“What’s that?”
“Huh? What’s what?”
“That mark on your foot, what is it?”
“Oh… that’s nothing.”
* * *
Beep, beep, beep, beep.
Where am I? What happened? I don’t even know where I am, I can’t remember anything. I can recall the words
“Count backwards from 10” and I remember counting down,
“10-9-8-7-6—” And then memory stops. This is life after the number six. Laying in this bed surrounded by Beep, beep, beep.
I open my eyes slowly, afraid to see where I am. One eye open, then the other. I’m shocked by the undefined, blur of a world that surrounds me. From the back of my foggy brain I retrieve the memory of removing my contacts not too long ago. It’s hard for me to keep hold of the memories as they come back to me. The faces of doctoring dancing across the stage of my mind. They make brief appearances before once again disappearing behind the dark curtain, and beyond my reach.
The sheets are rough against my skin. Sterile, crisp, white—hospital bed sheets. I want to roll over but my left foot seems so heavy I’m not sure if I can move it. I gaze down in its general direction, straining and squinting my eyes to try to create a clear image. I can tell it is big, maybe even wrapped in something. I just..can’t..see.. And the smell—the sharp bite of the antiseptics singes my nostrils; so clean that it hurts. I can focus no longer, my thoughts pinballing off of the inside of my skull. I close my eyes once more and succumb to the allure of dreamland.
* * *
“Let’s run,” Sam says through her smiling lips.
“Now? But it’s cold out,” I whine. I push the curtain away from the window and lay my palm on its icy surface. A shiver rolls up my arm and down my spine. She rolls her eyes at me.
“You got your stitches out, right?” she says, raising her eyebrows.
“Yeah…” I let my voice trail off as I looked down at my left foot. My dressy black flats expose the column of tan band aids and surgical tape covering the left side.
“Then we should celebrate. Our moms wanted us to bring the Grubers these cookies anyway. We’ll run there, drop off the cookies and run back. It’ll only be cold for a little while.” She says, grabbing our coats from the closet. She tosses my puffy gray coat at me and shrugs into her itchy black jacket. “Be back in a sec,” she says before she dances into the kitchen to retrieve the plastic containers of holiday themed cookies.
Still clutching my coat in my hands I kneel down, looking closer at my foot. With my index finger I smooth down the curled corner of a band aid, once again flattening it against the taught surface of my skin. I’m not sure if I’m ready to run, my skin is still stretched tight—pulling when I walk. I rub my finger from my pinky toe to the base of the messy band aid line, back and forth; ever aware of the fleshy, raw scar underneath. But maybe I do have something to celebrate. The scar is small and it will heal and for now I am healthy.
I stand back up and pull on my jacket as Sam arrives back from her kitchen mission. The plastic containers stacked high on one another teeter dangerously in her grasp. I grab the top two from her and raise them to my nose. The tickle of cinnamon makes my nostrils twitch. “Snickerdoodles?”
“Don’t worry I stole us a few,” she puts her hand to her mouth and whispers “those b****es weren’t gonna leave us any.”
“Hey, we made the cookies so we deserve to at least get some of them” I say in agreement.
“Exactly. Ready to roll?” She places her fingers on the door knob in anticipation.
“I think so,” I tell her, nodding.
“And….go!” She whips the door open and flies over the threshold, leaping down the brick steps and across the walkway. I close the door behind me and chase after her, hugging the containers to my chest. At first I wince as my left foot hits the bricks, the skin pulling as push off the ground, but I am soon distracted by the cold temperature and the whipping of my hair across my face. When I catch up we run side by side, speeding down the steep slope of the front yard. The grass is softer under my feet and icy cold against my skin. I laugh out of the sheer idiocy of running with cookies to our neighbor’s house in 35 degree weather.
