It was weird being the lucky type of
cancer patient. Everyone gives you sym-
pathy and you have to go through most
of the same stuff as the other kids with
cancer, but it’s like getting a sample. I did
intravenous treatments for three months.
I stayed in the hospital for a total of about
four weeks. I attended a depressing sup-
port group twice. My condition never got
bad enough that I went to church or made
right with my enemies. There were a few
bad nights and one or two real scares
when the cancer began to spread, but it
was never anything that couldn’t be fixed
within the next two or three rounds of
treatment. I got to miss a bunch of school
and was made prom queen, so all in all it
wasn’t so bad. The shitty thing is saying
all of that. Like, “Yeah, I had cancer, not
too bad, actually.” I was the asshole in the
World War I camp whose tummy was a lit-
tle upset while everyone else around him
was dying of dysentery. I was the prin-
cess in the castle complaining about a dry
pastry at the ball while the peasants tried
to outlive the plague. Try and complain
that your suffering wasn’t bad enough. To
anyone who hasn’t suffered, you’re still
someone to be pitied. To anyone who has,
you’re worse than you think you are.
I met Elio during those intravenous
treatments. What a classic, sick kid love
story. I think our medicine bags touched
while we complained about the slow inter-
net not letting our Twitter feeds load. Elio
was in for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which
means he won the “whose odds are worse”
game we’ve all played a hundred times. He
was in intensive chemo for a year, though
now he’d been in remission for two. He got
two checkups a year, and he was pre-med
on track to graduate a year early.
The other two were from that support
group Elio and I went to those two times.
We hated them. Ezra and Nicola were so
into it, they were spreading their positivi-
ty and making people weep with hope and
they lead the prayer at the end and, wow,
did Elio and I want to just punch them in
their self-righteous faces. Unfortunately,
outside of group, Ezra and Nicola were
just as hilarious and cynical as the two
of us, even if they were a sickeningly cute
couple. I’d dared Elio to ask them to do a
lunch date with us, assuming they’d say no
because they had to go build a house for
homeless kittens or something, but they
said yes, so the four of us got hotdogs and
Diet Cokes and bitched about bad hospital
staff for an afternoon.
Nicola was the only one of us who still
lived in the hospital. Nicola was also the
only one of us with odds less than 40 per-
cent and the only one of us who’d gotten a
Wish from the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
She called it having a “time of departure,”
meaning that at some point about three
months ago some doctor who thought he
knew everything said she had six months
to live, which is a fucked up thing to say
to somebody. She used her Wish on a
cash donation to the hospital which had
done hardly anything to extend her life,
in exchange for four vacation days hik-
ing with her friends. Enter Elio, Ezra, and
Shannon. The hospital trusted Ezra, as
did Nicola’s parents, and they collectively
tolerated Elio and me, so here we were,
with tracker bracelets around our wrists
like a band of delinquents and a way-over-
the-top mess of camping supplies, chasing
sunsets and existential meaning.
Lunch on the summit was a bougie
affair. We had peanut butter sandwiches,
potato chips, baby carrots and miniature
cheesecakes. Nicola chased the meal with
her second round of pills, and I watched
my feet while she did this, that feeling
of guilt spreading in my stomach. Nicola
then pulled a book out of her backpack
and held it up. “Anyone mind spending an
hour or two hanging out? Rest up for the
way back?” We agreed. I grabbed a Coke
from Ezra’s pack and strung up my ham-
mock between two trees, then hopped in
for a nap. A nap, however, I did not have,
thanks to Ezra, who climbed into my
hammock with me and began pontificat-
ing, in a way that only a man with half a
metal leg can.
“Shannon, I am not an old man, I am not
a young man, I’m am not evenly wholly a
man at all.” He indicated his leg. “I do not
pretend to be an expert in many things. I
have never been to New York City or writ-
ten a novel. I have not experienced great
loss, though that one is coming. And until
today, I had never even climbed a moun-
tain. But, that is why we are still here, is
it not? We still have too much to do, too
many people to meet, and too many stories
to tell.”
“Very good,” I told him. “The timing
needs a little work.” He pressed on as if I’d
said nothing.
“Take the four of us. We are the band of
misfits to star in any teen movie for which
they need us. We have it all: charm, wit,
tragic backstories — one of us even has a
pending time of death. Tell me that’s not a
compelling group of protagonists.”
“Is there a point coming?”
“Is there ever? I’m just observing. Be an
observer, Shan. Don’t think so hard about
everything, alright? You’re stressing the
rest of us out.”
“I am not.”
“You’re stressing me out.”
“That sounds like your problem.”
“Well, add it to the list.”
Ezra hopped out of my hammock and
crossed the clearing to join Nicola. When
he approached, Nicola began reading out
loud so he could hear. She did that a lot,
like she was trying to create a firm impres-
sion of what her voice sounded like while
she could. I wondered if I would have the
foresight to do things like that, were it me.
Probably not. I just listened.
From Page 7B
Drawing each and every wrinkle and hair strand really allowed me to engage with the woman and experience the hardships that
she went through in her life. -Christine Jegarl
Wednesday, March 13, 2019 // The Statement
8B