His First Love, My Last Goodbye novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Port
Esme has her first chemo alone, hands off her patients on 6 West, and comes home to find Clarissa standing in her kitchen with a violin case.
The chair in Infusion Bay 14 was blue vinyl, and it had a crack along one arm.
Esme had put a hundred children in chairs.
She had never sat in one herself.
"You can hold my hand," Ezra said.
"I can hold my own hand."
"Then I'll stand here and be useless."
The port had gone in at seven that morning under local anesthetic, a small hard lump under her right collarbone.
Ezra had called a friend in radiology and told no one else.
Now a nurse she had never met connected the line and smiled the careful smile Esme herself gave parents.
The bag was clear, and it began to drip.
It did not feel like anything.
That was the worst part, somehow.
"Nausea is Sunday, maybe Saturday," Ezra said. "The tingling in your hands is cold, so wear gloves, even indoors."
"I know the protocol, Ezra."
"You know it from the other side of the bed."
Her phone buzzed on the armrest, and Matthias's name filled the screen.
She stepped into the corridor, pulling the pole behind her, and let it ring twice.
"Where are you?" His voice was low and rough, a man who hadn't slept. "The house is empty."
"At work. I came in early."
It was the first lie she had ever told him that mattered.
It came out smoothly, which frightened her more than the diagnosis had.
"Clarissa's in a bad way," he said. "She told me last night. It's pancreatic, Esme. Stage three."
Esme closed her eyes.
"She won't see anyone. She says she's finished with hospitals and she wants to spend what's left on music."
"I'm sorry," Esme said, and the strange part was that she meant it, the way you mean it for a stranger.
"I can't leave her in a hotel."
"I know."
"I knew you'd understand." There was a long breath on the line. "I'll call you later."
He hung up, and for a moment she only stood beside the pole, listening to it tick.
By two o'clock she was back on 6 West in her otter scrubs, gray under her makeup.
She meant only to check the board.
She had four patients that week, and she wanted to see every one of them while she could still stand.
"Nurse Esme!"
A boy in a dinosaur hospital gown came barreling down the hall dragging his IV pole.
He was seven and had been in remission for five months, and he was here for a routine blood draw he loudly hated.
He held up a boat folded from a yellow sheet of discharge instructions.
"It's for you. I made it in art therapy. Look, it floats."
"It's beautiful."
"I'm going to float it in the ocean when I get out."
"You're already out, buddy. You get to go home Friday."
He studied her face with the unfair clarity of the very young.
"You look gray," he said.
"I'm just tired."
"That's what grown-ups say when they're sick."
Her hand tightened around the boat.
She crouched, so her eyes were level with his, and the port tugged under her collarbone.
"I'll tell you a secret," she said. "I'm only sick when I haven't had lunch."
"That's not a real disease."
"It's the realest one I know."
He gave her a grudging nod, the verdict of a man who had heard better lies and accepted worse.
Then a nurse called him back for his blood draw, and he went, mournfully, waving the boat at the whole hallway.
Esme stood in the corridor with her back against the wall until the dizziness passed.
She tucked the boat into her cardigan pocket.
It was the only thing all day that had been given to her for free.
She took the T home instead of a cab because she wanted forty minutes of people who didn't know her.
On Marlborough Street the brownstone's lights were on in the front windows.
Matthias's coat was draped over the banister.
A black violin case lay on the hall table, right where the wallet had been.
From the kitchen came a woman's laugh, low and rich.
Esme set her bag down very quietly.
Matthias stood at the stove with his sleeves pushed up, cracking eggs into a pan.
Clarissa Fairchild sat at the kitchen island with her feet on the rung of a stool, in Esme's gray cashmere sweater, holding Esme's favorite mug.
She was even more beautiful than the photograph.
Her white-blond hair fell in a sleek line to her shoulders, and her red mouth curved as she turned.
"You must be the wife," she said. "Matt said I could stay a few days."
← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend