Updated January 2025.
Ryan's head was bent low over his plate, his shoulders hunched, a thick knot of tension radiating across his back.
Seth and Summer were having a "date night"—-or what passed for a date night in the pediatric cancer ward during non-relative visitor's hours, as Seth would be quick to amend-so the Cohens and Ryan had been exiled from the hospital for a few hours.
Said exile had required a bit of negotiation on Seth's part, who'd pointed out to Sandy that, scientifically speaking, hovering in the waiting room and refusing to leave hospital grounds was not actually a known cancer treatment, so when his parents graciously allowed Seth and Summer to have some alone time, there was actually no need to deny themselves access to the great outdoors, or any of southern California's fine restaurants, or their own home.
Further, Ryan had a soccer game that afternoon, and Seth had expressed grave concerns that Ryan might abandon his extracurricular activities-nay, his dreams-without a show of parental support in the audience.
With all the negotiations squared away, Sandy and Kirsten went to Ryan's soccer game and then picked up Chinese food for an early dinner at home, after which-per the agreement-Sandy would return to the hospital for the evening.
The plan was all fine in theory, until Ryan sat down at the dining room table and realized that, between the hospital and court and soccer and The Newport Group, this was somehow their first dinner at home without Seth.
He also realized-much too late to make an excuse and retreat to his room-that eating at the Cohen family dinner table without Seth felt wrong, a wrongness greatly enhanced by whatever it was that was going on between Sandy and Kirsten.
Ryan tried to remind himself of what Summer had said about Sandy and Kirsten—-what had sounded so reassuring when she'd said it—-but it was harder to feel her same confidence in their relationship when he actually had to be in the same room with it.
His eyes flicked between Sandy, staring blankly ahead, and Kirsten, studying the tablecloth as she used listlessly pushed beef and broccoli around on her plate.
Ryan wondered what Seth would do in this situation, Seth who could somehow maintain a dinner table conversation even if no one else was willing to participate.
He'd never realized how useful a skill that could be.
Granted, Seth running his mouth didn't always make for good results, but somewhere along the way he'd developed a decently honed ability to defuse his parents.
Maybe that was an only child thing.
Like there was the time that they were late for a Newpsie event and Sandy had been mad at Kirsten, and both of them were irritated with Seth for some reason, and Sandy was driving too fast, his hands curled tightly around the steering wheel, muttering under his breath.
Seth had warned Ryan of this phenomenon.
"Mom makes us late, which pisses Dad off because he never wants to go anywhere, and the later we get there, the later Mom makes us stay. So Dad drives really fast and like, angrily somehow, so the first five to seven minutes of the car ride are mildly terrifying." Seth had explained all this as they'd gotten ready for some event, Sandy and Kirsten sniping at each other in the background.
Despite the thorough heads-up, and Seth's reassurance that Sandy's fury was merely a facade, that, despite his performative road rage, he was forever a boringly cautious and in-control driver-"You'll notice, Ryan, that the man doesn't miss a turn signal, and slows down for every yellow light"-Ryan felt himself go tense as Sandy changed lanes with a harsh jerk of the wheel, still muttering under his breath.
Sandy was a safe person.
Ryan knew that.
Still, he also knew something else, which was that people were safe until they weren't.
But then Seth had jostled his shoulder and given him a smirk and a nod before leaning forward, swiveling his head between his mom and dad.
"Anyone else catch The View this morning?"
Sandy and Kirsten had each broken, Sandy emitting a low bark of a laugh and shaking his head, Kirsten snickering and looking out the window, neither ready to stop being mad yet, but neither able to withstand one of Seth's surprise verbal attacks.
Still laughing, Sandy's arm had shot out in an attempt to catch Seth with a sideways noogie-Sandy's driving briefly terrifying for a different reason-and Seth had ducked away, adding "That Joy Behar is a real pistol, don't you think?", and Ryan felt his body start to relax.
