Love Always, Kate (3 page)

Chapter 3

November 12

Dear Diary,

I woke up this morning to a large clump of hair on my pillow. Even though I knew it was coming, I wasn’t prepared. The first time my hair started falling out, Mom kept a little
of it in a bag and put it in the FIGHTER scrapbook she’d made for me. This time, I balled it up in my hands, stared at it for a few minutes, then threw it in the trash. I keep telling myself, “It’s only hair. It will grow back.” Because sometimes, the mini pep talk actually works.

In the shower, I took great care washing it. I used extra conditioner and brushed through it as lightly as I could. My efforts weren’t enough. More hair than usual
ended up in the drain. When I got back in my room, I changed my mind and yanked some strands out of the garbage. I placed them in a plastic bag for Mom.

It’
s only hair. It will grow back.

I cried.

A girl at school asked me how I was feeling today. I didn’t know how to respond. No student has ever asked me that before. I told her I felt fine and thanked her for asking. She nodded politely then walked off to her next class. I wish now that I would’ve asked her for her name.

I hope I feel good this weekend. Mom wants help getting ready for Thanksgiving, and I don’t want to sit on the sidelines.
Besides, my Pinterest-inspired mother has a way with helping me keep my mind off things.

~*~

Curiosity got the better of me, and Friday night I spent the evening in my room with my laptop searching the archives of the
Des Moines Register
. Sometimes it reported on fatal car accidents in the state. If not, it would surely have an obituary.

I found a small ar
ticle dated two years previous on April 21. The
Register
said that a vehicle with two passengers, Nora Lowell and her son, Liam, had lost control during a thunderstorm and hydroplaned into the interstate barrier. Both passengers were killed on impact.

I also found their obituaries in the paper dated a few days later. Liam was eighteen when he died.
A year older than me now. He had just been accepted into the pre-law program at Yale. Mother and son had a dual funeral service.

I stared at the screen. Even in black and white, the picture of Nora showed a striking resemblance to Damian
, and even more to Liam. The brothers looked so much alike that they could have been twins. I traced my fingers over Liam’s picture on the screen. Were he and Damian close, like I imagined brothers being? A lump rose in my throat, and I stifled a sob as I closed my laptop. I threw back my violet comforter and fell asleep with my jeans still on.

On Saturday, I felt surprisingly good, health-wise
, anyway. I helped my mom bake pumpkin pies from scratch to put in the freezer for Thanksgiving. For some moms, putting decorative piecrust leaves around the edges and in the middle was a bonus. For my mom, it was a necessity for the perfect pie. As the three pies baked, I helped her make a beautiful centerpiece for the table. My mom was so crafty—I could barely cut a straight line. But I think I did a smash-up job placing the glue dots in precisely the right spots on the homemade cornucopia.

Knowing the stupidity of it
, I hung onto Damian’s words of a visit on Monday all weekend—even if it was just his job. I kind of wished I’d left my gloves at the hospital so that I’d have an excuse to see him sooner.

~*~

Leslie left the room for my orange juice. I settled in for the next two hours, wondering if Damian would show up. My wondering didn’t last long. Damian, wearing sky blue scrubs that brushed nicely over thick biceps, walked in holding a plastic cup of orange juice.

Don’t stare!

“Leslie said, ‘no peach schnapps.’ Sorry,” he said, smirking and handing me the cup.

I
smiled, half-surprised to see him. “Thanks for trying. It’s probably better for you this way. I’m not sure how well that would mix with this.” I pointed to the bag hanging from the pole.

“So, what is that stuff
, anyway?” Damian shot a glance up to where I pointed.

“A v
ery potent chemotherapy drug.”

Damian sat down beside me. I could smell the smoke on his clothes. He tried to cover it up with too much cologne
. I ignored the slight stir in my stomach.

“Does it hurt? Having cancer?” His eyebrows furrowed.

“No, it doesn’t hurt. I can’t feel that I have it. I just feel the side effects. It’s sort of like having a flu that doesn’t go away.”

“How long have you had it?”

“Dr. Lowell … I mean, your dad, diagnosed me with ALL—Acute Lymphatic Leukemia—when I was eleven. We did chemo for almost six months, and I went into remission, so my white cell count was back to normal. Then it came back two years ago. We did another round of chemo, and again I went into remission a year later. Now it’s back.”

“You talk about it like you’re okay with having leukemia,” he
said, confused.

I shrugged. “I’ve tried crying, screaming, throwing things, avoiding people. It is what it is. I didn’t choose t
o have cancer, but it happened.”

He let out a puff of air as h
is eyes drifted over me. “Damn, I couldn’t do it. Being here all the time, letting the nurses poke and prod you like you’re a cadaver.”

“You would if you had to.” I shifted in my seat.

“You’ve been doing this for, what, seven years? Wouldn’t it be easier just to give up, live while you can, do whatever the hell you want, and not be held back by shit like drugs and appointments?” His voice rose as he spoke.

I fidgeted with a tube, giving myself a second to try and figure him out.

“Sometimes I think that,” I answered calmly. “Every time I go out of remission, getting back in gets harder. I’ve gotten sicker each time. The chemo gets stronger while I get weaker. So, yeah, it would be easier to say I don’t want to do this anymore.” I looked around the room. This wasn’t the conversation I had envisioned. Yet, somehow I didn’t mind it.

“I could go t
o Disney World. See Greece. Climb Mount Everest. Swim with dolphins. Watch a volcano erupt. And not be sick for any of it. Enjoy the time I have left. Or be sick and then die, and not do any of those things. But I hang on to the hope that I can do it all, not be sick, and not have cancer.”

