To My Romeo, with Love novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Port

The infusion center had forty recliners and a wall of windows that looked out on a parking lot.

I got chair nineteen, by the window.

My father carried in a tote bag with a blanket, a phone charger, two paperbacks and a thermos of tea.

He had packed it the night before, and he had unpacked it and packed it again.

The port had gone in under my left collarbone three days earlier.

It was a small hard lump under the skin, covered by a square of clear tape.

The nurse who accessed it was a cheerful man with a shaved head and a ring in his eyebrow.

"Little pinch," he said. "Big breath. Good. You're a champ."

"I haven't done anything yet."

"You sat in the chair. That's half the job."

He hung four bags from the pole.

The last one was bright red.

"That's the one that colors your pee," he said. "Don't panic. It's a feature."

Dad made a strangled sound that was almost a laugh.

I watched the red go down the tube.

I thought of my mother in a chair like this one, in the old building on the other side of the city.

I thought, I'm lucky, because they'll find it, because they have these drugs, because it's curable.

It helped a little.

Around the second bag, I looked out the window.

A blue pickup truck sat in the farthest row of the lot, with its engine off.

It had a ladder rack on top and a dent in the tailgate.

I knew every dent in that truck.

I knew where he'd been the night he put it in a ditch at twenty-two.

Nobody was visible behind the windshield, and the glare was bad.

I turned my head away.

"What's wrong?" Dad said.

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