NINE
While Delphine was making us dinner, I sat at the table, though my laptop stood in front of me. I hadn’t touched it during the past fifteen minutes. Delphine kept a careful eye on me, looking over her shoulder regularly, asking how I was doing occasionally. I was doing all right physically but my head was a mess, tomorrow morning I had my appointment with doctor petit-Indian-man after which I would immediately proceed with my chemo therapy sessions.
Each time that thought came to mind my stomach turned about ninety degrees, making me feel nauseous. The thought of that poisonous liquid slowly making its way through my veins, made me feel anxious. I honestly hadn't thought it would be this bad. My mother had promised to take me to the hospital, but she couldn’t stay with me the entire day because she was taking my aunt to the spa for her birthday, it was something they'd planned months ago, even before I had told my mother about my cancer, so I had told her to not worry about me for one day and have fun with her sister who she saw so rarely already.
My aunt worked as a CEO at some large company and rarely had a minute off, let alone an entire day so I'd forced my mother to go and have fun. Whatever kind of fun one could have inside a spa was a mystery to me but anyway, she’d leave to pick up my aunt from the airport right after my appointment with Doctor B. so right before my chemo sessions, which was when I needed her most. Not that I blamed her but still.
The thought of asking Delphine had more than a thousand times crossed my mind ever since we'd sort-of-kissed on the roof, but every time my reluctance to tell her had won over the need to have her with me. Still I desperately wanted her to join me, to look into my eyes and tell me that everything would be all right, I wanted her to talk French to me, of which I wouldn’t understand a thing but I just really liked the sound of it. Just her being there would distract me enough to keep my thoughts away from what was happening. That was what she had given me during the past couple of weeks, she’d been the only thing or in this case person able to make me stop thinking about what was actually happening. She wasn’t even aware of doing it and in a way that was exactly what scared me, what if I told her and she would start acting differently, or worse, what if she’d be unable to deal with my illness and leave.
Still, I wanted nothing more than her with me when they’d stick that central line back into my body. Without realizing it I had unconsciously made my way over to where Delphine stood stirring in a pan of what looked like spaghetti sauce.
"Hi," she smiled and grabbed a spoon with which she got some of the sauce from the pan, she blew on it and held it in front of my mouth. "Try this.”
I tasted it, ignoring the soaring heat that burned my tongue. "It’s really good," I practically purred because it was probably the best I had ever tasted. Delphine was, beside a, a friend-slash-probable-future-lover-or-not, I guess, probably the best unprofessional cook in the world.
Delphine’s face broke into a grin that lightened my mood a bit.
"Delphine.”
She looked at me, her smile fading at my serious tone. "Oui?”
"I have to be somewhere tomorrow, would you mind coming with me?”
"Sure, where are we going?”
"Would it be all right if I don’t tell you.”
She nodded. "Sure, I guess," a small, uncertain smile appeared on her face. "I like surprises" she offered.
You won’t like this one.
I brought forth a fake smile with a certain amount of effort. "Thank you.”
For another long moment I lingered. "Delphine?”
"Yes?”
"Would you please stay the night?"
Delphine’s face lighted up a little but concern was still the main emotion capturing her face. "I would love to.”
The next morning we were picked up by my mother at eight precisely, not a minute before and not a minute later, my mother was punctual like that. Just when my mother texted me that she was had parked her car in front of the house and sat waiting for me and if she needed to come up to my front door and figuratively hold my hand while walking down the few stairs, exactly five, I realized that meeting someone’s mom was usually a big deal. Which was, when we walked down the stairs, I figured I had to tell Delphine about my mother picking us up before I gave her a heart-attack. Surely she would have given me one were she to take me to her parents without telling me.
"By the way, you’re meeting my mom.”
Delphine turned to face me, her green eyes big and alarmed. "You’re joking right?”
I grimaced and gently put my hand on her forearm. "Afraid not.”
