“You okay?” Chema asks.
I nod. “I will be.”
Another car door opens and shuts. “Chema!” Rory calls when we are almost at the door. Chema turns, so we both face Rory.
“Take care of her for me, okay?”
Chema nods and squeezes me a bit in his arms. “Always have. Always will.”
Rory nods and gets back in his car.
Chema sets me down on the bed, and I curl around my pillow, letting the sob out. “What happened?” Chema asks.
“We broke it off,” I admit, the words like hot daggers searing my throat.
“Why? It looked like things were going so well.” The bed shifts as Chema sits next to me. I stay facing away from him because I don’t want him to see me cry.
“He said he loves me.”
“And that’s why you broke it off?”
“No, I, I—”
“Do you love him?”
I nod and keep sobbing into my pillow. Even the energy required for a good cry exhausts me. Chema’s beefy hand wraps around my shoulder, and I put my hand over his.
“Then tell him that.”
“No,” I cry. “He can’t know I love him.”
“Why?”
“Look at me, Chema.”
“I’m looking.”
“How could you possibly think a man like that could be with someone like this?” I hiss out the question.
Chema shifts me on the bed so I’ll face him and knows I can’t fight it off. “Someone like what, Valentina? Someone strong and brave, smart and loving? Why wouldn’t anyone deserve someone like that?”
I snort. “I’m not any of those things. I’m shriveling up and dying. Don’t you all get that?”
“You are not dying.”
I smile. “I used to say that when I first started treatment. I was so hopeful and thought I would live, and I’d say ‘I’m not dead yet’ a lot. I haven’t thought it in weeks now—”
“Valentina, treatment is almost over. Just one week to go. Of course it was going to take its toll on you, but hear me when I say, ‘you are not dying,’ and I’m not going to sit here and listen to you tell me how you are going to die. I won’t do it—”
I raise my chin so I can stare at my friend in awe. His voice crackles, but his face is furious. Fuck. I’m hurting him too. There is not a single loved one I’ve managed to spare from the circus that is cancer.
It takes all the strength I can muster, but I bring my hand to his cheek. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“Don’t do it again,” he orders.
“Are you coaching me through the final week of treatment? Is that what this is?”
Chema wipes the tears pooling in the corners of his eyes and smiles. “Yeah. Guess I am. Now, rest.”
He shuts the lights off before leaving my room. I hug my pillow once again. I want his optimism, an optimism I shared when I first started, but my body is so far gone, I can’t imagine ever being what I once was. I was so naive to think I could hide this from everyone, that I could go back to fighting like nothing had ever happened. What a child.
My body will be altered for life, internally and externally. I will bear the scars as proof of this battle whether I die in weeks, months, years, or decades—I’ll always carry the reminders.
I lie in bed and have a breakdown unlike any I’ve experienced so far. I’m surprised at how far I’ve made it, from what Mandy had told me. I let the tears flow as I mourn for the life I’ll never get back even if I do live. I mourn the loss of the body I was once so damn proud of. I grieve for the loss of my physical strength.
The crying leads me into the early hours of the morning, and I can’t stop the breakdown because I also mourn for the only person I could ever imagine being the love of my life.
My heart is bruised.
Contusions in every ventricle sending waves of pain with each heartbeat because Rory's gone. And no amount of ice baths, salves, or massages will ease the hurt.
I mourn for the loss of my love with Rory Dennis.
Six Months Later
Chapter 19
Winter
“I have an opening at three tomorrow. Does that work?” The hospital scheduler asks.
“Yeah, I’ll be there.”
I hang up the call, and my blood runs cold. Is it back?
It couldn’t be, though, could it? I feel great. My energy is back, food tastes good again, and I’ve even put on some weight. My hair is growing in, including my eyebrows, and I thought, really thought, this was behind me.
Then I got the call to go back in for results from the tests I took last week. This is the news I’ve been waiting for so I can finally go home. Instead, I know they’ll be telling me the cancer is back. Then they’ll be suggesting another round of treatment—but I can’t. I won’t do it again. I would rather die than go through that again.
They asked me to come in. I know what that means. Bad news. If it was good news, Dr. Ramirez would have told me over the phone. But they asked me in instead, so it’s bad news.
I squeeze the armrest on the sofa to ground myself to the time and place. My apartment looks much the same and also different. It’s much neater now that Chema’s gone. He left after three months of concluding treatment. He refused to leave until I proved I could go up the flight of stairs in my apartment without getting winded. When I finally managed it, he fought me on it, but I didn’t want to keep disrupting his life, not when I was finally starting to feel fine.
He made me swear I’d call him to come back if there were any setbacks. Should I call him now? No. First, I need to hear it. I won’t believe it until Dr. Ramirez says the words out loud.
I wait in exam room five, and the minutes feel like hours as I wait for Dr. Ramirez. Her face twists in concern when she sees me.
“What’s wrong?” Dr. Ramirez asks. “Are you not feeling well?”
“You tell me,” I say.
“Nothing’s wrong, Vale, but you look like you saw a ghost.”
I share my suspicions with her.
