A Work in Progress

Eight - ?? Days

I'm changing out of my wrinkled clothes and into a clean outfit when he arrives. I hear a knock on the door as I put on my bra and hurry to put on my shirt, a light blue one that held a Rene Magritte reference. It presented a picture of a pipe, and under it lay a sentence, 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe,' which means 'This is not a pipe.' Mom is at work, so I hurry downstairs and open the door for him, seeing his eyes and his smile. 

"How do you feel?" Max asks in that clarion voice that I could probably get off to. The thought makes me chuckle, and he gives a questioning look before confidently taking my hand. I can feel my blush, and I just want to stand there holding his strong hand forever, even though I don't have forever, no one has forever, everyone dies. I feel selfish. I want to love this kid so much, but I don't want to hurt him. But I choose to love him. But I can't. I'm going to hurt him.  

"I feel okay, I guess." We begin our trek down the sidewalk to the movie theater, which is only a few blocks away. I see him shift out of the corner of my eye, and he reveals something. My purse. I had left it at the restaurant the day I ran from him. I take my purse and he seems to read my mind.

"Why did you run like that?" He looks over at me, and I feel tears prick at my eyes.

"I. . ." I begin a sentence. I don't want to tell him the truth, but I've already told him everything else. Everything. "I. . . I can't love you." I know I shouldn't have said that, because I look over at him and see the pain in his eyes. "I'm sorry, but I just can't. I'm gonna hurt you." I close my eyes, only using him to guide me through the streets to the movie theater. I wish I could love him. I wish I could be involved. I wish I wasn't going to die. So many wishes, and not a single lamp to rub. A single tear falls from my right eye and tickles my chin before landing on the bowl of the non-pipe that is on my shirt.

"Can we just be friends?" I ask Max a question out of utter desperation to let him know I don't hate him, and he looks down at the gray sidewalk. 

"Yeah. Yeah, I'd like that." He smiles duly before releasing my hand. In that moment, I think I put a puzzle together, one that I had all the pieces to but never bothered to attempt. I'm going to die. No matter what I do, I'm going to die. Even if the chemotherapy works, all it's going to do is slow down my bone marrow's reproduction of lymphocytes. Slow down my death. 

We enter the movie theater and Max buys us tickets for a sci-fi movie that I'm not interested in at all. From what I can gather while I'm not staring at him, it's about a man who wins a trip to the house of some rich guy who makes robots, but everything goes to shit --how could it not?-- when a fully sentient android turns against it's master and wreaks havoc. After the movie, we leave and he walks me home. I really don't know what to think of this guy anymore.

"Thanks for the movie," I tell him quietly as we stand on the sidewalk outside my house.  I hug him, a small, short hug that feels awkward no matter how I think about it. He smiles at me, and I smile back. I close the door as I watch him walk away and pull out my phone. Opening Google, I type the phrase into the search box, the phrase that I've wanted an answer to since the day I was diagnosed, but didn't have the guts to ask: 'survival chances for acute lymphoblastic leukemia' 

I search it, and then click on the first website. It takes me to a page that organizes the prognoses by age, youngest to oldest.

'...in those aged between 15 and 24, almost 70 out of 100 (almost 70%) will survive their leukemia for 5 years or more after diagnosis...' All this time, I had been thinking that my death was inevitable, that I only had two months. Maybe they did the tests wrong... maybe I won't die after all. I begin to laugh. I laugh so hard that I nearly cry, and it makes me remember how good it feels. I hear the front door open and close, the hinges squeaking slightly. 

"Mom!" I call to her, wanting her to see this. She doesn't answer, so I call louder, "Elizabeth!!" I hear her bounding up the stairs, and she probably thinks there's something wrong. Then she practically throws my door off the hinges, swinging it open. 

"What's wrong?!" She almost screams, and I'm still smiling, tears in my eyes. I can't speak, so I just point to the screen. She seems to understand what to do, and reads the passage in the middle of the screen. I see her hollow eyes twinkle brightly and she looks me in mine.  Tears flood her sockets and stream down her face, and for a second I think she's sad. But then she smiles more brightly than I've seen in all my years and wraps me in a warm hug, sniffling. "Oh, my sweet baby," she chants. "Oh, my sweet sweet baby, I love you so much." 

I reflect the quote. "I love you too mom, so much."

But what if I'm one of the unlucky thirty percent? I should have been diagnosed earlier. They could've done so much more for me. But nonetheless, I do feel a little better about my odds.

But at the same time, there's something nagging at me. Some dark thought in the back of my mind that I try not to let surface.

I know they tell you not to believe everything you see on the internet, but...