"Oh merde, you should have told me, I look like a mess," she said as she got out her phone and faced the semi-mirror of her phone and raked a hand through her hair. She absolutely did not look like a mess, if anything she looked stunning a usual.
I took her hands in mine. "You look beautiful, don’t worry about it.”
The panic-stricken look left her eyes only a little, she sighed deeply. "I hate you right now, you know that right, meeting my future mother in law in this state," she said it in a playful tone.
That made us both laugh. She always knew how to lighten the mood.
"She’ll love you," I smiled as I gently squeezed her hand. I wanted to hug her for officially being the coolest person on the planet.
Delphine flashes a broad grin at me. "I know, parents love me.”
I shook my head. "You’re insane.”
Once outside my mother waited by the car and when the both of us walked through the main entrance she frowned. Realization dawned on me again, I hadn’t told her either. Delphine nervously fingered the rim of the sweater she was wearing, my sweater, it looked good on her.
My mother gave me a hug. ’Hello, how are you feeling?’.
“Fine, fine.”
"So, who’s your friend?" she then asked.
"Mom, this is Delphine, Delphine, this is my mother," I said as an introduction.
Delphine immediately extended her arm, offering her hand. "Delphine Cormier.”
"Alice Niehaus, nice to finally put a face with the name, she talks about you often," my mother said with a smile on her face. Did I really talk about her often? I felt my cheeks flush a deep crimson and had to look away.
"Enchante.”
"Enchante," my mother repeated in such a flawless way that made me wonder where and when she had learned French.
"So you finally told someone," my mother then said, directing her attention at me.
Delphine looked at me. "she didn’t tell me.”
My mother’s face changed dramatically, her good-natured mood suddenly gone. She looked about ready to spew fire. "You didn’t tell her?”
I shook my head, looking down at my shoes in shame, realizing how big of a mistake I’d made by not telling her. "No, didn’t know how.”
Delphine looked truly puzzled, her gaze shifting from me to my mother and back. "What am I missing?"
"Nothing, you’ll find out soon enough, I’ll explain later.”
"Delphine honey, go sit in the car, you can sit next to me, my daughter just got degraded from shotgun to backseat, I'd even put her in the trunk at this point if it weren't illegal. We’ll join you in a minute.”
Delphine nodded, looked at me with raised eyebrows and both my mother and I watched her sit down in the car and put on her seatbelt.
"Cosima, this is not the way to tell her, it’s not how you treat a friend," she said in a way that made my mood sank way, it sank like way down below the pavement, sewer system level down.
"I didn’t know what to tell her, I was afraid she might run away or something.”
"So you decide to keep the truth from her and make it a surprise. This very well might give her a heart attack.”
Heart attack had officially become the medical term of the day.
Where before I had felt a large amount of shame, it had now tripled, making me want to die on the spot. What the hell was I thinking, of course I had to tell her, I couldn’t just barge into the hospital and confront her with the fact that I was dying.
"I’ll tell her.”
"You do that.”
We walked over to the car and both got in, Delphine was already in her seatbelt.
"Delphine, I’ll tell you where we’re going now.”
Delphine kept quiet for a moment, then turned and looked me in the eyes, there was a sadness pooled in those eyes and that made my stomach churn, she knew something was very wrong. "I’d rather you don’t so I can pretend for another while that nothing is wrong and I would like to talk to your mother, get to know her a little, is that all right.”
I nodded, if that was her choice, I’d accept it. She offered me a small smile and turned around in her seat again.
My mother started the car and drove away. The drive to the hospital, which was only a ten-to-fifteen-minute-drive by car, was spent listening to my mother and Delphine casually chitchatting in the front seats. Pretty soon my mind started going to the evening before.
