I didn't realize how fast your okays can change. Before it was a bad day if I got detention, but then I was okay if I spent the day holding Sarah's hair back as she threw up her entire stomach. I was okay meeting her after surgery, tracing along her scar lines that got bigger and more gory as time went on. I was okay if I went to school and saw Sarah's desk empty, because it almost always was.
I kept my promise and never cried, in front of her at least. We were silly and somehow I felt a little happy when I was with her. She had a fancy bed in her almost permanent hospital room with a remote control we always played with. We even made a game where you had to close your eyes and guess what you eating that made it easier to swallow the nasty food. A joke was always easy to make about the hospital gowns.
I didn't really understand much of what was going on. I just knew she had to have many surgeries and they tried many different treatments that were killing her just as much as the cancer. She had a hard time breathing and massive headaches, and most of the time she was tired.
Everything changed except Sarah herself. By the end of the month I could count her ribs, she had gotten so skinny and her arms and legs always seemed to be bruised purple. Her once tanned skin now had a greenish pale quality and her hands always shook. She hid it from Sarah, but her mom started drinking.
Her dad consumed himself with work, which wasn't completely a bad thing because cancer is expensive. The scrawny fourteen year old boy whose hair was always messy, stopped being her free spirited weird brother and became the kid who never talked.
Slowly Sarah's friends found new people to talk to and go shopping with, leaving her to be sick by herself. Of course people stopped by to see her all the time, but it wasn't the same. They either came in overly cheery or dreadfully gloomy, never their real selves.
Sarah cried. And it was real. I hated how all the patients in the cancer ward refused to be anything but strong. I never thought Sarah was stronger than when she was in my arms, crying so hard she couldn't breathe.