GUYS GUYS GUYS I WENT TO NEW YORK AND I MET ANTHONY RAMOS. LITERALLY I TOOK A PICTURE AND HIS GLORIOUS HAIR WAS TOUCHING ME. AND HE TOOK HIS HAIR DOWN AND PUT IT UP A FEW TIMES AND IT WAS BASICALLY PORN.
Anyway. Moving on. Welcome back to the angst! Sorry it's been so long, I didn't get to write in NYC.
All of the things that I want to say
Just aren't coming out right
I'm tripping on words, you got my head spinning
I don't know where to go from here
Tia's not wrong.
Alexander thinks, deep down, both of them held on to the vain hope of her being wrong.
(****)
He goes with her to the first chemo treatment, again.
Walking back into that building is surreal. Crazy as it sounds, it feels like there is someone laughing at them from the shadows.
Stupid Hamilton. He thought he was in the clear. Thought his life could return to normal.
Tia was right on so many things. The chemo looked the same, going in. In fact, everything looked the same. Same room, same chairs, same old magazines.
They cover Eliza with a blanket as the chemo drips in.
Alexander forces his mind to go blank, to not imagine all the outcomes of this relapse. Tries not to picture the doctors' somber faces when they told them that a relapse was harder to cure.
Tried not to picture Alex Jr. going up to his room and not coming out for the rest of the night when he was told the news.
Especially tries not to picture the muffled sobs he heard from the room and how his son would not allow himself to be comforted.
He was trying to be strong for his mother.
They are too much alike, Alexander knows.
When he finally did come out of his room, he had taken it upon himself to guide his siblings through the next week. He read with William, he played in the pool with Elizabeth, he took James to soccer and stayed for the game.
Alex doesn't honestly think he could be prouder of his children.
They are everything he wishes he could be.
He can't even protect his own wife.
(****)
He feels Eliza take his hand and squeeze.
During the first round of chemo, he pretended that he could protect her from this. They stuck together because they thought they knew what they were in for.
They know better now.
She's never felt so far away from him, not since the Reynolds debacle.
(****)
She's done in three hours, and they go home.
Life moved on outside the oncology building, insane as it sounded.
He's not even sure he can pain an accurate picture.
Eliza is fine at first. Like last time.
But then the shakes start, to the point where she can barely stand up.
She could be doing something so simple as picking up a cup, and she would drop it, only to have it shatter all over the floor, and step on it, cutting her foot because she couldn't control her limbs.
She sits as he dresses the wound with a proud, stoic expression, but her eyes glisten with tears.
Another time, out in public, the children have to hold her up.
And the vomiting. It's all the time, everywhere. Alex has started carrying plastic bags with him. Sometimes she will throw up so violently that her entire body will move.
Her body is weak, often too weak to live outside of her bed. And sometimes her bed is not enough.
She spends time in the hospital. Lots of time, when she has vomited until she passed out, or began gasping for air.
Her body becomes frightfully thin because the chemo affects her digestive tract and gives her horrible mouth sores.
She can barely drink a glass of water.
That put her back in the hospital as well, for dehydration.
And it lasted for months.
She's scheduled for three solid months of chemo but two months in, Alex doesn't know how much of this he can survive.
Selfish, he knows, but living like this is hurting all of them.
(****)
Eliza drops James, Alex Jr. and John (who had started in the middle school) off on one of the rare days she is able to and he knows she feels the stares and whispers of their teenage friends. Alexander cringes, fully anticipating the boys asking their mom to stay away from now on, knowing how that would break Eliza's heart.
He is more than a little surprised to get a call later in the day from the school, telling him to pick up his three boys, as they've been caught fighting. Despite his own reputation, the boys have never been prone to fighting, particularly not his namesake. He is suitably angry when he pulls up to the school, and demands to know what happened.
The principal tells him that they ganged up on two boys, and were found sitting on top of them, punching repeatedly.
When he asks the boys why, they fall silent. With prodding, the boldest, John, admits.
"They were saying shit about mom," he mumbles.
The principal gasps at the expression from his eleven year old, and lays into them hard, for the fighting and the language. They are suspended for one day.
He asks them what the boys said, wanting to know and yet not wanting to at the same time.
He gets only mumbles out of his sons, but finally digs out that the boys his sons hit were making fun of their family for "getting what was coming to them", as well as comments about Eliza "looking like she'll die tomorrow" (the boys had to force the word "die" out). They also reported nonsensical comments about how Eliza was the "stupid cancer bitch that stuck by her asshole cheating husband."
He sees red, and stops driving for a moment to rest his head against the steering wheel and quell the urge to go beat up two 15 year old boys.
He looks at his sons. "Are you sorry?"
They look at each other, look back at him and shake their heads.
"As an adult, I am obliged to tell you that violence is never the answer, and you should be ashamed. As your father…."
He looks at his sons and holds out his hand.
Grins broke out as his three oldest sons slapped his hand in a high five.
"Okay, you get a free day off school. Ice cream?"
(****)
Remember how Alex said Eliza felt miles away from him?
That went on for months too.
