“No. But I’d like an answer to my question, please. If that’s OK?” The old, polite me has returned temporarily.
He rubs his jaw and I envy him that slight dash of stubble that I haven’t had in forever. I kind of miss shaving regularly; it’s one chore I took for granted.
“I don’t think it will work,” he says. “That’s why we do three rounds.”
“You don’tthinkit will work or youknowit won’t work?”
Dr. Khader shifts on his seat, distinctly uncomfortable.
“Three rounds,” he says. “We do three rounds of this BEP chemo, spaced apart at certain intervals. Tried, tested doses. If we could stop you at two, we would.”
I nod. “OK,” I say. I don’t want to do it, but there’s no point going around and around on this again. I stand to leave.
“OK, you’re going to do it, or OK, you just want to get out of here and stop talking to me?” he says with a smile, but I can see he’s got a faint glimmer of worry behind that expression.
I simply smile in return. I need to think. I hold out my hand to shake his and Dr. Khader takes it.
“You have the clinic number. You call me whenever you need.If I’m with a patient, I’ll call you right back, if you want to talk it through again.”
“I don’t think I’ll need to,” I say, not sure at all.
I can see he’s reluctant to let me leave like this, but we’ve reached a stalemate and so he releases my hand. I can feel him watch me as I walk down the corridor toward the reception desk to sign out. It’s only after I’ve turned the corner that I hear him call the next poor guy into his office to read him his results.
—
I’m silent in the car on the drive home, after updating my mom and trying to remember word for word what Dr. Khader said about how encouraging it is, how the cancer hasall but gone.And then I clam up because I need to think, to work out what to do next.
My life has been put on hold for most of this year. I don’t know how April has arrived. I wonder what I would have been doing now if I hadn’t been stuck here, blindsided like this. I’d be in London. I smile. I might have been doing something fun and stupid with Hannah. I still haven’t replied to her message. I’m not going to, either. But I pull my new phone out every now and again, look over the messages Hannah and I sent to each other. I think about that first time I called her accidentally and how happy I felt in the weeks that followed—the video dates, the long talks, how I was so ready to meet her, get off that plane and start a new life in London. To say I am bitter is an understatement.
We pull up outside our house and my mom tries to talk to me. I just smile and nod. I have no idea what she’s saying, something about making us both a sandwich. I go inside. I’ve only got a week or so of peace and then the chemo cycle starts again. My bag is packed and ready to go for it. Mom has been diligently washing my joggers and T-shirts, making sure I don’t run out of toothpaste, and my bag sits there in between cycles, waiting to be dragged back to the hospital with me again.
The air-conditioning blows onto me as I watch TV, but I’m not really watching it, and then I see a familiar face enter the living room. My mom has let Grant in, given him her usual hug, asked after his mom, and he’s now standing in the doorway—only he’s wearing a baseball cap, which he never does.
I narrow my eyes at him. “What’s up?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says in that strange mix of English with Texan thrown in for good measure. Our parents met through the British expat community when they all moved out here to work for BP. Although my parents came when I was tiny, Grant’s came from England when he was thirteen, pulled him from his boarding school and brought him out here because they couldn’t bear to leave him behind. And now his accent is all over the place. When he joined our school he hid his English accent, pretending to be American because he thought it made him sound cool. But when we grew up and he realized being English in America would get him laid way faster, he switched back—unsuccessfully—and now he sounds like a cross between Ray Winstone in a London gangland biopic and Dick Van Dyke inMary Poppins:some sort of cockney Australian. He’s constantly being asked where in Down Under he’s from.
Grant bounces over to the couch, sinks into it forcefully, the way he has done since we were thirteen, and then gives me a knowing look. There’s something different about him, other than the baseball cap, which is throwing me.
I turn, eye him next to me.
“What are we watching?” he asks.
I glance at the TV, now on mute. “Grey’s Anatomy.Rerun.”
“You not so sick to death of hospitals yet that you want to watch them on TV when you’re not there?”
I laugh. “I hadn’t even thought about that. It was just on.”
“Count to three,” he says suddenly.
I do as I’m told, and then on three he takes off his baseball cap.
My mouth drops. “What have you done?” I cry, sitting up straight.
“Shaved my head. In solidarity with you.” He goes to fist-bump me, but I can’t even move as I look at his head. I move my fist slowly to return the bump, but my wide eyes still betray my surprise.
His confidence wanes and he touches the stubble on the top of his head. “You don’t like it? You’re offended?”
