialized in wigs. I wore dreads anyway so I figured I could get a wig that would resemble my usual hair style.
He arrived during the fifth day of my chemo and I asked him whether he could make a wig out of my own hair. He told me he could and in a way that was at least some sort of accomplishment, I might be bald one day soon but at least I'd be keeping my own freaking hair. I had never been one to experiment with hair so it would be weird if I suddenly showed up with a blond coupe instead of my own brown. The hair-doctor measured my head and had to come back once to measure my head again but before I was released from the hospital I was the proud owner of a wig, consisting most of my own hair.
There was the loss of eyebrows as well but I had already figured out I'd tell anyone who'd ask I'd lost a bet and that I had to shave off my eyebrows. It would do for now. I'd draw them in the meantime, it wasn’t anything I hadn’t done before, and hoped people wouldn't notice they weren't growing back anytime soon. Obviously there were many more troubling moments during my first weeks of treatment. I wouldn’t want to bore anyone to death with the details. All in all it was a boring month during which I slept often, exercised more than I ever had in my life. There was a lot of research, there was a long period during which I was watched very closely because I was very susceptible for infections and infections were bad for me because my immune system was for shit after the chemo sessions. Chemo basically killed everything inside you that was bad, but also everything that was good.
There were several bags of all kinds of stuff hooked onto my central line, blood, chemo, fluids, eventually food when eating had become too difficult. It was all very dishonoring and I regretted my decision of having chemo more than a dozen times per minute. Every time I noticed I was feeling sorry for myself I thought about the movie and that made me feel a little better. Not always though, sometimes it made me hate myself even more.
In May I was officially too busy with having cancer to contact my friends and while in April I had replied to most of their messages (despite being ‘busy’ with work), in May I felt too freaking exhausted to even lift my phone, let alone type messages or talk for half an hour. That left most, if not all of my received messages and calls unanswered. My mother asked me repeatedly why I hadn't told anyone about my disease but her and my father and I could do nothing but tell her the same thing over and over again, I wasn't ready to face the truth of my disease. Which, to a certain point was true, but there was more to it. I was terribly afraid of the way my friends might start treating me differently. The thought of them looking at me with pity in their eyes made my skin crawl. I was a proud person and losing twenty pounds when your BMI is already below average is not something that makes you feel good about yourself. The closest thing to describing how I felt is probably a walking skeleton covered with skin.
Where before I had been sort-of-attractive-I-guess, when looking in the mirror nowadays, the best way to describe myself was quite the opposite of attractive. Disgusting, repulsive, repellent were words that came to mind rather than pretty. Whenever I stood in front of the mirror naked, staring at my white, almost translucent skin, my bones sticking out of my skin in the strangest ways. It made me want to die. Not even the way the chemo made me feel so weak I couldn't get out of bed for days, not even the way it made me feel nauseous all day long or the way my nausea made me puke so very often. It was looking at myself in the mirror and seeing this person that in a disconcerting way looked like me, yet at the same time I stood there looking at a complete stranger, this person, this hideous creature, eyes sunken deep into their sockets, cheeks hollow, it wasn't me, it couldn't be me, could it? But then I'd pinch myself and it would hurt, a bruise would appear almost the second my fingers let go of my arm and I would know it was me who I was looking at. All I wanted at moments like that was for it all to end.
When June started, day twenty-one was reached, the day during which they would research my bone marrow to see if the induction phase had been successful. It hadn't been as successful as we (the doctors and my parents and me) had hoped and I would need another round of induction therapy. The only good news of that day had been the fact that I had a break between day twenty-one and the next round of induction chemo. I could go home for more than two weeks. Obviously there would be plenty of things to remind me that I wasn’t done with having cancer yet (like pills and regular check-ups) but still, not having chemo made that I had slowly started to feel a little bit better.
The day I got to go home my mother packed me a suitcase and took me home with her to the other side of town, the suburbs, which didn't really count as a city anymore, obviously. I'd stay with my parents for a couple of days, not because I wanted to, but because I couldn't have gone home even if I wanted to. During those days my mother watched me like a hawk, she took care of me like a professional nurse, which she wasn't, and treated me like a daughter who was about to die. She basically gave me everything I needed and wanted. It was nice for a couple of days, but soon it became a bit much.
