Amelia
“Sadie, what the hell’s going on?” I asked.
“Amelia, it took a lot of sweet talk for me to be the one to tell you this, so I’m gonna give it to you straight, alright?” she asked.
“That’s just fine with me,” I said.
“It’s back, but it’s treatable,” she said. “A bit of chemo here, a bit of radiation there. Shouldn’t be any longer than four months of treatment. You probably won’t lose your hair as badly as you did last time, and since you’ve already been through all the rigmarole, your body will be better able to handle the rest of the side effects.”
“It’s—b-back?” I asked.
“Amelia, look at me,” she said, taking my hands. “It’s small. We go in, carve out what we can, and get you started on treatment. You said so yourself, you haven’t been in too much pain. We’ve caught the relapse early. That’s a really good sign.”
I was diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma—otherwise known as kidney cancer—a few years back. For a period of time, I had to find a new job other than the part-time desk work I was doing at a hotel. I had to take a night job at a bar waitressing and occasionally bartending so I could do classes and treatment during the day, then I got my mind off things by running around a music-blaring, alcohol-guzzling cantina by night.
That’s when I’d met Lincoln, at the tail end of my treatment.
At a time in my life when I was weak and feeble, he made me feel beautiful. At a time in my life where I was wearing wigs to cover up how much hair I’d lost, he made me feel wanted. He cradled my arm close to his body but never once relented with the thrusting of his hips, and it was the only time during that fucking treatment that I actually didn’t feel like a cancer patient.
Like I was battling for my life.
“Sadie, I don’t know how I’m going to pay for this again,” I said, as tears rose to my eyes. “I— I scrambled the first time.”
“Well, the donations we operate off of yearly should take care of the first month of your treatment, so the bills won’t be as big as they were last time,” Sadie said. “And the four months is just an estimated projection. Remember the first time we all did this? We thought we’d be treating you for six, seven months. But, you were only treated for—”
“Five,” I said.
“So, maybe this time you’ll only need three months. The projections are always off, and that will help with the final bill, too,” she said.
“But, I’ve got enough bills to worry about. I’m still two gigantic payments off from paying off the last time we did this,” I said, sniffling.
“Amelia, now isn’t the time to talk about money. This is your life, and we’re very lucky to have caught it this early. That’s why we have patients come for regular check-ups, even up to five years after they hit remission status.”
I turned towards the hallway and simply sat and looked out. I memorized the calmness of the environment because it wouldn’t stay that way for long. I memorized how clean the air smelled, because the moment vomit was pouring through my nose, it would no longer smell that way. I thought about all the foods I wanted to go home and eat before everything started making me puke.
I wanted to go get my hair done one last time just to look at it the way it is now.
Just then, an older woman and her husband passed by the door. She was hunched over, breathing into an oxygen mask. She was feeble from her treatments, her ports dangling from her chest while her husband helped her down the hallway. You could tell she was tired, but it was imperative that she got up and kept mobile.
At least, that’s what they said around here anyway.
“Do you have anyone who could be here for you?” Sadie asked.
“You know the answer to that question. The moment I call my mother she’s gonna want to move down here for crying out loud. She’ll quit her fucking job and destroy her fucking relationships and it’ll be a mess,” I said.
“But, you’ll have a support system. That’s important, Amelia.”
“Well, I’ll have you. Just get them to assign you to my case,” I said.
“You know they can’t do that.”
“Then you can come sit with me during my treatments. Win-win.”
“Are you sure there isn’t anyone—”
“This isn’t anyone else’s problem to deal with but mine,” I said. “People in this world spend too much damn time worrying about the shit of other people before dealing with their own. It’s a nice distraction so they don’t feel so bad about their lives. I don’t want to be the comparison someone makes. I don’t want to be the person they come around when they need to understand that maybe their life doesn’t suck so bad after all.”
I was angry and I had every right to be. I was about to battle this bullshit for the second time, and I’d never crawl out of the debt it sunk me into. Sadie was an idiot if she thought the donations alone would keep this place afloat.
It’s why I wanted desperately for Lincoln to donate to this place. Holy hell, they could’ve used it.
“I’m gonna lose my job,” I said, as I looked back over to her. “I’m gonna lose my job, Sadie.”
“Amelia, it—”
A movement caught her attention as she whipped her gaze to the doorway. A tear trickled down my cheek as I closed my eyes, but then I felt a familiar presence of heat radiating out towards my body. I turned my head to see what was happening, to see who had entered the room and altered it so drastically. I wanted to see the person who owned the heat, who owned the confidence that had come rushing around the corner.
The tears that were brewing behind my eyes finally spilled over the moment I registered who was standing at the door. I felt a moment of relief barrel over my body as my eyes settled hard on the man leaning against the doorframe.
It was none other than Lincoln Collins himself.