It was hard to feel close to your wife when your most significant interactions were dropping her off at chemo and rubbing her back while she vomits.
He's trying, though.
He does all he can to make her life easier.
He picks up around the house, he collects her medication, he attempts cook.
She barely notices, it seems.
And he's exhausted.
He's loathe to blame her, though. As if she wasn't going through enough.
Eliza is angry, now.
She's angry most of the time and he doesn't want to add to it, so he does whatever he can not to.
But as someone who had a fair bit of experience with holding in anger, he should have expected it to boil over.
As it turns out, it boils over when he gets home late one night and doesn't unload the dishwasher.
She waits approximately four seconds before laying into him.
"I am too tired for this, Alex. I need some help around here."
"I am. God, I unload the damn thing every night. I do help."
"It's after chemo, Alex. You know I have no energy, and they are your dishes. I can't do everything."
"I'm trying, Eliza. I really am."
"I am trying to deal with this, and it's enough already…"
"I get that, I really do. I understand what you're…."
That's as far as he gets before the temperature finally boils over.
"No. Don't tell me that, Alexander," she spits out his name. "Don't give me that you know what it feels like speech, because you really don't. You stand there and you fuss over everything I do, and you hold my hair back and you give me my meds. That's all you do. What part of that lets you know what this is like?"
He opens his mouth to speak, always so verbose, but she is there first.
"No, don't even talk to me about this. Come back and talk to me when you've literally felt poison going through your veins. Come and talk to me when you have thrown up everything inside your body and you are still being forced to eat. Or when you struggle to drink a sip of water around the sores in your mouth. Or when your children, who you used to take care of, have to come visit you in bed because you're too useless to move. Or my favorite, trying to go to sleep, not knowing if you'll wake up in the hospital with a tube down your throat. Don't even try to talk to me, Alex, until you know what that's like."
She has barely even registered the words, anger filling every part of her, anger that she has held onto for so long.
Is it even about Alexander?
Perhaps. Perhaps not. She just looks at her life and is so furious because no part of this is fair and she's tired of it. She's tired of being the one who smiles and takes it.
When she looks back at her husband, she finally realizes what she's said to him. His entire expression screams defeat. Except his shoulders.
His head is bowed, but his shoulders are tense.
"I'm sorry," he whispers.
She feels a bit of the fight drain from her as she looks at her husband, but then his gaze snaps up to meet hers and his eyes are glittering with the same anger she's sure hers hold.
"You're right," he hisses. "I don't know what you're going through. I have no idea. I fuss over you, I hold your hair back, I give you your damn medicines, because that's my job. I have no way of knowing what this is like for you. I can't. Because I can't help with this. I can't take this from you."
His eyes are filled with tears and suddenly she knows, as much as she has been holding her anger back, he has been holding his.
"I am your husband, Eliza. I failed at that so many times, but my job was to protect you. And I can't. I can't protect you from this. I can't take this away from you. I can't make it better. So, yeah. I hold your hair and I give you your medicines, because that's fucking all I can do. And yeah, I don't know what it's like to go through this, but I can assure you it's not any better to watch the person you love fade away in front of you. You think waking up in the hospital is traumatic for you? I can assure you, coming to bed and finding you barely breathing is not much better. So yeah, don't worry. I won't talk you about it anymore. You get your wish. I'll stay away."
Then the only sound is that of the slamming door.
You're angry. She's angry.
Yes, Tia had been right about so much.
He'd rather run away then let her see him cry.
She didn't understand, he thinks. She just didn't get it. That night, when he had slid into bed, he had been banking on a grand total of about four hours of sleep. That was on the heels of the two hours it took to get William and Elizabeth down after a long tantrum about nothing in particular. He nudged Eliza's feet with his, asked her how she felt. It was a cursory ask, he knew she felt terrible, he knew she would tell him she felt fine.
But she didn't respond.
So he nudges her again, but she still doesn't respond. He reaches out and slings an arm around her and that's when he feels it.
Her chest isn't moving.
Her eyes are closed, her skin is pale, and he actually feels his heart stop.
"Eliza!" He shakes her. Nothing.
Someone is screaming to call an ambulance.
He'll realize later that it's him.
It finally occurs to him to lay his ear by her lips and he thanks every god, diety, and anyone in any remote position of authority (looking back, he will remember thanking Jefferson) when he hears faint breath coming from her lips.
The ambulance is called and on its way. He doesn't need to say their address anymore. He knows what doctor to ask for.
He holds her hand and rubs his thumb back and forth over the thin skin while he waits, begging her under his breath to keep breathing.
Stay alive.
And now the hospital is their second home, and she just doesn't understand.
How can she?
He doesn't really understand himself.
They don't speak that night.
Nor the next day, when they go for a progress check-up and the chemo that is raining down hell on their family is not shrinking the cancer.
They don't even speak the day after that, when Tia doesn't answer Eliza's call.
Restless hearts
Sleep alone tonight
Sending all my love
Along the wire
Hoo boy, more angst. Yay! I know that yelling at Alex does seem unlike Eliza, but honestly, cancer is tough shit, and it can rip families and couples apart.