After dinner we’d plopped down on the couch, ready to watch a movie called ’Zombieland’. I'd picked it because I was sure than I'd fall asleep during the first half-hour of the movie, which I always hate, especially when it's a good movie. So that was why I had picked Zombieland, figuring a movie with such a lame title had to be bad, it wouldn't be a big problem if I missed part of the movie. Missing half of the movie was something I absolutely abhorred so I tried my best to stay awake. Pretty soon though, I’d felt too tired to keep my eyes open so Delphine had offered for me to lay down on her lap with my head. Almost the second I’d put my head down and she started gently stroking my arm, I had fallen asleep.
I woke up a couple of hours later when Delphine gently shook me up so she could take me to bed. We laid down in my bed together, she was wearing an old, black sleeveless T-shirt of mine and a pair of black boxer briefs. She had looked phenomenal in them, it made my heart beat faster. I had wanted nothing so much as for her to kiss me, hadn’t it been for the fact that I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
Besides, what was the point in her really, truly kissing me if she could still walk away from me the day after. Part of me was counting on it, part of me even wanted it to happen because I knew that it would kill her to find out that I had cancer and that I might as well be counting down the days until my funeral. The biggest part of me screamed at me to tell her because she would stay no matter what. I could somehow feel that in my bones. Yet while I had faith in that most of the time, there was still a little voice in my head that told me things like ’she will be gone the minute you tell her, she deserves better than this and she will hate you for keeping the truth from her’. I hated that voice that made me doubt the most amazing person I had met in my entire life. Mostly though, I hoped that Delphine would prove that stupid-fucking-annoying-voice wrong.
When we arrived at the hospital Delphine stopped talking and that had me worried. She rarely stopped talking but as the three of us made our way through the still-empty hospital corridors, her silence made my heart race, my hands sweat and the voice in my head scream ’told you so’ over and over again like the annoying fucker it was. As we made our way deeper into the hospital maze of corridors Delphine suddenly stopped walking, a panic-stricken look on her face as if realization finally dawned on her. My mother noticed and gave me a nod before she stalked away, I was going to hear this for a long time. She was almost as angry with me for not telling Delphine about my cancer, as when she had found out I had cancer. I almost grinned as I watched my clothed-tomato-look-a-like-mother walk off with her arms flailing beside her. Almost.
I grabbed Delphine's hands and turned her toward me. I wanted nothing so much as to hug her, kiss her, tell her that everything was going to be all right but I’d be lying and lying was something I would do no longer. Especially now that we were here.
“You’re sick, like really bad aren't you?” Delphine asked, her voice breaking as tears formed in her beautiful green eyes that always reminded me of grass in summer.
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m pretty sick I guess. I have leukaemia.”
Delphine let go of my hands and moved shaking hands up toward her face, hiding behind them. Her hands were unable to conceal the loud sob that escaped from her throat.
I took her hands away from her face and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her in close. While she cried I stroked the back of her head and her back for a long five minutes until she backed away from me a little, looking at me with red, puffy eyes while tears continued to stream down her face. I gently wiped them away with my sleeve.
"Are you dying?" she finally asked in a broken, hoarse voice.
I lifted her chin so she would look at me, I gave her the most reassuring smile I could muster. "I’m still fighting.”
"You better. I'm really angry with you and I'll kick your ass for this later, just so you know," she sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "You have to tell me everything later oui? Every single detail.”
I promised her I would.
"So why are we here now?”
"I have an appointment with my doctor, he’s going to tell me how he plans to proceed with my treatment and after I will immediately start with my next round of chemo.”
"A second round of chemo, why is that?”
I shrugged. "Because the amount of cancerous blood cells in my blood needs to go down more. They didn’t go down enough during the first. I really hope you like hospitals, you’ll be spending a lot of time here.”
Delphine nodded like she knew exactly what I was talking about. "So why did you decide to tell me today, why now?”
"Because I realized I want you there with me, I hate the chemo sessions and you’re the only person who’s been able to make me forget about having cancer.”
Delphine smiled a little, then tears appeared in her eyes again. "You really can’t die, I’m going to kill you if you do.”
