The hospital coffee in my hand had gone cold an hour ago, but I kept holding it as if it were the only solid thing left in my life.
Six months had passed since the word “leukemia” walked into our living room and refused to leave. My daughter, Carol, was 17, and I was a single mom who’d learned to smile through things no smile should have to cover.
I kept holding it as if it were the only solid thing left.
***
My daughter used to cut dresses from magazines and tape them to her bedroom mirror.
“Mom, promise you’ll do my hair that night,” she’d say, even back when she was in the fifth grade.
“I promise, baby. I’ll do your hair for every prom you ever have.”
Now her hair was gone, and the magazine pictures were still taped to the mirror at home, waiting.
I sat by her hospital bed that afternoon, watching her doze.
“I promise, baby.”
The latest round of chemo had hollowed Carol out in a way the others hadn’t.
Her cheekbones looked sharper, and her hands looked smaller.
On the rolling tray beside her sat a leather journal I’d bought her in February. She wrote in it every day now. Letters, too, were carefully folded in thirds and addressed in her looping handwriting to names I recognized from her class.
When I leaned over to fluff her pillow, my daughter stirred and quickly slid the journal under her blanket.
Her hands looked smaller.
“Sorry, honey. Didn’t mean to startle you,” I quickly apologized.
“It’s fine, Mom.” She gave me her tired smile. “Just girl stuff.”
I nodded as if I understood. Teenagers needed their privacy, even sick ones. Especially sick ones, maybe.
Carol’s phone buzzed on the tray. The name Daryl lit up the screen before she turned it face down.
Daryl had been her best friend since middle school, the kind of boy who held doors open and remembered birthdays.
“He’s checking on you again?”
“He’s just being Daryl.”
I smiled and squeezed her foot through the blanket. “He’s a good one.”
“Didn’t mean to startle you.”
Carol’s eyes drifted to the window. Prom was four days away.
“Mom?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“Do you think I’ll get to go?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, of course. The doctors were optimistic, anything to fill the silence with hope. I’d decided that was my job. Hope was the one thing I could still hand her.
“Do you think I’ll get to go?”
“You’re going to that prom, my baby. One way or another,” I lied, giving her and myself false hope.
Carol looked at me for a long moment, and something passed behind her eyes that I couldn’t quite read. Then she nodded and reached for my hand.
My heart broke every time I watched her grow weaker after each round of chemotherapy.
That night, after she fell asleep, I noticed she’d tucked another folded letter into the back of her journal.
My heart broke every time I watched her.
***
Two days before prom, another round of chemotherapy made Carol feel even worse.
I drove her back to the hospital with shaking hands while she rested her cheek against the cool window. She didn’t say much; she didn’t have to.
My daughter was admitted for the night, then the next, then indefinitely.
“I won’t make it, will I, Mom?” Carol whispered from the bed.
I sat beside her and smoothed her thin hair back from her forehead.
