Chapter Seven: 3 to 4 Months

Jordan's pov 

The room they took me to wasn't an exam room. It was smaller than that, a few chairs arranged around a low table with a box of tissues sitting on it like furniture, and I understood before anyone said a single word that rooms like this existed for exactly one purpose, and it wasn't good news.

My mom was already in there. Still in the paper gown, a cardigan pulled over it now, sitting very straight in her chair the way she always sat when she wanted to look stronger than she felt. She looked up when I walked in and her face did something I'd never seen it do before, a kind of softening that was really just her trying to get ahead of my reaction before I'd even had one.

"Hey, baby," she said.

"Hey." I sat down next to her instead of across, close enough that our knees touched, and I reached over and took her hand without thinking about it, the way I'd done since I was small enough that her hand used to swallow mine whole instead of the other way around.

Dr. Osei sat across from us and opened the folder on her lap and didn't waste time getting to it, which I was grateful for later even though in the moment it felt like being hit by a car I never saw coming.

"The biopsy confirmed what we suspected on the imaging," she said. "It's cancer. Stage three, and it's already involved some of the surrounding lymph nodes, which is part of why we didn't catch it earlier. I'm so sorry."

The room didn't spin. I want to be clear about that, because I'd always heard people describe moments like this as the room spinning, and it didn't, it just went very still and very quiet, like all the sound had been sucked out through a straw, and I sat there staring at a folder full of paper that was apparently trying to tell me my mother might die.

"Okay," I said. My voice came out strange, flat, like it belonged to somebody standing slightly to the left of me. "Okay, so what's the plan. What do we do."

"We're going to start an aggressive treatment protocol as soon as possible. Chemotherapy first, to shrink what we're dealing with, and then we'll reassess surgical options after that."

"Okay. Good. That's good, that's a plan, we can work with a plan." I was talking too fast. I could hear myself talking too fast and I couldn't make myself slow down. "What's the timeline. How long is treatment, when do we start, what do I need to..."

"Jordan." My mom's hand tightened around mine.

"What's the survival rate," I said, because some part of me needed the actual number, the real one, not the soft rounded edges everyone kept trying to hand me. "Just tell me. What are we looking at."

Dr. Osei glanced at my mom, some silent question passing between them, and my mom gave the smallest nod I'd ever seen a person give.

"Without treatment, given how advanced it is, we'd typically be looking at three to four months," Dr. Osei said. "With treatment, we're hoping to buy significantly more time than that, and there's always a range, every case responds differently. I don't want you hearing three to four months as a hard number. I want you hearing that we are going to fight this as aggressively as your mother's body will allow."

Three to four months.

I heard the rest of what she said. I know I did, because later I could recall pieces of it, dosages and dates and the name of a treatment center two towns over that had a better track record with cases like this. But in that exact moment all I could hear was three to four months, looping, getting louder instead of quieter the more I tried to push past it.

"That's not enough time," I said.

"Jordan."

"That's not enough time, Mom, that's not, that's barely a semester, that's..." My voice cracked in half and I stopped, because if I kept going I was going to fall apart completely in a room with a box of tissues sitting there like it had been waiting for exactly this.

My mom pulled her hand out of mine and put both arms around me instead, right there in the little vinyl chairs, my head dropping onto her shoulder like I was eight years old again and not nineteen, and she held on tight and steady even though she was the one who'd just been handed a number like that, even though by every rule of fairness I should have been the one holding her up instead of the other way around.

"We're going to fight it," she said into my hair. "You hear me? We're going to fight it, and I am not going anywhere without one hell of an argument first."

I don't remember standing up, but somehow I was in the hallway a few minutes later, my back against the cool tile wall, my legs not entirely trustworthy under me. Dr. Osei had gone to get us some pamphlets and a schedule for the first treatment consult, and my mom was still inside, getting dressed, and I was alone in that hallway with nothing to do with my hands and a number sitting in my chest like a stone.

I called Eli before I even decided to.

He picked up on the first ring. "Hey, what's up."

"My mom has cancer." I hadn't planned to say it that bluntly. It just came out, flat, the same way it had in the room, because I didn't have a softer version of that sentence in me yet. "Stage three. They're saying three to four months if we don't treat it aggressively."

There was a beat of silence, and then I heard something on his end, keys, a door.

"Where are you," he said.

"St. Andrew's. Third floor. Eli, you don't have to..."

"I'm already in the car."

He didn't ask a single question after that. Didn't ask what kind of cancer or what the treatment plan was or whether I needed anything from the pharmacy on the way, he just said he was already in the car, and eighteen minutes later, I counted, because counting was something to do with my brain that wasn't spiraling, he came through the double doors at the end of the hallway at a near run, his jacket half on, his hair a mess like he hadn't stopped to look in a mirror before leaving the house.

"Hey." He grabbed me by both shoulders when he reached me, checking my face the way you'd check someone for injuries after a car crash. "Hey, I'm here. I'm here."

"You didn't have to drop everything."

"Shut up." He said it gently, which somehow made it land harder than if he'd been sharp about it. "Don't you dare apologize to me for calling. That's what I'm here for. That's what I've always been here for."

I felt something crack open in my chest, the thing I'd been holding together since that little room with the tissue box, and I didn't cry, not exactly, but my eyes burned and my breath came out shaky and Eli just stood there and let me have that without making it weird, without making it about anything except the fact that we'd been doing this for each other since we were seven years old, since the fort in his basement, since every scraped knee and failed test and heartbreak either of us had ever survived.

"Three to four months," I said. "That's what they told me, if we don't treat it."

"Okay." His jaw tightened, but his voice stayed steady, stayed solid, the exact tone he used to use on the field when a game was slipping away and somebody needed to hear that it wasn't over yet. "Okay. So we treat it. What do you need. Rides to appointments, somebody to sit with her when you can't, money if it comes down to that, I don't care what it is, you tell me and it's handled."

"Eli, I can't ask you for that."

"You're not asking. I'm offering." He pulled me into a hug then, quick and fierce, the kind two guys give each other that's over almost as soon as it starts, and when he pulled back he kept one hand gripping my shoulder, steady, grounding, like he could physically hold me together through the palm of his hand if he just held on hard enough.

"Whatever you need," he said, looking me dead in the eye like he meant it with everything he had, because he did, because that was Eli, all in or not at all, no half measures, not for the people he actually loved. "I'm not going anywhere."