Ryan didn't know how to do that, what Seth could do. He knew how to fight anger physically, how to make it clear that it was best not to mess with him, but he didn't know how to talk it out of existence or wear it down until it was impossible to be angry anymore, how to disarm it with a stupid-but-well-timed joke.
Seth would probably take that opportunity to point out that, between the two of them and their unique skill sets, they were well-prepared for any number of scenarios requiring conflict resolution.
He could hear him in his head: "What did I tell you, Ryan? United, we're unstoppable."
A little smile twitched at the corner of Ryan's mouth.
"Ryan?"
Ryan's head jerked up.
Kirsten was looking at him.
"Sorry, what?" Ryan shook his head.
"I was just saying that Meredith mentioned that the College Fair is next Tuesday."
"Oh. Uh, yeah." Ryan frowned. "I mean, I guess so."
"I'll meet you at the library after homeroom," Kirsten said. "That's usually what they have the parents do."
Ryan's brow furrowed. "I wasn't-I mean, you...you don't have to do that," he said. "Come, I mean."
"Don't be silly. Of course I'm coming." Kirsten smiled at Ryan. "I know it probably feels early to think about college, and it can be pretty overwhelming, but it's good to start figuring out what you want."
"You really don't-I know you're busy." Ryan looked down at his plate. "It's really okay. I wasn't even planning on-"
"Let her do it, kiddo," Sandy cut in. "Your mother lives for this stuff. She's got a whole college binder started for Seth, colored-coded and everything. I'm sure she's been working on yours too."
Ryan swallowed a sudden lump in his throat.
"Yes, well." Kirsten's voice was soft, lilting, and would sound playful to anyone who didn't know her well. "I may have already started developing your color code, Ryan."
As Sandy dropped some line about how you wouldn't want two guys to have the same color code, Ryan was imagining Seth there, unpacking with fascination the way that his parents could talk at or around each other without ever actually talking to each other, how they could mimic the patented Cohen family banter, but without any warmth between them.
The phone rang/
It was all Ryan could do not to sigh in relief.
"I'll get it." Ryan pushed away from the table quickly, nearly knocking over his chair.
He headed for the phone, hands clenched in fists at his side.
ooo
"Um, Sandy?" Ryan held the phone out, wishing he'd let anyone else pick it up. "It's the hospital. They, uh, want to talk to you." He couldn't quite bring himself to look at his foster father, to clock his reaction as he grabbed the receiver and strode quickly out of the room.
Ryan slumped into his chair, closing his eyes to the sound of Sandy's hushed "Hello, this is Sandy Cohen," followed by a door clicking shut.
At least the College Fair discussion had been dropped.
Sandy returned a few minutes later.
"That was Dr. Penner," he announced.
Ryan had never met him, but he knew that Dr. Penner was the head doctor on Seth's case. Caleb seemed to revel in detailing, often and at length, all the strings he'd needed to pull to land him.
A guy like that probably wasn't calling families at home, and that late in the day, just to chat.
"Seth's having some side effects with the new medications." Sandy put the phone receiver down on the table. "He wants to meet with us tomorrow morning to talk about treatment options."
Ryan snuck a glance at Kirsten before looking back at Sandy.
"What uh, what kind of side effects?" he asked tentatively.
"He had some tremors and he was coughing up, or," Sandy winced a little, "throwing up blood. They said it could be a throat infection, or something else; they don't know yet."
Infections were bad.
Ryan had stayed after school one day to do research on cancer treatments. He hadn't wanted to upset Seth or the Cohens by asking too many questions, and the bits and pieces he gleaned from listening but never speaking weren't filling in all the blanks.
Chemotherapy trashed your immune system and infections could be dangerous, even fatal. Even when they didn't kill you, they could also result in a dramatic lifestyle shift..
Seth had talked about it once: everyone having to wear protective equipment around him and maybe nobody being allowed to be in the same room with him at all, but having to talk to him through glass, like he was in a prison movie or something.
"Well, believe it or not, I seem to have lost my appetite," Sandy said. "I think I'll just head to the hospital now."