That made me laugh. "You’re stupid.”
"No you are, for not telling me or your friends for that matter, they’re worried sick about you and with good reason apparently.”
"I told you.”
"It’s a start.”
"We have to go, my appointment is in a couple of minutes, do you need a moment?"
Delphine started wiping at her tears. "How do I look" she laughed between two sobs.
"Absolutely abhorring.”
"I don’t know that word, is it a compliment?”
I laughed. "My sarcastic tone made it into a compliment, it means terrible.”
Delphine opened her eyes wide. "You called me ugly?" she asked in fake astonishment, pinching me. "You’re the one who’s ugly.”
I merely laughed and kissed her cheek. "You could never look ugly," I murmured.
"Neither can you, you stupid lying woman, let’s get going before we’re late and your mom has to go in by herself.”
"Smart thinking, Doctor B. makes my mom uncomfortable.”
"Why?”
"He’s asked her out a couple of times.”
We both laughed and made our way over to doctor B’s office where my mother still sat waiting, she looked at us, more carefully at Delphine than at me, she gave me a ’don’t you dare to ever do that again to anyone you devil daughter of mine’ look. It was the look she gave me solely when she was super disappointed in me or my behaviour.
My mother took Delphine’s hand in hers and gently squeezed it. "Don’t forgive her just because she has cancer," she said, shooting me another look.
Delphine laughed and I tried to hide my smile by turning away a little. "I promised her I would kick her ass later.”
My mother nodded approvingly. "Good.”
They smiled at each other and my mother squeezed Delphine's hand.
"I’m glad you’re still here Delphine," my mother said in a way that showed me they already had some sort of connection. Delphine was special like that.
"The thought to leave hasn’t even crossed my mind," Delphine said, winning my mother over even more. Just one more comment like that and my mother would fall in love with her too.
That thought gave me pause, in love, that was truly how I felt about Delphine. For the first time in my entire life I understood what being in love felt like. I had exactly zero experience with being in love but I had never been more sure about anything in my life. Somewhere deep inside of me there was this feeling that told me this was exactly what being in love was supposed to feel like. Delphine was wonderful in every single way of course but the way she gave me more energy than I was supposed to, the way she made me feel safe yet entirely out of my comfort zone. Whenever she was near me I felt at ease and I missed her whenever she wasn’t.
Many of my friends were gay so I had given the idea some thought but before Delphine there just hadn’t ever been anyone to catch my attention, boy nor girl. Some people had joked about me being a-sexual. Hadn’t really liked the jokes but they had stuck and they’d had me worried about myself for a long time. After meeting Delphine though, I was more than sure about one thing, I was not a-sexual, I had no clue as to what the hell I was then, straight, bi-sexual or gay but that didn’t really matter anymore, I didn’t care about labels. But standing there, in the hospital waiting room, I wanted nothing as much as for her to kiss me, to take off my clothes and make love to me, however the hell two women did that, I was clueless, but I wanted it. I wanted her. Perhaps she was my special-someone after all.
Doctor B. came out of his office and first stole a peek at my mother, then at me and then his face turned surprised when he saw Delphine.
"Miss Niehaus, you brought a friend," he exclaimed, surprise obvious in his Indian-English accent that always made me smile, I tried to copy his peculiar accent often but failed to keep a straight face for longer than two seconds. Except that one time after he had asked my mom out, then I was able to repeat the entire conversation ’misses Niehaus, would you please go out with me one day, I would love to take you out to dinner, there’s this lovely Mexican restaurant I’m dying to try’. My mother had replied clearly with a louder than necessary ’no’. It still made us laugh so bad until my mother would yell at me to shop laughing or she’d pee her pants.
"Yeah, figured I’d tell someone before they read it in the paper.”
Doctor B. liked my dark humour and usually when we were alone he’d make crude death jokes with me, not with my mother in the room of course, he needed to make a good impression on her, period.
