Hey, guys! I had the idea for this fiction yesterday, because I just recently had lunch with a friend whose cancer is in remission. She's a Music major, and she told me that during her chemotherapy, her boyfriend sang her 'Like You'll Never See Me Again' by Alicia Keys every night before she went to bed.
That's love, guys. That's love.
Enjoy. : )
It started with the headaches.
"I'm just going to go lie down, 'Tana," Rachel says to me as she shakes two pills from the ibuprofen bottle on the counter. "This one's pretty bad."
I huff indignantly at her from my spot on the sofa. It's been weeks since we've passed any extended amount of time together; partially because of her rigorous rehearsal schedule for her lead as Eva Peron in Broadway's Evita, and partially because whenever she's been able to come home to our upper Manhattan studio apartment, she's had ear-splitting headaches that force her to retreat into our bedroom as soon as she sets foot in the door. I miss the old Rachel; the one who couldn't wait to get home and tell me about her day. I miss the Rachel who'd surprise me at the firm with lunch when she knew I was working so hard I'd forget to eat. I miss the Rachel who lived for the Saturdays that we used to spent making love against every flat surface in our apartment.
I want that Rachel back, because she's been gone for longer than I can take.
I lean back and rest my sock-covered feet on the glass coffee table in front of me before I lift my bottle of O'Doul's to my lips again. I did enough drinking in high school to last a lifetime, so I gave it up during my first year of college. And, because she knew I couldn't handle being sober alone, Rachel gave it up to make me happy. It was, hands down, the most thoughtful thing anyone's ever done for me, and it made me fall even more in love with her.
"Alright, babe. Dinner's in the microwave if you're feeling up to it," I call to her before she shuts the door to our room.
Or not, I think to myself as I pick up the television remote and turn the volume down on the Hardcore Pawn re-run that's playing so as not to disturb her. When I glance at the analog clock above the screen, the digital numbers stare back at me.
5:36. She didn't even make it to six o'clock this time, I sigh in defeat.
Rachel continues to insist that the headaches are a result of the stress she's under due to her job, but even I know that increasingly frequent headaches should not be so easily dismissed. I know that my girlfriend doesn't like doctor's offices because of a bad experience with a nurse and an another patient's open blood sample back in our freshman year of high school, but if the headaches don't stop, I'll have no choice but to drag her in.
Next came the memory loss.
"Santana, I swear on my collection of Barbra Streisand CDs that I fed him already," Rachel insists vehemently while she lugs the large bag of IAMS dog food out of the pantry. "I fed him before we left for the gym."
When one of our neighbors asked if we could look after her two year old German Shepherd while she went on a cruise through the Mediterranean, Rachel and I had said yes with no hesitation. I thought it would be a good chance for us to test our ability to care for something as a team. Honestly, I believed it would help me figure out if we're mentally and physically prepared to have kids. I'm more than ready, but I think Rachel would be more content with a dog, judging by the way she's been interacting with Gatsby (our neighbor is an English major at NYU).
I quirk my eyebrow up when she mentions going to the gym. Rachel and I haven't worked out together in three days because of our demanding work schedules. When I turn to her, her eyebrows are furrowed in frustration as she pours the dry dog food into Gatsby's blue plastic bowl. This isn't the first time in the past few weeks that Rachel's been having these little slip-ups. Last Monday night, she'd sworn she put her black flats on the floor next to the front door. I'd had to remind her that she'd let one of her castmates borrow them last month. Rachel had seemed startled by her mental faux pas, but she'd laughed and brushed it off as a product of exhaustion. I had too…
Until it happened again at Sylvia's yesterday when we went to lunch. Rachel had been adamant about the fact that she'd paid the bill before I came back from the restroom, but when we got up to leave the restaurant, the waiter stopped us before we made it out the door and demanded that we settle the tab for our meal. Rachel had been incredibly insulted and stomped her foot like a petulant child before rattling off our lunch orders… that we'd gotten when we went to Lorenzo's two weeks ago.
"Babe, are you okay?" I ask her gently when she collapses on the couch beside me. I throw a comforting arm around her and let her snuggle into my side. Gatsby pads his way over to us and rests his head in her lap as a sign of his own concern.
"Yes, 'Tana, I'm fine. I'm just exhausted. All this work on the show is really wearing me out," Rachel murmurs against my neck.
