JACKSON
On Friday night after her chemo is done for the week, April is shaking on her bed after we've just gotten back to her dorm.
"Do you want a blanket?" I ask, reaching into her closet.
She doesn't answer me. She just gingerly wraps her arms around herself and continues to violently tremble. I can't stand to watch her.
"Let me get a bath going for you," I say. "That'll warm you up. Does that sound good?"
She looks up to meet my eyes and I get enough of an answer from that alone. I walk into the bathroom and lock the other door so her suitemates don't come in. They don't know yet. I don't think she wants them to know; she's been avoiding them.
I watch the water fill up the tub and make sure it's hot enough. Once it's full, I go get April and help her into the bathroom with my arms around her bony shoulders. "Do you wanna do it on your own, or…?" I ask. I don't want to make her feel incapacitated, but I still want to do everything I can. I'm not quite sure where that boundary is.
She lifts her arms above her head and avoids my gaze, telling me without words what she needs. There are dark blue circles under her eyes - she hasn't been sleeping well. I always tell her to wake me up, but she never does. I've taken to lying there with my eyes open, waiting for a sign that she's up, too. Most of time, we don't talk, we just lie there together in solid silence and I fall back to sleep first.
I pull her shirt off and watch goosebumps rise up on her skin, and she tucks her arms into her chest as she kicks her way out of her drawstring sweatpants. She hasn't said much today; I know she's exhausted. Every night this week, her anxiety would get worse as she thought about what was to come the next day. I had no idea what I could do to help her.
I guide her into the water and she sinks beneath the surface so her head is the only thing above it. Her chin touches the water just barely, and she wraps her arms around her knees to rest her cheek against them.
"Does it feel nice?" I ask, reaching to pet her hair then pulling my hand away. I don't touch her hair anymore. It makes the fallout worse.
"Warm," she says. She lets out a rattling breath and closes her eyes. As I watch her face, her mouth turns down in a frown and wrinkles appear on her forehead. "Jackson," she says, and her voice is waterlogged.
"What, baby?" I say.
"I just…" she whimpers. "I just miss being with you. With you."
I nod.
"I want to have sex with you," she says, her voice small and weak. "I want to be close with you like that and… and I can't."
I push myself up onto my knees and press my lips slowly to her dewy shoulder as I tighten my arms around her. "It won't be long until you start feeling better," I say. "That's what Dr. Janssen's been saying. You'll feel more like yourself in a little bit. And then we don't ever have to leave that bed, you can do whatever you want to me. Or have me do whatever you want to you. Anything." I offer her a smile, and she opens her eyes but doesn't reciprocate. "I love you," I say encouragingly.
She looks down at the water and blinks. "I don't feel like me," she says. "I just want to feel like me." She looks down at the water and somehow pulls her knees even closer. "You don't love this me."
"Yes, I do," I say insistently. "I love every version of you."
She shakes her head. "You shouldn't," she says.
"Don't say stuff like that," I say. As the days have gone by this week, it's gotten harder and harder to help her feel hopeful. I don't know what else to say anymore; I feel cheesy when I try to be inspirational. I know it doesn't work. But sitting here silent doesn't feel like it's doing much of anything, either. I just want her to know that I care and I'm not going anywhere.
She picks up her head and switches cheeks to face the other way.
"Want me to wash your hair?" I ask. It needs it. She hasn't washed it since Tuesday, and though she's afraid of what might happen, it's past the point of greasy.
I see her nod slightly and pull her shampoo and conditioner off the shelves above us. I pour a cupful of water over her head to get it wet, then start massaging the shampoo into her scalp. She stays still - her only movement being the subtle rise and fall of her bony back.
I take my time and bathe her in silence. After I'm done rinsing out the conditioner, I look down at the water surrounding her and see tendrils of red hair floating around her. It's not like after a usual shower - broken and few and far between. These strands are long and wound together, clumps that have fallen out all at once. Coating the tub.
She sees them, too. She sits up with her hands capping her knees and her eyes flit to the water surrounding her, then she suddenly stands up out of it which causes a sudden splash.
She stands naked in the middle of the water, arms wrapped around herself. I'm not sure what she's doing, but I hand her a white towel anyway so she doesn't start shivering. I help her back onto the rug, and she clutches at me for dear life.