Sandy was hovering next to Kirsten's shoulder, staring pointedly down at her, directing every word to her, reminding Ryan of the way his 7th grade Science teacher used to stand over kids until they came up with an answer that satisfied him.
Kirsten was doing what Ryan used to do in that situation, ignoring the guy towering over her, pretending like she couldn't feel the whole laser beam stare thing.
"Kirsten?"
Kirsten finally looked up at Sandy.
"I think Seth would really appreciate it if we both went." Sandy's gaze flicked over to Ryan, who looked away. "I think he's probably pretty terrified right now."
"Obviously I'm going." Kirsten's nostrils flared. "I was just-" She looked at Ryan. "I'm going. I'm done eating, and I'm going."
"Ryan?" Sandy asked. "I know it's a school night, but we can make an exception if you wanna come by for a while."
"I, uh, don't think so." Ryan directed his answer to his dinner plate. "I mean, I-I shouldn't. I have homework." He found he couldn't quite look at Sandy then either, not wanting to see the mixture of confusion and hurt on his face, not wanting to watch him trying to figure out if this was something he should push.
"Okay," Sandy said, and it was bad enough, hearing the confusion and the hurt and the hesitancy in his voice. "I will uh, call when we get there. Maybe you can say hi to Seth."
"Sure, yeah." Ryan cleared his throat. "Okay."
Ryan sat at the table for a while longer, well after Sandy and Kirsten had left, feeling glued to his chair, unable to bring himself to get up and go do the minimal amount of homework he'd used as an excuse to beg off seeing his best friend who had cancer.
He was an asshole.
He'd disappointed the Cohens, and he was going to disappoint Seth, who-Sandy was right-was almost certainly pretty terrified about then.
Seth had confided in Ryan once about how blood freaked him out, how, though he was adamant that he'd never cried or fainted when he had to get a shot, he also felt distinctly queasy leading up to, during, and after any kind of blood draw.
Ryan couldn't imagine what it must've been like for him, to suddenly be coughing up blood.
It might've just been a few drops, but Ryan couldn't help but imagine something more like a waterfall, blood all over Seth, blood everywhere, Seth panicking, medical personnel all over him and freaking him out worse, and either Summer there to witness him erupting like the elevator scene in The Shining and not being able to exactly bear it very stoically, or nobody there that he actually wanted to see, nobody there who was any comfort to him.
That Shining elevator thing: that was all Seth.
It was weird how, even though he hadn't known Seth very long, Ryan could think like him, could imagine what he'd say, could imagine how he'd look saying it, down to the smirk or the cringe or the face that implored Ryan for reassurance, whether it was that his mom probably wouldn't notice the missing/broken vase from the living room shelf, or that Ryan didn't think it was such a big deal: being freaked out by blood or by small spaces, or still confiding in his childhood plastic horse, or liking comic books and emo music, that although Newport judged Seth to be less than, Ryan never did.
And it was true the other way around too. Seth didn't care about all the ways that Ryan knew he was less than.
The phone rang again.
It was probably Sandy, making good on his word of having him say hi to Seth.
Ryan looked at the phone.
In his haste to leave for the hospital, Sandy had left it on the table.
Or maybe he'd left it there on purpose, knowing somehow that Ryan would stay at the table, ensuring that he'd have no excuse not to pick it up, not to say hi to his best friend who had cancer, to his brother who had cancer, if you wanted to go there.
Ryan stood up, almost knocking his chair over for the second time that night.
What he needed was a cigarette. He wasn't sure how he'd been getting through without one, and he was fairly certain he couldn't last another minute without one.
Grabbing his jacket, Ryan headed for the door, letting the phone ring.
ooo
"What?"
"What?"
"You're mad."
"Or I'm worried about our son."
"You're seething." Sandy slowed to a stop at a red light. "I can feel you seething. You know you manage to direct a lot of anger my way, even without talking."
"Are you really doing this right now?" Kirsten demanded.
"Maybe right now is the perfect time to do this," Sandy pointed out. "Maybe it's better than sitting here worrying about our son. What do you think?"