The tiniest of smiles tugged at the left corner of his mouth. "You’re not dead yet," he offered.
I smiled. My mother and Delphine scowled at me.
"What? I like death jokes.”
My mother shook her head disapprovingly. "You’ll never change," she murmured.
I shook my doctor’s hand and went into his office. He shook my mother’s hand and then Delphine’s. "Who is this lovely lady?" he asked.
That man was totally strange but still he was funny in his strangeness.
"Delphine," she offered and I realized once again how much I liked her name.
"What a lovely name, it fits your lovely appearance.”
What a man. I absolutely adored him and his strange flirty ways that were entirely inappropriate but somehow tolerated because this tiny-human-being-doctor-man was adorable with his accent and his glasses and his smile.
Delphine smiled politely as the man introduced himself, then she said her beautiful ’enchanté’ that gave me goose bumps and she went inside the office and sat down next to my mother who sat in the middle, I sat near the window where during my first appointment with doctor Indian-man I’d stared out of, watching the world outside that window continue its course while in here my entire world had crumbled down.
Doctor B. sat down opposite us, formed his usual pyramid with his fingers and put on his let’s-get-down-to-business face.
"Cosima, as you know, you need another round of induction therapy, we’re going to start today and are very hopeful about it. That it didn’t work well enough the first time doesn’t mean it won’t work the second time either.”
“So what if it doesn’t work during the second round either. What then?” I asked, remaining sceptical as ever.
“Let’s not think about that yet,” doctor B. said.
I frowned, feeling the need to know exactly what would happen were I to not respond to the treatment this second round. Still, trying to be a good patient, I let it go, despite it eating away at my brain during the entire appointment.
The rest of the appointment was rather uneventful. Doctor B. laid out the plan for the next month, and it was basically the same as before, another ten days of chemo after which I would have to stay in the hospital for another three weeks to make sure I wouldn’t get infections during my downtime. I call it downtime because during those three weeks my entire body is basically shut down, nothing functions properly, my body is so tired from all the chemo that I sleep more than anything, my blood values are so incredibly low that I can get an infection from basically anything, also there’s the fevers, the bowel problems, the soars in my mouth, basically, anything during those three weeks are for shit.
The first thing they were going to do after my appointment is install a central line, they would do that during a small operation, after which they would give me all kinds of things to prepare me for the chemo after which the lovely poison will freely flow through my veins for ten lovely days. Not ten full days obviously, I’d have the nights off, during which I would sleep uncomfortably in my one-person-room because other people might get me infections and infections might very well kill me before I even got to phase two, deduction therapy.
After we left the doctor’s office, my mother hugged me and Delphine goodbye and told us she'd come back with my aunt by the end of the day. I told her to enjoy her day at the spa and that tomorrow would be soon enough. She didn’t take no for an answer and told me she’d come by whether I wanted her to or not. She asked me to text her later to tell her how everything was going and I promised her I would even though she wouldn’t be able to read her messages while naked at the sauna.
After my mother left, giving us both several hugs in the process and telling Delphine profoundly and repeatedly how happy she was she had come into my life, we made our way deeper into the oncology department and I headed straight for the department where I had to report for duty, or chemo camp as I liked to refer to it. Naturally I wasn’t allowed to be there long, too many infectious people around. I was immediately brought to my room, where a suspiciously-young-looking-nurse, one I had never seen before eventually came over and started hooking me onto the iv, missing my vein three fucking times in the process. My veins were easily found and missing the one it should go into, was like driving a Smart into a wall instead of a twenty-feet-broad garage. Luckily Delphine held my hand, kissing it lovingly each time the nurse called Marcy missed. What kind of name was Marcy anyway. What can I say, having cancer made me cranky.
After the iv was finally in, I had to wait for a while until I was taken away by another nurse. Delphine was asked to wait for me until I’d return about an hour later. The procedure had become routine by now. I was put in a light sleep, my central line was installed in my neck like it had never left. I woke up in my room, cranky and slightly disoriented. Delphine sat by my bed, which was a new development, one I liked.
