Chapter
46
“Are you ready?”
Elyssa looked up at the face of her nurse, Darlene, and
nodded shakily. It was just the day
after her diagnosis, and already, she was about to receive her first
chemotherapy treatment.
“Okay, hop on into the chair,” Darlene coached, nodding
down to the wheelchair positioned in front of her. Elyssa obeyed, climbing slowly out of bed
and easing herself into the wheelchair.
As Darlene wheeled her out into the hall, AJ appeared. “You want me to come with you, honey?” he
asked, taking Elyssa’s hand.
She shook her head.
“I’m a big girl,” she said solemnly, pulling her hand from his
grip. She nodded to Darlene to keep
going, and the nurse wheeled her slowly away from AJ.
As Elyssa was pushed down the hall, she did not see the
hurt expression on her boyfriend’s face.
***
“You okay, AJ?” Serena asked. She had come up the hall to find AJ standing
in the middle of it, looking lost.
He shrugged unhappily.
“Why do I feel like Elyssa’s avoiding me? Since her diagnosis, she’s been pushing me
away, and even before that, it seemed like she didn’t want me with her. Does she not love me anymore? Did I do something wrong?”
He sounded miserable, and Serena felt for him. “AJ, I don’t think it’s your fault,” she told
him soothingly. “Elyssa has a lot to
deal with, so you can’t blame her for not being personable. She’s been avoiding all of us. You just need to leave her alone for a
little bit and let her deal with this on her own if she needs to.”
“But I feel like I’m being a bad boyfriend if I just desert
her,” AJ insisted. “I love her, I can’t
betray her!”
“You’re not betraying her,” Serena said calmly. “You’re just letting her be by herself. That’s what she needs right now. She doesn’t want us hovering over her,
feeling sorry for her. She wants to be
alone.”
AJ nodded sadly, accepting Serena’s observation, but still
feeling like taking her advice was not the right thing to do. However, if that was truly what Elyssa
wanted, her would follow through with it.
Her happiness was all that mattered to him, and he would do anything to
make her happy again.
***
Darlene wheeled Elyssa into the chemo room, a spacious room
painted in soft peach, with beige carpet.
The room contained a row of beige recliners, each with an IV stand next
to them. Magazine racks lined one wall,
and a small table and chairs sat in the center of the room. On the table lay coloring books and buckets
of crayons. The sight of the those made
Elyssa shiver, as she realized there were children having to go through this
too.
Darlene wheeled Elyssa to a chair at the end of the row and
helped her into it, reclining her back until she was comfortable.
Darlene rubbed the inside of Elyssa’s left elbow with
antiseptic to prep it for the IV she would have to insert for the chemo. Elyssa clenched her teeth as Darlene slid
the needle into her arm, knowing this was something she would need to get used
to.
Darlene attached a thin tube to the needle in Elyssa’s arm,
and attached the other end to an IV bag of liquid hanging on the stand next to
the chair. She adjusted some valves on
the tubing and soon, the liquid in the bag began to drip slowly through the
long tube, traveling into Elyssa’s arm.
“Okay,” the nurse said.
“You just relax. This will take
at least an hour or so.”
Elyssa nodded, sighing.
“Would you like a magazine to read?” Darlene asked,
glancing towards the racks on the wall.
“Sure,” Elyssa replied half-heartedly.
Darlene nodded and strode over to the racks, bringing back a
copy of Teen magazine. “There you go,”
she said, handing it to Elyssa.
“Thank you,” Elyssa replied.
“I need to go check with the other patients. Just call if you need anything,” Darlene
said.
Elyssa nodded, and the nurse headed down the row of chairs,
stopping to check on the others who were in the room, receiving their chemo
treatments as well.
Elyssa thumbed absently through the magazine on her lap,
rolling her eyes at the juvenile nature of some of the articles in it, which
were all about silly things like make-up, clothes, and guys. That was all most girls that age cared
about, she reminded herself.
She had been the same way.
But that was before this had happened to her. Now her world had begun to revolve around
medicine and sickness. She hadn’t worn
real clothes in days, hadn’t even bothered to put on make-up. And although she knew it wasn’t AJ’s fault,
she was just about fed up with his over-protectiveness of her.
She didn’t want to be treated like she was sickly and
fragile. She wanted him and all of the
others to act like nothing had happened, like she was the same person she had
been just days earlier. And she was the
same person. But now she had
cancer. And that had changed everything.
***
