THIS IS NOT A CANCER BOOK
I always knew she was too ethereal. Too perfect for this world. She wasn’t made for the universe we live in. I just didn’t assume that was true in the literal sense. She might leave. This is the worst thing that has ever happened.
My life would be so much easier if I could quit her. But I can’t. And I don’t want to. So I swallowed all my anger and tried to rethink all this. She is all I want in the world. I don’t care anymore. I need this. I need her. So I genuflected at her bedside all afternoon. She was the cross, and I was Jesus, nailing myself to her and preparing for the end. Because I don’t want easy love. I want this. Whatever this is, I want it. Being with her is like reaching the top of a roller coaster and having no fucking clue what the hell will be on the ride down. But I want the high, and she is more than worth the crash.
I will skip over some of the hospital scene, because 1. I made a groveling fool of myself, and 2. I want it to last between us forever. But after all was said and done, I put a hand on her arm.
“What is it?” she asked. The action had died down, and now we were watching one of my fishing shows, the air potpourried by artificially scented flowers, as the middle-aged fisherman fought their sharks. I looked over at her as she lay there in her papery hospital gown, giddiness sinking into me just as it had that first night at Joe’s. My body sang for her. Even if this was the only white gown I’d ever see her in, I’d still treasure her forever.
I felt so fucking bad for the way I’d treated her the night before. But how could I ever make it up to her?
“I just want you to know that if the whole world fell away tomorrow,” I whispered, “if the mountains fell into the sea, if all the lights went out, and all my cheesy poems were reduced to dust, you would still be enough for me. I know you think you’re nothing, but you’re everything, and I was a fool not to see that earlier.”
She looked away. “But I’m completely broken,” she said, hiding her scar with her hand. Slowly I pulled down her arm, grabbed her by the chin, and pulled her eyes toward mine.
“And I completely love you. So what?”
We settled in, and she started flipping channels. When she reached a show where two girls tried to find wedding dresses, she stopped, and her eyes glazed over. As the show ended and the credits flashed over the wedding ceremonies, I sighed and sat back, thinking out loud.
“‘Til death do us part’ is such a stupid thing to say at a wedding,” I told her, the death of the day flashing gold in her hazel eyes through the windows.
“Why?”
I bit my lip. “It just is. Why should love have to stop at death? I want love forever.”
Those eyes filled with tears and she looked away. Realizing we’d experienced enough emotion for the day, I grabbed the remote, turned it to my favorite fishing show again, and waited for the evening rains to roll in.
And when my sweet girl fell asleep, wrapped in cords and lines and IVs, I looked over at her and wrote this in my iPad:
it’s gonna hurt.
it’s gonna root around in your guts and keep you up at night and make you pick at your fingernails at work and stare at the walls of your shower in the morning and wonder if you could ever survive the ending of it, how anyone had ever survived the ending of it, why anyone would even want to survive the ending of it
but love
it will be so worth it
THE NEXT DAY
Today was terrible. No getting around it: it sucked ass. There are so many things I wish I could say, but I don’t know how. I have dealt with my mom’s issues, sure, but nothing compares to this. I wish I could tell her how brave she is. There is nothing in this world braver than looking the world in the face and saying I am not going to be what you want me to be. And she refuses to go down easily. She refuses to be the mopey deathbed girl, even as the doctors and nurses whirl about. Her personality is intact, her wit as sharp as ever, even as specialists pick and prod at her like she’s some human Petri dish. I hate it all, and I want it to stop. So after lunch I pulled Dr. Steinberg, Summer’s general practitioner, aside and told him to give it to me. Just throw it out there: the truth. He looked to be in physical pain as he cleared his throat and started.
“Cooper, I know you’ve been having fun this summer and all, but…I don’t think she’s been totally honest with you.”
He explained her situation. Her whole situation. I wanted to slide down the wall and disappear. I was furious with her for lying, but beyond all that, I was so, so sorry for her. And so scared. It was so unfair. They were being forced to try to fix all her problems at once, and the surgery had a twenty percent success rate. I cried like a little bitch, right there in the hallway. The passing nurses stepped well clear of us, giving me my space, but I could see the curiosity in their eyes.
