Beauty from Ashes: Authors & Dancers Against Cancer Anthology

by Vera Quinn

  “We should probably be getting home ourselves,” the woman in the corner finally spoke.

  “Sorry, ladies.” Mr. Rose cleared his throat. “This is our neighbor, Sue. She’s been taking care of Lily while I’m tied up here.”

  “But just ‘til you get home,” Lily said.

  We all exchanged broken looks, but Mr. Rose was the one who spoke. “That’s right,” he told her. “Just until I get home.”

  As we all filed out, Mr. Rose called my name. I let the others pass and moved back to the bed. He had that same look in his eye, and I couldn’t help but feel I was being assessed.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Will you come back to see me?”

  “I…” That was unexpected, but I was compelled to say yes. How do you refuse a dying man’s request? “Of course,” I said. “Whenever you like.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “Lunch time?”

  “Of course.”

  He reached a trembling, withered hand out to me and I took it, surprised at the strength he still held as he shook my hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  That was the first of many visits between Mr. Rose and me. We talked about so many things, including his time in the war, the wife he’d loved for over fifty years. She died several years back from breast cancer, which he said was ironic, considering he was dying of cancer as well.

  And we talked about his son, Lily’s father, and his horrible final choice, the one that not only took away Lily’s parents, but my Max as collateral damage. On our second meeting, Mr. Rose admitted he knew who I was. He’d seen my picture in the paper after the accident. I didn’t even realize it had been such a public event, but Mr. Rose, he’d followed all of it. He knew about Max, and he knew of my loss. As we talked, I began to feel like he knew more about me than I knew of myself.

  For two weeks, I visited Mr. Rose every day. Sometimes I’d go after work, and we would talk until he got tired. On the weekends, I would stay longer, sit with him while he slept, while the cancer that riddled his body did its work in destroying him on a cellular level.

  Toward the end, he slept through our visits, never waking the whole time I was there. But I stayed and watched over him, held his hand, told him stories about Max and me, stories I hoped he would take with him to the other side, whatever that may be.

  On his last lucid night, we watched the recital again, together this time. When I took my final bow, Mr. Rose nodded his head, just as he had that first day we met.

  “I need to ask you something,” he said, as he laid the tablet face down on the covers. “I know I don’t have the right, and you’ll probably think it’s a strange request. Hell, it’s probably the last thing you would want.”

  A coughing jag took him, and I rubbed his back as he worked his way through it. When he caught his breath and could speak again, he said, “I hope you understand, my time is short. If you say no, that’s fine, but I’d die feeling awful if I didn’t at least try. You see, I’ve talked to my lawyer, and…” he pointed at a large envelope sitting on the bedside table. “I asked him to draw up some papers. All I need, if you’re willing, is your signature on that last page.”

  Chapter Nine

  Another day, another funeral.

  This time the sun shone brightly, though the December air held a long, chilly note. The crowd was smaller than Max’s had been, but respectable, nonetheless. They were older, too, as the man being buried was in his late seventies. He had no family to speak of, except for the little girl who stood stoically at my side. She didn’t cry or make a fuss, simply stared at the casket covered in a blanket of yellow and black flowers, so reminiscent of the school buses they’d watched come and go just a few months back.

  Miss Jolie stood near the back of the gathering, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue she held clasped in her gloved hand. The fundraiser money, it turned out, would be used to cover Mr. Rose’s funeral expenses. I personally saw to it that Lily was included in as many of the decisions as possible. She picked out the flowers, and they couldn’t have been more perfect.

  Someone sang Amazing Grace, and someone else read a poem. The sing-along of You Are My Sunshine had been Lily’s idea as well, and I found that particular touch the most heart-wrenching.

  The preacher quoted a few scriptures, then he closed his little leather book and said the words to conclude the service. The gatherers dispersed, some looking back at the casket with respect, others just going about their day, having done the necessary.

  I lifted Lily up and carried her to the casket. She laid her hands on the lid, her little fingers spread wide, then leaned over and kissed the shiny wooden top.

  “Bye, Papa,” she whispered. She then reached over and pulled a giant sunflower from the casket spray and handed it to me.

  She slid from my arms and took a step back as I stood there staring at the flower, its bright yellow petals and large black center so different from the roses that covered Max’s casket. So perfect for the man we laid to rest today.

  I took a deep breath and turned away from the sad scene. When I reached my hand out to Lily, she laid her little palm in mine.

  “You ready?” I asked her.

  She stared up at me with huge blue eyes and nodded.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

  When the Stars Align

  AJ Downey

  Chapter One

  Brody

  It was the third anniversary of my wife’s death. I was young. Twenty-two. Too young to be a widow, but I had been with Maia since we were both ten. We had been thick as thieves since the day she moved in across the street, and it only made sense that best friends would transition into lovers. We’d held out until I was seventeen, and she was sixteen. Used protection. Had done everything right…

  We’d had plans, the two of us. Eighteen, both accepted to the same college, looking forward to moving into a little place off-campus, both of us working – her as a barista, me as a busboy. Our parents planned on helping us out with the things we couldn’t afford above and beyond our shitty little jobs in the evenings after class.