"I want it off," she says, and as she speaks I can see bald spots on her head that have become very visible.
"What?" I ask, lowering my eyebrows.
"My hair," she states. "All of it. I don't want to watch it fall out anymore." She's gripping the towel so tight that her knuckles are straining and turning white. "I want it gone."
I stare at her for a long while. "You… you're sure?" I ask.
She nods.
"April, this is big, though," I say. "I don't want you to change your mind, once it's gone, it's-"
"It's going anyway," she says, eyes big and round. "I don't want to sit here and wait. I just…" She sighs. "I want to be in control of something."
I study her face, then lift my hand to stroke the apple of her cheek with my thumb. "Okay," I say, not fighting anymore. If it's what she wants, it's her body. And she's right. She should have control. "Want me to go get my razor?"
"Please."
I walk into my room to find Mark at his desk, doing something I've never seen him do before. Homework.
"Hey," he says, briefly looking up. "Haven't seen you in about ten thousand damn years."
"Yeah," I say, digging in a big Tupperware container that was stored under my bed.
"How've you been, you piece of shit?"
I feel a frown grow on my face. April hasn't told anyone, so it's not my place to tell anyone for her. "Uh, fine," I lie.
"You sound like I just shot your fuckin' dog, dude."
I look over my shoulder to find him watching me. "Well, things have been a little rough," I admit.
"How so?" he says. "Is it your girl?"
"I don't really wanna talk about it," I say, finding the razor and gathering the wire in my hand. "No offense."
"None taken," he says, shrugging. "But one thing, is she okay? Like… she's good, right? Haven't seen her a single time since we got back to this hellhole."
"She…" I begin, but my voice dies off as I picture her in her towel, pale and vulnerable. "She will be, yeah."
When I get back into April's room, she's dressed in thermal pajamas with fuzzy socks on, her wet hair combed back from her face to trail down her back. She's laid a towel out on her bed and is sitting cross-legged in the middle of it, faced away from the door. She's leaning forward, her shoulders rounded and deflated, as I close the room up behind me.
I sit behind her and plug the razor into the wall after making sure that it's sharp enough. The last time I used this, I was cutting my own hair. I'm not that good, but it doesn't take much skill to just take it all off.
"You're sure, right?" I ask, one last time.
"Yeah," she mutters, and I notice her shoulders tense when I flick the razor on. The buzzing is loud and brash, I know it must be even worse right by her ears, but I don't rush. I don't want to nick her skin at all.
The first stroke I make is long and concise, right down the side of her head. The skin underneath is marble-pale and nearly translucent, like a newborn baby's. I let out a long breath from my nose and shut my eyes, steeling myself to be able to do the rest of this. She's the one with cancer. I'm here to be her support system.
It takes a long time for me to get all of the hair off. It lands in sections down on the towel, and when I'm finished, she looks smaller than ever. I can't help but stare down at all that I've just shaved off and pick up a piece, running it between my fingers.
"It's gone," I say, and she swivels around to look at me, then touches her very bare head. "I finally have more hair than you." I smile, in hopes of getting her to mirror it. She doesn't.
She keeps her hands on her scalp and I wonder if she regrets it. She keeps touching the new, foreign part of her body, then meets my eyes. "It's really gone," she whimpers, tugging on her earlobes. "Jackson," she rasps. "I'm bald and I have cancer."
I stand up from the bed and walk to her desk, where I set down my stuff earlier. I pull out my winter hat, which is black, white, blue and red with a D for DePaul on the front and a pompom on the top.
"Wear this," I say. "It'll keep your head warm." I slip it on her and she lets me, then reaches up and touches it. "You look great, DePaul fan," I say.
She looks down at the hair surrounding her and gathers it in her hands, balling it up so she can't see it anymore as she walks to her trash can. She throws it in, and folds up the towel to throw it in her hamper. When she comes back, all the evidence of what had been on her head before is gone.
"People are gonna talk now," she says. "I know they will."
"Of course they will," I say. "People are people. But you don't have to say shit to them if you don't want to. That part's up to you."
"People will feel sorry for me," she mumbles, eyes towards the floor. "They won't treat me the same."
I don't have any words for that one, because I know she's right. When someone is outwardly sick, they get babied. Condescended. Things handed to them instead of having to work for them. And I know April, and that's not the way she works.