In the end I grabbed him by the shirtsleeve, and he gave me a weird look. “She’s so special,” I said. “She’s not just any patient. She’s treasure. Can you save her?”
He took a breath, choosing his words carefully. “I am going to do everything I can to ensure that we do all we can for her.”
I looked down at the floor for a second. “Can I take her, then? This place sucks. Can I get her out of here for a few days?”
He looked at me with pity. Absolute pity.
“There is an organization that can help. I will get you a phone number.”
I drifted back down the hallway and did my best to swallow my fear before I let her see me again. When I did, though, the sight of her made me remind me of how in love with her I was, and of what a good decision this had been. It was the only decision, actually. I would never run from this.
As she fell asleep later that evening, her golden blonde hair unfurled out across the bed around her head like a yellow halo, I wrote this as I watched her:
it is so hard to let yourself love
to push out all the monsters in your head and stand tall and say, you know what, I am worthy of this, and I’m gonna do this even if it hurts, even if I wake up one day hating the world for introducing me to something so magnificent and then snatching it away again
and then you do it
and you wonder
why in the hell you’d waited so long
THE NEXT DAY
I escaped with her to St. Augustine, my hometown, to get away from the hospital. After sightseeing a little we found a hammock in a deserted courtyard somewhere within the maze of the Casa Monica, our hotel. Summer was sore from sitting in her wheelchair all day, so I held her hand and waited as she sort of awkwardly climbed onto the netting. As we swayed in that dirty old thing in the St. Augustine wind a few minutes later, a pastel sunset splashed out above us, the sky itself seeming to shimmer with the love bleeding from our every pore, Summer put a finger on my chin.
“Why are you still here?” she whispered as I planted a kiss on her fingertips, which were much cooler than they had been just a few weeks ago. But I didn’t care. I still couldn’t feel the ground, here in this wonderland with her. “I mean, after all this? After everything I did? Why not run?”
I pushed her thinning bangs from her hazel eyes and took a breath. “Because leaving would break me.”
“What?”
I swallowed. “Looking into the eyes of anyone else, ever again, would ruin me. Even after all this. It’s just…you. It’s always been you, since the first moment. I never want to do this with anyone else again.”
She didn’t know what to say, so I pulled her in and kissed her on the temple. She didn’t need to say a word, anyway. She knew. She would always know. I would make absolutely sure of it.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked me.
“The future.”
“Oh, God. What about it?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“…I’m asking, aren’t I?”
I took a breath. “It’s just that…I don’t know where I’ll be in five minutes and I don’t know where I’ll be in two years. I was nowhere five minutes ago and God knows I’ll probably be nowhere next year, too. I’m doing a pretty sorry fucking job of making my way through this senseless mess they call the world, and adulthood is like a joke everyone gets but me. But all I know is that wherever I’m going, I want you to be part of that mess. Whatever destiny is, I think you might be mine.”
I was crying.
“I just want you forever,” I said. “Forever and ever and ever and-”
She put a hand on my lips. “Okay. Stop. Let me make you one promise.”
“Yes?”
She gulped as much as her condition would let her. “If Earth isn’t the end of us, if a soul is real, if we float up anywhere after this or whatever, I will do everything in my power to stay with you. To come back.”
“Promise?”
“On this life and the next one.”
I could tell she didn’t want me hearing this stuff. Her eyes got all beady and a layer of sweat covered her forehead. And that just killed me. So I reached up, took her by the forehead, and pressed it against mine so that she was so close, I could feel her breath on my mouth. “All I know is that you’re mine, and that’s not changing. I just wish I could give you my future. You deserve all that is fucking good in the world, and I just want you to be the rest of my life.”
The sun was setting and we were slipping into love. We were kissing and her hands were wrapping around my shoulders and she was biting my lip and she was dying and we were in love, hopefully eternally.
