He laughed. He got a dizzy spell at that moment, and she waited and watched him. “Sorry,” he said.
“You okay? Should I call the nurse?” And just like that, he had a cancer buddy. This new friend who started to phone the house, who bought a ballerina music box for Addie once. Freddie started to pick them both up （it was impossible to walk home after chemo） and would drive Imogene to her small apartment in the retirement home. When the phone would ring, Freddie would hand it to him. “It’s your girlfriend,” she’d say.
When he was prescribed the weeks of radiation after his numbers were still sketchy, Imogene asked for the details. “Mind some company?” she said.
“Actually, no, I wouldn’t mind.” He didn’t. He had gotten used to her at those chemo appointments. The way they stared at the tubes together. The way she never cried—only shrugged, only sighed. And he liked her jokes. “Just put it in this pincushion,” she’d say, holding out her thin arm. Or, “You better stick a few extra doses in there, baby doll. Fill ’er up.”
In no time at all, she had ingratiated herself with Rosco when Greg started at the radiation place. Rosco’s wife died two years ago, and his grandson drives him for treatment and picks him up. Greg and Imogene collected Rosco to join them, and then Brandon, whom Imogene found outside with his hands in his pockets, wearing his headphones. “We’re all on the same team,” she said to them that day.
Now he tells them what he’s wanted to say, about his promise to Freddie. Imogene looks up at him. Rosco shakes his head. A deliveryman comes through the doors with boxes stacked on a hand truck. Brandon laces his fingers together. “That’s a shitty promise, man,” Brandon says.
Greg glares at Brandon. What did he expect from his group? That they’d say an outrageous promise was okay, that it’s fine for sick people to enter into risky contracts? Yes, he wants them to say this. He wants them to say they understand. That maybe they have made similar promises. In fact, he wants them to all promise right now that they will get through this. Sometimes a voice screams in his head that maybe half of them or most of them or all of them will die, and sitting here like this will not have meant anything.
“You thought you needed to,” Imogene says. She pats Greg’s hunched shoulder blades. It hurts, he wants to say. When you pat my back, it hurts like hell. It shouldn’t hurt. He wonders the way he always does if his cancer has spread—he imagines an X-ray or scan with every part lit up, showing disease. But they’ve been monitoring him closely and he would know.
Rosco declares, “We got no business messing with God.”
Greg groans and looks up at the ceiling. What God? he wants to say. It’s just each of us alone. Each of us trying to hold on to who we love before we’re ripped into the abyss. Greg frowns. He picks up his ginger ale can and what’s left of the cupcake, stands, and walks over to the garbage. He is not pissed at Brandon or Rosco. He is ashamed. Haunted by what he said. He wanted their forgiveness, their understanding, a benediction of sorts. Can’t he at least have this? He’s lost so much. Can’t he at least make a fucking long shot of a promise?
He glances over at the toys. He never noticed the jigsaw puzzle among the stacks: a winter scene with cardinals and squirrels. He stands there and looks at it. He imagines for a second spilling it out on a table in the corner by himself and how good it would feel to hold each piece and study where it belongs.
Brandon and Imogene and Rosco are staring at him. Imogene is so brittle. She must weigh ninety pounds, and Rosco wheezes as he shakes his head slowly. Brandon doesn’t look sick at all. Greg never noticed how tall he was. How broad his shoulders are. Fucker. No one would look at them in a lineup and say Brandon has cancer. He will probably waltz in and out of cancer, and that will be that. He has a mild kind of lymphoma or something. They don’t ask the specifics.
Greg sees Fifi and the other nurses march back and forth with files behind the glass window. He sees the clipboard by the window and wonders if he signed in. There are still Christmas cards taped to the ledge of the reception area. He thinks of cards he used to write Freddie when he was in college. I’ll be home soon. The weeks will fly by. Or postcards he would send her and Addie from business trips to New York. Or Los Angeles. Or London. I miss my two girls. Be back in a jiffy （with gifts!）。 He has been solid with his promises. He has done what he’s said, and now Brandon and Rosco are right—this is a promise out of his hands. He wonders what his mom and dad would say about all this. Easy does it, honey. Let’s just wait and see before we get carried away.