"You'll just have to prove them wrong," I say. "Because you're a badass, cancer or not. Don't let people forget that."
After her hair is gone, somehow April is happier. I don't ask her to explain, because she might not even know why, but she is. The next week, while I'm playing a game, I hear a familiar shriek and look up to see her in the stands, DePaul hat on. My face breaks out in a wild grin. When I'd left, she was taking a nap and I thought she would be gone for a few more hours. But slowly, she's been getting her energy back.
It makes me think that the chemo is working.
I trot to the sidelines once we win and pick her up off the ground. She smiles and squeals, wraps her arms around my neck, and kisses me full on the mouth.
"Did I surprise you?" she asks, her forehead pressed to mine.
"You really did," I say, finally setting her down. I hold her jaw in my hands and kiss her again lightly, pressing my lips to hers over and over. She smells amazing, like lotion and some fruity flavor of Chapstick. "I think we won because you were here. You're my lucky charm."
She giggles and leans against my side as we walk.
"I was gonna go practice piano," she says. "When I woke up from my nap, I picked out my first song from the book you gave me. Wanna come with?"
"Wanna come with," I repeat. "Duh. Of course I wanna come with."
In the practice room, she sits down on the bench and adjusts her hat before pulling the thick book of sheet music out. "What'd you pick?" I ask.
"It's from Chopin's 24 Preludes," she says, flipping through. "Sostenuto 'Raindrop.' I think you'll like it. Listen. Well, I'm not very good at it yet, just so you know. I haven't run it through, just looked at it. This is just my first time, so you-"
"Just play it, piano girl," I say, cutting her off. "No more talky."
She snorts and lays her fingers over the keys, squinting at the music before she begins. She's not as confident as she was with her other pieces, but I know she'll get there. She stumbles over the notes every now and then, worrying over what she's gotten wrong, but she pushes through. I watch her lose herself in the music towards the middle, smiling to herself as she starts to get the hang of things. I love that stage.
When she's done, she lifts her hands away. "So?" she says. "Do you think it'll be good?"
I kiss her on the cheek. "It's already good."
"You're deaf then," she says, swiping her fingertips over the white keys without making any sound. I turn towards her on the bench and wrap my arms around her waist, moving my head so I can go lower and kiss her neck. "Jackson…" she trails off.
"Yeah?" I answer, lips moving on her skin.
She pushes me away by my chest. "Not now."
"Aw, come on," I say. "Why?"
She gives me a wide-eyed stare. "We can't have sex in a public practice room."
I chuckle to myself. "Nobody said anything about sex," I say. "I just wanna make out with my extremely hot, extremely talented girlfriend. That's all. And she won't let me."
She rolls her eyes and - maybe subconsciously - touches her hat. "Well, maybe I want it to lead somewhere," she says, turning her attention back to the sheet music.
"Now we're talkin'," I say. "So… can we go? Back to our room? Like… preferably now?"
She cracks up. "No!" she says. "We're not done. You need your lesson."
"Didn't bring my book," I say. "Too bad, so sad. Looks like we gotta leave now."
"Not too bad," she says, digging in her music bag. "Because I did. Sit down, city boy, and get ready to learn from the master."
I watch her smile to herself and feel my body buzz with something unknown to me. I have no idea what the feeling is, but it's warm and inviting. I sit down next to her again as she smoothes out my book, opening it to the first page, which is 'The Itsy Bitsy Spider.'
"A fuckin' jam," I say, plunking my hands down on the keyboard.
She rolls her eyes and suppresses a grin. I've done my job.
"Let me move your fingers," she says. "Come here. Come here, you big idiot."
I give her hand my hand and she positions my fingers in the way they should be. She moves them along the notes and makes them play the song, somehow making music come out of me.
"The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout… down came the rain and washed the spider out… out came the sun and dried up all the rain, and the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again," she sings, helping me play it.
"Nice," I say, after the song is finished.
"Now you try," she says, nodding me along. "Do you remember what keys?"
I look down at the mess of black and white keys that mean nothing to me. She's tried to teach me the notes before, but the names never stick. "Um…"
"I'll help you again," she says, laughing, as she takes my hand. I don't complain. I love the way her soft, lithe fingers feel moving against my own.
I think the reason I can't learn the names of the keys is because I'm always too busy watching her face instead of watching what I'm doing. And I don't think that will ever change.