A side effect of having had chemo was that it made me very tired, so there were surprisingly no rules for sleeping like when I had been younger and still living with my parents. I had to wake up at nine every single day, no matter if I had nowhere to be that day, no matter if I'd gone out the night before and had gone to bed at eight a.m., I wasn’t going to waste my time in bed. Well, that rule no longer applied, my mother actually got kind of angry if I got out of bed before eleven o’clock. I needed my rest and had to take it whenever I could. That meant afternoon naps, after dinner naps and let me tell you one thing, I absolutely love naps. So, I guess, there was a benefit to having cancer, it was like an all-you-can-sleep-buffet.
Still, after a few days of being treated like someone with cancer, I begged my father to talk my mother into letting me go home for the remaining time. Surprisingly enough she came in that evening and told me she would allow me to go home for the remaining days, which would be nice break from my sweet and kind but very fussy parents, nurses and doctors (who absolutely weren't fussy, but more distant and matter-of-factly). My mother would watch me shower and even pee if I allowed her. I didn't.
Somewhere during the afternoon of my official release from my parent's house I went home and slept the night away, only to wake up on the morning of my best friend’s annual and famous dinner-party. I woke up earlier than usual and when I turned around in my bed I found out it was only nine in the morning. Since I knew it was going to be a very long day, I decided to stay in bed for another while and eventually fell asleep again. The second time I woke up that day, the clocked told me it was half an hour before noon. Ever since I had started chemo, my nights (and often days as well) were spent rather uncomfortably, I felt feverish most of the time, even when I didn’t have a fever. Sometimes I did have one, which lead to me sweating, a lot, as in, really A LOT. My average of used, sweaty t-shirts that ended up in a heap next to the bed per night was five.
At a certain point my mother had become so annoyed with having to wash so many t-shirts every single day that she wanted me to sleep without a t-shirt or to re-use my sweaty ones once they had dried up. If there is one thing worse than waking up in a sweat-soaked t-shirt, it’s waking up in sweat-soaked sheets and no way I'd sleep half naked in the hospital. So I told her I’d wash the damn t-shirts myself if I had to but I would NOT I repeat NOT re-use sweat-soaked T-shirts. My mother eventually gave up and washed the damned T-shirts. Another benefit of having cancer I guess, people didn’t really want to start a fight because you might suddenly die and your last conversation would be about not wanting to wash your nasty T-shirts.
Each morning since my chemo had begun, started off practically the same. I woke up, felt tired and fed up with the world, yet I propped myself up into a sitting position, sat staring out of the window for about a quarter of an hour (ignored the many nurses that came in and went out of my room), whilst preparing myself for the day and for getting out of bed and into the shower. Then I’d get out, sway on my feet as I walked all the way to the shower (only about fifteen feet in the hospital and twenty at my parent's place), sat down on the plastic chair that had been put there because standing on my feet for longer than five minutes that early in the morning was just too damn exhausting.
After my usual sitting-for-fifteen-minutes-in-the-shower session, I got dressed into a pair of oversized sweatpants and an equally oversized sweater, which made me look even thinner than I already was, it was time for breakfast. Now that was something I missed, my mother preparing and bringing me breakfast every single morning. Not just a bowl of cereal or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. No, she made me a fruit smoothie of which the fruit varied every single day, she cooked an egg, baked bread, I’m not joking about the bread, and put a delicious, layer of Nutella spread on it. That layer became thicker the more weight I lost. Obviously I didn’t complain. Benefit number three.
After moving back home, which kind of felt like I was on a holiday in my own house, I was back to my usual breakfast, but only after a one hour lasting after-shower-nap on the couch. Breakfast consisted of soy yoghurt, vanilla flavored, because it’s the best, with a banana and some strawberries, blackberries and blueberries. Still had to eat healthily of course. With that I had a cup of tea and a glass of freshly pressed orange juice. By the time I sat back down on the couch, I was almost ready for another nap. Instead I turned on my laptop, illegally downloaded some series (which made me feel like a pirate) and ate while I waited for the newest The 100 and Game of Thrones episode to be a hundred percent. The 100 was done first, I plugged a cable from my TV into my laptop and was able to watch the series on my television while I still worked hard to get all of my breakfast inside of me. It was quite the struggle. Not feeling hungry versus the knowledge that calories and vitamins were the reason I would be able to make it through the day without fainting or falling asleep mid-conversation. It was a serious internal battle.
