This is it.
When Beca opened her bedroom door, the smell of cookies in the oven filled the air. Chloe always baked when she was stressed (and when she was happy, and when there was more than one person in the house, and just when she felt like it) and her white chocolate chip cookies were Beca’s favourite.
Inhaling deeply, Beca walked along the landing, limping slightly, and slowly made her way downstairs. Somehow, now that she’d told Chloe what was happening, the pain in her leg was worse, almost as if it knew it had nothing to hide any more. She had been expecting it to get worse, had been told she would start needing crutches to get around. She had just been hoping it wouldn’t happen yet.
As she rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs to the open plan living/dining room, with the small galley kitchen off to the left, everyone stopped moving, and four pairs of eyes were suddenly fixed on her.
Chloe was in the kitchen, transferring cookies from the baking tray to a wire rack. Her blue eyes were overflowing with the same concern she’d shown when Beca was coming round from her faint.
Stacie was standing behind Chloe, stirring something on the stove in the small kitchen, her hand paused in mid-air, sauce dripping from the wooden spoon that was hovering over the saucepan.
Emily was laying the table, cutlery in hand, in the process of putting down a fork. Her eyes were red rimmed and her face was puffy but she managed a small smile as she saw Beca.
And Amy, Amy was sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table, Netflix open on her laptop, connecting the speakers they used when they wall watched TV together.
For a couple of heart beats, everyone was still, looking at Beca, unsure how to react, unsure how to behave now that they knew, and Beca knew they knew, but no one had sad it out loud yet.
“Bring it in, aca-nerds,” Beca smiled, opening her arms. Emily squealed slightly and got to Beca first, slamming into her in an Emily-enthusiastic hug. Amy came next, ruffling Beca’s hair and telling legacy to “get her tall skinny ass out the way,” because “Beca needs my rack confidence”. Stacie came and joined the pile of girls, her head over Fat Amy’s shoulder, her eyes bright with tears. And Chloe crossed her arms and watched, making eye contact with Beca’s navy eyes from the middle of her Bella huddle, slowly shaking her head as she smiled at Beca, who only raised her eyebrows as if to say, ‘what are you gonna do?’.
After a few seconds of this Beca’s instinct to avoid all human contact kicked firmly in.
“Alright, alright girls, back at it, off you pop, things to do, places to go,” she said, wriggling slightly uncomfortably, until one by one all the girls peeled off and went back to their activities. Beca went over the Chloe, wrapped her arms around the taller girl’s waist, and whispered “thanks for telling them,” in her ear. Of course, as she did this, she stole a cookie from the behind the girls back.
No one talked about cancer for the next two hours. They ate dinner together (Stacie’s special pasta sauce with Becca’s favourite shape of pasta), followed by chocolate chip cookies and Buffy, snuggled together on the sofa. The sofa, which was absolutely not big enough for more than 3 people at a squeeze, but that somehow, with Fat Amy and Stacie on the arms, and Beca practically in Chloe’s lap between her and Emily, managed to hold all 5 girls. Beca, inevitably, fell asleep. As soon as Chloe noticed this, she prodded Stacie, who paused the laptop, while Chloe gently shook Beca awake.
“Hey, sleepyhead” she cooed, brushing Beca’s hair from where it fallen over her face.
“Time for bed munchkin,” (Beca wrinkled her nose at this nickname), “Do you wanna brush your teeth?” Chloe or Beca asked each other this every night.
Nodding sleepily, Beca began to get up, too tired to do anything other than sling an arm around Chloe’s waist as they slowly went upstairs.
None of the Bella’s were much in the mood to celebrate Halloween that year. The previous year they had just signed the contract on their house for the following year, and all wen out dressed as superheroes to celebrate, even Beca, although not without approximately 19 sarcastic comments about tights and capes en route. They pre-drank watching horror films and, for the first time in any of their university experiences, had taken advantage of the fact that a taxi would take them home without a fare in exchange for their student cards. None of them had been sober enough to navigate an ATM, and they had all looked appropriately shamed when the taxi driver came back the next day to swap their student IDs for his money.
This year, however, there was a sense among the Bella’s that real life was scary enough at the moment, without Halloween, horror films, and inevitably horrendous hangovers added into the mix (the whole house had had a sober November after last year’s debauchery). So this year they instead had a Bella’s dinner at their house. The Bella’s were spread across two houses (fun as it would have been to all live together, there was not a house in the city that would accommodate 10 students), just round the corner from each other, and the Bella’s of 36B joined the Bella’s of 140A for children’s party food, followed by children’s Halloween games. By now, all the Bella’s knew about what was going on with Beca, and they were all determined to have as normal an evening as possible for their miniature captain. They’re efforts also served to distract Beca from her previous plans for the evening, although Chloe looking stunning, even in her cat onesie and with whiskers painted in her face, did not help.