After I get a little better at playing the song by myself, she says it's good enough for the day and lets us leave. I've never been more excited to get back to that room in my life - I practically run there.
"Slow down!" she says, laughing and calling after me. I look back at her and realize that she really can't go as fast as me anymore, even if I'm just being funny. I slow down and extend my arm for her, and she takes it and we walk side-by-side back to Clifton.
I stop in the bathroom when we first get there, checking in the mirror to make sure I look okay. I don't have anything on my face, but I don't smell that great from the game I played this morning.
"Hey, uh," I call out from the cracked-open door. "Where's your deodorant?"
She chuckles from the direction of the bed. "Why?"
"No reason."
"Jackson, if you're sweaty from your game and think I care… I don't," she says. "Come out here and put your hands on your girlfriend."
I've never left a room faster than I leave that bathroom. When I come out, I smile at her where she lies on the bed wearing her hoodie, hat and pink underwear. I crawl up there with her and she pulls me on top of her body, wasting no time to start kissing me.
I press my lips to her mouth, her cheeks, her temples, but when I get to her forehead I get a mouthful of fabric. "Can I?" I ask, and she knows what I mean. She nods, and I slip it off to expose her beautiful little cueball head. I smile and kiss it, covering the warm skin with my lips, and her arms relax over me.
"Jackson, I have to tell you something," she says softly, trailing her fingertips up my bare back as she goes inside my shirt.
"What's that," I say, looking at her face.
"I love you," she says. "And I really, really mean that. I've never loved a boy in my life, not before you. But you…" She nods and smirks. "I love you."
I smile - I can't help it. I smile so hard that my cheeks hurt. "God, I love you," I say, face tucked to her neck. "And we gotta get this off."
Once her hoodie's off, I spend a lot of time with my lips on her belly, kissing any open skin that I can. I open my mouth on her sternum, over her bra, then pull down the fabric without even bothering to take it all the way off.
"Jackson," she says, giggling. "What's the rush?"
I smile against her, just slightly. "I missed you," I say. "You're so goddamn perfect. I missed these." I press my face between her small breasts and she holds the back of my neck.
"You missed my boobs?" she asks, sounding amused.
"Mm-hmm," I say.
"Let me at least get my bra off," she says, somehow wriggling out of it. "There. Now come back."
I smirk up at her and scatter kisses along the round underside of the right one, and then hold it in my hand so I can cover the nipple with my lips and tongue. She moans softly as she watches me, and I say, "Sounds like you missed it, too."
She rolls her eyes and smiles a little bit, then winds one leg around the back of my thighs to rest her foot there. "Maybe a little," she says, then yanks my shirt up over my head.
She squeezes the backs of my arms as I move my lips over her breasts and between them, and still as I move down lower to her ribcage and belly button. I glance up at her when I get to the waistband of her underwear, then run my thumb over her scar right above it.
"You know how I feel about this," I say, covering it with my mouth and tracing the edges with my tongue.
She writhes under me; that feeling drives her crazy. She's extra sensitive there.
"Does that feel good?" I ask, teasing her.
She pops her hip up to move my mouth away, and then wriggles out of her underwear. "Grab a condom," she says. "I don't wanna wait anymore. I'm scared this feeling's gonna go away and I'm not gonna want…" She reaches to the nightstand and pulls out a string of foil packages herself. "I just want you right now, okay?" she breathes.
"Don't have to tell me twice," I say, ripping the foil and putting the condom on. I press my lips to her cheek deliberately, then hold her hips steady as I push my way inside her.
"Mmm," she moans, arching her back and lifting up to meet me. "Just like that."
Her voice is louder than she realizes, but I don't care. I actually like it - that people probably know that we're having sex in here. I love the fact that people know she's mine. That I get her all to myself.
She gets increasingly louder, too. When she's almost to her climax, she's clutching at my shoulders and digging in with her fingernails, her eyes pinched shut tight as her mouth is open wide. "Oh, my god," she cries. "Right there, right there, oh my god!"
I snap my hips and know that I've done it, because she starts jerking erratically and making sounds I know she can't control. I start to come as I watch her experience the effects of her orgasm, and bury my face in her neck as I do. She's still making sounds, unable to quiet down, when there's a bang on the conjoining bathroom door.
