That’s not forgiveness. Bev Larkin would call that the whole business.

Chapter 7 — Growing Back

The scans in June were clear. The scans in December were clear.

My hair is past my shoulders now. It came in with a wave in it and about a dozen grays at the temple that arrived all at once, and I have decided to keep them, mostly out of spite toward nobody in particular.

I went full-time at the cancer center in the fall.

Sonya put me on intake, which is the first conversation, the one where somebody sits down across from you on the worst morning of their life and you have forty minutes to find out what’s actually going to stop them.

It isn’t usually the diagnosis. It’s almost never the diagnosis. It’s a car that doesn’t run, or a job that won’t hold, or a person at home who has opinions about whether they’re really sick.