“I don’t think the statistics are on your side.”

I opened my mouth to retort then closed it. Most people, when they learned I had leukemia, grimaced and told me they were sorry, and encouraged me. Other than with the hospital staff, I’d never had a conversation like this before. I appreciated his bluntness.

I sighed. “I know the stats, and they get scarier every time I have to come back here. But I have people counting on me. Someone fills that small percentage. Why shouldn’t it be me
? Staying positive is medicine, you know.”

Damian looked solemn. He was the son of my doctor, and I wondered how much he knew—how much Dr. Lowell talked about his work and the survival rates of patients.

Damian’s gaze settled on me. “Your file was sitting on Dad’s desk, so I flipped through it.”

My eyebrows shot up, surprised and actually a little thrilled that he took the initiative.

“It says you’re on the bone marrow transplant list.”

I cringed. During my last lapse, my best friend was Molly, a nine-year-old girl who had her chemo treatments the same days as me. When I went into remission, she wasn’t showing any signs of improvement. Dr. Lowell put her on the bone-marrow transplant list, a list with over
ten-thousand names. No suitable donor was ever found. I went to the hospital during her treatment times to keep her company until one day, she wasn’t there. It rained the day of her funeral. She would have liked it—she loved the rain.

“Yes,” I
said, pushing Molly’s memory away. “It may be my only chance. And if I get it, my stats increase.”

He scoffed. “It’s one helluva list.”

“It is. But there’s always hope.”

“Your folks aren’t a match?”

I swallowed. “No, they’re not. They got tested last time. Their HLA type isn’t compatible.”

“So, how do you get a compatible HLA
?” His dimples deepened when he talked. It was hard to ignore.

“The best matches come from siblings. I don’t have any.”

His playful grin faded. “Yeah, me neither.”

The words hung in the air for a moment. I stared at the linoleum.

Damian spoke quietly. “I admire you. You’re strong.”

I was strong because cancer is resolute, and I didn’t want the beast to win.

“Now you know me. How about you? What’s your story?” I asked.

Damian sighed and
adjusted his nametag. “I’m the son of Jackson Lowell, Doctor Extraordinaire. That means I have a lot of time to myself. I play the guitar. Write music. I’ve beaten every
Assassin’s Creed
game. And I don’t live up to my father’s expectations. Hell, I don’t know if I live up to anyone’s expectations.”

“I’m sure your dad just wants you to be happy.”

Damian grunted. “Whose definition of happy? His? Mine?” His eyebrows rose. “Yours?”

I shrugged. “Doesn’t happy only have one definition?”

“Does it? Are you happy?”

I thought about it for a few moments. I had beaten my disease twice before, and I was determined to do it again. More than anything, I was happy just to be alive. “Yeah, I am.”

His eyes narrowed. “Having a tube sticking out of your chest, being hooked up to toxic drugs, getting sick—that makes you happy?”

“Oh, well, no. But…”

“Not that easy, is it?” The edge in his voice pricked at me. I couldn’t tell if he was talking about me or himself.

“The outcome of—”

“You don’t
know
the outcome.” He sounded angry, his eyes blazing. “You only
hope
it will make you happy, when it might kill you. That’s reality.”

I
pulled my lips tight. “True, but it makes my parents happy to see me fight.”

“Bullshit. They’re not happy having a daughter who has to battle cancer. And if you die, well, how can they be happy about that?”

“If—”

Damian cut me off. “Yeah. If
. So much is based on that word, and there are no fucking guarantees attached to it. What makes you happy now may be what destroys you later. Or those you love. Then what? Sometimes, being happy isn’t worth the risk.”

“And sometimes it is,” I
said quietly.

Damian brightened again, offering a slight
smile. “See what I mean? Nothing in this shithole life is easy.”

“Just because it’s not easy, doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.”

“So tell me then:
is
it worth it?” His blue eyes searched mine. “Worth all the time in this place?”

It was a question I’d asked myself many times. One I didn’t have an answer for. Sometimes it didn’t seem worth it. If I fought and lost, no one gained anything. I’d have waste
d the last years, months, weeks of my life on hoping. I’d be dead, my parents would be heartbroken. No one would win. If I stopped fighting, went off the chemo and accepted my fate, I could enjoy my last moments on this earth. My parents could enjoy them with me, making memories they could cling to long after I was gone. But if…

What if I kept fighting? And won? Then we all won. The chances were slim, I knew that. Wasn’t it worth holding on to, though?

I stared at the wall in front of me. “I don’t know."

"
I could do what makes me happy now and risk being miserable later.” I felt Damian’s gaze on me as he spoke. “Or I could please the good doctor and be miserable now. Choices come with consequences, some good, some bad. It’s risky, and it’s always,
always
based on if.”

I swallowed hard and took a sip of my juice before lifting my eyes to him. “Does your dad want you to be a doctor?”

Damian scoffed. “I’m sure he would. He had his career picked out when he was my age, med school and everything. Me, well, I’m just hoping to graduate.” He tugged up the corner of his mouth, showing off his gorgeous dimples.

My stomach tightened.
Not now
.
Not in front of Damian again
.

His smirk faded. “Hey, are you okay? You’re white. I can get Leslie.”

I shook my head. There was no time. I shot my hand down beside me but the wastebasket wasn’t there. Oh no! I leaned forward and heaved. When I’d finished, I noticed Damian on the floor in front of me, holding the basket with one hand, his other resting on my thigh.