It was Week 5 of nonstop McDonald’s breakfast. By that point, I shat liquid. That wasn’t from the sausage McMuffin. That was from the chemo.
My husband Keith brought the value meals, complete with hash brown, from the Outside. He visited everyday at seven before work, so he could spend the evening with Michelle.
He showed me a picture of her the other day. I started crying. Keith patted my hand, and upset the IV.
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It turns out there’s a whole genre devoted to cancer. There’s even a YA series about it, like the Baby Sitter’s Club. I found them in the hospital library, under the keywords “uplifting tragedy.” They’re melodramatic, but it was either that or a soap opera, and at least when someone died in the cancer books they always found the body.
My room mate killed time by dialing strangers systematically, trying to find celebrity’s numbers. She didn’t keep track of the phone charges.
“If the insurance doesn’t cover it,” she said, “Us magazine will.”
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When my stomach got stiff and I started vomiting, Keith was ecstatic. He told me not to bother with a urine test. “You’ll need a check up,” Keith said. “I’ve got a good feeling.”
Returned from the gynecologist, I sat in the driveway until he came to the rolled-up window. I had manual windows, and I cranked it down with one half-revolution every five seconds.
“It’s not yours,” I said.
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My room mate and I watched a horror movie on AMC. They kept dubbing the word witch for bitch. The main character broke the fourth wall in her terror — the call was coming from inside the house.
“At least someone’s calling,” my room mate said.
(Click through photo to see more photography by Jonathan Mathias.)