The Bellas were began to clear up the incredibly messy living room (go big or go home was their motto when it came to games). It was suggested that Beca help, to which she replied, “Dude, I have cancer!” and no one was going to argue with that, so she was sitting, folded up on a kitchen chair, DJing the clearing up effort. When it was all done, Chloe flopped on the sofa with a sigh. A few minutes later, a covered-in-flour (having played the, cutting-flour-away-from-a-sweet-and-eating-it game), slightly damp (bobbing for apples), and a not-entirely-sober Beca flopped onto the sofa next to her, and said,
“So I start chemo tomorrow,” and then, more quietly, “wanna come?”.
Beca had never had a great relationship with her parents, and, sadly, finding out that she had cancer did little to change that. Beca’s mum had moved the Australia the second she had started university, and in the past 2 years they had only managed to Skype once. Beca had emailed her, telling her what was going on, only to have the message bounce back. She didn’t try again. Beca’s dad was closer to home; he lived in Bristol too, and so was geographically extremely close to Beca, but somehow physical proximity had never translated into emotional intimacy. Beca had been fiercely independent since the tender age of 12, when 12 years of worrying that this time her parents would split up finally came true, and starting university and living with her friends had only served to underscore that independence. First year Beca wouldn’t have allowed anyone to accompany her. She would have thought that having company undermined the fiercely independent exterior she had worked so hard to maintain. She would have got herself to the hospital on the bus, and brought herself home again 3 days later, without telling a soul about what happened.
Luckily, this was third year Beca, and she was sure as hell dragging her best friend along for the ride. The Teenage Cancer Trust had a unit in Bristol where Beca would be able to receive her treatment, and owing to the unique nature of their units, Chloe would be able to stay with her almost all of the time.
The girls’ first day at the hospital could only be described as long.
First, Beca’s PICC line was placed. The most painful part of this procedure was the local anaesthetic. This was also Beca’s least favourite part because of her aforementioned terror at the sight of a needle. The few minutes the nurse spent numbing the area saw Beca with her right hand firmly squeezed round Chloe’s left, and her face buried in the hair around the redhead’s neck, as Chloe stood in front of her as she lay in the hospital bed. Chloe could only imagine the fear the brunette must have faced when she was getting her tattoos, and shook her head at the thought of baby Beca, sucking it up to get inked. Fortunately having a PICC line would mean fewer needles for Beca in the long run.
Next, Beca was sent for an x-ray, to check that the PICC line was properly in place. Once upon a time, the idea of someone taking a picture of her insides would have been reasonably exciting to Beca, and the idea of an x-ray in which she could see her heart and lungs would have appealed to the side of her which wore thick black eyeliner. By this point, however, many pictures had been taken of Beca’s insides, with half a dozen different types of imaging, and the novelty of “breathe in, and hold your breath” had completely worn off. Especially as Beca really didn’t like what they could see. “I’ll give you a clue, I have cancer,” she pointed out to the poor radiographer who was tasked with persuading her to cooperate.
Eventually, the PICC line was in, it’s location inside her body had been established, and the nurse was giving Beca the first part of her chemo.
“This is it,” Beca said, squeezing Chloe’s hand.
“This is it,” Chloe agreed. And so it began.
Three hours later, Beca was bored. The results and side effects of chemo might sound pretty exciting, but the process itself was boring. Her arm was fixed up to a drip, Chloe had had to go to some meeting with her academic tutor two hours ago, and while there were a few other young people on the ward, Beca wasn’t really feeling up to socialising with the other sick kids yet. She huffed, and looked up at the bag connected to the drip in her arm. Stupid chemo she thought, sticking her tongue out at it.
“Real mature as always, Becs,” Chloe chuckled from the doorway, before bouncing in (did that girl ever not bounce somewhere?) and practically sitting on top of Beca in an attempt to get on the bed with her.
“Dude!” Beca yelled, before shifting over on the bed to make room for Chloe, “you could’ve just asked!”
“Sorry Becs, you were so tiny I thought there must be room for me!” Chloe replied, jabbing Beca gently in the ribs with her elbow.
“Hey, sarcasm’s my thing, get your own,” Beca retorted. And just like that, the boredom was gone.
Beca was in the hospital having her treatment delivered for three days. Three days ago, Beca had persuaded Chloe to get the bus to the hospital. After all, she pointed out, she was fine. Now, three days later, Beca climbed into the back seat of the taxi Chloe had ordered without protest, immediately curling herself into a ball, knees to her chest, arms wrapped right around them and head on her knees, and slept.