Mia

My body felt like it was breaking in half and my heart along with it. For a week I only left my room to go to the bathroom. Heath brought me food and so did Adam. And I ate a little, because neither of them would leave me alone until I did. But I didn’t take the pain meds and Adam actually started an argument about it before I shut him down.

After that, I would take a few of the pills out of the bottle and throw them away when he wasn’t there to see. But he wasn’t stupid. It was impossible for me to hide the pain and he knew I wouldn’t be like this if I had taken them.

After our argument, I only got the deeply concerned looks when he thought I wouldn’t notice them. I wasn’t against medication at all. But for this… well… I couldn’t explain it fully. Something inside of me strongly compelled me to feel everything, the emotions of what was happening, the physical pain. I was afraid to be numb about it. So I felt it all.

Because one thing I couldn’t afford was to fall into depression. That would defeat the purpose of why I was going through all this in the first place—depression would only inhibit me from surviving the cancer. And I had to survive, especially after this. I’d done this for everyone who loved me so, because of that, I wouldn’t give up.

But Adam didn’t understand and I lacked the words to explain it to him. All I could feel, in his every stiff muscle when he visited, holding me in his arms when I asked him to, was worry, concern, and yeah, deep guilt. It made it hard for us to talk and, to be honest, I don’t think either of us could have even if we’d wanted to.

On one of the days when Adam had to put in a few hours at work in the afternoon, and when I was feeling well enough to migrate to the couch and watch TV, Adam’s cousin William paid me a visit with a plastic box tucked under his arm.

“Hello, Mia,” he said with a nod as he sat down on the chair, facing me where I reclined on the couch. His mannerisms were formal and stilted in social situations. I was used to his autistic quirks by now but sometimes I think they made Heath uneasy. I sat up, racking my brains trying to remember if I’d brushed my hair that morning. I ran a self-conscious hand over it, gathering it behind me into a makeshift ponytail. William hardly noticed.

“How are you feeling?” he said, his eyes on the floor in front of him.

William didn’t know about the pregnancy or specifically why I was feeling under the weather at this time. But Peter and my mom had told him about the cancer. They’d broken it gently but Mom had told me that he’d been very upset, suffering an anxiety attack. Peter had been able to calm him down but they’d all discussed it and decided it would be best if he didn’t visit me until he felt he could handle it.

Apparently this was that day. So I was going to make extra sure to put him at his ease. While the thought of doing that should have exhausted me, it actually was comforting to know that I could step outside of my own misery and worry about someone else for a little while.

“I’m doing just fine, William.”

He nodded, bringing his eyes up to my chin before they drifted down again. He rubbed his hands across the front of his jeans and appeared out of things to talk about already.

“How’s work?”

He grunted and shrugged. “It’s okay. There is a lot to do. We have deadlines to meet for the new expansion.”

“Yeah, I can’t wait until that comes out.”

He frowned. “Well, unfortunately, you have to.”

I smiled at his literal interpretation. I usually tried not to use figures of speech around William because they weren’t his forte.

He rubbed his palms over his lap again a few times before bending to snatch up the box he’d set next to him when he’d come in. “I have something for you.” And he presented me with the box.

I took it from him. “Oh, thank you.”

It looked like a portable box for fishing tackle. I knew, because Heath had one like it, which was actually full of stuff he took on his camping trips. I gave William a fearful look and he said, “Do you want me to open it for you?”

“Uh…no, that’s okay. You know I don’t fish, right?”

William stared at me like I’d spoken to him in Martian. So instead of saying anything further, I opened the box. Inside, each tiny compartment that had been designed to hold fishing tackle items was instead filled with pieces of foam cut to fit each square. Resting in the middle of each piece of foam was a tiny pewter figurine—the figurines he loved to paint in his old room when he was visiting his dad’s house.