The air is thin and sharp, slicing my throat and tightening my lungs. I know my feet are pounding against the ground because I can hear the constant thud, thud, thud but I can no longer feel their attachment to the rest of my body. I look over at Sam and her long chestnut hair is whirling around her like a horse’s mane. Her hazel eyes tearing in the frigid wind and burning with the setting of the sun. We continue running; down the sidewalk, across the pavement. Just running. And I forget for a while about the scar on my foot.
* * *
The doctor plucks a miniature marker from a cup on the counter.
“Now, we are going to have to take a larger sample than you had taken in your last surgery. Just to make sure we get everything.” He chirps while removing the cap of the marker.
“So…this means the scar is going to be even bigger right?” I say, staring straight forward. There’s one of those black and white photographs of two little children in an ice cream parlor, drinking one milkshake with two straws.
“Yes unfortunately. More like this.” He draws a dotted line starting at the base of my left pinky toe. I don’t want to watch him draw where he intends to slice my foot and so I stare intently at the photograph on the wall—I can feel the cool tickle of the marker against my skin The little boy is wearing a little bow tie and the little girl has a head band with a flower in her hair. “There we are. That isn’t so bad is it?” The line curves outward from my pinky toe sloping down and growing wider until it reaches the gap between my big toe and my second toe. There it curves downward, sloping back toward the left side. It dips two or three inches below my current scar, bulbs out a little to the left until finally connecting with the original line at the base of my pinky toe.
“Kelsey, doctor Whitman knows what he’s doing. I know that might look like a big area but it’ll be okay.” My dad says. I can hear his lips part into a smile as he pats me on the shoulder.
I cringe at the sudden metallic taste in my mouth and realize I’ve been biting the inside of my cheek. I don’t respond but instead I return my gaze to the happy children in the photograph. And I pretend I’m the little girl with the little flower headband. And the purple dashes don’t exist.
* * *
“And we have to do it..?” I ask, smoothing my surgical gown over my thighs.
“Yes. This is the only way to make sure that the cancer hasn’t spread. And if it has, this is the only way to know which lymph nodes to remove,” the doctor grumbles, pushing her glasses back up her beak of a nose.
“How many will there be?” I ask before biting the nail of my right thumb.
“Three. They will go by quickly.” She assures me. I look left at my parents. I can tell my mother is trying not to cry, her blue eyes aren’t bloodshot but her red nose gives her away. My dad puts his arm around her and smiles at me, the skin around his eyes crinkling.
“Okay, then I guess we should get going” I nod as I say it to emphasize that I’m ready even though I don’t feel ready at all. I don’t think I’d ever be ready for radioactive shots.
“It will feel like a bee sting and then a burn” She positions herself at the end of the table near my left foot. “It’s better not to look” I turn my attention to the monitor next to me that shows the image of my leg in black and white. It reminds me of the images produced by an X-ray. “Three..” I wonder what produces an image like that. “Two…” My mind is racing, millions of questions colliding with one another. I wonder if this will hurt. “One.”
There is a sharp pinch. She was right; it’s similar to a bee sting. And then I am overwhelmed with the feeling of fire. I gasp and whip my head around to make sure the doctor didn’t accidently light me on fire. There’s only a needle wedged deep into my skin.
I am burning. I hear someone screaming—it takes a while to realize it’s me. I don’t know where to look and so I shake my head wildly trying to find something else to focus on. Finally I meet the horrified gazes of my parents.
“It’s going to be okay.” My dad mouths to me. But the pain seems endless and I see no end. I look at the monitor, still showing my leg’s image. I can see a bright, white line creeping up to my shin from my ankle.
“Alright, that was the first one. Only two more to go.” The doctor chirps, sounding pleased. “I’ll start the next one in about a minute or so.” I don’t look at her as she talks. I don’t watch her rise from the chair and retreat to the back of the room to retrieve another needle. I just continue to stare at the screen’s image; now blurry through the cloudy film of tears in my eyes. The bright white line continues it’s sluggish crawl up from my ankle to my calf, seeming to burn through my flesh as it goes. “Okay Kelsey, it’s time for the next one.” I feel disconnected from the rest of my body, as though the rest of me is dead and only my foot remains alive.
