Hey guys, guess what? I have a cough Granted, that may be from traveling for 24 straight hours and a change of climate but still.
In other news, I have found three perfect songs for this fic and am considering making an 8tracks playlist of songs that go with this. Would you guys be interested in this?
Even through the darkest phase
Be it thick or thin
Always someone marches brave
Here beneath my skin
They return to the doctor one week and six days after Eliza comes home.
She is mostly recovered from the lobectomy, barely uses her oxygen anymore. She's returned to a somewhat normal schedule.
They still visit doctors entirely too often.
Alex never thought hearing that Eliza had healed nicely from the surgery was a bad thing, but it was today, because that meant she was ready for chemo and radiation.
The primary oncologist, Doctor Nam, had led them into his office.
He explained that Eliza's form of cancer was more advanced than they'd like, so they were going to "be aggressive in our attack". However, she should be able to come daily to the clinic and receive her chemo, then go home at night. He knows that is a relief to Eliza.
They ask the doctor the usual questions, will she be sick, will she lose her hair, but as it turns out, every cancer is different. They can't tell her if all of her hair will fall out or just thin, they don't know how sick she'll get or if it will affect caring for the children.
The doctor pats her on the shoulder and smiles.
"Unfortunately, chemo is a wait and see kind of thing."
Alex hates that answer, but he's learning to deal with great unknowns.
-break-
They check her into the hospital again for a minor procedure to insert a tube into her chest called a port. It's a much less intense surgery than the lobectomy, but Alex is still trying to wrap his head around two surgeries in a matter of weeks.
Eliza smiles and tell him it's a blessing in disguise, that now they won't have to connect her to an IV every time she has to have chemo, but there are a lot of words in that sentence that don't seem to go with the word "blessing".
Since the surgery, Eliza's calm mask is back in place. She insists on doing everything herself, and rarely tells him or the children if she is in pain, but he has known her for too long, and he can tell when she is hurting anyway.
He tries to be there without being overbearing, so he'll sometimes pass by her and slip a pain pill into her pocket, or make sure all the heavy lifting is done before she can get to it (she does comment on it being the first time he's done the laundry in years).
The word has gotten out, in this day and age, about Eliza's cancer, but they all pretend they don't see the trashy magazine headlines or the online articles. They pretend they don't see the pitying looks from the other mothers when Eliza goes to one of James' soccer games. They pretend they don't see how everyone outside their house looks at her like she is going to collapse on the spot.
How little they know his wife, Alex thinks. She maintains herself through sheer force of will, for him and for the children.
Herc, Laurens and Laf make good on their promise to come around more often. Laf brings his kids around to hang out with the older boys, and he knows his sons are grateful for a break from their school friends, who don't seem to know how to act around them.
Herc texts precisely every second day, always asking what he can do. Eliza nudges Alex once and tells him to take advantage of it and go get some "feminine products", just to see if he'll do it. The sparkle in her eyes tells him she's joking, and he doesn't do it because he can picture with embarrassing clarity how that would go. Hercules Mulligan would do that the way he does everything, jumping into it with both feet, and he doesn't think he could handle getting a call from his friend, telling him that he has consulted with the salespeople and he thinks Playtex is the right option in this scenario, but that they shouldn't rule out Tampax for next time.
And Laurens is just there, in his quiet way. He comes over sometimes and sits with Alex on nights when Eliza has already gone to bed, he plays with the children, who adore him, and most of all, he keeps Madison off Alex's back.
(Once, he texts Alex a creepily taken picture of Madison with the most embarrassing expression on his face, with the caption "HERC MAKES THIS EXACT FACE! #twinsies and the whole thing is just so ridiculous that Alex has to laugh)
Without even realizing it, Alexander trades the life he knew for a whole different life. Instead of planning his life around meetings, he plans his life around radiation treatments. Instead of making sure that he is there to speak at every event, he counts it as good enough if someone from his office is there to speak. Instead of grabbing takeout on the way back to the office, he goes home and haphazardly cooks dinner for his family, when he can barely make toast.
They bend their lives around chemo. The first day, Alexander insists on going with her. The oncology clinic looks overwhelmingly intimidating, for reasons unknown. Alex swallows down the Kansas sized lump in his throat and threads his arm through his wife's. She gives him a wobbly smile in return and they go in.