It was a hot-cold day, of which I’d been having a lot lately. Shivering one moment and being covered by a sheen of sweat the next. It always made me worry about having a fever so as usual I checked my temperature and as usual I had no fever, just a beautiful 98.8 degrees that gave me a feeling of great relief each and every time I stared at the little display. Getting sick while having cancer is a definite no-go.
After a Game of Thrones episode of epicness, I fell asleep again and woke up about an hour and a half later because my phone was ringing. A low growl worked its way up from my throat all the way out of my mouth as I sat upright and answered. It was my mother, checking in on whether I was doing all right.
My mother had promised me to check in on me exactly three times a day, at ten in the morning by text message, to which I was required to answer or she’d get worried and start calling, or worse, come by my house. It was one of the terms I’d had to agree upon, or otherwise she wouldn’t have let me go home. The second check-in was by phoning me around four and again by text message at nine.
My mom asked me about my plans for that day and I carefully lied about going to bed early 'because I’d be dead on my feet around nine anyway'. She agreed it was a wise decision and wished me a good day after asking once again whether or not she should come over to cook for me. She’d seriously tuck me into bed if I allowed her. I didn’t, feeling at least five years too old for that.
It was only then that I realized I was supposed to buy two bottles of Scotch. Luckily there was a liquor store two blocks away, a lively two-minute walk if you didn’t have cancer, an exhausting five minutes if you did. Guess into which category I fell.
Going out required careful preparation, a backpack containing a wallet, my phone in my pocket, mom on speed dial in case something happened. The optimist inside me continuously yelled, ‘you’re strong, go on you cancer-woman. Let’s do this’. Yet the pessimist begged me to remain at home. A promise was a promise though and I couldn’t afford to lose more credit with my friends.
Funny thing though is that when people find our you have cancer, they suddenly start acting totally different toward you. Suddenly misbehavior is tolerated, to a certain height of course, but still, I hadn’t told my parents about having cancer, which was kind of a big deal, yet the moment they found out they obviously couldn’t be very angry, I had cancer after all. The doctor, the nurses, the people in the hospital, whenever I started swearing and show insubordinate behavior, they just let it go and looked at me with these looks in their eyes, as if I were already dead. Well motherfuckers, I’m still walking here, still sort-of going strong. What I liked about my friends not knowing about my illness was that they still give me a hard time, they did get angry with me and it might be weird but I enjoyed their anger. It made me feel normal, like everybody else.
That evening was my best friend’s annual dinner-slash-birthday-party but I’d been working on staying alive and I literally hadn't spoken to anyone in a month. My friends were used to me disappearing for a week or two regularly but never a whole month so I had to make it up to them. My best friend Sarah had told me (by text-message) I could only come if I brought not one but two bottles of expensive scotch, Blue Label of course, not the cheap kind.
So after leaving the pleasant company of myself in my apartment, I quickly made my way into the liquor store and was about to head home straight after when I passed a Starbucks. As had happened often during the past few months, I had found myself being rather tired and in need of a small break so I could get my breathing and sweating under control again. The Starbucks was only a small one and counted ten chairs, two couches, six small tables and a counter behind which exactly one barista stood preparing crappy coffee. Luckily it wasn’t as crowded as usual so I made my way inside, hoping I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew. When I had woken up that morning I’d put on some sweatpants and a sweater because my plan had been only to go to the liquor store for ten minutes, after which I’d go home again and sleep for a couple of hours before showering and getting ready for the party. Exercising was something I hadn't done much since going home. Art would be so disappointed in me.
The good thing about Starbucks, and yes there is basically only one good thing about the Starbucks franchise, is the coffee-flavored-frappuccino. They are officially the best treat in the world of mankind and they, in general, make me a very contented woman. Since I was able to eat basically anything I wanted, I’d already lost over ten pounds, I ordered a large one, with whipped cream. I even kind of asked for a little bit extra whipped cream. The guy behind the counter either didn't care or thought I was a little on the skinny side, because he gave me so much whipped cream it spilled over the plastic-see-through lid. When the guy handed me my treat I felt like a little child and acted like it, my eyes grew big, a grin spread on my face. I turned around in order to sit down and enjoy about fifteen minutes of down-time when I was literally hit by a hurricane.