Marcy came back in, hooked the poisonous-chemo treatment to it and then it was time to ’sit back and relax and let the chemo do its job’. I wanted to scream at her, 'you get fucking hooked to a fucking chemo iv’.
"I have a surprise for you," Delphine said once the nurse was finally off, killing someone else’s arm while trying to get a needle into it. How the hell had she graduated college?
I looked up into my favourite pair of eyes and had a total melting moment. "What kind of surprise?”
"The good kind.”
"Is there a good kind of surprise?”
Delphine smiled mysteriously. "Well, I’d like to think so. I bought you a gift," she let go of my hand and ducked to get something out of her bag.
It was a small package in the form of a book, it was wrapped in brown paper, the old-fashioned kind. She put it in my lap. "Open it.”
The book was heavy and the cover was obviously hard, which I liked, paperbacks were for those who didn’t collect so it had to be a collectible. I started unwrapping the gift, curious as to what book it might be. Once I had gently pulled off the wrapping and saw what book it was, my eyes grew big, my heart started to race. "No way.”
Delphine grinned. I started to tear up.
"Delphine, this is too much.”
"No it’s not, it’s perfect.”
It truly was. In my lap lay a very old, very-expensive-looking-leather-bound-one-of-the-first-editions of Alice in Wonderland. The cover was old and worn and a shade of faded-brown, the pages were yellowed and perfect. The writer and the title were written in gold, which contrasted beautifully with the rest of the cover.
"It is perfect," I murmured.
Delphine lifted her arm and caught a tear that ran down my cheek. “Glad you like it.”
"I more than like it, I love it, thank you," I gently squeezed her hand and leaned in to kiss her cheek. "You’re amazing, you know that right.”
"I know," she winked.
"Thank you, for this, for still being here," I said, gesturing around me.
"I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here stupid. I won’t ever leave.”
"I might.”
Delphine’s face contorted in pain before she flashed a small smile filled with pain. "I’d rather spend one day with you and feel what I’m feeling right now than an eternity without having known you and without having felt what I’m feeling right now.”
"I don’t want you to be in pain and I know I might give you pain.”
She smiled at me so sweetly my stomach ached. "I know why you tried to push me away.”
“You don’t hate me for it?”
“I could never hate you for anything, but I am still a little bit angry with you,” she winked.
“Guess I have a little bit of making up to do then.”
“I guess so.”
We smiled at each other. “Perhaps I should cook for you one day, after all the times you did for me, just don’t expect my meal to taste as exquisite as yours does.”
“That’s all right, you can think of something else, I remember those eggs you boiled the other day.”
My mouth fell open. "You said they were fine.”
"You had them, they were not all right.”
"Bitch, liar, asshole.”
Delphine laughed and I joined in. "They were terrible indeed, I suck at cooking. Sorry.”
"Luckily you have other skills as well.”
"I hear I'm a pretty good writer.”
Delphine smiled. "You are indeed.”
"Lucky me, I wouldn't earn shit as a chef.”
"I don't think you'd even get a job as a chef, like anywhere.”
I laughed. "Well thanks for the vote of confidence.”
"Welcome.”
For a long moment we sat in silence. Delphine casually glanced around her and I followed her gaze, trying to imagine what she was seeing, how it made her feel to be here. It was a quiet day on the oncology department. Before, when we’d been to cancer camp, we’d seen a lot of people who’d been at least twenty years my senior but some had been about my age, one girl looked to be younger, she was in the company of a boy who was bald and his leg had been amputated. Cancer formed bonds for life, however long or short it might be. I'd made the mistake of making a 'friend' here as well, she died before I had even finished my first round of chemo. After that I had decided that there was one thing worse than having cancer and that was having a friend who had cancer and seeing them die a little more each day until the day their heart stopped beating.