Kirsten scowled. "I think that I don't need to be scolded about how I deal with our child, Sandy, and especially not in front of Ryan."
"I did not scold you."
Kirsten scoffed. "He must be terrified," she mimicked. "You think I don't know that, Sandy? You think I needed you to guilt me into going to the hospital?"
"So what, you want me to treat you with kid gloves, is that it?" Sandy asked. "I'm about at the end of my rope between work and the hospital and making excuses for you with Seth, but you're right, I should put more time and energy into making sure your feelings aren't hurt."
There was a long silence, broken up only by the steady clicking of the turn signal.
"It just...it doesn't feel like him anymore, Sandy. When we go...it's like he's not even there." Kirsten stifled a sob, turning her head to look out the window.
"He's still Seth," Sandy said, voice softening. "I know it probably feels like with your-"
"He's not though," Kirsten cut in, frustrated with Sandy for always feeling like he had the answer, had the fix for problems that couldn't be fixed.
And she was frustrated that she couldn't explain it to him, couldn't make him understand.
Things like physical affection and expressing her love for her boys didn't come naturally to Kirsten, not the way that those same words and gestures poured out of Sandy easily and freely and frequently.
When Seth was in preschool, she used to secretly hate when Sandy would come with her for pick-up time at the end of the day. When Seth was still in that part of childhood when he would break into a run to jump into one of their arms, Sandy always won. It was always a loud "Daddy!" and Seth hurling himself headlong into his father's waiting arms.
Another mother had turned to Kirsten one day, rolling her eyes as she said "Mine's going through a real Daddy phase right now too." Kirsten had smiled weakly, embarrassed, not about to share that Seth's life up to that point had been one long Daddy phase, and that it was Kirsten's fault, because though she was a good mother, it was the same way that her mother had been a good mother, tending to every need with competence and diligence, but without much in the way of warmth.
When Seth got hurt, Kirsten would be the one with the gauze and the tape and the ice pack, but Sandy would be the one who never forgot to kiss the boo-boo or to praise Seth for being so brave or to say, voice dripping with sincerity and concern "Oh wow, that really stings, huh?"
Gauze, as it turned out, was not the kind of thing that made a kid jump into your arms, and when Kirsten tried Sandy's same lines, tried to be soft and sweet, she knew it came out stilted and phony,could see by the way Seth would cock his head to one side and squint at her like something was missing, but he didn't quite know what.
Still though, still, she had something she held onto, something that Sandy didn't, those first few months of Seth's life when he was her's more than his, her's more than anyone else's, months where he spent most of his time in her arms, when her whole being was so cloudy from giving birth to this tiny creature that there wasn't room to feel awkward or incapable of physical closeness. Seth was in her arms, and even though Sandy would hold him and bathe him and coo at him, it was like he was magnetically attracted right back to her, back to his home base.
And from that home base, she knew him first and best, and so even if everyone seemed to agree that he was more his father's son than anything else, she would always be the one who'd known him the longest.
Seth was so awake and alive right from the start, so desperate to move, to explore. He wiggled and wriggled and his limbs went every which way, and as he grew and continued to move and talk and seem to be everywhere at once, his brain and his body never seeming to halt for a moment, he grew into the boy she'd always known he would be: funny and inquisitive and sometimes playfully contrary and sometimes maddeningly contrary, but always, always, in motion.
Except when he was sick.
Seth had had some terrible illnesses as a baby, fevers that never seemed to break, colds that lingered and required the use of a nebulizer, and when he was sick, it wasn't the fever or the runny nose or the pitiful baby coughs that made Kirsten nervous, that caught her heart in her throat.
It was his stillness; it was her squirming, always reaching for something, always trying to go somewhere. baby suddenly motionless, desperately clinging to her, skin burning up.
But the clinging helped. It gave her something she could do. He would rest against her body and let out his pitiful baby coughs and she would hold him close until the sickness passed and the movement started again.
