A picture popped into Lace’s head, of trying to kiss that silly face, and she couldn’t tamp down the giggle that escaped from her throat.
A few of those sharing her space grinned in her direction because…Yeah.Nobody was going to call her out on her unexplained giddiness. They were all, every one of them, searching for the same elusive sunshine she’d just spontaneously displayed as they floundered in their private seas of uncertainty.
But now she was exhausted.
Maybe she’d just close her eyes and have a little nap.
Dreaming about the circus wouldn’t be a bad thing.
It must have been just under an hour later when Lace felt a gentle hand at her shoulder.
“You’re all set for today, Lace,” a kind voice told her. “Take your time. I’ve already removed the line from your port so you’re okay to go whenever you muster the energy.”
“Thanks,” Lace responded groggily to Betina, the wonderful nurse she’d come to know over the past few weeks.
“Can I get you anything to nibble on before you go?” Betina asked.
Just the thought of food made Lace want to barf again. “Uh, no thanks. I’ll wait until I get home.”
Andthattrip would be a struggle today.
After her infusions, Lace was always wiped out, and today she’d added losing her cookies to the mix. The thought of walking to the bus stop, waiting there in the beating sun, then making her way down her street once she was dropped off, seemed almost insurmountable. But dammit, she was stronger than that, and smart enough not to have driven her car to her appointment, since she’d almost driven into a tree after the first time.
Sucking in a deep breath, Lace hoisted herself out of her chair and headed for the door, swaying a little on her feet.
This was going to suck.
An hour and a half later, finally spying the small, comfortable cape style home no more than fifty paces away, Lace felt her shoulders relax. She’d been fighting back intense fatigue, as well as bile in her throat for the past twenty minutes, and couldn’t wait to get inside where the intrinsic warmth of her house would hug her tightly as she flopped down onto her overstuffed couch.
In the tiny abode her grandparents had left to her, she always found peace.
Of course, it wasn’t at all the same after they’d both passed nine years ago. There were no longer smells of Gram’s baked goods lingering in the air, nor was there the sound of two-stroke engines being worked on in the garage out back. But in Lace’s imagination, Gram and Peepaw were still here. Still encouraging her in all she did.
Why then, had life seemed so lonely lately? Lace had always embraced the positive, and even after her grandparents had been taken from her too soon, she’d leaned on her one close friend in town to keep her centered. Yes. Just one good friend. Lace had lost touch with her other elementary school acquaintances long ago, having spent her middle and high school years at a regional vo-tech ten miles to the north. The only person she’d reconnected with was Bobbie.
Thatwonderfulwoman. For all Lace’s adult years, Bobbie had been her rock. A busy, up and coming caterer for the area, her bestie had nonetheless always managed to make time for thetwo of them to get together, bitch about life, and toss back a few drinks.
But just last year Bobbie had met and married the man she deemed her soulmate—one of the larger-than-life Sothard brothers who were almost mythical in town—and she was now eight and a half months pregnant.
Lace didn’t begrudge her friend any of her happiness, especially with the heinous past the woman had finally escaped.
With Lace’s breast cancer diagnosis, Lace had purposely distanced herself from Bobbie, not wanting to rain on the very first joyful parade of the woman’s life, and she missed her.
Bobbie still texted Lace pretty much every day, so Lace didn’t feel completely disconnected, but she wasn’t exactly stellar company these days, so when Bobbie suggested getting together, Lace always found one excuse or another to put her off.
That, of course, wasn’t going to cut it with her intrepid friend for very much longer. Bobbie wasn’t the type to sit back and watch someone wallow in misery.
If Lace could just get through her chemotherapy…
Right.
Once she finished that, it was surgery to remove the tumor and the breast. Then, of course, radiation treatments. It would be a lifetime of drugs and testing thereafter. But everyone she’d talked to in a breast cancer support text-chain she’d joined, said it got much better after chemo was complete.
She was looking forward to that.
Once inside her door, Lace swept off the scrubs cap she still wore, and reached for her ubiquitous head scarf.Yeah.She’d lost her hair just two weeks into treatment, and that had been another kick to the gut. She’d always loved her long blonde sheen of hair, and in the first weeks of her treatment, had cried every time she’d lost handfuls of it in the shower, on her pillow,or just when she forgot about it and reached up to scratch her head.
It had been a tough decision, but after dealing with that sad mess for a week or more, Lace had finally decided to embrace a buzz cut. What she hadn’t known, and nobody had told her, was how freaking cold her naked noggin would get. It felt arctic when she was just sitting around, freezing when the wind blew, and her pillowcase, at night, had the temperature of block ice.