There goes that idea.
Beca and Chloe sat side by side, pillow propped up against the headboard of Beca's bed, the duvet over their legs, blanket round their shoulders, one hand each wrapped round a steaming mug of tea, the others' joined together between them.
Beca had just finished telling Chloe the story. The story of how at first she'd noticed her leg was swollen and thought she must've banged it without realising. Of how she'd gone to the doctors, told them she was tired, told them her leg was swollen, and he'd sent her for a blood test. Told her she was anaemic, which was common for girls her age, and that her leg pain was musculoskeletal and would go away. Of how she'd gone back, she'd been un-Beca-like in her persistence, that she was scared deep in her gut that something awful was happening. Of how she'd finally, 3 GP visits later, been referred for an X-ray, and oh how it had moved quickly after that. An osteolytic lesion on her x-ray. An urgent direct access appointment with an orthopaedic specialist the next day. An MRI scan, alone and scared in a hospital, loud machine surrounding her, cold in her hospital gown. The bone biopsy, a long thin needle sticking out the front of her leg that she could most definitely feel. The serious face of the doctor a week later as he confirmed her worst fears, and the first time she felt that the ground was falling from underneath her. The words; you have cancer, that she'd heard for the first time a week ago, that she'd said out loud for the first time that afternoon, that she'd barely begun to believe.
And now they were sitting. Sitting, and drinking hot sweet tea, because that's what Mama Beale always made in a crisis, and who has words after a story like that?
Eventually, Chloe asked the question that's been on her mind since Beca started her story; her voice would have creaked from the lack of use had it not been for the hot, sweet tea she'd been sipping.
"What next?"
"Chemo," Beca sighed, "Chemo and then surgery and then more chemo."
"What kind of surgery?" Chloe asked, frightening ideas of one-legged war veterans popping into her head.
"Well, the tumours on my fibula, nowhere else… yet… I guess they can just take that out and it doesn't matter? It doesn't bear weight? I dunno, I mean I don't really understand how you can just take out a part of your leg bone and still be expected to stand up but… I guess it's a thing."
"So… So… You'll still be able to… to dance?" Chloe asked, trying to get her head round the idea of taking out a bone, a bone, something which seemed so essential, taking out a bone from her friend's leg.
"Well… Apparently they take out a couple of tendons too? Because they're attached to the bone? So for a while I won't really be able to lift my foot… but then they take one from somewhere else so I can? I'm not really clear on that whole part. The idea that bones and tendons can be missing from places without changing something is… weird."
"Right," said Chloe, head spinning, ears ringing, because the idea that Beca wouldn't be able to dance for their last year as Bellas was much easier thing to focus on than the fact that she had cancer.
(It's funny, really, how when you're young, and healthy, and no one you know under the age of 80 has ever died, nothing seems insurmountable, not even cancer. It doesn't even occur to you that it could kill your friend, until suddenly it does occur to you, and suddenly that's all there is.)
Bella bitches of 140A
House meeting, 6.30. Be there, no excuses.
17:32
Stacie <<3
I've got a hot date!
The hunter needs some exercise…
17:37
Fat Patricia
Maybe I'll be there, or maybe I'm collecting my award
for best mermaid dancing in Tasmania this evening and
won't be able to make it
17:37
No excuses tonight aca-bitches
Also we all know that's code for sleeping
with Aubrey and Bumper, respectively, guys.
This shit is serious. I'll see you both then.
17:42
Legacy
Oh no Chlo! I'll be there.
Also, definitely did not know there was a code.
Awww you guys must make such cute couples!
17:44
Fat Patricia
Calm it Red, don't blow a tit, I'll be there. And then maybe go
out for a smoothie afterwards and not come back for
14 hours. Who really knows.
17:56
Stacie <<3
What does this mean we get best friend's approval Chlo?!
YAYYYYYY!
Ok, see you tonight.
17:59
Chloe sighed as she slipped her phone back in her pocket. She was not relishing the idea of telling the other girls, but Beca had asked her to, and Beca had cancer, and she would. She turned her gaze to the brunette who was sleeping soundly beside her. Apparently 6 digestive biscuits, 3 cups of tea, and the feeling of Chloe's thigh beneath her head were enough to knock Beca out for the count these days. As she slept, Chloe studied her. She didn't look much different. Her face was slightly paler, perhaps, than it had been, and the shadows under her eyes marginally more pronounced then they might have been before the summer. The angles of her face might be slightly sharper, the dip beneath her collar bones slightly deeper. And then Chloe's eyes drifted down to Beca's leg. Covered by the puffy duvet, it didn't look very special. Just a leg like any other leg. But inside it was a tumour, and inside that were cells that were multiplying and multiplying, and, to Chloe's mind at least, ready to spring into action and spread all over the girl's body at any point.
Chloe's tummy sank as she realised the subtle signs she should never have missed. Would never have missed, if she hadn't gone home for the summer rather than stay in Bristol with Beca. If she'd spent the summer with Beca, the girl she'd crushed on since they first met at Fresher's fair two years ago, the girl she'd fallen in love with over Jessie J and Simple minds, instead of with Tom, hometown fuckbuddy extraordinaire.
Sighing again, Chloe gentle lifted Beca's head from her lap, scooched out the way and replaced it with the warm pillow she had been leaning on. Beca stirred only slightly, her face twitching and her arms drawing closer to her chest, before she was still again. Standing up gently, so as not to disturb the mattress, Chloe quietly walked toward the door, opening and closing it as quietly as she could, before going downstairs to speak to the girls.
"Cancer? She has cancer? Our Beca? Has cancer?" Stacie stuttered, before covering her mouth and nose with her hands and taking a deep breath.
"I thought Shawshank seemed a bit less perky than usual, but she's Beca effin' Mitchell, I thought it was just her badass coming out," Amy said, Amyish as always.
Emily, the youngest of the three, said nothing, just sat there, blinking hard and breathing fast but unable to stop the tears overflowing and running silently down her cheeks.
"Yes. Our Beca. She has cancer," Chloe confirmed, hardly aware how she could even be saying these words so confidently.
"Shit," Stacie said softly.
"Yeah," agreed Chloe, "Shit.".
Back in her bedroom, Beca was slowly blinking awake. For a second, she forgot. For a second she felt light and happy and warm. And then the pit in her stomach was back, and then she remembered. Remembered telling Chloe. Remembered what she had wanted to be telling Chloe in only a few days from now. Confessing how she felt, because, you see, Beca Mitchel had been in crush with Chloe Beale since the day she met her at Fresher's fair, and in love with the redhead since they had produced their first Varsity final set.
Beca had been planning on asking Chloe Beale out on Halloween. Instead, she'd just told her she had cancer.
Well, thought Beca. There goes that idea.