Ever since I was young I had hoped my death would be peaceful in bed at the age of eighty-something, then I found out I had cancer but still remained hopeful that even with cancer I'd die a quiet death. But after meeting Ira I knew better, seeing how every day he’d grown weaker, how his bones started showing more and more until it was almost intolerable to look at him, how in the end he couldn't even go to the bathroom by himself anymore. He’d needed a bag so the little fluid and food that were forced into his body through tubes, would be able to actually exit his body.
Dying of cancer was nothing if not dishonourable. You were given a body and it was the only one you'd get, it was a body you were supposed to grow old with, you were taught from a young age to trust that body, accept it the way it was. Yet to me, finding out I had cancer, I felt betrayed, not by some God that was supposed to be looking down at us. In my opinion, if there would have been a God, they wouldn't be as cruel as to 'give' cancer to children, they wouldn't let groups of people murder each other just because they believed their God was better than the other's. It wasn't even about me, I had never thought of myself as important enough to be personally given cancer because I had either done something wrong or because he needed new angels, weren't they supposed to be immortal anyway? It all just sounded ludicrous to me. No, there was no God who had betrayed me, my body had.
"Cosima," Delphine said suddenly, pulling out of my dark train of thought.
I looked aside at the woman who held my hand lightly, she played with my fingers, pulling at them one by one. "Yeah?”
"Did you really have a fifteen percent survival rate when you started?”
"Yes.”
"That isn't a lot.”
I snorted softly. "I know.”
"It almost gave me a heart attack.”
A sad smile pulled at the right corner of my mouth. "I can imagine", I said and squeezed her hand hard.
"I had no idea it was that bad.”
"Yeah, if fifteen live, eighty-five die.”
"But now there's forty survivors. You'll be one of those. You have to be.”
"I know. I want to be now.”
Delphine raised a disapproving eyebrow at me. "Not at first?”
I worked some saliva into my mouth, trying to swallow the bad taste in my mouth. "Honestly, I didn't really care at first. I didn’t even want to start the treatment.”
"Why not?”
"Because I've never really had anything to live for, the only thing I ever really focused on was my work, that's not living, that's surviving so in a way I felt like it wouldn't really matter if I were still alive or not.”
Delphine watched me intently while I spoke but remained silent for a long moment after I was finished explaining my former lack of interest in living.
"You changed that, you know that right?" I added.
She nodded. "Oui.”
I tried to flash a heartening smile but completely failed in the attempt, instead my throat tightened and I was fighting back tears that threatened to escape from my eyes.
"Hey, why are you crying.”
"Because I'm happy.”
"You're supposed to smile when you're happy," Delphine gently offered.
That made me laugh through my tears. "I know. I guess I'm just suddenly afraid of dying, I mean, finally I have someone amazing in my life and now the thought of dying just makes me regret everything.”
"Define everything.”
"Not living, not meeting you sooner, focusing on my career only.”
"But that's only natural isn't it, you love your job, you didn't expect to get cancer, no one does really, right? We all hope to be lucky enough to be skipped. Now you just have an extra good motivation to fight because that's what you're going to do, you're going to fight until you kick that cancer in the balls.”
I laughed again, drying my cheeks and runny nose with my sleeve. "This just blows.”
"It does but we're in this together, not literally, I know how people say that and it's easy to say when you're not the one with actual cancer but I'm here and I'm not going anywhere and I'm going to kick your ass if you stop fighting, cancer or not.”
"You're allowed.”
More tears started flowing downward and a sob escaped from my throat. I looked around but there was no one near and besides, people who worked in the oncology camp were used to people crying. I'd seen more people crying during my time here, than ever in my life. Right then, I could hear the sobs of a woman echoing down the hallway. I wondered whether it was the cancer patient crying or a family member. I smiled inwardly when I realized it was more often the family members crying than the cancer patients. We're tough like that.
