The Price of Hope

six | summer sickness

Three months ago

"You're all set, Ari. Stay brave, all right?"

The nurse says in her chirpy voice. Her routine kindness is a peculiar habit you develop around the hopeless lot in an oncology department. She plays with my IV line, and liquid starts dripping down the thin tube and into my veins. It burns a little at first as she punctures my left forearm, securing it with the off-white medical tape over the channel, but the pain soon becomes dull as I see my parents leaning against the white-washed wall of my ward across me. My father looks calm- that particular one before the storm, and my mother is blank. I think the pain does that to you. After a while, you just become numb to it. I know the feeling.

I'm getting tired of seeing so many fellow patients around me everyday. Honestly, I'm not even bothered most days, but a few days I can't help feeling the sickness getting into my nerves. I'm maudlin, today.

My parents look like walking zombies and I'm feeling like shit. Since, I have the excuse, I let myself just wallow in the shittiness of my cancer, not the best version of me. It doesn't seem fair. It hurts everywhere. I feel nauseated all the time. It sucks. No motivational podcasts can make me feel any less bad about the whole thing. Fuck this.

"A couple of hours is all it will take for this to drip through. I will be monitoring you the whole time-"

"I got this," I cut her off as she tries to be warm and extra caring even though I know deep down she is that detached person whose job is to watch people die. Everyday, she has to treat new faces with a mask of hope and it must be tiring. 

She smiles. "You're a brave one, Ari. It is your first session, and you're handling it well."

"We'll be here." It's my father. His voice has that protective husk to it.

"Of course, Mr. Sharma." The nurse says, her brown eyes sympathetic as she allows my parents to take the visitor's couch beside me. "If you need anything, just press the call button."

I'm not the only one getting the chemo. There are a bunch of other patients, skinnier-looking and pale, their heads shaved. As an instinct, my fingers dive into my shoulder-length curls, my heart caving. I love them and I may lose them eventually.

Hesitating for a few seconds, I finally say, " There is something." Then I glance at the curtain not pulled shut, and I can see an elderly lady dozing in her bed as the drip flows into her veins through an IV similar to mine. 

The nurse catches my hidden plea and brings the two ends of the curtain together. The metal rings rattle against the rod. "Is this all, Ari?"

I nod, readjusting my body in the monstrosity of a chair they've equipped me in. It makes a squeaky sound every time I move my limbs. It's not as comfortable as the lounger back in my home and not as clinical as a hospital bed, but something entirely different. It is vinyl material that sticks to my exposed skin creating some sort of morbidity about my situation. It is disturbing, and I hate it almost as much as I hate the smell of the hospital ward, the IV causing me nausea, and the pained look on my parent's faces. How did I end up here? Why am I stuck in this atrocious chair?

I remember partying with Aarya, celebrating her first-ever birthday outside her home in a club newly opened for young adults like us. We were seventeen and having the best evening of our lives.

I remember a black-haired guy catching my eyes from across the room. The hood of his black hoodie covered most of his features, but I knew he wasn't a stranger from the familiarity of his smile, Rehan Syed, the artist. He raised the plastic cup half filled with whatever fruity concoction they served at the party in my direction, then tipped it back to finish it off. He made a show of tossing it aside and disappeared among the crowd of boys. It took me solid ten seconds to process his charms. Back then, if I had known about him the way that I know now, I'm sure I couldn't be able to brush him off so easily.

That was the last thing I recalled about that night before losing the sense of my surroundings. It was supposed to be a simple blackout due to whatever alcohol they mixed secretly into the punch, but it wasn't. 

I woke up in a hospital bed with my parents looking down at me as if they saw me for the first time. No one said a thing, not about the alcohol or the clubbing. I thought luck was in my favor. My parents hid it so well. However, I could sense the despair on their dull and gloomy faces. The anxiety creeping within me wasn't for nothing. I knew something bad had happened when I heard my parents crying secretly. 

Within the next few days I went through an MRI and a CT Scan followed by some medical questioning by Doctor Ray, and the next thing I knew, I was traveling in a plane to Mumbai.

And from there, it all started. 

"Do you need anything, Ari?" My mother asks, pulling me back into the hospital ward. It happens to me often whenever I go through the chemo. I sometimes lose sense of my surroundings and lose myself to my memories. In a few minutes, I will lose control of my limbs too, and before that happens I need to write down my thoughts.

"Can you pass me my bag?" I turn my head to the side and gesture at the backpack sitting next to my hellish chair. It squeaks some more as I take it and reach into my bag to pull out my laptop.  My mother catches it just in time as the device slips from my shaky fingers.

"Do you have to use it now? Can you not relax for a bit, Ari? Please..." Tears wet her eyelashes, and her voice sounds watery. I know she wants me to be comfortable with my current situation, but sitting in an atrocious chair with an IV needle stuck into my vein isn't helping my nerves. I need an escape.

"I need to complete this essay over the summer." I sigh, taking the laptop from her hand and entering the passcode; there's Wi-Fi in here, but I don't connect to it. I open the last saved version of my manuscript and close my eyes when words become hazy. Taking a deep breath, I push away mentally the fog of the chemo, the dripping sound of the IV, and the pinching sensation of the needle piercing through my vein.

My father's warm hand squeezes my shoulder, giving me that final rush of strength I need. I push it all away, opening my eyes to the world where I still exist, at least for the moment.

I find my flow with the rhythm of my heartbeat and every synthetic rush of life pushed into my blood. I'm still here, and that is all it matters. As Jimi Hendrix said, I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.

With this final piece of essay, I'm about to weave out a story. The happily ever after and a forever song I will never get to live.

It is going to be my last letter.

***

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