The day I wrote a song about you

Chapter 21: Mirror

My phone felt heavy in my hands. I had one missed call from my mother. I knew I needed to call her, but I also knew if I did, I needed to call my father right after. Not because they cared about me, not in the slightest. But because they were competitive like that. I kept in inside of my pocket again.

Not that I had been doing that for the past ten minutes.

With the bittersweet mood I had been having all day, I didn't want to ruin the sweet part of it by having those phone calls.

Sighing, I sat up against the tree and grabbed the phone from my coat's pocket. It was really cold that Friday morning, and it was only the beginning of November. I wondered if it snowed in the city. I needed to ask Luca about that.

I dialed my mother's number until her secretary picked it up. Madame Marret, aka maman, with her recently new last name thanks to her new husband, Pierre Marret, was the editor of a well-known fashion magazine. She was extremely busy, except for two weeks in the summer, when she decided to spend her time with her beloved ones in a paradisiacal beach. That is to say, her lover of the moment.

"Hello?" For some reason I had to remind myself that I had to switch languages to French, it had been a long time since I didn't talk to anybody in French. Maybe a couple of sentences were exchanged with Luca when he wanted to tell me something in front of Riley and he didn't want her to understand.

"Hello. It's Nicolas Dumont, I'm calling for Madame Marret." I mumbled lazily.

"Wait a second." I waited. One second, two. Maybe 184 more. "Sir?"

"Yes."

"Did you have an appointment?"

"No." I sighed heavily and ran a hand along my face. "I'm her son."

"Oh." I waited again. Three seconds, five. "Wait a second." I snorted. I couldn't help it. This was ridiculous. It felt unrealistic.

"Nico?" I heard the familiar voice on the other side of the line.

"Maman."

"Nico! I was waiting for your call, mon chou."

Yeah, sure. "I'm sorry, I was at the doctor's."

"Is there something wrong?" She changed her tone into a concerned one. She was a bitch but she was my mother, that instinct never goes away.

"I- I have a lymphoma. But-"

"What's that?" My mom asked quickly.

"It's cancer, but they say-"

"Cancer?!" She almost made me deaf from one ear. She started rambling about how I should go back to Paris, how incompetent doctors in this country were and how she was gonna get me the best treatments.

"Maman, maman. Stop. It's okay, they're gonna remove it and I'll be okay. They say it hasn't spread, it's small and we caught it in the early stages of it." I wasn't gonna explain her that I was having radiotherapy five days a week for the next three weeks, it was better to tell her that it could be removed just like that. I hadn't already grew into the idea, but I knew it was a really short amount of time in terms of cancer and I was really lucky for that. They said I had a really little chance to have it back again.

She sighed, a little more relaxed now. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. I'm having surgery in three weeks." I told her. Oh yeah, another thing I wasn't going to tell her, I was having surgery in three weeks again for my hip. They wanted me to finish radiotherapy since they said I'd be really tired after the sessions. The surgery wasn't anything too dangerous, I had it before, so I guess I knew what I was going to go through. Let's say right now, I wasn't the healthiest man on earth.