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

