24. Hannah
The worst part of illness, I’d found, was the boredom. When you were too wasted from chemo or radiation to think clearly, you couldn’t read. Television lost its appeal after a couple of days, and even bathroom trips were so onerous, I put them off until I was in physical pain from the need to void.
My treatments left me too weak to go for a walk, too nauseated to eat, and too irritable to want company, even though Logan’s family was treating me like a queen. I wanted to give up at least three times a day, despite the last confirmation from Dr. Patel that the therapies were working. He’d given me a surgery date and sent me home to wonder how I ended up in a house of strangers.
They took good care of me, cleaned up my first rounds of vomit when I’d been too weak to get help or get myself to the bathroom before I puked. Hope was walked, fed, and brushed, then she’d get up on the bed with me and sleep until it was time for someone to pamper her again. I felt guilty for not doing more for myself or for little Hope. I felt uncomfortable staying with the Hargraves when I didn’t know where Logan and I were even headed.
Our conversations when he had called since being away were stilted and centered mostly around how awful I felt and platitudes from each of us to the other. He would tell me that it wouldn’t last forever and I’d be okay. I’d respond that he should be out doing what he loved and I wouldn’t be a burden.
What I wanted was to tell him I was scared, that by the point we’d reached in treatment, I had always been more functional, and my continued reliance on his family was causing me to cry myself to sleep every night and sometimes wake to more tears in the morning.
Ever the mind-reader, as soon as I started thinking about how much Hannah had done for me, I heard her light knock at the door, and she poked her head in to ask if I could handle some solid food. I accepted, even though I knew I would just throw it up if I ate it. Dr. Patel had suggested that I eat as much as possible, even though I wouldn’t keep it all down. Whatever did make it through my system was vitally important, and I needed to get as many nutrients in me as possible.
“Mrs. Hargrave, could you please help me get my clothes together? I think I need to get home. I can’t keep waiting for Logan to return. I’m starting to feel like a leech,” I said, carefully draping my legs over the side of the bed as I prepared myself to attempt to stand. The pain in my legs and back had gone from episodic to constant as the radiation weakened not only the tumor, but my spine and hips as well.
“Starting to feel like a leech? Who do you think you’re kidding? You’re family. No matter what.”
The tears spilled over, and I fell heavily back onto the bed. “I’m sorry, I can’t. I’ll get in there on my own in a minute.” I wiped my face with my sleeve and sniffed as I tried to control my shaky breathing. Hannah sat beside me on the bed and waited with her hands in her lap. “I think I’m going to be here for a little bit. I can make it on my own; I was just asking because I thought we’d be faster together.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Heidi.” Hannah chuckled and patted me on the knee. “You might have noticed this already, but Logan is more like me than his brothers.” I glanced sideways at her, and our eyes met. “You need to shower because you’re getting really ripe.”
I burst out in surprised laughter. “I bet I am.”
“Then, we’re going for a ride.” I started to protest, but she held up a hand to silence me. “We’ve already figured it out; you’ll be fine. Hope can come, too!” She stood and held out her hands to me, and I gripped them tightly and pushed down on her to leverage my way to my feet. The now-familiar nerve pain shot through my back, down into my legs, and I gasped and held on until it abated a little.
“There is so much about this that sucks,” I panted, and Hannah nodded her understanding. “You have these strong, gorgeous women all around you, then Logan brings home the half-lame, scrawny stray nobody wanted and left her with you when he took off again.”
“Wow. I hadn’t looked at it that way,” Hannah blurted. “My boy always had a soft spot for strays.” She started walking backward, and I followed exactly in her footsteps. We both knew that a few feet in, I’d be able to walk on my own. But those first steps were excruciating, and my reflexes slow to react.
“I’ve got it,” I panted, then hissed a little as something twanged in my hip, like the snap of a rubber band.
“How does it feel?” she asked.
“Like the treatment is worse than the disease. I’m okay. It’s just that loose feeling in my hips your doctor warned me about. I guess that means everything is happening the way it needs to, right?” I bit my lip to concentrate, and Hannah gasped.
“Oh, my God, you’re bleeding.” I put my hand up to my mouth and came away with blood on my fingertips. Embarrassed, I wiped my mouth on my sleeve.
“I guess they’re a bit dry to be chewing on,” I chuckled lamely. “I’ll have to find my Chapstick again.” Once alone in the bathroom, I painfully stripped off my clothing and stared at the stranger I’d become.
My ribs and hips jutted out from my body, and my stomach caved in. I pressed my hands against the inward curve between my hips, and they both fit without touching the countertop when I leaned my hips against it. My hair had started to come out in clumps, and Verica had shaved my head for me. Tears slid down my cheeks as I looked at my face, not child-like anymore, but with the same dark hollows under my eyes. It was almost impossible to think that I could ever get better when recovery looked so much like death.
“Not your first rodeo, remember?” I asked my reflection and tried to make a face at the ugly, tear-stained girl looking back at me.