“Oh, Vale, honey—”
“It’s back, isn’t it?”
“No!” she nearly yells. “Valentina, I wanted to give you the good news in person. That’s all. Please stop reading about treatment or procedures online. It’s not the first time it’s gotten you in trouble.” Dr. Ramirez arches an eyebrow, almost making me cower.
“Good news?” I ask with all the hope I’ll allow myself.
“Yes, Valentina. Good news.” Dr. Ramirez grabs my shoulders and squeezes for a moment. A smile spreads the width of her face. “Six months remission. It’s a great milestone.”
“Really?” I have to confirm because it feels like a dream. I don’t even know when I started crying, but I feel the tears rolling down my face.
“Really,” she says. “I thought we should celebrate. I’m not working right now. Let’s go across the street to the bar. Champagne. My treat.”
I’m relieved to see Sofia working the bar when we get there. In the last six months, I have come to the bar quite a bit—at first with Chema, who started to feel cooped up all the time in the apartment. Since he left, I’ve spent quite a bit of time with Mandy and the girls at La Oficina, though I didn’t quite partake in any of the drinking myself.
Over that time, I’ve got to know Sofia pretty well. I haven’t grow quite as close to her as I have to Mandy or Izel or Tlali, but she sure is one of the friends I have been lucky enough to make during the most horrific time of my life, and I am grateful for her. I’m glad she’s here to celebrate this moment.
“What we celebrating?” Sofia asks when Dr. Ramirez orders champagne. Dr. Ramirez just looks at me, and I know she is waiting for me to answer. She can’t divulge my health information unless I give her the green light.
“Six months in remission,” I say proudly. This is as much Dr. Ramirez’s victory as mine. From what I hear, the clinical trial is promising, despite being in its early phases.
“Wow. Congrats!” Sofia
says, a face-splitting grin taking over her features.
When she comes back with two flutes filled to the brim with champagne, she sets them on the table. “On the house,” she says. “All cancer ass-whipping is rewarded at La Oficina.”
Sofia leaves us to our drinking, and Dr. Ramirez and I are grinning like idiots at our table.
Then, Dr. Ramirez’s gaze shifts above and behind me.
“Dr. Dennis,” she greets, and I freeze at the sound of his name. Does he know it’s me sitting here?
“Please, Dr. Ramirez, call me Rory outside of work.”
“Okay, then please call me Carolina.”
Rory shifts to stand at the side of the table so he can see both our faces, and I panic. I remember I didn’t wear a scarf today and wonder if my pixie hair is pointing in all different directions. I try to tame it with my hand discreetly, but I don’t know if it’s helping. Why did this joint have to be all classy and not have any mirrors?
“What are we celebrating?” Rory asks.
“You want to tell him?” Dr. Ramirez asks.
I look at Rory for the first time. I haven’t seen those green eyes in six months, and I don’t know how I keep it together. He’s as handsome as ever. I have always regretted that we didn’t take any photos during our brief time together to remember him by. Though honestly, I wouldn’t have wanted to be in them at the time. But it would have been nice to have recorded our time at the park for posterity.
“I, um—” I clear my throat. “Remission. Six months,” I say and sink a little in my chair, though I keep my plastered smile, hoping it looks natural.
“That’s great!” Rory all but shrieks.
The pang of guilt forces my eyes to the ground. I should have messaged him at some point to tell him I was better. I force myself to look him in the eye again, and his smile never dissipates.
Our eyes are locked when Dr. Ramirez interjects in the exchange. “Rory, why don’t you sit with us?” she asks.
Rory looks at me, waiting for me to echo the invitation. Part of me doesn’t want to open this door again, but I know it’s the part that will lose because I’ve missed him, and I need to know how he’s been all this time, so I nod.
Dr. Ramirez gets another champagne flute for Rory, and the three of us clink glasses.
“To kicking the shit out of cancer,” says Dr. Ramirez.
“To kicking the shit out of cancer,” Rory and I both echo.
It’s hard to include Dr. Ramirez in the conversation because we both have a lot of catching up to do, but we don’t want to be rude, so we steer clear of any heavy subjects for the time being.
“So, I saw your fight with the Russian—what’s her name?” Rory asks.
“Galina,” I say.
“Yeah, that’s right. It looked like you won. I can’t believe the judges gave her the fight.”
I smile, remembering that fight. At the time, it had seemed like the most unfair thing I’d ever go through. I hadn’t been diagnosed yet. Now, it seems so minor and unimportant. “You weren’t the only one,” I say.
Rory keeps babbling about the fight, and I look over at Dr. Ramirez with concern. She is looking at her phone with her face scrunched up, and those eyebrows of hers are drawn together into twin frowns.
“Is everything okay?” I ask her.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I, uh, have to go. Do you mind?”
“No, please. I hope everything’s fine.”
Dr. Ramirez kisses my cheek warmly in a gesture I know is crossing a line, but I also think she is telling me she is no longer my doctor because I no longer need her. This was always the plan—for me to return to Mexico and get follow-up care close to home. Watching her leave the bar, though, makes my chest constrict a bit. I’ll miss her immensely.
