Julie Murphy - Side Effects May Vary

I shut out Alice’s wheezing breaths and pretended that she was 98.6 degrees and healthy. I watched the movie all the way through the end of the credits and well on into the copyright info. Finally, the TV stereo began to buzz and I knew it was time to go home. Normally, I would have turned off the TV and snuck out of her room. Instead, I sat there next to her in her little twin bed. Her hipbones protruded through the blanket while her chest rose and fell with each jagged breath. Medicine on her nightstand was stacked high like a fortified city. The huge box of tissues too. For a little while Alice was getting these insane nosebleeds, and she would sit around for hours with a tissue stuffed up each nostril. But those had petered out and tonight she was just congested, I guessed. Or maybe this was the next step down in her declining health.

I closed my eyes and we were old and wrinkly, sitting side by side, watching reruns of Wheel of Fortune or something.

Shadows passed beneath her bedroom door. Alice’s mom, Bernie (short for Bernice), walked down the hallway, talking on the phone in a hushed voice. “It’s not a good time.” Pause. “She’s already asleep, Mom.” Pause. “Maybe tomorrow.”

Bernie’s family lived on the other side of the country, and as far as I knew, Bernie didn’t mind. She hung up the phone and a few minutes later she and Alice’s dad, Martin, flicked the hallway lights on and off, talking loudly about going to bed. A little show to let me know it was time to go home even though they would never come in and actually tell me to leave.

I swung my feet off the bed and tied the dirty laces on my sneakers. I got up and immediately sat back down and did something I had never done before. I woke up Alice to say good-bye because these bad nights reminded me that we only had so many nights left. When I squeezed her bony shoulder, she moaned in protest. Her lips were dry and cracked, the sound barely escaping her mouth. I dipped my head down next to her ear, my cheek pressed against her bare skull.

“Alice,” I breathed. The buzzing TV cast a blue light over her. “Alice, don’t leave, okay? I’ll come here every day, just don’t leave.” A single tear cut a path down my cheek, and I wiped it away before it felt real. This seemed like good-bye, not good night.

But then she opened her eyes. “Hi.”

I tried to smile.

“That movie sucked.”

I laughed. “Yeah. It sort of did.”

Her eyes crinkled a little and her lips curved upward, like she’d remembered something funny from a time that wasn’t now. “I’ll miss you most, Harvey.” She sat up on her elbows. “I don’t know what it will feel like after, but I know I’ll miss you most.”

We’d gone through so much shit together, but this was the first time she’d ever told me that I was important. And that I mattered to her. I wanted this. I wanted to keep it forever. But you don’t ever get what you want how you want it.

I cleared my throat. “Alice, I—”

“Don’t.” She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Save that for someone who’s not about to bite it.”

I nodded. I loved Alice. It was so obvious that I didn’t even need to say so out loud. I stood and opened her bedroom door.

“Harvey,” she said.

I turned.

“Me too.”

Before I could stop myself, I reached for my hair, my fingers smoothing over my naked scalp. Gone, it was all gone. Even now, over a year later, it still came as a shock. I did this several times a day, like clockwork. It was a phantom limb, my hair.

My oncologist for the last year or so, Dr. Meredith, bustled through his office door. Noise from the hallway bled through for a moment before the door shut behind him, sealing us in. My mom drummed her fingers on her leg, a nervous habit. Dad reached over and took her hand in his, absorbing her tension.

Dr. Meredith was a large, robust man, and jolly too, with rosy cheeks and this perpetual baby-powder smell. I always thought he would be better suited as a Santa Claus at the Green Oaks Mall rather than a doctor charged with the duty of delivering earth-shattering news. Maybe his appearance was supposed to soften the blow. The bad news is you have cancer. The good news is Santa Claus is your doctor. Peppermint stick for your trouble?

I almost laughed out loud, remembering that stupid Christmas movie I’d watched with Harvey last night. Well, he watched it and I slept through it. But that wasn’t all that happened. I always knew how he felt about me, and I finally told him that I felt the same. Telling him that felt like my final task—well, almost. There was one item left on my list. From where I stood, it was likely to remain my only unfinished business.

My dad spoke up first. “What is it, Dr. Meredith?” Then, a little quieter, almost to himself, he said, “I thought we’d heard the worst of it.”

Dr. Meredith squeezed behind his desk, sweat gathering at his brow, huffing between labored breaths. My parents occupied the two chairs directly in front of his desk. I sat in the middle of the small loveseat in the corner of the office, stacks of folders and papers sat on either side of me. Dr. Meredith had been my specialist for over a year and neither of these stacks had moved an inch. The couch was stiff and, I suspected, rarely used. It was one of those deceiving couches that looked like it should be much more comfortable than it really was. Typical doctor’s office furniture, something I was all too familiar with.

Dr. Meredith looked at me directly while I stretched my long legs out in front of me, pointing my toes hard, like I would in my pointe shoes. (Now stuffed away in the back of my closet along with some old recital costumes.) Long out of practice, the backs of my calves stung.

All the news Dr. Meredith had given us has been delivered to my parents. I had always been in the room, but not really , not to them. It must have been easier for him to say those things to my mom and dad. It removed me from the situation. But whatever it was he had to say this time, it was me he wanted to say it to. He’d called us early this morning and told us we needed to come in as soon as possible. In my experience, phone calls made outside of office hours never led to anything good.

Flipping through my charts, Dr. Meredith said, “I see your temperature’s a little high.”

Instinctively, my hand flew to my forehead. Still clammy, but not as bad as last night when Harvey had come over. I’d gotten so used to being ill that now I had trouble telling the difference between being sick and being Sick.

My dad cleared his throat, loudly.

Dr. Meredith took a deep breath. “Alice.” His brown eyes found mine, and it was only me and him. He exhaled. “You’re in remission.”

For a moment, it was quiet and everything felt okay. But then my mother began to sob, her entire body shaking in response. It was a horrible noise that made the room feel too small. Dad coughed, trying to bite back his tears. He pinched the bridge of his nose, like his fingers might absorb his tears, but instead they rolled down his hand and into the cuff of his jacket.

Oh shit .

This, I did not expect. This was not on my list.

My eyelids hung heavy from staying too late at Alice’s last night, again. I jogged down Aisle 9 (soup, canned vegetables, and dressing) toward the employee break room, with the Christmas Muzak crackling over the speakers. Pushing the door open with my back, I called to Dennis as he restocked the prepackaged lunchmeats. “I’m out early, man. Heading to Alice’s. We’re watching your favorite, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou !” One of Dennis’s life goals was not to be like Bill Murray, but to be Bill Murray.