  I remember the day like it was yesterday, that we first knew something was wrong. I was in bed, studying, when Maia called out from the bathroom. The note of alarm in her voice had me bounding out of bed as if I could levitate.

  Her mouth was full of blood; the sink, too. She’d been brushing her teeth, and all hell had broken loose. Her gums bleeding in a torrent. She’d complained that she’d been feeling tired. Had been sleeping more than usual. We’d been afraid she’d gotten pregnant. Had picked up a test the week before, but it’d come back negative. We’d made a doctor’s appointment, anyway. It was for two days from then. We’d had to wait that long just to get in.

  She’d never made the appointment. We went to the ER that night where she’d been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. She was a rare blood type. Everyone we knew, my parents, her parents, all of our friends, extended family, strangers – we all got tested and none of us were a match. The National Registry came up empty for her. Her college fund went to her hospital bills that weren’t covered by her dad’s stellar health insurance and on experimental treatments. You name it; we tried it, and it was all for nothing.

  We got married in the hospital. She wanted it before she went, and I was all for it. She still, surprisingly, had quite a bit left in her trust for college and her parents insisted on rolling it in with what my folks had set aside for me.

  I moved back home, threw myself head first into my studies to cope and shut out the world. Earned my degree in accounting in record fucking time and landed myself a damn good job.

  From the outside looking in, everything was perfect. Good job, fit, good-looking dude with his own house, a good car, and cash in the bank, but my life was so fucking… empty. Meaningless. I was feeling it tonight, too.

  When Maia was dying, I’d taken to a subreddit for cancer support. I hadn’t visited it in p
robably more than a year, but I found myself in front of my laptop on the forum and looking for –

  I don’t know what.

  Support? Reassurance? Somebody else in a similar shitty situation?

  All I know was that I was tired of feeling so alone so I logged in, clicked through a few screens and held my breath as the r/cancersupport channel came up and the posts populated. I went to write my own, but for some reason the top post made me pause.

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker 3d

  My (19F) Little Brother (10m) Has Leukemia – That’s Just Where This Shitshow Starts.

  I hesitated and finally clicked on the link. I didn’t know what to expect, but her story certainly wasn’t it.

  So, my little brother who I love more than life itself was recently diagnosed with leukemia and naturally, me, my mom, and my dad got tested to see if we were a bone marrow match, right?

  Not so fast.

  Not only did the universe decide that my little bro needed to be some other blood type than us, it ALSO decided that now, of all times and in the shittiest of ways it needed to out my mom’s affair she had on my dad.

  Tests came back that not only are none of us a match, there’s absolutely no way in hell my dad can be my little brother’s dad too.

  My dad lost his ever-loving shit on my mom right there in the hospital hallway. Marched off and when she and I got home? (We had to take an Uber BTW. He took the car and left us stranded at the hospital.) Yeah, he’d cleared out his shit and is GONE.

  Mom’s devastated and won’t stop bawling in her room. I’m pretty much freshly graduated from high school and my entire college fund has disappeared into the fucked-up American healthcare system, but I don’t even care about that.

  I’m sitting here, by myself, all alone as I type this, and I’m just afraid my little brother is going to die. That he’ll never even get to see high school. I don’t know what to do. He asked where Dad was when we left, and my mom straight up lied to him and said our dad wasn’t feeling well and with little bro’s immune system in the shitter that he thought it was best to stay away for the time being.

  That isn’t going to last long.

  I feel like I am going to have to be the grown up now, and it scares me. I barely know how to boil water without setting the kitchen on fire. How am I supposed to be the strong one in all of this?

  I know it’s probably the worst idea on the planet to ask the internet for help or guidance at a time like this, let alone Reddit, but here I am. Go easy on me guys. It’s been a harrowing few hours to say the least. I don’t actually even know what I am doing here.

  Something about the post resonated. Maybe it was her age. She was a scared nineteen-year-old kid fresh out of high school, and her whole world had just pretty much collapsed in the span of a few hours. I could definitely relate. Made a single lonely night missing Maia seem kind of paltry in comparison.

  The rug had just come out from under AnnikaSkyWalker. I’d been free falling for a while now.

  I didn’t know what to tell her, but I felt compelled to say something. Not that I had much to add to the rest of the comments that’d already been made – most expressing sympathy – some trying to troll the fuck out of her. One even going so far as to call her mother all kinds of fucked-up shit.

  Still, I felt for Annika, if that was her name. I also had a soft spot for the Star Wars reference in her username. Some of my best memories with Maia had been on the couch cuddling and watching the original episodes, four, five, and six on a rainy weekend, throwing popcorn at each other and laughing. I wanted to be a Jedi. She wanted to be a Sith. I thought it was adorable. Maia had been too good, too pure to ever be one of the bad guys.

  I hit ‘comment’ and stared at the blinking cursor for a long time before I started typing.

  Hey Annika, I know how it feels. I was your age when my wife was diagnosed. We weren’t married then, though. We got married right before she died. It’s our anniversary tonight and I can’t even imagine what you’re going through. I had my parents, her parents, our friends – we all leaned on each other and Maia did her best to hold us up.