The mirror was starting to steam up from the running shower. I watched my growing fog obscure my face until I guiltily realized how wasteful it was to my hosts. I showered and turned off the water before the heat made me too dizzy to stand, then dried off and dressed. I had a mountain of paperwork to do to finish out my time with the park, and I was still avoiding the worst task on my list, now weeks overdue.
I wiped condensation from the mirror enough to look into my own cowardly eyes. Daddy didn’t need to hear about my relapse. For him, I’d died the day I walked out of the hospital, cancer-free, and took away his excuse for “having to go away to work.” Mom, on the other hand, who blamed me for her husband’s affairs, ignored me unless she needed money, then wrote long, sad letters about how I needed to give her grandchildren. In her twisted, lonely way, she loved me.
“That’s what you get for not telling her you had a boyfriend, Heidi,” I chided my reflection. “That would have been a much better phone call to lead with after three months of not talking.”
“Not talking? Sounds like you’re doing plenty of talking, even though you’re all alone. You are alone, right?”
I jumped and let out an embarrassing, girly shriek and gripped the counter.
Logan laughed, then crossed the distance to me and took me in his arms. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just wanted to surprise you.”
I punched him in the arm, and he chuckled.
“My heart almost exploded. You can’t do that, Logan,” I panted and let him hold me upright while I got my legs under me again. “Wait. It’s you! You’re really here, and three days early?” I relaxed into his chest and sighed. “I’m glad you’re here, but I wish I looked better.”
“Your face is my favorite thing to see, and the one reason I came back at all, let alone early.” He stroked my cheek and wrapped his arms around me tighter. “I had to be home for your surgery. It was wrong of me to leave at all. I wasn’t staying away one minute longer than I had to.”
I chuckled. “That’s very sweet of you, Logan, and I’m really glad you’re home in one piece. After Mr. Grimness called to apologize,”
“Boyd called?” Logan’s voice lifted almost an octave, and I hid my smile in his firm chest.
“Yes. He told me all about the shooting and the hunters. You’re lucky you weren’t seriously hurt, or worse,” I chided him. “I wasn’t expecting you back; I even rescheduled my pre-surgical appointment like you asked.”
“After Boyd got himself in hot water with the townies, he suggested I leave early, to make us less of a target. Personally, I think he has the hots for Sheriff Song and wanted to let her nurse him back to health.”
“Can’t blame him for that.” I smiled. “Look, how about I meet you downstairs after I get ready?” I didn’t want him to see how bad it was, not first thing after he’d arrived.
“Uh, okay,” he replied. “I wasn’t trying to invade your privacy.” He looked unhappy that I was sending him away, but I didn’t have anything extra to give for his ego. His surprise return was amazing on so many levels and painful on a few more.
“No problem,” I assured him. “I’ll be down in a little bit. But I’m sure your fur child would love to see you, too.”
He left without another word, a look of disappointment and dissatisfaction on his face, almost as if I’d slapped him. I added one more item to my dreaded to-do list.
Finish paperwork, call mother about cancer, make Logan forget that you’re a selfish asshole. I shot the emaciated girl in the mirror a dirty look, and my reflection stared back at me just as accusingly, as if to say, “Don’t look at me, you’re the one who keeps blowing this.”
If that wasn’t the truth, I couldn’t say what was. I knew Logan would stick it out until the end, if it came to that. But just because he would didn’t mean it was the right thing to do. I shuffled my to-do list and picked up my phone. There were a lot of things I was running out of time on. As strained as our relationship was, there was one person who could help me out of my predicament. Besides, how much cowardice did it take to refuse to make the call she’d been preparing herself for, for the last decade?
The phone rang, and suddenly, my stomach dropped and I prayed it went to voicemail. After two more rings, my heart began to slow down, and then there was an audible click and a voice on the other end.
“Heidi, I’m so glad you called! I’ve been thinking about you. I have so much to tell you!” My mother came through the line, cheerful and vibrant, and from her shrill tone, on the manic side of her depression. I cleared my throat and decided not to say anything about my condition, but her end of the line when curiously quiet before I could invite her to continue. “Heidi? Is something wrong?”
I laughed, a harsh and angry sound and sniffed back the rush of tears that threatened to spill. Haltingly at first, then in a rush of words that poured from my mouth in a flash flood of fear and pain, I told her everything. I told her about Logan, my work, my cancer. Not once did she interrupt or ask a question. When I was done, I was shaking and sitting on the floor by the bathroom door.
“I’ll be there in a couple of hours. Don’t do anything stupid before I get there.” She hung up and left me staring at my phone like it had been the one doing all the talking. She hadn’t even asked for an address. She hadn’t even said goodbye.
“Oh, Lord, what have I done?” I asked the phone, but having done its part, its face stayed black and unresponsive. I pulled my cap on over my thinning hair and headed down to warn Logan he was about to meet my mother.