"Oh, so you can have loud sex with your boyfriend, but you couldn't say hi to your two favorite suitemates all last week?" Amelia calls, her voice just a bit muffled by the closed door.
April freezes when we hear the door handle jiggle, but luckily I remembered to lock it.
"Once you're decent, you better open up," Amelia says. "You're avoiding us!"
I pull out of April and tie the condom off, throwing it away in the trash after. She lies there, spent, with her hands resting on her belly, staring up at the ceiling. I lie next to her and wrap an arm around her, covering one of her hands with my own as I kiss the bare skin of her head.
"Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?" I ask, ignoring Amelia's insistent presence through the door.
She chuckles, then snorts. "The Bald and the Beautiful," she says, then turns to me with a light in her eyes. We both crack up laughing, leaning our faces towards each other as we do.
"I'm still here!" Amelia whines, pounding on the door. "We exist, you know!"
April and I make eye contact and she sighs as she reaches for the DePaul hat. She puts it on and makes sure it lays right, then pulls on her hoodie again. "I'm gonna have to tell them," she says. "They're gonna know… they're gonna see."
"Do you want to?" I say.
She shrugs. "I think so. Maybe."
"Well, only do it if you want to," I say, and squeeze the pompom on top of her head.
"Put your clothes on," she says, climbing over me and off the bed.
I let my head fall back to hit the pillow. "Ugh," I say. "I hate it when you say that."
She leans against the bathroom door. "Um, Jackson's putting his clothes on," she says, adjusting the hat again. She can't seem to get it right. "Then you can come in. I have to tell you guys something, okay?"
"Why are you being so cryptic?" I can hear Addison's voice now as I re-dress myself.
"I'm not," she says. "I just don't want you to be freaked out."
"Freaked out?" Amelia says, then the handle jiggles again. "April, you're being weird. Let us in. You're scaring me!"
"Just…" April lets out an agitated sigh. "Just give me a second." She yanks on a pair of pajama pants and casts me a look, and I nod her along. She opens the door and I watch her fingers tighten on the edge of it, but I can't see her face when she sees them on the other side. "...hey," I hear.
"What's with the hat?" Amelia asks, making her way inside. She looks at me first. "Hey, Jackson. Any way you could possibly teach Owen whatever you're doing to this girl? You're apparently so good that she's screaming our walls down. And he just can't seem to find-"
"Amy!" Addison scolds. "Not what we came in here for."
Amelia rolls her eyes. "Fine. But like I said, what's with the hat? And why have you been avoiding us? I've texted you like, a billion times. You leave me on read like we don't live five feet away from each other. Like I can't hear you peeing in the morning, or like I can't hear your boyfriend fucking the shit out of you through the wall. What the hell is going on?"
"Can you stop being mad for like one sec?" April says, just as a defensive feeling was rising in my gut. "Just give me a chance to explain. I… it's not exactly easy for me to just come out and say what I have to tell you. No one really knows, except…" Her eyes flit to me. "Him."
"Shit. You're pregnant," Addison states.
"What?!" April exclaims. "No! God, is that… no. I'm not freakin'... pregnant. No, Addie."
"Well, what is it then?" Amelia asks. "What else could it be? Do you have lice or something? Is that what the hat's for?"
April sighs. "I don't have lice, would you stop? I'm trying to get this out. Just try not to freak out when I tell you, okay? But…" She looks between the two of them. "I have cancer." There's a short pause, then she lets out an incredulous sound. "It sounds so weird saying it out loud. But I have cancer. I… yeah. I've been avoiding you because I haven't been feeling very good because of my chemo. I haven't been myself, and…"
"You're doing chemo?" Addie asks, dumbfounded.
"Well, not right now," April says. "I'm off it for a couple weeks. I just got done with a round a few days ago. It lasts for a week, and…" She goes to tuck her hair behind her ears and realizes with a start that she can't. She adjusts her hat instead. "It's really hard."
"Are you gonna be okay?" Addie asks. Amelia is silent, standing there and looking shocked.
"The chemo is supposed to help," April says. "I have to go back soon. It's supposed to kill all of it, even though it makes me feel really sick. Then hopefully, it won't come back."
"How did you find out?" Amelia asks.
April tells them the story of the ins and outs of her diagnosis and I sit back and listen to her explain her disease. She does it remarkably well, without seeming scared or ashamed.