“So, you look good,” Rory says.
“Thanks. I’m starting to feel a little like my old self.”
“That’s great,” he says.
“Though I finally resigned myself to the fact that I’ll never be what I once was—”
“Don’t say that—”
“No. No, it’s not a ‘pity me’ thing. It’s the truth. My new reality is finally sinking in. A lot of things are different.”
“You’re more beautiful than ever,” Rory says and winks at me.
“Rory—” I take an exasperated breath.
“Sorry,” he says and hangs his head, but I can tell he is smiling.
“I’m different now,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“You know how it is. My body’s different. There are things it can’t do anymore, and don’t get me started on chemo brain.”
Rory’s eyes soften. “Yeah. I know how it is,” he admits. “But you’re looking a lot better than the last time I saw you. That alone is reason to celebrate.”
We clink glasses again and each take a drink.
I don’t give him details, but one of the worst changes to my body is chemo brain. I forget little things, can’t find the right word sometimes—only made worse by my bilingualism. I shake my head, thinking of what a snob I used to be when people would speak in Spanglish and how sometimes I’m forced to do that now when I can’t find the word in one language but can in the other. My reaction time has slowed, and I’m hoping I can work on correcting that if I have a shot in hell at fighting again. Now that I know I’ll live, I have to at least give it a shot. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be me.
“Thank you,” I say. “For everything. Really.”
Instead of his regular ‘you betcha’ that he customarily uses instead of ‘you’re welcome,’ he says, “Stop thanking me. It pisses me off.” But he is smiling.
“This is the last time. I promise. Thank you for respecting my wishes back then. I couldn’t bear to have you around while I was going through that.”
“I know. It killed me to stay away. But I know.” Rory’s hand reaches across the table to take mine. His thumb grazes over the top of my hand, and we smile at each other. God, I’ve missed him.
“I missed you,” he says as if he is reading my mind.
I won’t tell him I missed him back. I don’t want to give him hope again. There is no point. I’m leaving for Mexico in a week or two—as soon as I can arrange everything—and then Rory Dennis will be nothing but a sweet memory from my time in KC, as I always knew he would be.
“You look good too,” I say.
“Valentina Almonte, are you flirting with me?”
I draw my hand away from his and shake my head. “No. I’m just glad to see you looking so well.”
Rory’s smile falls for only one second before he regains it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s okay. We’re allowed to be happy to see each other.”
“I’m glad you’re happy to see me,” he says.
I stand and put on my coat. Grabbing my purse, I toss it over my shoulder. Rory stands after I do, and I surprise us both by taking him into a hug. I take in his smell one last time. He doesn’t know this is goodbye for good this time. “I have to go,” I say. “Chema’s waiting for me,” I lie.
“Right. Say hi to him for me, will you? I think I owe him big time.” Rory smiles weakly at me as I turn to walk away.
I leave him at the bar, holding my heart without his knowledge.
Chapter 20
Four Months Later
Spring
The water rolls down my face as the shower fills with steam. I don’t mind much that Chema never installed women’s locker rooms. There are so few of us, and if the men didn’t mind me here, then I had no complaints.
My parents never had to know.
I dress and try to try to rush past the front desk. My sister is expecting me for lunch, and I’m running late. I fail to sneak past Chema, though. He is at the front desk, wrapping up with a customer. He smiles as I try to dash past the desk.
“You did a great job today,” he says.
Pausing to say goodbye, I face him. “Stop lying,” I admoni
sh.
“The best since you got back.”
My smile is weak, and Chema picks up on my defeatist attitude.
“It’s going to take a while, Valentina. We’ll get you there.”
“You know we won’t, right? This is it. This is as good I’ll ever be again.”
“It’s only been four months. Can you at least give it a little time before you throw in the towel?”
Nico comes up behind Chema and wraps his arms around Chema’s waist. “What’s this I hear about someone throwing in the towel?” He asks.
Chama pats him gently on the arms around his middle until Nico unravels his embrace and steps forward so we can both see him. He is wearing an athletic tank and shorts that complement Chema’s outfit. They are so cute I feel like punching them in the face.
“Valentina’s getting a little frustrated,” Chema explains.
“Oh, honey,” Nico says. “You don’t remember when you first started, but I do. You were way worse than this.”
I burst out laughing. Leave it to Nico to put things into perspective. I’ll always be grateful to him. He was more than generous sharing his partner while Chema was in Kansas City taking care of me. Nico managed the gym while Chema was away. I hope I can one day have what they have—that kind of supportive partner with complete trust.
At least, I hope I’ll have it again because I’m sure I got close to it once.
“Thanks, Nico,” I say. “I don’t know if that makes me feel worse or better.”
“Any time, honey.” He blows a kiss at me and kisses Chema for real before going off to teach a self-defense class.
Chema does his best to give me an empowering speech, and I try to hear it, but I think somewhere deep down, we are both aware I’m at the end of my professional fighting career. I know I’ll always be in this business. Maybe I’ll coach like Chema does or sponsor other fighters at some point, but me fighting, I know I’ll have to let go of that notion real soon—if I haven’t already.
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