Page 153 - In Five Years

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The chemo goes from good to bad to gruesome quickly, too quickly. Next week
she’s sick, the following one she’s weak, and after that she is sunken, her body
practically concave. The one saving grace is that her hair doesn’t fall out.

Session after session, week after week, not even a strand.
“It happens sometimes,” Dr. Shaw tells me. He comes to her chemo sessions
to check up on her and run through any recent bloodwork. Today, Jill is there.

Which might explain why Dr. Shaw and I are in the hallway, a whole room away
from where Bella’s mother pretends to be dutiful. “A patient who doesn’t lose
their hair. It’s rare, though. She’s one of the lucky ones.”

“Lucky.” I taste the word in my mouth. Rotted.
“Poor choice of words,” he says. “We doctors aren’t always the most
sensitive. I apologize.”

“No,” I say. “She has great hair.”
Dr. Shaw smiles at me. Colorful Nikes peak out from the bottom of his jeans.

They point to some kind of life beyond these walls. Does he go home to
children? How does he shake the everyday of these patients, shrinking inside?
“She’s lucky that she has such a good support system,” he tells me. It isn’t the
first time he’s said it. “Some patients have to do this alone.”

“She has two more weeks of this,” I say. “And then she’ll do another test?”
“Yes.” We’ll check to see if the cancer has been localized. But you know,

Dannie, because it’s in the lymph, it’s really about containment. The likelihood
of remission in ovarian cancers . . .”
“No,” I say. “She’s different. She has her hair! She’s different.”
Dr. Shaw puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes gently. But he doesn’t say

anything.