"Now stop crying and let's get down to business, how exactly do you make the most of chemo-therapy sessions?”
Delphine had a way of making even the most difficult situations seem bearable. With just a few words she wasn't only able to make me stop thinking about the predicament I was finding myself in, she actually tried knew how to make the best of a situation, even though it the reality of it was difficult to cope with.
"Usually my mother just brings a couple of magazines, which I find incredibly boring. So I normally just watch something on my iPad.”
"Hm, that just won't do, we're going to do something fun, did you bring your sketch pad with you.”
I nodded and pointed at my bag. "It's in there.”
Delphine let go of my hand and got up in order to grab my bag. She took out my sketchpad and a pen.
"What are you doing?”
"I'm not going to do anything, you're going to make a bucket list.”
"A list of things to do before I die, really? How morbid of you.”
Delphine shook her head disapprovingly. "No, we’re making a list of things you have to do while you live.”
Always that positive spin to crappy situations. She made my heart swell with love. "All right, I like that, you have to add yours as well though, we can do them together.”
"We should make categories though.”
"What kind?”
"Well, I want to go skydiving one day but we can't do that during chemo-time because you'd fall asleep before we'd jump out of the plane.”
She flashed a smile and I grinned. She was probably right.
About an hour later we had a large sheet with dozens of bucket list items on it, written horizontally, vertically, small, big, beautifully and practically unreadable. Delphine officially had the worst handwriting I had ever seen in my life and that said a lot, my grandfather used to be a doctor with classic doctor’s handwriting but his way of writing would be considered pretty compared to Delphine's. So in the end, I’d started writing down most of the bucket list items that belonged on our list. There were two categories, the first being a during-chemo and the second being after chemo. The first half of the page contained the more soft items such as visit an aquarium, go to a zoo, go to Disneyland, though that last one was a difficult one to place because an entire day of Disneyland could be rather strenuous.
“I want to start crossing off items of our list, starting as soon as possible,” Delphine said while compiling the first list.
“I agree, maybe we should start off with this one,” I replied, pointing at the one I had just written down.
Properly kiss Delphine Cormier.
A smirk appeared on her face but then she frowned a little. “Right here, right now?” she asked.
I looked about and a shiver travelled down my spine when I watched all the people around me sit in their recliner, being poisoned by a substance that was supposed to make them better in the end. There was no way I’d kiss Delphine for the first time while having chemo pumped through my veins. So I shook my head and offered a gentle smile. “Later,” I promised.
Delphine had smiled and winked. “You better not disappoint because I absolutely love kissing.”
“Great way to pressure me woman.”
Delphine grinned at me and leaned in to kiss my cheek .“You’ll do fine, Sarah told me you were a great kisser.”
My eyes grew big in surprise. “No way, she told you that?”
“Oui, when I first told her I liked you.”
“When was that?”
“Two days after our dinner party.”
“You already knew?”
“Honey, I knew the moment I bumped into you at the Starbucks.”
I took a moment to let that sink in and stretched out my hand toward Delphine, she got the hit and put hers took Delphine’s hand in mine.
“When did you know you were in love with me.”
“I guess I truly realized it when I looked at the sketches you made of me. They were so beautiful and the way you had drawn me, no one has ever looked at me like you have. It made me feel special and well, it gave me butterflies.”
Her words made me grin like a Cheshire cat. Another bucket list item came to mind and my pencil moved over the paper in my lap.
“What are you writing?” Delphine asked, leaning in curiously to read my words. “Get high with Delphine,” she read.
“Seriously? You want us to get high together?” she commented in a slight disapproving tone.
“What? I have cancer, I’m allowed to smoke medicinal marijuana.”
“For the pain yes.”
“Obviously.”
Delphine shook her head and I nudged her arm with my elbow. “Come on, be crazy with me, let’s smoke pot.”
She took a long moment of consideration, then sighed in resignation. “Sure, fine.”