My dearest K.

Prologue

11 December 2014

She pulled her eyes from the polished linoleum floor to catch a glimpse of the hallway that stretched beyond. The hallway had much more personality as the rest of the hospital. Instead of the straight dull walls, the hallway has a big curve, disappearing in fifty meters or so. The floor is slate grey and the walls in cream color. The light coming from the square windows is so bright for her eyes that she finds it abrasive. This place certainly isn't run by risk-takers and she could find comfort in that.

Every few seconds she passed a different set of doors with a hand-sanitizer dispenser: to psychiatry, to geriatrics, to maternity. She bypassed them all heading for oncology because that's where she belongs.

When pancreatic cancer took D., she was skin and bones, pale as a ghost, face masking the ordeal inside. There were times she screamed in pain and agony became the best friend of her soul. In these times, her family would call the ambulance and she would be hospitalized for a week or so. Dr. Bernard would increase the morphine, which slid her into a long dream... her body so still that everyone wondered if she had passed on. On these hospitalization days, she asked Meg to read her a story, something pretty to help her mind escape.

Today was one of those days... the days when she feels like an old consumed woman, all of her useful years, her happy and healthy years in her past. Her eyes once sparkled at a pretty Christmas tree as she eyed the gaily wrapped gifts. Her fragile collar bone once sat above a college seat and the arms covered in tubes held new-bought books. Her feet have known the streets of Germany and the sidewalks of New York. But that young adventurous little girl is still in there, locked into a body that won't quit like it should, tethered to a heart that insists on beating in spite of her chances of recovery being non-existent. The pain would be with her until the end, every day a battle not to lose hope.

- Hey roomie. You seem much better than yesterday.

- Omg Meg. How many times have I told you to cut the roomie word from your dictionary?

- And here comes my lovable grumpy roommate.

– Hahaha... Meg... please read me something nice. I feel so low. I need motivation.

–D...

-Yeah?

-K...

- Please don't ask me to tell any other story of us. I am not in the mood. Besides, I have told you he is on a military mission during these five months and...

–And how much you love him and that you have insisted so much on not telling him about your illness while he is there, yeah I know this poetry of yours. But...

- But what? Meg, what is going on?

-He has sent you a letter. It came this morning.

– K. wrote me a letter? What the fuck? What could he have written?

- I knew you would be a little weak after the chemotherapy... so... I read it. I hope you don't misunderstand, but I knew you would be impatient to know what he has written... and...

– Meg... you girl are a lifesaver. Don't read that to me anyway. I want to feel it myself. Just make a summary.

- He misses you like hell and... he... K. has learned about your illness. He was trying to appear strong for you, but you could understand he was devastated. And...

- And...?

- He has decided to send you a letter every time and again. Each letter a different question... so that he can help your mind escape from illness psychology.

D. opened her mouth, but her tears were falling too thickly. Meg stepped forward.

- I know you are trying to avoid him so that he gets used to... your absence, but D... I can tell he is the best thing that has ever happened to you and he is so madly deeply inconsistently in love with you. If I were you I would try to enjoy these two or three months of life instead of shutting yourself off. Try to give him a chance... to give both of you a chance. You two deserve this.

D.'s hands were frailty and caution, shaking gently as she reached for the stack of paper at the nightstand near the bed. Her movements were ashen where the sunlight caught them, not ghostly like a white person. That was the first time she realized how vulnerable she was and how much of a toll the sickness had taken.

-D... What are you doing?

- Writing a letter to my dearest K.