The countdown begins again but I do not hear it, because it seems the pain has reached my ears. And once again there is an explosion; the surge of a wave crashing across a stone jetty. I’m gripping the fabric of my hospital gown so hard my knuckles have gone white.
I know that a third injection takes place—but of it, I have no memory.
* * *
I sit just on the edge of my bed with both of my bare feet resting on frigid hardwood floor and my head tilted down. I know that I should stop staring but I cannot seem to tear my eyes away. The first time, the stitches had laid flat in a precise, straight line—my foot tied in clean black ribbon like a Christmas present. Now, the stitches seem to barely hold my patchwork of skin together; weaving in and out of my flesh in a long, crooked line. What’s left of my skin is a dull red; raw and sensitive. In my mind I see the image of two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that don’t quite fit together correctly.
* * *
“What’s that?” questions a petite voice at my shoulder. Soft and light, like the twinkling of wind chimes.
“Huh? What’s what?” I look away from the silver strap of my heel I have been trying so desperately to connect. Harlowe, my new cousin in law, is standing beside me, confusion painted openly on her oval face. She tilts her head, golden curls cascading across her forehead while her tiny hands fidget with skirt of her white “flower girl” dress. Lifting her arm she points down at the faded pink scar on my foot.
“That mark on your foot, what is it?” She’s eye level with me while I’m kneeling. Her little sapphire eyes staring deep into mine. Do I tell her the truth? Relay to her the graphic details of my surgeries and radioactive injections and stitches?
“Oh…that’s nothing.” I smile at her reassuringly but she raises her little eyebrows unconvinced. I lean closer to her and whisper “Four years ago a bad thing happened but everything is better now.” She grabs my shoulder with one of her tiny hands.
“Everything is better now?”
“Everything is better.”
“Huh? What’s what?”
“That mark on your foot, what is it?”
“Oh… that’s nothing.”
* * *
Beep, beep, beep, beep.
Where am I? What happened? I don’t even know where I am, I can’t remember anything. I can recall the words
“Count backwards from 10” and I remember counting down,
“10-9-8-7-6—” And then memory stops. This is life after the number six. Laying in this bed surrounded by Beep, beep, beep.
I open my eyes slowly, afraid to see where I am. One eye open, then the other. I’m shocked by the undefined, blur of a world that surrounds me. From the back of my foggy brain I retrieve the memory of removing my contacts not too long ago. It’s hard for me to keep hold of the memories as they come back to me. The faces of doctoring dancing across the stage of my mind. They make brief appearances before once again disappearing behind the dark curtain, and beyond my reach.
The sheets are rough against my skin. Sterile, crisp, white—hospital bed sheets. I want to roll over but my left foot seems so heavy I’m not sure if I can move it. I gaze down in its general direction, straining and squinting my eyes to try to create a clear image. I can tell it is big, maybe even wrapped in something. I just..can’t..see.. And the smell—the sharp bite of the antiseptics singes my nostrils; so clean that it hurts. I can focus no longer, my thoughts pinballing off of the inside of my skull. I close my eyes once more and succumb to the allure of dreamland.
* * *
“Let’s run,” Sam says through her smiling lips.
“Now? But it’s cold out,” I whine. I push the curtain away from the window and lay my palm on its icy surface. A shiver rolls up my arm and down my spine. She rolls her eyes at me.
“You got your stitches out, right?” she says, raising her eyebrows.
“Yeah…” I let my voice trail off as I looked down at my left foot. My dressy black flats expose the column of tan band aids and surgical tape covering the left side.