I’d been so right, with my prediction that day I met her. This fucking hurt.
~
The day of reckoning is coming. As much as I want time to stop in place, my thoughts are hurtling forward, spinning me towards tomorrow, screaming for the inevitable. With that in mind, I wrote this in our hotel room, her hair glistening with this bizarre heavenly glow as she slept beside me:
I want you forever. let’s just get that out of the way
you and me, me and you, us, eternally
but honey, God forbid
if fate intervenes and the heavens let us down
if we end up parting ways
I want you to know that if we bump into each other in thirty years
city crowds, busy sidewalks, two strangers caught in the hustle
I will look you in the eye and smile
out of gratitude
for the summer
when we loved
and damn near ruined
each other
by the sea
ONE DAY LATER
The surgery is tomorrow. We had one last pier date tonight. Summer glowed again, if only at her feet. And I did too. This girl made me okay with me being me again, and I will never be able to repay her for that.
“I need something to believe in, Cooper,” she said in her wheelchair, on the way back to the car. I could tell her strength was waning, her hard shell cracking a bit, as the clock ticked closer to morning. “Only for tomorrow. Only for the surgery. I need proof I can believe in something.”
“Proof of what? Proof of God?”
She nodded. “I’m scared.”
“Okay. Do you love me?”
“What?”
“Do you love me?” I repeated, and she nodded.
“Forever.”
“Okay, well, prove it then.”
“What?”
“Prove it.”
“I…I guess I can’t,” she said.
“Well there you go, then. If you can’t prove love, why should you have to prove God? Some things just…are.”
After I dropped her off, hiding the tears in my eyes all the while, I bowed my head and prayed. That is my constant position these days, at least metaphorically speaking: I have been brought to my knees. I am bowing at the feet of her, arms out, hoping against all that is holy that the surgery will go well. I have never been a praying man, but one last time I am going to send this one out into the air and hope that somewhere, somehow, it touches the heavens above:
God, please save my girlfriend.
July 11, 11:50 AM
So. The day is here.
As we wait I sit down on the hospital floor, sick with fear, and start making deals with God. I know these things never work, but I’m desperate and it couldn’t hurt. The prospects of what could happen today are dizzying me, panicking me, and so I do all I can to prevent the worst. Oh, what I will do to have her survive today…
From this moment on, I’m going to be the best boyfriend the world has ever seen. I promise. I know I’ve fucked up in the past, but no more. She’s going to survive the surgery, but it’s going to be hard. She may need round-the-clock care, but I can do this. I will do this. I will be at her bedside for the rest of my life, if I have to. I did it for years with my mother, after all. Whatever it takes, whatever I have to give up, I will do it. I will be there. All she has to do is live.
Here’s one more poem. It just came into my head out of nowhere, so here it is:
This brand-new love is so easy, here by the sea
The ocean in your eyes, rolling over me, eternally
But soon the sun gets too hot
Soon ancient devils invade my July thoughts
You know,
One day your eyes won’t gleam so brightly
One day your face won’t give off this light
One day your blood won’t flow so forthrightly
One day my teenage dream will kiss the night
But darling,
Just know that I will be there
When your hair fades from yellow to silver, and finally blue
I will be there
When your hands can’t squeeze mine like they used to, it’s true:
I will be there
When your memory flickers, your thoughts sink down too deep
I will be there
And when your heart weakens and finally thuds its last beat
I will be there.
So pretty baby, don’t you worry
Silver hair is coming, creased skin is on its way
But this love, this thing, it’s here to stay
And when you lay me down tonight, just know that I want to stay
Right there, until the end of days
So, invincible love
Eternal darling
At the end of this ride, I would gladly lay by your side
So let’s push up daisies, side by side, for all time
Flower twins, forevermore
And as it was, it will be
As we are here by the sea, we will be eternally
Even though you won’t know it, even though we’ll both just be lovely bones and dead air
Just know that
I will be there.
(I mean it, Summer. I will see you again, no matter what happens. I promise)