“What a motley bunch,” Greg says. He thinks he’s used that line a few times.
They wave to each other （hugging is too germy, too risky）。 They tell Greg he looks cold. “Brrr,” Imogene says. They set up camp where they always do in the lounge for the patients receiving radiation. Imogene doesn’t have any treatments prescribed for her （her numbers are good at the moment）， and Brandon, whose dark hair is longish because he never had chemo, only has a week to go until he can ring the bell, a celebratory gesture patients do at the end of their treatment. Rosco, a spunky old man who reminds Greg of his grandfather, and Greg have the longest sentences of radiation: five days a week for six more weeks, give or take. This is a breeze compared to chemo, compared to the stem cell transplant the doctors are telling him they might try down the road if the numbers look good and they find a match. Greg’s job now is to stay healthy.
They open the ginger ale Rosco has brought, and Imogene puts out small chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. They are not supposed to eat anything unhealthy these days, but Fifi, the nurse they all love, said small treats are fine. The group breaks off pieces of cupcakes and says they’re like heaven and wow and thanks. Greg tastes only metal.
They have a good forty-five minutes until Brandon’s appointment, and then Greg and Rosco go in later. Greg always looks at the toys in the corner of the room—one of those abacus-looking things with sliding balls, and Dr. Seuss books, and a small kitchen with plastic dishes and pots and pans. He is grateful every time that the toys seem undisturbed. He hopes they stay that way. He thinks of Addie and what she would do if she were here waiting with him. He imagines her sliding the wooden abacus balls back and forth. He imagines her sitting at the table next to him and resting her face in her hands patiently.
The group makes small talk about the Super Bowl commercials and the snow （just three inches） the other night. How fast it melted, they say. They shake their heads about the bombing on the news, and no one can believe it’s been that many years since Peter Jennings died, and then Fifi pokes her head out to see what Imogene baked. “I might steal the whole tin,” she says, and they smile and sigh and look at each other. What is it about this crowd that Greg so enjoys? He wants to get up and hug each of them. Even Brandon, who is sometimes a little whiny.
“How’s our Addie?” Imogene says to Greg. She dabs her mouth with a Valentine’s cocktail napkin she brought with the cupcakes.
“Good, good,” Greg says. “Getting big.” She likes to rub my bald head, he wants to say. She started writing in a diary, he wants to say. Greg can’t bring himself to read it. He wants to say: What if, despite all we do to distract her, she’s scared and worried that I’ll die? It was always his number-one goal to never have her worry about anything. His parents worked hard to let him be a worry-free kid, and maybe that is what gave him this determination, this unshakable confidence. But Addie stares at him longer than she used to. She hugs him tighter, he thinks. Once he saw her close her eyes in the mirror when she hugged him, and he wondered what that meant—if she was trying to memorize him or something. He silently says a prayer for her—a quick one—and turns back to Imogene. “She joined the glee club at school.”
“Cute,” Rosco says. He coughs, and they can all hear the wetness in his lungs.
Brandon looks out the window and says something about the girl he’s seeing. Selena. He says her name with a touch of an accent, which annoys Greg. Brandon likes drama. He is still young enough to want drama.
Imogene thinks her daughter is up to something. She keeps asking Imogene to write down her medication, the pension information, the stocks. She shakes her head. “Does she think I’m losing my marbles?”
“We’ll straighten her out,” Greg says. He only ate what amounts to a large crumb of cupcake. He sips the ginger ale. Metal fizz. He wants something extra sweet—so sweet it will eat through the metal—like purple Kool-Aid or Cherry Coke. He keeps feeling guilt over his promise to Freddie. Days later, and it still burns him. What business did he have saying those words?
Once a week they make it a point to get together like this—though he ends up bumping into Rosco many other days, and sometimes Brandon. He met Imogene in chemo after the holidays. They would sit side by side in their chairs, with the tubes and the beeping monitors, and look over at each other and roll their eyes. “I’d rather be doing my taxes,” Imogene said to him that first day.