And then she walked into Seth's hospital room one day and he was still again, but with no end in sight and nothing she could do about it.
She was just expected to watch him wither and go motionless in a hospital bed, watch him become less and less himself as the days went by.
He could still speak at length sometimes, but other times his words trailed off to nowhere. Someone would say something that would be the perfect setup for a joke, but he would miss it-that brain that missed nothing, that absorbed everything, that could somehow hold three conversations at once while eavesdropping on his parents' conversation two rooms away, was shutting down.
"Kirsten?"
Kirsten closed her eyes.
"Can we try talking to each other?" Sandy asked. "I know it's-"
"You...you wouldn't understand." Kirsten closed her eyes. "I mean, I can't explain it. You're always so good with the boys and their feelings and when things go wrong. You always do the right thing."
Sandy snorted. "Oh honey, I definitely don't. I'm driving Seth crazy half the time with how overbearing I am."
"But you're there," Kirsten insisted. "You're not terrified of him."
"Of course I'm terrified of him. I'm terrified of everything right now. I'm terrified that if I'm not there every second, something's going to go terribly wrong and it'll be my fault because I wasn't there." Sandy snickered. "And here we are, racing to the hospital because everything went to hell when I wasn't there."
Despite everything, Kirsten found herself smiling a little. "I guess we'll have to prepare Seth for you becoming even more overbearing."
"I guess I learned the wrong lesson from taking the afternoon off," Sandy admitted. He eyed Kirsten. "Seth's gonna need you there to rein me in."
Kirsten exhaled sharply.
"I'm sorry," Sandy said. "I didn't mean-"
"To give me the kid glove treatment?" Kirsten asked wryly.
"I just...I want to be able to talk about this stuff," Sandy said. "Not just how insufferable I've become, but what's going on with you. It feels like we've both been going through it alone, when we could be doing this together." He turned right into the hospital parking lot and started scanning the rows of cars for a free space, absent-mindedly hating how familiar all of it had become, how he'd developed strong opinions about the best and worst places to park relative to the hospital.
"I know," Kirsten said quietly.
"And you know, I'm not a bad friend to have," Sandy added.
"No," Kirsten said, "you're not." She reached over, finding Sandy's free hand without looking, her fingers interlacing with his.
He always drove one-handed and it used to make her crazy but she'd come to appreciate being able to take his hand when she felt like it.
"I missed you," Kirsten admitted softly.
Sandy raised their clasped hands to his lips and kissed her hand.
"I've missed you too," he said.
ooo
There were times that Seth wished he could get through the whole cancer thing in some kind of suspended state, like Han Solo frozen in carbonite, and then everyone could just wake him up when the whole thing was done.
He was pretty sure he'd already achieved all of the bravery and all of the character-building that one could out of cancer, and everything since then had just been overkill.
And it wasn't like he really needed to be there for any of it. He wasn't exactly a valuable member of the cancer-fighting team. He was really just the husk of a human that they lugged around, pumped drugs into, checked vitals on, made inane chatter to in between all the drugs and the vitals and the inane chatter.
Being frozen in carbonite sounded relaxing, to be honest.
No excruciating pain, no excruciating boredom, no bleeding gums, no vomit, no therapy-because that was somehow something he'd been strong-armed into doing now too-no parents non-stop worrying in his general direction, no shiny cueball head he still couldn't bring himself to look at directly, no wondering if Summer only stayed with him because it was too awkward to dump a Cancer Kid, no sad little bald kids pestering him for his comic books and filling him with gratitude that his parents had never saw fit to give him a younger sibling in the traditional sense, because Ryan would've never both dog-eared and broth-stained his favorite installment of Preacher.
None of that.
Just rest and quiet and wake me up when the Jewfro's grown back.
He'd started to daydream about the carbonite sometimes.
He was having a little trouble settling on the pose-did he go for the classic Han Solo-hands-up-anguished-face, or try for something that radiated a little more charm and confidence, a little more "I chose the carbonite life; the carbonite life did not choose me, thank you very much"?