Now that would have been tragic, perhaps I should have said figuratively because the hurricane in this case was a woman, not a strangely shaped clutter of wind that tugged at your hair and made you want to hold on to, well, anything. Still, this woman was my personal hurricane and the result of her 'hitting' me was that the entire frappuccino ended up covering my beautiful grey, best-color-ever-to-have-frappuccino-spilled-on-NOT, sweatpants and equally grey sweater. I kind of looked like a group of twenty babies had pooped all over me. Believe me when I say, it wasn't pretty. Where the woman had been quick enough to jump back, my traitorous body had been too slow to even blink, let alone step back three inches.
“Ah, well, crap,” was all I could get out in a weak voice. Getting excited over frappuccino was apparently very exhausting after the day I’d had.
The woman looked down at the ground, where the remainder of frappuccino lay wasted on the floor. Such a shame. Her eyes had grown big, her mouth wide open in shock. Then, she looked up and when her eyes reached my newly attained stain, she had to cover her mouth with her hand in order to hide the grin that was now spreading on her face.
“Oh merde, je m’excuse, I’m so sorry,” she said, laughter bubbling up through her words as she looked me up and down and saw my entire grey outfit turned into a blur of brown crunched ice and whipped cream. I was literally covered from head to toe and could feel drops of the sticky stuff covering my face and wig. I had become a frappuccino.
I wasn’t sure what to say, my body wasn't the only part of me that had become slow over the course of the day, so had my brain. Once upon a time I used to be witty and occasionally, I was even sort of funny. Well, not right then. I stood there, my mouth open, staring, feeling like the biggest moron on the planet.
“I sure do hope you don’t have to be anywhere anytime soon because you look like well, a frappuccino,” she said, her voice thick with a French accent. Not the accent that makes you want to cringe each time you hear it, more the kind of French undertone that made you long to hear more. It made me wonder where she was from, France or Canada or some other place where they spoke French as a first language.
When I looked up into her eyes, trying to make sense of her words, I noticed they were the most beautiful shade of brown I had ever seen in my life.
At seeing her something happened unexpectedly, a surge of energy made its way through my body, starting at my heart and radiating outward to the top of my head, the tips of my fingers and the tips of my toes. Everything inside suddenly burned with a need to jump up and down, to go running five miles, which was odd, I never even ran when I needed to catch a train or a bus. Looking into her eyes made my heart burn with an unfamiliar fire.
She, I realized, made me feel alive. Which was something I had never really felt in my life. I’d always been living but not really LIVING, if you know what I mean. That morning I’d realized just that, ever since I’d been sixteen years old I’d been writing movie and series scripts, trying to become a successful script-writer, which had led to me neglecting what was considered normal, dating, falling in love, clubbing, hanging out with friends, experimenting. I had never even really lived, according to normal standards and now I was going to die and there wasn’t even enough time left to do all of those silly things.
Suddenly, with my burst of energy, my brain finally kicked in as well and I looked down at my clothes, putting on a fake frown as I lifted my frozen sweater away from my skin. “Well I had a job interview in ten minutes. Not anymore though,” I said, murmuring the last few words so it would seem more real.
For a long moment she looked puzzled as she looked me up and down carefully, then a grin appeared on her face again. "You’re joking right?”
I shook my head. "No, why would I be joking?”
Her smile faltered as she tried to find a way to answer without being rude it seemed, replying in a small and uncertain voice. "You’re wearing sweatpants and a sweater.”
I blinked a couple of times, trying to be as convincing as possible. I never were much of an actress so I had to focus in order to keep on a straight face.
"I'm aware, I’m the one who put them on this very afternoon. But without the stain I looked good right?"
She stared, eyes wide open, mouth agape. "Sure, but," she was officially at a loss for words and looked a bit like a lost puppy. She reminded me of the blond Labrador we used to have when I was a child, Trevor, he had been my best friend in the world.
Suddenly, perhaps because I thought of Trevor and comparing her to him, I couldn’t keep a straight face any longer and I burst into laughter. Which confused her even more it seemed. She looked truly embarrassed as her cheeks flushed a bright red while averting her gaze.
