Chapter Twelve: First Round

Jordan's pov 

The infusion center had recliners instead of hospital beds, which somebody had probably decided made the whole thing feel less clinical, and my mom sat in hers with a blanket over her legs and an IV line taped into the back of her hand, cracking jokes at the nurse about how the chairs were nicer than anything in our actual living room.

"I could get used to this," she said. "Might just move in."

"Don't even joke," I said, and she reached over and patted my knee like I was the one who needed comforting, which, honestly, in that moment, I probably did.

The bag above her chair dripped slow and steady, and I sat there watching it for longer than was probably normal, like staring at it hard enough might make it work faster or better or somehow less than what it actually was, poison measured out carefully enough not to kill her while it tried to kill something worse.

"You don't have to sit here staring at me the whole time," she said. "Go get a magazine or something. I'm not going anywhere."

"I want to be here."

"I know you do. Doesn't mean you have to make it your whole personality for the next four hours." She said it light, teasing, but I caught the real thing underneath it too, the part of her that didn't want me watching her like this, fragile, tethered to a bag of chemicals, because some part of my mother had always needed to be the strong one, even now, especially now.

I pulled the folder of paperwork out of my bag instead, mostly to give my hands something to do, and immediately regretted it, because sitting right on top was the letter from the insurance company I'd been putting off dealing with for three days.

"We regret to inform you that the requested treatment protocol has been partially denied pending further review."

Partially denied. I read that phrase about six times trying to make it mean something other than what it obviously meant, which was that somewhere between the diagnosis and the actual treatment, somebody sitting behind a desk with no idea what my mother's face looked like when she laughed had decided some percentage of this wasn't going to be covered.

"What's that," my mom said, watching my face.

"Nothing. Insurance stuff."

"Jordan."

"It's fine, I'll figure it out." I shoved the letter back in the folder, my jaw tight, doing math in my head that kept coming out worse every time I ran it. I'd turned down my spot at State back in the spring, deferred it, told myself I'd go the following year once things settled, except things hadn't settled, they'd gotten so much heavier, and now I was picking up every shift the hardware store would give me on top of caregiving hours that never seemed to end, and none of it was going to be enough if that letter meant what I thought it meant.

"How much," she said, quieter now, the joking gone out of her voice entirely.

"Mom, don't worry about the money. That's not your job right now."

"It's absolutely my job. It's my treatment, it's my body, you don't get to carry that number around by yourself and pretend I won't notice you carrying it."

I didn't answer, because the number was bad enough that saying it out loud in a room full of recliners felt like it might actually break something.

That was when I heard my name, and looked up to find Priya standing near the entrance of the infusion center with a paper bag in one hand, scanning the room until she spotted us.

"Hey." She came over, a little awkward, clearly unsure of the etiquette of showing up somewhere like this. "Mia mentioned you were starting treatment today, and I know this is probably weird, us barely knowing each other, but I made too much food last night and figured somebody should actually eat it instead of it going bad in my fridge."

She held out the bag. It smelled like something homemade, garlic and rosemary, and my mom's face lit up in a way I hadn't seen since before the diagnosis.

"Are those your grandmother's empanadas," my mom said, peering into the bag like a kid at Christmas. "Mia mentioned you make these."

"Guilty. My abuela would disown me if I let the recipe die with her."

"Sit down, sit down, you can't just drop off food and run, that's not how this works." My mom patted the empty chair on her other side, and Priya glanced at me for permission I hadn't realized I was supposed to give, and something in my chest loosened at the easy way she folded herself into the chair like she belonged there.

"This is really kind of you," I said. "You didn't have to."

"I wanted to. Mia's been a wreck worrying about your mom, and honestly I think she needed to feel like she was doing something, even if it's just sending me with empanadas instead of coming herself." She glanced toward the IV bag, then back at me, careful. "How's the treatment going so far?"

"First round. Ask me again in four hours."

"He's been staring at the bag like it owes him money," my mom said, already unwrapping an empanada despite the nurse's earlier warning about nausea, because my mother had never once in her life let medical advice get between her and good food. "Somebody needs to distract him before he wears a hole in the floor pacing."

"I don't pace."

"You absolutely pace."

Priya laughed, and it was a good laugh, easy and real, and for the first time in three days I felt something in my chest unclench slightly, just enough to breathe around the insurance letter still sitting folded in my bag.

"So what do you do," I asked her, mostly to keep the conversation somewhere that wasn't the treatment or the money. "Besides making empanadas that could apparently distract a grown man from an existential crisis."

"I'm building a candle business, actually. Small stuff right now, farmers market, some online orders. I do part time classes around it, figured full time college could wait while I actually try to build something for myself instead of just following whatever the default path was supposed to be."

"That's brave."

"That's terrifying, mostly. But yeah, brave too, I guess." She shrugged, easy, unbothered, and something about the way she talked about it, no apology in it, no need to justify the choice to anyone, struck me as exactly the kind of quiet confidence I hadn't been around in longer than I could remember, everyone else in my life currently drowning in the same crisis I was.

My mom, watching the two of us with an expression I recognized immediately and chose to ignore completely, reached for a second empanada.

"You two should exchange numbers," she said, entirely too casually. "In case Jordan needs more distracting during round two."

"Mom."

"What? I'm just saying. A dying woman's allowed a little matchmaking, it's basically in the handbook."

"You are not dying," I said, sharper than I meant to, and the room went quiet for a beat too long, the joke landing somewhere neither of us had actually meant for it to land.

"Not today," my mom said finally, softer now, patting my hand. "Not today."

Priya reached into her bag and pulled out a pen, scribbled something on the corner of a napkin, and slid it across to me without any of the awkwardness I would have expected given everything currently happening in the room.

"For emergencies," she said. "Or empanadas. Whichever comes up first."

I looked down at the number in her handwriting, then back up at her, and for the first time in three days, sitting in a recliner watching poison drip slowly into my mother's veins, I felt something that wasn't entirely dread.