He didn't want Summer visiting his frozen slab and regretting her choice in boyfriend, thinking how dashing Chip Saunders would've looked under the same circumstances.
The pose felt like a real commitment, a problem he could overthink and obsess over in his usual fashion, but it was also a problem he welcomed.
Lately he'd been having a lot of "frightened by my own mortality" problems, and he wasn't exactly a big fan of those.
So he was all about the carbonite; he embraced the carbonite, but then Summer was there and he was finally having one of those times when he wasn't pining for a state of suspended animation.
He and Summer were lying in bed watching a moderately funny movie, and he was leaning his head on her shoulder and her breath was tickling his ear and his brain was quiet, which was nice. He wasn't worried that she was bored, or turned off by the whole "emaciated bald guy thing", or plotting the most graceful way to dump said Cancer Kid and go out and actually enjoy her youth while she could.
Maybe he was just super exhausted or super drugged up, but he was just kind of appreciating the moment.
He was even able to ignore the little bursts of trembling that started up in his hands. Not wanting to ruin the moment by summoning a nurse, he just stuffed his hands under the blanket and kept watching the movie, like an idiot who'd never heard of foreshadowing before.
What was slightly harder to ignore was when he went to cough into his only-slightly-tremoring fist and out came a deluge of blood-think that elevator scene in The Shining, although far more horrifying, as none of that blood splattered onto the hottest girl in school who had somehow been convinced that dating Seth Cohen was a worthwhile pursuit.
And look what Summer got for her troubles.
Seth could actually step outside of himself and appreciate the absurdity of some of it, like trying to stammer out an apology between more coughing and more blood, all while Summer was scrambling off the bed and frantically smashing the call button and practically shouting "It's okay, Cohen, it's fine. I've seen a lot worse!" And him, between more coughing and more blood, wondering what Summer could possibly be referring to, until the nurses started to kick Summer out of the room and she protested "But I'm a candy striper; I can help."
"Oh right," Seth thought. "She's a candy striper."
But then Summer was gone, and while he was wondering where him projectiling blood all over her ranked in terms of her disgusting hospital experiences and just what that would do to their sex life, there were hands all over him, and he was too weak and too terrified to protest or to insist that he could could do it himself, because, to his continued horror and humiliation, he couldn't do any of it himself.
They were stripping off his clothes and shoving them in a biohazard bag and moving his limp body this way and that as they managed to change his sheets and maneuver him into a dreaded hospital gown. And although the nurses changing his clothes and wiping his body down were brusque and professional and didn't act scandalized when they tugged down his bloody pajama pants and there was his junk, just hanging out for all the world to see, it didn't mean that Seth didn't feel thoroughly scandalized and thoroughly humiliated and thoroughly like this was just the latest in a long line of stab wounds that made him want to skip the carbonite and head straight to pencil-diving into Sarlacc the pit monster's mouth, just calling it a day on the whole 'living' thing.
But the nurses had continued their brusque and professional thing, asking if he wanted them to call his parents. Weakly, he offered that he thought his dad was coming by later anyway, but the nicest nurse told him they'd have someone call them anyway, that they liked to give parents a heads-up on what they'd be walking into in situations like that.
He wanted to ask them to ask his mom to come too, but he couldn't quite get the request out of his mouth, self-conscious as he was that he was sixteen years old and asking for his mom, and afraid as he was that maybe she wouldn't come, even if he asked, and this was probably the exact wrong moment to find out that she wouldn't come even if he asked.
When the excitement had died down a little, and after Dr. Penner had given him a jargon-laden explanation for what was happening to him that he could only somewhat follow, Seth thought about staggering over to his dresser so he could change into his own clothes and he thought about summoning a nurse to ask if he could get his t-shirt back, because, biohazard or not, Summer had given it to him, but he didn't have the energy for any of that, so he did the only thing he had the energy to do and curled up his limp pathetic body in its ugly misshapen hospital gown on his stupid Cancer Kid bed to wait for whatever configuration of his parents would come to be with him.