The Rule of Thirds

Chapter Thirteen

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4: 2 DAYS UNTIL VANTAGE POINT

Mr. Winters wins the award for slowest walker, but he gets away with it, on account of being about 42 pounds and 93 years old and having tubes sprouting out of the most random places. “I know I’m slow, but what’s your excuse?” he says. He’s right. He may be shuffling, but I’m the one who’s dragging my feet. I’m supposed to be accompanying Mr. Winters on his way to the cancer center, just like I accompanied my dad. But ever since Dad, I made a rule, and right now, I’m breaking it.

PIPPA’S RULES ABOUT GOING TO THE CANCER CENTER
1. Avoid at all cost.

At first, visiting Dad wasn’t so bad. Cancer. I didn’t even know what the word meant then. The first couple of days at the hospital it actually was kind of fun. Mom hung out with him all day, every day, so by the time I showed up after school she was ready to head home for a bit, for a break. It was tough to get my dad by himself before that. He worked a lot, in his makeshift studio in the base- ment and in the evenings he often was out meeting with potential clients, like couples who wanted engagement, wedding or maternity photos. But at the hospital, I got him all to myself. He’d save the best part of his lunch for me, the chocolate pudding, and I’d eat it while doing my homework. Then we’d talk about school, about photography, about what- ever book I was reading for English class. At first I looked forward to visiting him.

Then the radiation treatments started. Monday through Friday. Sometimes Mom would take him, but sometimes he was scheduled in the afternoon, and it was me. They didn’t take long—the actual treatment was, like, two minutes, but there was some waiting around for his turn—and then we’d be back in his room. The first few weeks were no big deal at all. Sometimes I even forgot he was sick. He didn’t seem sick—he was taking enough pills for the pain—and there weren’t any real side effects from the radiation. Everyone else always was so bright and cheerful and positive—like he was actually getting better. Like we were winning. I believed it. He was so positive. But the signs were all there. He was an in-patient. If he was getting better, why wouldn’t they just let him go home between treatments? Because he wasn’t get- ting better. He was getting worse.

And it all happened so quickly once he started chemo. He got all puffy. His skin was blotchy. Every time he got up to go to the bathroom or whatever he’d leave a tiny clump of hair on his pillow. One of his fingernails fell off. You hear about how fingernails and hair are made out of the same stuff, but you don’t really get it until you’re playing Go Fish with a dad whose forefinger nail fell off the day before and who has half the hair he did two weeks ago. I could see it in my mom’s face too. We weren’t winning anymore, and the nurses’ cheer started to seem, like, obscene. Good afternoon? Seriously?

A couple of years back, maybe when I was 13 or so, I had a friend—well, she was a Facebook friend, not an IRL friend—and her brother had leukemia and she would mention it in her status updates. “Just three more chemo sessions left!” There was some- thing heroic about her positivity and maybe I was a bit jealous of her—no, not of her, I was jealous of the opportunity that she had. To be heroic. Everybody talked about her—about how strong she was. I wrote a few Facebook status updates like that, and I knew people were talking about me. I felt special. I was the girl whose dad had cancer.

And then, when I realized I was about to become the girl whose dad died of cancer, I stopped feeling anything at all.

It was like that YouTube video that guy made a few years ago where he shot a photo of his son every day for 18 years, and then stitched them together into a video? In the span of three minutes, you saw his son grow up. With my dad it was kind of the opposite. Every day Dad looked and acted a little different from the day before. One day he could still walk down the hallway to the vending machines. We’d play a game to see who could put their money in and get their chocolate bar out first. And then, a few days later, he couldn’t make it all the way there. And then he couldn’t walk at all. And then he couldn’t even get out of bed. And then he couldn’t go to the bathroom. And then he could barely see, because this thick, milky glaze had formed over his eyes. And then I never saw his eyes again.