The last year has been Hell.

 

I mean really Hell—not just your few bad days strung together or something. I mean the whole year, every single fucking day from the minute that you wake up in the morning to the minute you fall asleep at night, day after day, week after week and month after month until I looked back and realized that an entire year of my life had been as much of a nightmare as anyone can imagine.

 

Yeah, I know. I’m a drama queen up there with the best of them, but this time I’m just telling the honest to shit truth.

 

Fuck.

 

It had started about fourteen months ago when I noticed that Justin had started favoring his right wrist again. At first I’d thought that he was having some residual problems from the bashing, but he denied it and insisted that it really didn’t hurt.

 

Really—it didn’t.

 

But there was this lump and it just sort of sat there and seemed to get bigger while you looked at it until finally, around Labor Day, it had gotten as big as maybe a ping pong ball and I told him that if he didn’t go to a fucking doctor, I’d drag him there myself.

 

The first doctor was his primary—you know, the good old GP—and he prodded it and pressed it and shit, then sent him for an x-ray. After he looked at that he suggested that Justin might see a specialist, maybe an orthopedist he could recommend.  So we did that, we made another appointment to see the new doctor and I even drove Justin over because he was pissing and moaning about how long it would take and it didn’t even hurt and he had things to do. We still didn’t get it at that point—neither of us did—we just thought that it might be a gangling or a keltoid or something that was an annoyance but no big deal.

 

That’s when the orthopedist told us that she thought that it would be a good idea to run some tests on the thing. That’s when I started getting this feeling in the back of my brain, a sort of prickling that this might be something important and that I couldn’t allow Justin to let it slide like he sort of wanted to. I called and made the Goddamned appointment myself and drove him to the doctor’s so they could get a sample. From there it was biopsies and after a couple of days, well actually it was almost a week so that it could be cultured, they called my work number since Justin’s cel needed recharging and there was no one at the loft. They really scoured to find a phone number with a person on the other end to get me at Vanguard and out of a meeting. I came on the line, after politely excusing myself from the clients for a minute and listened while the nurse politely suggested that Mr. Taylor should make an appointment so that the doctor could go over some test results with him. They would make room for him today—could I have him there at two?

 

Shit.

 

Fuck.

 

Everyone knows what that means. Oh, sure, they couched it in terms and phrases about how they weren’t allowed to discuss results over the phone and it all just had to do with the new privacy laws and shit like that, but everyone knows what it means when they want you to come in to talk to the doctor.

 

It means that you’re in deep shit.

 

I called him at school, right in the middle of Concepts of Design, and told him that I wanted to take him out to lunch and so have his cherry ass outside in half an hour. He complained and said that he had class and had to be there, why couldn’t I make it dinner? I gave him some bullshit about how I was pissed about some client and needed some stress management—that’s one of our codes for ‘let’s fuck’—and he, ever the dutiful boyfriend, caved.

 

So I picked him up, took him out to the diner where he knows everyone and where I knew he’d be able to relax before the fucking shoe dropped then told him that we had a stop to make before we could get to the stress relief. We just had to stop at the doctor’s to pick up the results and then we could get on with the business at hand.

 

I was such a Goddamned coward—Jesus.

 

He looked at me with those big blue eyes and he was so happy and I couldn’t be the one to break it to him that he was fucked without lube.

 

I just couldn’t do it.

 

So we got to the office and the nurse gave us this look like she was really sorry and said that she’d tell the doctor that Mr. Taylor was there. In about two minutes she opened the door and invited him in. He got this look on his face, like he knew that something was going down—and not in a positive, life affirming way—and looked back at me. I knew that he was suddenly frightened and I wished I could make it go away and not be what I knew it was. He sort of took a breath, reached for my hand and just said, “Come on.”

 

I followed him into the private office.

 

The doctor was professional and kind and explained to him, to us, told him—told us—that it was malignant. She had been in contact with a few of her colleagues and they had a course of treatment they could suggest.

 

She had the name of a good oncologist she could recommend.

 

If we wanted a second opinion, she would understand and could give us names for that, too.

 

She seemed so damned sorry.

 

Shit.

 

Justin went pale, paler than he normally is, and started breathing hard with his mouth slightly opened, like he’d just been punched in the stomach—which, of course, he had. His fingers were still locked around mine and he seemed unable to process at just that moment so I asked the expected questions.

 

It was in the early stages, as far as they could tell right now. It was an aggressive form and they suggested an aggressive approach to treatment—both radiation and chemo to start as soon as was feasible.

 

He’d probably need a medical leave from school.

 

There were good treatment centers in Pittsburgh, but he might want to consider relocating to New York—Sloan Kettering was really the leader in the field.

 

They couldn’t handle it here; he had to go to the specialists. That was what they were saying, that was what they meant—they couldn’t deal with it and we would have to go elsewhere to get him help, if help could be had.

 

She was sure that the oncologist would be happy to make the needed calls.

 

I don’t think there’s a word in the English language that’s any fucking scarier than ‘cancer’.

 

You go cold, and you go numb and you think it’s a Goddamned nightmare and it’s not real or it’s a mistake. It has to be a mistake—but you know it isn’t.

 

God, and poor Justin. He was barely nineteen when that happened and he looked like—he looked like he’d just been handed a death sentence and no amount of reassurance that it was early yet and there were lot’s of treatments available and he was young and strong and all that other crap they tell you—he looked like he wanted to curl up in a ball and cry and so did I.

 

It was some weird, rare kind of cancer, not even your run-of-the-mill they know what to do with it and you’ll be fine after a few months of puking cancer. It was cancer of the muscles.

 

Muscle cancer. Whoever heard of that one?

 

Jesus.

 

OK, you want to know what you do? The first thing you do is denial—can’t be happening, can’t be. I want a second opinion from someone who doesn’t have their head up their ass.

 

OK, you get the second opinion and it’s the same as the first and then you have to start dealing.

 

So we thanked the doctor, took the card with the name and number of the oncologist on it along with the time for the appointment they had made and went out to the car. I held him against the fender as he held onto me like I was some Goddamned life preserver that could save him from drowning in whatever the fuck was about to swallow him up.

 

He let go after a couple of minutes, though and said that, if it was OK with me, could we just go home?

 

He didn’t cry.

 

I think he was beyond it, and so was I.

 

I drove us back to the loft, neither of saying anything, him with his head turned away from me, looking out the window.

 

We went upstairs and he walked up to the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

I thought that he wanted to be alone to cry or something, but after a couple of minutes I heard the toilet flush and he came back out to sit next to me on the couch. I put my arm around his shoulder and he held my hand, leaning into me.

 

“I don’t want anyone to know until we find out what’s really going on.”

 

I almost told him that he should tell his parents, but didn’t. They would learn when he was ready. It was his decision, this was his show.

 

“Alright.”

 

We just sat there for a long time, not talking because we both knew what we would say. He knew, we both knew, that we would fight this together, that it would probably be awful, that there was a chance that he might not win and that in a day everything had fucking changed forfuckingever.

 

We didn’t bother turning on the lights when it started getting dark, we just sat there, quietly, until he broke the silence and hit the Goddamned bulls eye for both of us.

 

“I’m scared.”

 

“I know. I am, too.”

 

Then he cried.

 

 

Return to Remission