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To die will be an awfully big adventure.
── J.M Barrie
TATUM MORENO IS DYING.
Ever since she was thirteen, cancer had ravaged her body. It had all started with a simple migraine in the middle of AP Chemistry, and it was all downhill from there.
First was the eye cancer. The blurry vision had almost been fixed with a strong pair of glasses but the large lump burrowing underneath her iris was a whole different story. That first daunting trip to the hospital had terrified her to her core. Being told you have cancer wasn't an easy thing to hear as a newly turned teenager. The chemotherapy was extensive and barely helped, only succeeding in making her weaker and insecure. To prevent the tumor from growing or spreading, the doctors removed the offending eye. Now fourteen, she was in remission but missing an eye, her hair, and her confidence.
At sixteen came non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The growing lump under her armpit was no cause for concern for a while, Tatum thinking it was just a reaction to her shaving without cream or her immediately spraying deodarant after showering. But after a troubled night where she had an array of symptoms ─ fever, nausea, shortness of breath ─ she was back in that hospital, being told she had cancer again. This time was more dangerous, her immune system being at risk of horrible infection. So, she stayed in the pediatric ward for her chemotherapy this time, isolated from her family and friends as the treatment tore through her body and confidence once more.
This second bout introduced her to two people who would become the most important people in her life. Her nurse, Wayne Abaza, was a soft-spoken man who always talked her ear off when he was putting the needle in her arm. He was the one to hold her hair back when she was vomiting in the first few days, and the one to hold her hand through her head-shaving session when the clumps were getting too big to salvage the rest of her locks. He'd sneak her chocolate pudding when she was feeling particularly upset and sit with her when her favorite show, The Nanny, would play in her room.
Then there was Thorn Blake, an enigmatic hurricane of a man. Only a year her senior, he was one of the aides who helped out the sick kids on her ward. A brash and bold metalhead who hadn't realized it was the nineties yet, he brought a smile to her face like no other. He introduced her to new music, helped paint her nails, and constantly fed her compliments every time he noticed her. The two could talk for hours over anything, taking care to avoid the subject of her cancer as best they could.
