Izel changes seats so she can be next to me on the sofa. She wraps her arm around my shoulder into a half hug. “Dr. Ramirez is amazing,” she says. “You’ll be fine.”
“And we got you. Whatever you need,” Tlali adds with a smile of her own.
My eyes sting with tears; I am so moved by this small tribe of women who don’t know me from Eve but offer a safety net for when I fall. If this is what having girlfriends is like, I never want to go back. “Can we talk about something else? Treatment starts tomorrow, and today I just want to feel normal,” I say as I wipe my eyes.
I don’t share all my fears with them. The prospect of going under the knife for the first surgical procedure of my life is terrifying, and I’ll have to follow that up with radiation. I need my mind off it all and am so thankful these girls are here to help with that.
“Of course,amiga,” Tlali says. “What you wanna talk about?”
“Um, what do you guys do at the hospital?”
“We all have double lives,” Izel says with a grin.
“What?” I ask, confused.
Izel points her chin toward Mandy. “You know how she’s a research assistant-slash front desk clerk at the hospital by day and a painter by night?”
“Yeah . . .”
“Well, I’m a surgical technologist by day, and I write by night,” Izel says.
“And I’m a medical interpreter by day, and I translate novels by night,” Tlali says.
Mandy jumps in. “We have a master plan that we will all one day make a living from our arts and leave our day jobs. We cheer each other on to stay motivated.”
“That’s amazing,” I say. “What kind of books do you write and translate?”
“I write horror,” says Izel. “Pretty gruesome stuff,” she says with a delighted grin on her face.
Tlali rolls her eyes. “And I translate proper literature. Or want to, anyway.”
“So you do speak Spanish? Or are you translating another language?”
“Yeah, Spanish.”
“Your double lives—it’s like Superman and Clark Kent—”
“Exactly,” Mandy says. “Did you know Superman is from Kansas?”
I shake my head. “No, I didn’t.”
We laugh and get to know each other better the rest of the night. The cousins don’t ask me more about myself unless I offer tidbits, and I realize they are trying to respect my privacy.
If I make it out of this, I hope we can all stay friends. I surprise myself because, more and more, my plans post-treatment seem to shift to Kansas City and away from home.