Vick
Life flashes before you sometimes.In snippets, on a film reel, in a damn commercial if your mother decides to put it out there for the world to see. And, God, did they ever see it.
I remember each of the moments before the coma and, savvy marketer that she was, she made sure there was a clip of me in that coma too. The summer before I found out I had cancer, we celebrated my sixteenth birthday. I was getting my driver’s license. I was going to go to homecoming. I was potentially going to be voted onto the homecoming court. I played tennis, I cheered, I had so many damn friends. I looked like the cute, happy, all-American teenager. With two loving parents who made good money and no siblings, I was spoiled rotten.
When the doctor called with irregular blood results, we didn’t think anything of it.
At sixteen, hormones are all over the place. I was tired for no other reason than my busy sports schedule and maybe some fluctuations due to the birth control I was on.
The doctor ordered more tests. The worst one was the bone marrow biopsy. My mother held my hand. I didn’t scream because I was a Blakely, but I saw the way my mother’s face tightened, how her jaw flexed and felt how her hand squeezed mine. Blakelys felt pain just like everyone else, and we both endured it at that moment.
Every single pain I went through, my mother did as well. I learned very quickly how much she loved me. How much she cringed and broke with each of my treatments.
I tucked that pain away from my parents because I loved them too. I held on to my family when my friends turned away, when they realized they didn’t know how to act around the girl who couldn’t play volleyball anymore, who was in a coma during prom, who was in the hospital for weeks.
I cleared my throat. “It isn’t something I talk about to most people, Jett. Obviously, a Levvetor drug saved my life.”
“Am I ‘most people’?” The question wrenched out of him.
I finally lifted my head and pushed my hair behind my ear to look at him. I had avoided this exact encounter with so many, knowing I’d see the pity or the change in their eyes. I didn’t want any of it. I wanted to be treated exactly the same as I had been before they knew I had cancer. But no one could do that. And Jett wasn’t any different. His azure gaze drowned in pity and sympathy, but there was another emotion there.
Anger.
“Jett, people don’t want to hear about a disease that tormented me. Cancer makes people squirm.”
“I’ll ask the question again. Am I ‘most people’ to you?”
I sighed and bent the paper in front of me. I focused on lining up the edges and creasing it neatly in two as I said, “I don’t know what you are to me.”
“Well, I’ll inform you then. I’m the guy who screws you into oblivion and then stays to see the sun rise on your skin. I’m the guy who wakes up thinking of you and goes to sleep only to dream about you. I’m your boss, but I’m also your lover. I’m definitely your only boyfriend, and I’m the one who you’ve been contemplating spending your life with even if you don’t want to admit it.”
I crumpled up the folded piece of paper. It had Levvetor facts on it which I didn’t need to know. I already knew that three out of every five of their terminal leukemia patients recovered in some way. Did they go into remission like me? Not always. And mostly, the companies didn’t track patients past the five-year survival point.
I was a statistic, and I was a damn good one in their eyes. None of it mattered if I couldn’t find a way to live with it though.
“Most days, I wake up wondering if it will be the day I start to feel a little more tired, if I’ll maybe get a pain in my bones that will signal the cancer is back. Most days, I’m determined to wake up and avoid every reminder of that looming statistic, the one that Levvetor and all those pharmaceutical companies promote. I’m a damn good stat in their eyes. I’ve survived past their five-year studies, and they don’t even follow up any more. To them, I survived and their job is done. Yet, every single day, I feel like I’m dying. Like I’m not living big enough, well enough, not experiencing enough. So, yeah, I don’t want the reminder from you, or anyone else, that I’m a survivor or that I had leukemia. I want to forget it.”
“Who's to say I’m going to remind you?” he whispered.
“You’ll remind me every time you look at me with pity in your eyes. And even if you aren’t thinking about my past, I’ll wonder if you are whenever you ask me how I’m doing or how I’ve been feeling. My paranoia will creep in, and I’ll never feel like the invincible girl you saw before they played that godforsaken commercial.”
“I never thought you were invincible. I thought you were naive,” he stated matter-of-factly.
“Well, I don’t know if that’s better or worse than what you think now.” I shoved away from the table and stood. “Does it matter? We should never have come this far. I should have walked away before I started falling in love with you.”
His nostrils flared, but I didn’t care anymore. None of this mattered. He wasn’t going to be my perfect ending because I wasn’t going to get a perfect ending. No one did. We came into the world alone and we would leave it alone. In between, I’d continue to find ways to stave off the anxieties.
“Yes. You should have walked away. I’m not going to baby you and tell you that you shouldn’t have. I’m not a damn prince or a knight in shining armor. I have a business to run, Victory.”
“Then run it! I’m not asking you to do anything else.”
“Yet, here we are: me screaming at everyone to get out of a very important meeting because my girlfriend didn’t care to enlighten me about the video of her deepest secret being shown to the whole office.”
“I had no idea my mother was coming today. You have to believe that. That footage was all her doing.”
“I do believe that, unfortunately.” He rubbed his fingers over his eyes. “You don’t have to sign off on that commercial.”
“I do,” I countered and turned away as I said the words. “Bastian’s right. He knows I can handle this. I should handle it.”