“Then we should celebrate. Our moms wanted us to bring the Grubers these cookies anyway. We’ll run there, drop off the cookies and run back. It’ll only be cold for a little while.” She says, grabbing our coats from the closet. She tosses my puffy gray coat at me and shrugs into her itchy black jacket. “Be back in a sec,” she says before she dances into the kitchen to retrieve the plastic containers of holiday themed cookies.
Still clutching my coat in my hands I kneel down, looking closer at my foot. With my index finger I smooth down the curled corner of a band aid, once again flattening it against the taught surface of my skin. I’m not sure if I’m ready to run, my skin is still stretched tight—pulling when I walk. I rub my finger from my pinky toe to the base of the messy band aid line, back and forth; ever aware of the fleshy, raw scar underneath. But maybe I do have something to celebrate. The scar is small and it will heal and for now I am healthy.
I stand back up and pull on my jacket as Sam arrives back from her kitchen mission. The plastic containers stacked high on one another teeter dangerously in her grasp. I grab the top two from her and raise them to my nose. The tickle of cinnamon makes my nostrils twitch. “Snickerdoodles?”
“Don’t worry I stole us a few,” she puts her hand to her mouth and whispers “those b****es weren’t gonna leave us any.”
“Hey, we made the cookies so we deserve to at least get some of them” I say in agreement.
“Exactly. Ready to roll?” She places her fingers on the door knob in anticipation.
“I think so,” I tell her, nodding.
“And….go!” She whips the door open and flies over the threshold, leaping down the brick steps and across the walkway. I close the door behind me and chase after her, hugging the containers to my chest. At first I wince as my left foot hits the bricks, the skin pulling as push off the ground, but I am soon distracted by the cold temperature and the whipping of my hair across my face. When I catch up we run side by side, speeding down the steep slope of the front yard. The grass is softer under my feet and icy cold against my skin. I laugh out of the sheer idiocy of running with cookies to our neighbor’s house in 35 degree weather.
The air is thin and sharp, slicing my throat and tightening my lungs. I know my feet are pounding against the ground because I can hear the constant thud, thud, thud but I can no longer feel their attachment to the rest of my body. I look over at Sam and her long chestnut hair is whirling around her like a horse’s mane. Her hazel eyes tearing in the frigid wind and burning with the setting of the sun. We continue running; down the sidewalk, across the pavement. Just running. And I forget for a while about the scar on my foot.
* * *
The doctor plucks a miniature marker from a cup on the counter.
“Now, we are going to have to take a larger sample than you had taken in your last surgery. Just to make sure we get everything.” He chirps while removing the cap of the marker.
“So…this means the scar is going to be even bigger right?” I say, staring straight forward. There’s one of those black and white photographs of two little children in an ice cream parlor, drinking one milkshake with two straws.
“Yes unfortunately. More like this.” He draws a dotted line starting at the base of my left pinky toe. I don’t want to watch him draw where he intends to slice my foot and so I stare intently at the photograph on the wall—I can feel the cool tickle of the marker against my skin The little boy is wearing a little bow tie and the little girl has a head band with a flower in her hair. “There we are. That isn’t so bad is it?” The line curves outward from my pinky toe sloping down and growing wider until it reaches the gap between my big toe and my second toe. There it curves downward, sloping back toward the left side. It dips two or three inches below my current scar, bulbs out a little to the left until finally connecting with the original line at the base of my pinky toe.
“Kelsey, doctor Whitman knows what he’s doing. I know that might look like a big area but it’ll be okay.” My dad says. I can hear his lips part into a smile as he pats me on the shoulder.
I cringe at the sudden metallic taste in my mouth and realize I’ve been biting the inside of my cheek. I don’t respond but instead I return my gaze to the happy children in the photograph. And I pretend I’m the little girl with the little flower headband. And the purple dashes don’t exist.
* * *
“And we have to do it..?” I ask, smoothing my surgical gown over my thighs.
“Yes. This is the only way to make sure that the cancer hasn’t spread. And if it has, this is the only way to know which lymph nodes to remove,” the doctor grumbles, pushing her glasses back up her beak of a nose.
