“No. Felipe, he . . .”
“Yeah, I know. Don’t worry.” The day she leaves that slime ball will be the happiest day of my life.
“I can’t believe she told Mom and Dad,” I say.
“Really? That’s what you’re worried about? God, Valentina, you can be so selfish sometimes.” Chema shakes his head and stands to pace the small space in front of my bed. “We thought you were dying. Which, I guess you kind of are . . .” He trails off, and his bottom lip quivers.
“Chema, I didn’t mean to . . .”
“I know.” He sniffs. “You’ve always been too proud to ask for help, but I never thought you would take it to these extremes—”
“It’s not about pride,” I say in a small voice.
“Then what?”
“So many things. It’s hard to explain.”
“Try.”
I want to tell him the truth. I never wanted this disease to define me. I didn’t want to walk into a room and be the cancer girl. The sick girl. The dying girl. I’ve always been the strong one. The fighting one. The athlete. This is not who I am. I don’t want to tell Chema I was afraid he would stop coaching me after—if there will even be an after. Or that I feared potential sponsors losing interest in my career. I didn’t want them to see the failure of my body, because I wasn’t a failure. But most of all, I want to tell him how angry I am. I don’t say any of it. “I didn’t want my parents to know. That’s all.” I say.
“Why not?” Chema wants answers, and he will not relent until I give them to him.
“Because I’m so angry at them, okay? I can’t stand to look at them.” That’s not a lie, and I’m hoping a partial truth will appease him.
His eyes soften, and he retakes his seat next to me, cupping my hand not trapped by the IV line in his. “Did something happen before you were diagnosed?”
“You know it’s always been strained between us. Dad had a lot of resentments toward me even before this happened. And I won’t lie. I have a lot of resentment for him too. But Chema, that’s not even it. There’s a vaccine for this type of cancer. They refused it because they said it was forsuciasonly.”
“And if you’d had it, you wouldn’t have gotten cancer?”
“No. I wouldn’t have.”
“Then you have every right to be angry at them. Hell, I’m angry, but tell them that, Valentina. Don’t shut the rest of your family out because you’re mad at your parents.”
Chema is right, of course. I’m bottling up so much anger for my parents, anger I’ve accumulated for so many years, anger that stretches far beyond their inability to give me a simple vaccine.
At first, the anger started when I was old enough to understand Dad’s general disinterest in his own family. His business took up most of his time. His lovers took the rest, leaving nothing left for his wife and daughters.
For her part, Mom retreated into herself with the help of various little pills that a new doctor friend of hers prescribed. She slept or was awake but high—those were her two operational modes growing up. She became a hollowed-out, inactive participant in her own life, and I couldn’t stand to watch her weakness. I was only fourteen when the dynamics of my family finally fit together in the jigsaw puzzle.
I swore I’d never be that weak and decided instead to be strong. I chose mixed martial arts in my quest to find my own strength, and I thought I had found it until my body told me otherwise.
“Chema, I know what happens next with my parents.”
“What’s that?”
“I will be an inconvenience for my father who has to be away from hiscommitments, and my mother will play the part of the perfect martyr whose daughter is sick. It’s nauseating.”
“Why don’t you give them the benefit of the doubt?” He asks.
“Because I know better.”
Slowly but surely,I get the full story out of Chema. Pilar became increasingly suspicious and decided to engage the services of a private investigation company. They found me out, easily tracked my mobile device, and took pictures.
Pilar hadn’t thought to let me know, she simply wanted to know I was safe, but she knew I was sick when she saw the photos. I make Chema show me the images they’ve seen. He has them saved to his phone. The PI took pictures as I left the hospital. This was before I lost my hair. The image of the girl in the photo is unrecognizable even to me. She is me, but with no indication of muscles ever having existed, sunken eyes, and a greyish pallor.
The truth is, if at this moment Chema showed me a picture of Pilar looking like that, I would move heaven and earth to find her and make sure she was okay. I can’t begrudge them for caring. Even if it means my parents were on their way.