"I’m sorry, it was just really easy to mess with you.”
Her gaze moved back to my eyes and for along moment she stared at me hard, question marks still in her eyes. "So no job interview?”
"No job interview," I winked.
The woman exhaled like a large burden fell away from her shoulders, she laughed then, a bright and sincere laugh that sounded pleasant and warm.
She extended her hand and caught my eye again. "Delphine.”
I took her hand into mine, fully aware that my hand was cold, yet sweaty. "Cosima.”
"Enchante.”
"Likewise."
I decided I was a big fan of listening to people speaking English with a French accent but speaking French myself was a definite no-go, my pronunciation was for shit, or so had my high school French teacher told me many times so I decided to stick to English.
"Ladies, when you’re done flirting, I’ve got some towels for you and a new frappuccino," the guy behind the counter, same guy as before, said to us, sounding an looking bored. His comment proved to me he wasn't straight. Straight guys at least would have looked fascinated.
I could feel blood rushing upward to my face. I hadn’t been flirting, had I? Not on purpose anyway. Delphine looked equally embarrassed, her cheeks again red as she tried to avoid my and the barista's eyes. She again focused on my stain.
I fake-smiled at the guy behind the counter as I accepted the towels and my new frappuccino, mumbling a 'thanks'. First I wiped myself clean, well I wiped away the whipped cream mostly, the rest of the icy deliciousness had soaked through my clothes, clinging to my skin, making me feel cold.
"There's still some on your face," Delphine said, taking the towel from my hand as she took a step closer, wiping at some drops of crunched ice or clots of whipped cream.
I smiled at the woman standing so closely in front of me and she smiled back at me, a gentle smile that sort of lifted my heart, like whenever you see something that completely restores your faith into humanity. An example could be a huge, dangerous-looking, tattooed man on a motor cycle lifting a tiny, blond kid who’s all giggles and smiles at being lifted into the air so high.
"Let me make it up to you, if you're not too cold?”
I was, but found myself saying, "I'm fine,” instead.
"All right, so what can I get you, how about something to eat with your tiny frappuccino?”
A smirk appeared on her face and I chuckled in genuine delight. “I'm all right, this unit should be just enough. You can make it up to me by sitting with me for a moment.”
Delphine ordered a cappuccino, which seriously made me doubt her taste in coffee. After paying and receiving it, I gestured for my companion to lead the way, she walked all the way to the back of the room where she found us an empty leather couch. We both sat down, me sitting with my leg folded under my leg so I could face Delphine. She stared at me curiously, like she was trying to figure out whether she had seen me before. I stared back long and hard until she spoke in a gentle tone. “What?”
I'd been staring at her hair. She had to have the most beautiful hair I had ever seen in my life, thick, blonde curls that nearly reached her shoulders, they were just drop-dead-gorgeous. I have a serious thing for beautiful hair, call it a bit of a fetish, I’m not ashamed of it.
"You have beautiful hair," I said, making Delphine smile shyly before she bit her full lower lip.
"Wow, didn't see that one coming. Merci, I like your smile, now that we're throwing it all out there.”
I grinned a little, feeling suddenly shy at her compliment. I was acting like a full-on-moron but wasn't exactly sure why. This was just a woman, an attractive woman sure but when had I ever liked any woman more than just as a friend. Still, there was something about her, something that made my heart race. Perhaps it was the way she took me in with an intensity that I had never seen in anyone's eyes before, perhaps it was in the way she radiated energy. Perhaps it was the way she made me feel. Perhaps, it was something else entirely. I realized I didn't know nor care.
"So, where were you off to, for real?" Delphine asked.
"Back home, just had to go out and buy something real quick before the shops closed, hence my outfit, you?”
"Oui, moi aussi, quick errant,” she gestured at the bags next to her.
"So where are you from, France, Canada?"
"Is my accent that obvious?”
I grinned. "A little, so, tell me, which one?”
"Neither. Well, I was born in Belgium, in a small town and went to Paris to study after, high school is how you call it I guess.”
"What did you study?”
"Languages.”
"Which ones?”
"Spanish, English, Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish and German.”
I stared at Delphine, incredulous. That was amazing. "Holy shit, you speak seven languages?”