"So… you lost all your hair?" Amelia says.
Addie starts sniffling and wiping at her eyes. "First Alex. Now this," she whimpers. "What is going on?" She covers her face with her hands and shakes her head. "Really, what the hell is going on?"
"Hey, April's not going anywhere," I say, chiming in for the first time. "So don't equate her to Alex."
"I'm not," Addie snaps. "But it's two bad things. How can I not think about them together?" She narrows her eyes at me. "I didn't say she was gonna die, Jackson."
Amelia narrows her eyes at her friend. "Leave him alone," she says. "He's scared, too."
Addie turns and faces away from me, still drying her tears. "I know, I'm sorry," she says quietly, then April wraps her arms around her in a big hug. "Oh, April," Addie cries. "You feel so small."
"I-I know that," April stammers, maybe a little self-consciously. She looks at Amelia. "And to answer your question, yeah. My hair was going away. So I just asked Jackson to shave it all off."
Both of her friends' eyes are wide with alarm.
"It's just better this way," April says. "Just for all of it to go at once. It was better than waiting for it to go."
"I've been seeing…" Addie says. "Hair. In the bathroom, more than usual. I-I wondered, I didn't know… I had no idea. I even got annoyed. I can't believe I got annoyed when you… when you…"
"Don't worry about that now," April says comfortingly. "It doesn't matter."
There's a short silence, followed by Amelia's unsteady voice. "You're gonna be okay, right?" she says.
April sits down on the bed and sets one of her hands on my socked feet. "I'm trying," she says.
Two weeks pass. One and a half of those weeks are full of April coming to my games, her head easily discernible from everyone else in that DePaul hat. Full of her bringing me to practice rooms to get better at Itsy Bitsy Spider and to listen to her practice Raindrop before she goes onto another one for her winter recital. Full of her smiling after she's done with Vocal Sem for the day, because apparently her classmates in there don't even notice her hat because they're so impressed with her voice. I can't say I blame them.
The light hair on her arms has fallen off, and what's on her legs is slowly following. And during the last half of the second week, when she knows chemo is looming, she gets quiet on me again.
I wake up in the middle of Sunday night to the sound of April throwing up. I hadn't gone to bed that long ago, I was up working on some impossible homework, so my brain is all disoriented. At first I think that it must be from her chemo before I realize that she doesn't go in for her next round until tomorrow.
"April?" I call out sleepily, getting out of bed and padding to the bathroom. I squint against the harsh fluorescent lighting and see her sitting by the toilet with her arm around it, her face pale and drawn. "What's going on?" I ask, kneeling down beside her.
She's shaking and not wearing the hat. The sight of her bare head catches me off guard for just a moment - it's rare that I see her without that thing on lately. It keeps her warm and it makes her feel safe - not even so much as peach fuzz has tried to grow back.
I smooth my hand over the skin and feel her breathing heavily, then she squeezes her eyes shut tight.
"What's wrong?" I ask.
"I can't go back," she says, tucking her knees up closer to her body. "I don't wanna go back to the hospital tomorrow."
"For chemo?" I ask. It's a stupid question, I know. But it comes out before I have any say over it.
"I don't want to feel like that again," she says, staring down at the half-clean tile floor. Her sense of smell has gotten so sensitive from the drugs that she can't stand the cleaning products being used in here, so no one has cleaned in a while. "I can't do it again."
I rub her back. "It'll make you better," I say.
She hits her palm against the toilet seat so it makes a resounding clang. "I don't see how making me feel horrible is making me better!" she exclaims. "It took my hair the first time. What's it gonna take this time?" She wrings her hands. "I don't want it."
"You have to," I say. "I'm sorry.
She bites the middle of her top lip, then pinches them together. She lets a loud, short breath out of her nose that turns into powerful, shaking gusts of air. She parts her lips to say something and clenches her jaw, letting that same air out through her teeth. "I hate this," she growls. "I hate all of this. It isn't fair." She throws her fists down on her thighs and hits herself hard. "Why did this have to happen to me?"
She hits herself again and winces with pain, so I move her wrists away. She glares at me, then lurches forward to throw up into the toilet again.
"I'm so nervous that I'm throwing up," she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her eyes have grown glassy now and she's shaking her head. "You don't have to stay here. You should go back to bed. You need your rest, you have dark circles."
