Chapter Twenty-Five

Georgina

 

 

When I was a little girl, I pretended to be a princess a lot of the time. I would wrap the long scarves my mother had worn over her head during chemo around my waist and shoulders, like they were my mantles and my wedding gowns. Those scarves had stayed with me during my own chemo.

They had all eventually fallen apart. The only one still left intact was made from filmy green silk printed with weirdly shaped, giant yellow birds. I asked Dad once where Mom had gotten it, thinking there must be a story there, but he said it was just something she had liked in a store.

As a kid, I’d made up my own stories for that scarf—how it reminded her of the tropical vacation she had taken and never told Dad about, or of the pet parrot she’d had when she was a kid living on a pirate ship. At this point in my life, I figured it had just struck her as quirky and when your life was at stake, you often needed something to smile at.

I wore that scarf when I walked into the Breast Cancer Care Center to get my results. So that Mom would be with me. Just like Dad was, and Blake, and Kaley, and Priya. I was guarded and loved on all sides.

We told the woman at reception I was there, then took our seats to wait. Dad and Blake sat either side of me, and Kaley and Priya sat opposite us. I unwound the scarf from my neck and laid it across my lap, petting it like a cat.

“I never liked that scarf,” Dad grumbled, staring at it. “Used to make me think of flying mucus.” He reached over and patted it as well. “Now it just makes me think of your mom. She’d be so proud of you.”

That was when he saw the ring on my finger.

I hadn’t told him on the phone. I’d meant to announce it as soon as I saw him this morning but got distracted. Impending results from a cancer test were a bit distracting.

“Blake proposed at Niagara,” I confirmed nervously. I was worried what he’d say—that we were too young or it was too soon or that it was a reaction to intense circumstances. And maybe it was all those things, but it was also our choice.

“Spontaneous indeed.” He muttered something about tomatoes and then put his arm around my shoulders. “Congratulations. I think it’s beautiful.” Tears filled his eyes as he looked from me to Blake. “You’re both beautiful together.”

I wrapped my arms around Dad’s neck and let his bushy eyebrows tickle my cheeks.

Blake put his hand on my knee, and I could feel his fingers shaking. Across the narrow floor, Kaley’s knees jittered the way they had when I’d first met her and she was getting tested herself. Priya chewed on a fingernail.

I felt still, and calm. Not hard like a stone or locked into invisible armor. This was different. It was acceptance.

I had woken in my bed that morning in Blake’s arms, surrounded by a giant rainbow unicorn and a cute plushy narwhal, with a smile on my face. We were almost late for the appointment because I didn’t want to get out of that bed. Not from fear. From losing track of time with me in Blake’s arms and him inside me.

I still felt that warmth spreading through me.

The lemon-yellow waiting room had large vases of fake sunflowers in every corner, and the Breast Cancer Care Center logo was etched into the windows and painted large on the wall above the reception counter. It was a simplified bust of Botticelli’s Venus. I nodded at her sure, accepting smile.

“You look like her,” Kaley said. “I don’t know how you do it. Babe, I was curled up on the floor crying when I came in for my results, and that was after I got the all clear.”

“She’s not kidding,” Priya said.

“I’m sure it will be fine though. You’ll be fine. It will be fine. This is going to be fine.”

I smiled at Kaley’s rambling and just shrugged.

When I was fifteen I had searched for signs and portents. I had stared at the receptionist, tried to read the expressions on the faces of nurse’s or doctor’s, thinking a frown thrown my way would mean the worst, or that a secret smile meant good news awaited me.

Not anymore. I was ready to accept either outcome. We all lived. We all died. Our whole galaxy would someday be nothing but stardust, and it was terrible and awe-inspiring.

Could I be fine with that?

“Everything dies. Everything changes. In the greater scheme of things, does any of this matter?”

Blake stared down at me, silent. Then he asked, “How do you feel, right now?”

I looked around at my entourage, so scared for me, caring so much for me. “Loved. Happy. Alive.”

“Then that matters.”

Kaley awed and Priya hugged her. She whispered, “We matter.”

It might be easier if everything didn’t matter. Nihilism had its upsides. But mattering made it all worth it.

I would make every moment of my life matter.

Images of a wedding day filled my mind along with the realization that holy shit, I’d agreed to get married. Being with Blake forever was one thing, a sort of inevitable truth, but the realization that there would be a wedding had just caught up to me. Regardless of what happened next, with my results, there might be a wedding, there might be me moving in with Blake or him with me, or finding a new home together. There might be us, having a family. There were so many what-ifs and maybes and hopes ahead of me.

I thought I was done with lists, but my mind was filled with the future. I pulled a pen and my black journal from my bag and started to draft one final list. The last list I’d need for the rest of my life.

 

 

 

 

Next to those words, I sketched a little bald lion.

“Georgina? Georgina Stone?” A young female doctor looked up from her clipboard, seeking a response from the nervous crowd in the waiting room. Dad still had his arm over my shoulders and Blake had his arm around my waist. They both squeezed their love into me.

I am Georgina Stone. I am strong—stronger than I ever knew. I am loved. I am brave. It will be okay.

Whatever came next. Whatever life threw at me.

I was ready.

 

 

The End