  You don’t have any of that, do you? Your little brother is too young, your mom and dad are doing their own thing. I don’t really have much to say that hasn’t already been said but if you need someone to talk to that understands some of what you’re going through on a personal level feel free to DM me.

  I promise. I’m not a creep. I’m sure you’ve heard that before, though. This is Reddit, after all.

  Anyway, I am going to set a reminder on this thread and come back in a couple days and see if you’ve got an update. I know how crazy shit gets and the Wi-Fi and cell service in hospitals are crap, so it doesn’t surprise me that it doesn’t look like you’ve logged in since you posted this.

  Keep your head up. I wish I could tell you more than that.

  I set the reminder bot to remind me to come back and went to log off and digest some of what I’d just read. I went to ‘X’ out of the browser just as my notification icon lit up.

  I froze and checked and had to laugh at myself. It was just a reply to what I had posted elsewhere a day or two ago. Then it pinged again, and this time it was a private message.

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  Thanks BrohemianRhapsody

  Some of the comments on my post were expectedly trash, but yours gives me some hope that I might be able to get my shit together. I’m sorry your wife didn’t make it. I’m still hoping that by some miracle, my little brother will. They’ve just started searching the National Database for bone marrow donors. Maybe we’ll get lucky? Feels like the universe can’t really trash on us anymore than it has. When it rains it pours, right?

  I hit ‘respond’ and dove right in.

  u/BrohemianRhapsody

  You get to feel things too. You just need to take the time every now and then to stop and feel them. I wish somebody had told me that when Maia was sick. Nobody can carry the weight of this kind of thing all by themselves, so promise me you won’t try. If you need to, reach out. I’m always here to listen… er – read.

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  Thanks for that. I will definitely take you up on it. You’re not much older than me, so that helps. I think I would feel weird talking to someone outside my age range about something like this. Maybe because I’m kind of pissed at my dad? I guess he’s been hit pretty hard, but still he’s not exactly acting like a parent. Everything is just such a mess right now and I don’t feel like I can do anything about it, you know? It’s driving me crazy.

  My name really is Annika. What’s yours?

  u/BrohemianRhapsody

  Brody, and yeah. I’m 22. Seems like a world of difference somehow, but in actuality it’s only like three years. If I ever do or say anything that makes things feel awkward or weird, please, absolutely call my ass out. I really don’t want to come across as a creeper, I just want to help. I mean it.

  You got any friends you can talk to?

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  Ahhh, so your username is a play on your actual name, too. You like Queen? My dad does. We used to listen to them on long car rides. I feel like I’ve lost my whole family almost overnight and it reeeeally sucks.

  As for friends? Not many. My dad took a better job, and we just moved us here. It’s been a year, and it’s so different from where we came from. I tried to stay in touch with my friends from back home, but that’s high school life, you know? It was tough enough transitioning from one school to another in the middle of senior year, but then Luke got sick and to be honest? I don’t know how I made it through my last quarter and through finals and all of that.

  The whole thing has been kind of a blur. I guess I should just be happy I graduated at all, let alone with a 3.92.

  What I am really glad about is that Luke got sick or at least started showing symptoms AFTER we moved. We were country bumpkins and now we’re closer to the city and way better hospitals. Blessing in disguise, maybe?

  I wa
nted to know where she was from and where she had moved to, but I was afraid to ask. Again, I genuinely was trying to help here, not creep her out or looking to score. In fact, that last thought honestly made me a little ill to think about.

  Instead, I focused on answering her questions and kept the focus on what she might need to get through what sounded like a pretty hefty shitstorm going on around her. Jesus Christ, it was bad enough her little brother was sick, but for her dad to just bail on both her and her kid brother no matter what their mom had been up to ten years ago… that was a dick move. It was something that if it had come up in the ‘Am I the Asshole’ subreddit, I would have hands down declared; yeah, bro, you are definitely the asshole.

  u/BrohemianRhapsody

  Yeah, I do like Queen. Bohemian Rhapsody was kind of my wrestling team’s unofficial fight song. We played it on the bus to and from every meet. Those were good times.

  So, Annika and Luke, huh? I take it both your folks were Star Wars fans?

  You should be proud of yourself holding it together and graduating with such a high GPA. I know I had to take a semester off when my wife got sick. I just couldn’t hang. I made up for lost time after she passed though, got my degree early. A lot of hardcore full-time studying. What about you? Got any designs on college? What did you want to be when you grew up? What about Luke? What’s he into?

  u/AnnikaSkyWalker

  You caught that, did you? My dad was the Star Wars fanatic, although the naming convention for me and my brother was a seized opportunity, more or less. My mom named me Annika after some college friend of hers. I don’t know whatever happened to her, she would never tell me. Maybe the friendship bottomed out or she died. God, now with everything going on, I really hope she didn’t die.

  Anyway, when my brother came along, my dad got naming rights and went with Lucas. My mom never even caught on until my dad sat me and my brother, who had just turned six, down for a Star Wars marathon. The look on her face was priceless.