"Right," I nod slowly and rest my cheek on the top of her head. "Of course, mi corazon."
She snakes her arm across my waist and buries her face into the juncture between my neck and shoulder. She proceeds to fall asleep quickly and soundly while Showtime softly advertises the upcoming season of The Real L Word, leaving me to mull over her preposterous response to the fact that she's losing time and worry about what the true cause might be.
But the seizure was, by far, the most frightening.
"Rachel, I'm home," I call through our apartment as I toss my keys down on the kitchen countertop.
"I'm in the bathroom. Be out in a minute," I hear her yell from our en-suite bathroom.
I kick off my tangerine Steve Madden heels, a gift from Rachel for my twenty-first birthday, next to the door and pad across the hardwood floor to the refrigerator in my bare feet. I tug the door open and grab the frosty green neck of an O'Doul's bottle, using the bottle opener on my key ring to pop it off. Taking a large gulp, I shirk off my black suit jacket and drape it over the arm of the sofa.
"Babe, what do you want for -"
Before I can finish my sentence, I hear a sickening crack from the bathroom, followed by a firm thud. The beer bottle that hung in my grasp now clatters to the hardwood where I once stood as I race through our small bedroom and into the bathroom. The sight I'm met with nearly sends me into hysterics: Rachel, spread eagle on the white linoleum flooring, her eyes rolled back as her small nude body convulses violently. My hand fumbles for the iPhone I know is in the pocket of my dress pants and when I finally grasp it, my fingers hurriedly tap out the emergency number on the dial pad.
"911, what is your emergency?" A pleasantly calm sounding woman answers after the second ring.
"My girlfriend is having a seizure and I don't know what to do," I sob brokenly into the phone. On the floor, Rachel shows no signs of coming to, and this makes me cry even harder.
I need her to be okay, I think desperately. She has to be okay. I can't live without her.
"Alright, sweetheart, I'm sending emergency services to your phone's location. Has she sustained any injuries?"
When my eyes scan her petite naked frame, I notice that she has a large bruise and furiously bleeding laceration above her eyebrow from where her forehead made contact with the countertop. This revelation causes a new wave of panic to settle into my chest.
"Yes, she has a cut on her head that's bleeding pretty profusely," I tell the woman shakily.
"Okay, I need you to staunch the blood flow first. If you can, find a towel or a blanket, fold it so that it's about four inches thick, and then press it firmly against the wound."
I rush to her side and drop to my knees, taking her head into my lap and stroking her hair, still damp from the shower she just took. Tears smear my mascara down my cheeks as I look down at the one I love and watch her body twitch and spasm uncontrollably. I've never felt so helpless in my life.
I grab the fluffy white towel from the back of the toilet on the other side of the bathroom and follow the operator's instructions. My girlfriend's blood immediately soaks through the towel, the angry red spot expanding by the second. I haven't prayed in years, but right now, as I'm on the cusp of losing the one girl who's loved me from the beginning, through every awful thing I said or did to her… I'm definitely looking for help from The Big Man Upstairs.
"Alright, done. What now?" I ask the woman on the phone after taking a few deep calming breaths to clear my head.
"Is there a toothbrush or a spoon nearby? We need something for her to bite down on so that she doesn't bite her tongue or swallow it."
I hurriedly grab Rachel's toothbrush from its place beside the sink and jam the flat end between her tongue and the roof of her mouth. Her teeth lock onto it and bear down hard as she continues to tremble hard, and I'm forced to hold it in there so that she doesn't accidentally shake it loose.
Just as I'm about to ask the operator for my next set of instructions, I hear the sirens outside on the street screaming toward our building. The next thing I remember is two burly looking EMTs bursting into the apartment and shooing me out the door. They offer to let me ride in the ambulance with Rachel, and I accept immediately. By the time they slide the stretcher into the ambulance, they've given Rachel a shot to stop her seizing, but she's still unconscious, and one of the EMTs tells me that her heart rate is still erratic. As the emergency vehicle careens down the busy streets of New York City, I hold my girlfriend's hand to my mouth and whisper sweet promises into her skin.
I love you.
I need you.
You'll be fine.
They'll fix you.
I'll never let you go.
There will be a second part, so stay tuned.
