“Always.”
On the way home I pick up Drew’s favorite pizza and a six-pack of his favorite IPA beer. When I get home, he’s lying on the couch, asleep in the den, the TV on. I almost break down in tears looking at him, because right now, he looks so robust and healthy. I can’t imagine he has cancer in his lungs.
Sitting on the couch next to him, I put my head on his chest and wrap my hand around his neck. I know it’ll wake him, but I don’t care. I don’t want either of us to ever sleep again and waste precious moments we could spend together.
“Hmmm. I’ve always loved waking up to you.”
“I’ve always loved sleeping with you. By that I mean making love, and not actually sleeping.”
“Funny.”
“I brought dinner home.”
“That’s nice.” He yawns. “I’m not particularly hungry, though.”
I lean back and inspect him. “Did an alien beam down from space and invade Drew McKnight’s body. Not hungry?”
He half smiles. My attempt at amusing him is an epic failure. “I’m sorry. We don’t have to eat. We don’t have to do anything. We can just lie here all night and not even talk, if that’s what you want.”
“Cate, that’s not fair to you. You need to know the plan.”
I toe off my shoes and stretch out on top of him. “Shoot.”
“Tuesday morning I go in for round one of chemo. Different drugs. Same side effects.”
I grab his face and say, “You good with this?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“We do three rounds, then surgery. But this time we’ll do bang, bang, bang.”
“Meaning?” I ask.
“No time off in between.”
Ouch. That’s rough. That means he’ll debilitate. With zero time off, it won’t give him much time to regroup and gain his appetite back.
“That’s rough, Drew.”
“I know. They know it. But they think I’m hearty enough and it gives me the very best fighting chance and I have to take it.”
“Okay, I’m with you. Are the drugs as harsh?”
“Yeah, but the doses will be different and they’ll add more protective measures to make sure I don’t get neutropenic and such.”
“Okay.”
“Then PET scans and if they like the progression of the shrinkage, then surgery.”
He’s tempering his Greek because I understand these terms, when usually I don’t. This tells me he really doesn’t want to talk much more about it, and I’m good with that.
Three weeks later, Drew is down twenty-five pounds and feels like hell. I bring him milk shakes, ice cream from his favorite ice cream shop, sundaes, cake, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, you name it, to try to get some pounds back on him. But eating is a huge problem. He’s nauseated all the time. The drugs they give him to prevent it don’t seem to be that effective. Ben, bless him, scores some weed and that helps the most. Plus, it has the added benefit of stimulating his appetite. At first I worry it will hurt his lungs, but Drew, in his dry humorous way, looks at me and says, “What, Cate? Worried I might get cancer?”
And what can I say to that?
He finally seems to be turning in the right direction. The doctors won’t even consider surgery until they can get his strength up. So Ben comes over every night and they smoke and get high. And by high, I mean completely stoned. Drew eats, and Ben and I laugh, because Drew is freaking hilarious. He comes up with the craziest shit, like telling us we’re going to plant asparagus in the back yard, instead of grass. Then we’ll just mow it down once a week and have dinner afterwards. Ben and I try to convince him it won’t work, but he has it all planned out in his head that it will.
One night we’re all sitting around, and my mom decides to pay us a surprise visit. Drew, who is stoned as hell, pulls out his pipe, and offers my mother a hit off it. Ben almost falls out of his chair, and I have to drag my mother in the kitchen and explain things to her.
“Cate, I am aware of the medical uses of marijuana. I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday, you know. I did smoke the stuff when I was in college.”
“I didn’t know that, Mom. But, uh, thanks for sharing.” Jeez, talk about a shocker. I can’t conjure up an image of my mom taking a hit off a bong for the life of me.
“By the way, Cate, where did Drew get his pot from?”
“Oh my god, Mom, I can’t believe you just asked me that.”
She shrugs. “Well you never know if you’ll ever need it.”
When I tell Ben what she said, he dies laughing again.
“Oh god, the picture of your mom hitting the pipe is just too good. Cate, we need to get her high with us.”
“Ben Rhoades! That is a big negative.”
Drew chuckles. “Oh, Cate, I think she’d get so into it.”