That Boy

Cancer no more!

"She's cute, John. I really think you have a chance with this girl." This was the third date he'd been on this month with a different girl here. 

He smiled at me, "I'm glad you think so. I hope it lasts, she's nice." 

In the corner sat the girl he was on a date with, her name was Rebecca and she had black hair and lots of make up. She wore shorts and a tight grey t-shirt, she dressed like all the other girls he'd brought here, to impress in all the wrong ways. 

I smiled back at him, "Good luck." Then he payed and went to go eat his ice cream with her. I worked at this ice cream shop and John always liked my opinion on the girls he took on dates so for the first date he brought them here. 

Luis, one of my co-workers, came over to talk to me, "How's it going?"

"Good, another date again this month. This is the most ever in a month." I looked grimly down at the ice cream, it was hard to be his best friend and watch him be heart broken over and over again.

"No Tessa. I meant the other thing. That thing you like to call 'a touch of cancer'." He hated my lung cancer. I'd been working with Luis since my dad had bought this ice cream shop eight years ago in Wisconsin. Buying and owning the shop had paid for my treatment bills in the long run and for about a week I've been cancer free. It doesn't seem like much but when you have cancer for five years running a week is better than never. 

"It's all good. I mean I went in yesterday for more tests and they said that they couldn't find anything in my lungs." Now just about my hair growing back. "That means no more throwing up from therapy." 

A laugh drifted over from the table that John was sitting at. He'd cracked a joke and she'd found it hysterical. Most girls did but when you heard them over and over again they became annoying. 

When I'd first gotten cancer I'd spent six months in the hospital with stage three non-small cell lung cancer(NSCLC). It is a slower version of small cell lung cancer. It's a disease in which cancer (malignant) cells form in the tissues of the lungs. I went through radiation therapy and chemotherapy. After six months they did a re-diagnosis and my stage three lung cancer was suddenly only stage two. They lowered me to a chemotherapy drug. They called it Tarceva, I took three pills three times a day an hour and a half after I ate so I wouldn't throw it up. I was diagnosed when I was twelve and at first we'd all been in shock. I didn't smoke neither was I around smokers before but the doctor said that sometimes people just get it for other reasons, sometimes unknown by anybody.

Mrs. Harpso, my pediatric oncologist, told me that I had a forty percent chance of living. Other than my parents telling Luis, who was actually older than me by about ten years, John and my friends were the first people I told. In those next six month I lost a lot more friends then I'd like to admit, all of them really. Accept John, he'd stayed with me through thick and thin. He'd been my shoulder to cry on, the creator of laughter and sometimes he was just the best person to talk to. For a while I could see why all the girls liked him really. But then several months after I got out of the hospital he started dating and I was left working at the ice cream shop for my dad. He started bringing them to the shop for dates. Now five years later he's still doing the same thing, but we are closer now.

Suddenly a loud noise sounded and I jumped up to see the girl he'd just been with get up and storm out of here. A look of shock on his face and the other people in the shop looked up from what they were doing, trying to figure out what the commotion was. John stood up and came back behind the ice cream counter to talk to me. He was a whole head taller than me. My forehead stopped just a tad above his shoulder. I was tall for a girl but I enjoyed being a little different. He picked a strand of wig in between his middle and pointer finger, a habit he was bad about. I wore a wig that looked like my old hair until my actual hair grew back.