"No, I'm gonna stay right here with you," I say.
"You don't have to," she says. "I don't know how much longer this will go on."
"I'm staying," I say, leaning back against the wall with my legs straight out.
Her eyes land on me for a moment before drifting off somewhere else as she zones into the world inside her head. I hate, more than anything, that I essentially have to sit here and watch this play out. There's nothing I can do except be here, and most of the time that doesn't feel like enough.
A while later, she moves away from the toilet and rests her head on my lap. I stroke her smooth scalp and her eyelids flutter closed, but her face doesn't relax.
"Are you coming tomorrow?" she asks after a long silence.
"Of course," I say, running my palm over her forehead.
She falls asleep there on the bathroom floor, so I pick her up easily and carry her to bed. To keep her warm, I slip the DePaul hat on her head and pull the covers up tight around her, tucking her in close to me while she stays asleep.
In the morning, it's snowing. April doesn't say a word as she gets ready, but I watch her put on layer after layer so she doesn't freeze. Without speaking, I hand her my blue DePaul sweatshirt with the red lettering and she pulls it over her head, hugging her arms close to her chest once it's on.
She stares out the window as we make our way to the hospital in an Uber. She didn't want to be around people today, so we didn't take public transportation. As we sit in the car, she still doesn't speak. Her hands are clasped together in her lap and I can see the veins on the insides of her wrists - they're showing bright blue through her pale skin. It makes her look so vulnerable.
I reach across and take her hand, and she glances at me when I do it. She lets me take it though, and I hold it on my lap as our driver maneuvers away from campus and onto Lakeshore to get us downtown.
"So you're going to Northwestern Memorial, huh?" the driver asks.
I feel April's hand twitch in mine. "Yeah," I say, hoping he'll leave it alone.
"You feelin' okay?"
I furrow my eyebrows. "Uh, yeah," I say. "Just, um, getting a yearly physical."
"They say it's one of the best hospitals around, you know that?" he continues, switching lanes. "It has a great… what is it, what do they call it with cancer?"
"Oncology," I say quietly.
"Yeah, that. They say there's a great oncology program there. I read that in the paper yesterday, one of the best in the country."
April goes back to looking out the window, only the back of that hat is facing me.
"I've heard that, too," I murmur, running my thumb over the bumps of her knuckles.
After her blood-work is finished and vitals are taken, we're sitting in the same room as last time. The same view out the window, the same TV on the wall, the same menu on the table.
We're waiting for the chemo nurse to come in and with every passing second, April gets more anxious. Her knees are bent on the reclining chair and she's bouncing one heel, her hands folded together between her thighs and stomach. I look over when I see her start to shake her head vigorously, her mouth turning down in a frown and her eyebrows knitting together.
"I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this," she mutters, over and over again. She starts to breathe heavier and faster, taking sections of the inside of her lower lip to chew on. "I can't feel like that again." Her chest heaves with how hard she's breathing, so I get up from my chair to go join her.
She looks quickly up at me as I lower myself down, pinching her face more. "Stop, no, I don't…" she whimpers, still breathing shallowly and shaking her head. "You shouldn't have to be… Jackson, no, you don't…"
I wrap an arm around her shoulders and she doesn't fight me. She blinks hard and a few tears roll down her cheeks and slide into her mouth, and her tongue darts out to make them disappear.
"I don't wanna be here," she says, her voice very small. "I don't wanna be here, I don't wanna do this, I don't want you to see this…" She covers her face with her hands and finally lets herself sob, but I just rock her side to side with my lips planted near the pompom of the hat.
Without really realizing it, I start to hum. I hum the first song that comes into my head, which coincidentally is 'The Itsy Bitsy Spider.' I hum it a couple times through and soon she stops sobbing so violently, and looks up at me curiously with wet, shiny cheeks.
"Wanna hum it with me?" I ask. "It might help you feel better."
She rests her head back down on my shoulder, and I keep humming. The same song, over and over again, filling up the silence of this room. It takes a little bit, but she finally joins me - her high voice melding with my much lower one.
Her voice still rattles when she speaks, but what matters is that she says something. "When we get back," she says, her hand flat on my chest as she grabs at my first. "Would you play it for me?"
I press my lips to what I can reach of her forehead and squeeze her closer, telling her without words that there's nothing else I'd rather do.