The Price of Hope

seven | magic potions

I wish I could get saved by some magic potion. I wish I could say I never dreamt of it more than once. But that would be a lie.

The only magic potions in my life are high-dose painkillers and drugs that keep my nausea in check. They help me escape the sympathetic looks of the people around me. The last three months have been all about an experimental variation of chemotherapy designed to stop my brain from shutting down at once and reduce certain side effects, such as hair loss and gastrointestinal problems.

It is successful to the extent that I still have some hair on my head. It has become brittle and thinner. So, I cut my curls and settled for a buzz cut. The medicines also helps keeping my sickness in control and I don't get the headaches or seizures as frequent as it is supposed to be.  And I only spend a few hours or so being violently sick with the effects of chemo rather than weeks and days.

Why do I still want to keep all this from my friends? I hate the idea of being pitied or seen as an unfortunate person. I have always been an introvert, and keeping my private life to myself has been my superpower. I want to have it my way.

My father even went ahead to make my school authority sign an NDA for my health condition. The director of our school, Father Mathew, seems to sympathize with me. It helped me save from the whole school, giving me those 'poor cancer girl' look at all times.

For the most part, no one apart from my parents and a few close family members knows about my sickness. Not even my best friend, Aarya. Why? I don't know. But I have kept it from her via a very elaborate plan about going on a series of trips to my relatives' where I build my schedule around the chemo and recovery days, a fabricated lie to hide my disappearance for the entire summer from the town and occasional off-school days. If I appear sick and lose weight after the sessions, I blame it on my poor digestive system.

Sickness is better. It's recoverable, and Aarya doesn't think much about it.

But I'm dealing with the hardest form of sickness. When you get the C word, there's no stopping it until you become it. And you transfer it to the people who love you.

You don't get cancer. You become cancer, and I never want people to speak the word out loud for me. As if not speaking the word will somehow magically make it go away.

The truth is I want to be just sick. At least that still holds a string of hope with it.

I think that's why my mother never speaks of the C word. For her- I'm coming down with the flu whenever I get a headache or feel feverish. She stays by my side after each of my chemo sessions, taking care of me, bringing me a bucket to puke at odd times of the night, and crying when she thinks I'm asleep.

She does that as I doze off in my bed after yet another MRI test. The visit was supposed to identify if surgery could fix me or if the tumor could get treated through radiation. I'm not sure if it went the way it was supposed to. I'm afraid nothing can fix me anymore.

"Ma, don't tell Aarya yet." I whisper as the drugs infuse my blood, causing a haze of sleep in my brain. "She will hate me for hiding it for this long."

"You should take a rest. The new medication will take a day or so to adjust to your body. Try not to overthink about...about..." She can't even say the words, let alone go through with it.

I place my sweaty palm over her cold hand. She is sprawled on the bed beside me, her body heat and calming scent relieving some of my pain. "Ma, it's okay. I'm still here."

She nods even as I know it hardly does anything not to break her hope into a million pieces. MRI results already did that earlier.

***

I wipe my face. I have been crying, not out of pain but the sheer hopelessness of carrying cancer inside my brain. The crying comes, occasionally, only when I realize how my absence will affect the people around me. My parents, mostly. I am their only child. And it doesn't help at all. It's not fair at all.

If I have to wish for one miracle apart from living, it would be to wipe their minds off all my memories. All the magic resides in fictional worlds, and here in this world, we cannot escape the inevitable reality.

They'll lose me.

After I'm gone- if I'm gone- I'll become a painful memory for them.

I don't want to be that. I don't want to be gone, either.

I collect myself.

It's seven thirty, Thursday. I've been off from school for three consecutive days. Although the school authorities know and won't complain about my absence, my classmates will turn suspicious. Besides, I promised Aarya I'd help her get the love of her life.

And I keep my promises.

My heart thuds violently at the L word. It leaves a sour taste on my tongue as I put on my usual knitted cap over my head and play with the three hoop earrings on my left ear. I got two additional piercings this summer to compensate for my curls. I know it sounds lame, but I needed to look convincing. For others, I got a little funky glow-up over the summer, with the new buzz cut hairstyle and cool new piercings, but they have no idea what demon lurks behind it.

And they wouldn't until it was too late to hide behind my fake smiles. Till then, I will try to blend in and live the rest of my earthly days like other teenagers.

Back to the thoughts of a certain artist guy, I almost cringe at my reflection in the mirror when a sick-looking girl gazes back at me. For some reason, I don't want to look like a zombie meeting Rehan at school. I shouldn't bother applying the concealer under my eyes to cover up the dark circles, and definitely, shouldn't apply cherry lip gloss on my chapped lips.

But I do.

I have never been this anxious and jittery about meeting someone. But I feel it in my bones, the thrill and excitement of having someone's unfaltering attention for the first time in my life. So, even though the time isn't right and maybe even the person himself is not right, I don't want to subdue it. In fact, for some weird reasons I'm sort of enjoying it. And the biggest paradox of the whole situation is that I'm setting him up with my best friend. I, for one, shouldn't care how he sees me.

But how can I not care when I know I am the one he's got his eyes on?

***

Word Count Milestone: 8,013

Author's Note: If you are enjoying the story so far, please add your comments and votes.

Thank you so much for reading this story.