"Eight, I also speak Dutch, it's a Belgian thing, being a bilingual country and all.”
"Why the hell do you speak so many languages? It's insane.”
"I'm a translator so I kind of need to speak as many languages as possible, makes me more attractive as a translator," she laughed.
I nodded. "That makes sense.”
"What do you do?”
“I am a script writer,” I said. Not for long though. That thought made me cringe inwardly. Not for long Cosima.
“Really, anything I might know?” she asked, looking genuinely intrigued.
I thought about that for a moment, I’d written several movies and series. I mentioned a couple of projects I’d worked on.
“Seriously, you wrote Letters From the Sky and Dreams AND Lives Are Now, those movies are insanely good,” Delphine said, with huge eyes.
“Thanks, I’m just very thankful that they got picked up.”
Delphine smiled. "Can imagine, how long have you been working as a script writer, professionally I mean?”
"Ever since I finished high school I guess, immediately went to college and studied writing, a few of my scripts got picked up during my first year so I studied and wrote at the same time for four years until I finished my education.”
"Wow, you're lucky, that usually doesn't happen does it?”
"I guess not," I said, smiling only a little, as much luck as I'd had with my work, as little luck did I have in real life so far. "So, what are you translating right now and into which of the many languages you speak?" I added, turning the focus back on the woman next to me.
"Did you read Repeating the Past from Gemma Horner by any chance?”
"Not that I know of no.”
"Well, I'm working on that book right now and I have to translate them into French, Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish.”
"Holy fuck, how long does that take you?”
"I have about a month and a half do to all four.”
"Are you fucking kidding me, that's insane, how long do you work?”
Delphine laughed. "Depends on the day but the good thing is that I can basically work anywhere I like, always have my laptop with me so that's nice.”
"I do that too, I like going to places where I get extra inspired, makes me a better writer.”
"I can imagine. I would love to see you write one day.”
"Maybe one day," I offered and we both smiled a little sheepishly.
She stared at me for a long moment, her eyes taking me in intensely, I stared back into her brown eyes and realized something beside her presence giving me strength, she made me feel at ease. That kind of at ease you feel when you're with your best friend who you've known your entire life, or that's what it feels like to be with my bestie, we are just really comfortable around each other, we know that we can say everything and act stupid without making a complete fool out of ourselves. It felt like I had known this woman my entire life, seen her smile a million times. It was nice to feel that way. And rather unexpected. It was the unexpectedness of the situation, of meeting this person, that had me rattled a little bit.
"Hey question, I know we don't know each other but would you perhaps like to go somewhere with me someday, you know, to hang out?" Delphine then asked, looking up at me with uncertain eyes.
For a moment I sat and suddenly, at hearing that specific question something inside me snapped as realization welled up. Life and reality seemed to catch up with me. This girl wanted to be friends with me, or she wanted to start something that might very well end up as a friendship. The ease with which we spoke to each other was something I didn't often encounter with new people so I could see some sort of future friendship enveloping without having to think about it too hard. At the same time I realized that it wouldn't be fair to say yes to her now, if we'd hang out and we'd have fun we'd hang out again and again and probably again. I wouldn't tell her about my cancer, not straight away anyway. That wasn't a way to start a friendship. What if I died without telling her.
Without realizing it I had gotten up off my seat and was now standing, facing Delphine who still sat, looking up at me, her eyes focused on me intently, she was frowning a little. "Is something wrong?”
"I have to go, I’m sorry, we can’t be friends," I said and got up, stalking out of the Starbucks without looking back. Even though I desperately felt the need to look back, I denied myself the satisfaction. My house was just a one-and-a-half minute stroll to my house but I ran all the way. Only once I arrived back home I realised I had totally forgotten about my frappuccino. I was lucky to have taken my bag and my bottles of Scotch.
When I opened my door I realized I was sweating profoundly and that I was winded and gasping for air. My physical condition was not what it was supposed to be, even after all the exercising I'd done at the hospital. Then I thought about how it would even get worse and my mood sank. Again I realized I wished I’d stayed and given Delphine my phone number, perhaps if everything had been different, if I hadn’t been diagnosed with leukaemia we could have been great friends. A thought in the back of my head made me frown. I wished I could get to know her, for real.