Chandler's Wednesday

Noelle had the system down. Boba tea from the place on Colfax, both orders memorized. Brown sugar milk tea light ice for me and whatever seasonal thing she’d been rotating through since October. She knew which chair was mine and which outlet the IV machine needed. She’d figured out that the third chair from the window got a draft and steered me away from it without saying anything. Six weeks of Wednesdays and she had it mapped.I was deep into Cycle 6 when the door opened and it wasn’t Hanna.Chandler stood in the doorway in his hoodie, backpack over one shoulder, looking at the room the way he looked at most things, like he’d already decided. His eyes found me. He didn’t wave or make a face or do anything that required a response. He just came in.Noelle looked up from her phone. Then at me. Then back at Chandler. She lifted her chin in that way she had, the one that covered everything, and he nodded back, and that was the whole transaction.He pulled a chair from the wall and set it

All Of It

Wednesday morning there were more clumps on my pillow than the morning before. I lay there for a minute looking at them, then got up and video-called Chandler.He answered on the second ring, still in his room, faux hawk not yet done, and I didn’t say anything for a second and neither did he. He looked at my face on his screen and said, “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”He was there before I’d finished putting the clippers on the counter.I’d gotten the clippers from under the bathroom sink, the ones Dad used for his edges, and I’d set them on the counter and then stood there not touching them until I heard the front door. Chandler came upstairs. I was sitting on the bathroom floor with my back against the tub, the same position I’d been in the last time he’d found me here, which felt like something but I wasn’t going to name it.He looked at the clippers. Then at me.“You sure,” he said.“I’m losing it anyway.”He didn’t say anything else. He picked up the clippers, and I sat on the

Lylah

January had a specific quality that December didn’t. December was loud and full of things happening. January was what was left after. Cycle 7 VDC, first Wednesday back, and the hospital felt the same as it always did: the antiseptic smell, the low murmur of machines, Hanna’s rotation arriving at predictable intervals. Consistent. None of it caring what month it was.Lylah was already in her chair when we got there.She’d lost more weight since before the break. The lilac wig was gone, replaced by a soft grey beanie that sat low on her forehead, and her book was open in her lap but she wasn’t reading it. She was looking at the window. When I came in she turned and did the small nod she always did, and I did it back, and that was the whole transaction.Emory had come because I’d asked and he didn’t like hospitals and had said so directly and then come anyway, which was its own kind of thing. He’d been quiet in the car over and was sitting now in the chair beside mine with his jacket sti

Things Lylah Told Me

Grief didn’t compress the way I’d expected it to. I’d thought it would arrive all at once and then diminish, the way a fever did, breaking cleanly and leaving you on the other side. Instead it came in layers, some days thin and close to the surface, some days heavy in a way that had nothing to do with the treatment fatigue and everything to do with the silence that Wednesday had now.The funeral had been Tuesday. A church in Aurora I’d never been to, full of people who had known Lylah longer and better. Her older sister spoke. She had Lylah’s same direct way of looking at a room. Two little brothers in the front row who were too young to be sitting that still. I sat in the back with Noelle, her sapphire eyes red-rimmed the whole service, and didn’t cry until the drive home, which was when it was finally private enough.I went back to Happy Paws on Thursday. Not because I was ready. Because Cove needed the session and nobody else knew his training history the way I did.Cove was a three

The Gala

The thing about a room full of people who understood was that you didn’t have to explain yourself. That was the whole thing. You could just be in it.The ballroom was on the fourteenth floor of a hotel in downtown Denver, formal and polished in the way of things that had been planned for a long time: round tables with white linens, centerpieces that were tasteful and not too tall, a silent auction along the east wall with items that had been donated by people who wanted to do something and didn’t know what else to do. The foundation had been running this gala for eleven years. It showed in the way the evening moved, unhurried and organized, like a machine that had learned its own rhythm.I was in a deep navy midi dress that Noelle had approved in a single look, structured through the bodice and soft everywhere else, and I’d worn the gold earrings from homecoming because they were the right weight and didn’t pull. Cycle 8 meant cumulative tired, not just today tired, the kind that live

Okay

The text took three drafts.Not because I didn’t know what I wanted to say. I’d known since the Suburban ride home, the phone in my bag and the city going past and Stetson’s shoulder warm against mine. I’d known it the way I knew things that had been true for a while before I let myself name them. The three drafts were about finding the version that didn’t make it bigger than it was.Monday afternoon. Cycle 9 started Wednesday. It had been snowing since morning, the slow February kind that stuck, and I was on my bed with Bernard across my feet, and I typed the third version and sent it before I could make a fourth.I think we should talk. Not over text if that’s okay.He called within two minutes. That was Evan, always prompt, always prepared. I sat up and Bernard relocated, indignant, and I answered.He was kind about it and so was I and neither of us performed anything, which was maybe the best version of how this could go. He said he’d sensed it. I said I had too, for a while. He s