“How many will there be?” I ask before biting the nail of my right thumb.
“Three. They will go by quickly.” She assures me. I look left at my parents. I can tell my mother is trying not to cry, her blue eyes aren’t bloodshot but her red nose gives her away. My dad puts his arm around her and smiles at me, the skin around his eyes crinkling.
“Okay, then I guess we should get going” I nod as I say it to emphasize that I’m ready even though I don’t feel ready at all. I don’t think I’d ever be ready for radioactive shots.
“It will feel like a bee sting and then a burn” She positions herself at the end of the table near my left foot. “It’s better not to look” I turn my attention to the monitor next to me that shows the image of my leg in black and white. It reminds me of the images produced by an X-ray. “Three..” I wonder what produces an image like that. “Two…” My mind is racing, millions of questions colliding with one another. I wonder if this will hurt. “One.”
There is a sharp pinch. She was right; it’s similar to a bee sting. And then I am overwhelmed with the feeling of fire. I gasp and whip my head around to make sure the doctor didn’t accidently light me on fire. There’s only a needle wedged deep into my skin.
I am burning. I hear someone screaming—it takes a while to realize it’s me. I don’t know where to look and so I shake my head wildly trying to find something else to focus on. Finally I meet the horrified gazes of my parents.
“It’s going to be okay.” My dad mouths to me. But the pain seems endless and I see no end. I look at the monitor, still showing my leg’s image. I can see a bright, white line creeping up to my shin from my ankle.
“Alright, that was the first one. Only two more to go.” The doctor chirps, sounding pleased. “I’ll start the next one in about a minute or so.” I don’t look at her as she talks. I don’t watch her rise from the chair and retreat to the back of the room to retrieve another needle. I just continue to stare at the screen’s image; now blurry through the cloudy film of tears in my eyes. The bright white line continues it’s sluggish crawl up from my ankle to my calf, seeming to burn through my flesh as it goes. “Okay Kelsey, it’s time for the next one.” I feel disconnected from the rest of my body, as though the rest of me is dead and only my foot remains alive.
The countdown begins again but I do not hear it, because it seems the pain has reached my ears. And once again there is an explosion; the surge of a wave crashing across a stone jetty. I’m gripping the fabric of my hospital gown so hard my knuckles have gone white.
I know that a third injection takes place—but of it, I have no memory.
* * *
I sit just on the edge of my bed with both of my bare feet resting on frigid hardwood floor and my head tilted down. I know that I should stop staring but I cannot seem to tear my eyes away. The first time, the stitches had laid flat in a precise, straight line—my foot tied in clean black ribbon like a Christmas present. Now, the stitches seem to barely hold my patchwork of skin together; weaving in and out of my flesh in a long, crooked line. What’s left of my skin is a dull red; raw and sensitive. In my mind I see the image of two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that don’t quite fit together correctly.
* * *
“What’s that?” questions a petite voice at my shoulder. Soft and light, like the twinkling of wind chimes.
“Huh? What’s what?” I look away from the silver strap of my heel I have been trying so desperately to connect. Harlowe, my new cousin in law, is standing beside me, confusion painted openly on her oval face. She tilts her head, golden curls cascading across her forehead while her tiny hands fidget with skirt of her white “flower girl” dress. Lifting her arm she points down at the faded pink scar on my foot.
“That mark on your foot, what is it?” She’s eye level with me while I’m kneeling. Her little sapphire eyes staring deep into mine. Do I tell her the truth? Relay to her the graphic details of my surgeries and radioactive injections and stitches?
“Oh…that’s nothing.” I smile at her reassuringly but she raises her little eyebrows unconvinced. I lean closer to her and whisper “Four years ago a bad thing happened but everything is better now.” She grabs my shoulder with one of her tiny hands.
“Everything is better now?”
“Everything is better.”
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