It's really quite a calm affair. They check in, a nurse takes Eliza's blood. They check her vitals, then lead her to a room with a few reclining chairs. Eliza is instructed to sit. They give her some premedication for nausea (she already looks a bit pale) and then bring out a bag of clear liquid.
Face to face with the beast he has been dreading, Alex glares at it, even as the inanity of resenting a plastic bag occurs to him.
They attach it and he can't take his eyes off the poison that will invade his wife's body.
He feels her hand grab his and squeeze, because once again, she as the sick one, is comforting him.
He sits there in tense anticipation for two hours, before the port is disconnected, and they are told to go home.
He hovers over Eliza the whole day, watching for any sign of distress, until she tells him to go away, and that he's driving her crazy.
He is actually calmer when they head to bed. The day has been as close to normal as possible. Eliza's cheeks are still pink, she ate a full meal, and has not had any adverse reactions.
The doctor had told them that many patients maintain a fairly normal life when going through chemo. He dares to hope that may be them.
Or he does until he wakes up in the middle of the night after feeling Eliza rocket away from him and run to the bathroom.
He hears the retching and his heart drops to his feet.
It's even worse as he sees her bent over the toilet, emptying her stomach in violent bursts.
So lost as to what to do, he can only grab her hair (gently) and hold it back to the sound of vomiting mixed with sobs. When she finally slumps against the wall, her eyes meet his, and her face is stained with tears.
"Darling," he whispers, feeling entirely useless.
"Alex," she sobs. "I have cancer"
And so, on the first day of chemo treatments, husband and wife cry together, at 3am on a bathroom floor.
Luckily, all days are not like this. The doctors say the first night was likely just Eliza's body reacting to the new medication, but they refuse to change it.
-break-
Alex scours the internet for home remedies to treat nausea, but the best resource Eliza finds ends up being the other chemo patients she sits with during treatments. She is on daily treatment for now, so she goes to the clinic every day, sits for three hours while the chemo drips in, and goes home. It takes two full weeks for her to convince him that she can not only go on her own, but can drive herself there and back.
The women at the clinic seem to take Eliza under their wing. According to her, some have been coming for years. They advise her to take her medication before she feels nauseous, even if she feels perfectly fine, because if she takes it when she starts feeling sick, she won't be able to keep it down.
She tries this and it works.
She still throws up occasionally, and it still sends him into a panic, but there is no more periods of waking up and vomiting.
She does need him to help with the kids more, because while she isn't typically sick, she is tired. Completely exhausted. He finds her napping in the most random of places. On top of the laundry, at the dining room table, even once across the hood of the car ("I was just checking to see if the engine was overheating," she explains sheepishly).
On a Tuesday, he picks Eliza up from clinic and she is busily chatting with another woman. He almost recoils when he takes in her frighteningly thin arms and the hat that sit on top of her hairless head.
She looks so sick.
"Alex," Eliza smiles and beckons him over. "Come meet Tia. Tia, this is my husband Alexander."
"Of course, Senator Alexander Hamilton," she grins, and her smile is happy and relaxed.
"Good to meet you."
"Alex is fine," he carefully shakes her hand.
"Tia has stage 4 lung cancer," Eliza explains casually, like she's just told him that Tia's favorite color is orange.
His look of shock must have shown, because Tia laughs. "Welcome to the Washington Hospital, Alex. One of the rare places where cancer is actually entirely normal."
Tia taps the woman beside her on the shoulder and fixes her with a hard look.
"Whatcha' in for?" she rasps in a harsh voice.
The woman grins. "Martha. Stage 3 osteosarcoma."
Tia throws her head back and laughs.
"They gotcha in the bones! Poor girl!"
They all grin, and Alex realizes the room's atmosphere is pretty much the last thing you would expect from a room full of people with cancer: it's light, even happy.
That helps, actually. It helps a lot.
Until Wednesday, when Angelica is functionally kicked out of school.
The staircase tips
The foot trips
The moment explodes
Notes:
Sorry this took so long!
Believe it or not, this has been more regularly updated than 90% of my fics :P
Thank you all for your lovely comments!