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I shake the thought away. “I’ll go help him.”
“You’ll help him get undressed?” she asks.
“If he needs me to.”
“You’ll help him get washed up?”
I stand a little taller. “If he needs me to.”
“Well, go on then.” She motions like she wants to shoo me forward. I turn the knob and step into the bedroom. I find Aaron in the bathroom, leaning heavily on the porcelain sink.
“Dude,” I say, “you need a hand?”
He shakes his head, still staring into the bowl of the sink. Then he straightens up. “Thought I was going to puke again. It passed.” He picks up a hand towel, wets it under the sink, pumps some soap onto it, and washes his face. Then he pulls his soiled shirt over his head and starts to scrub his chest. “You should have seen Bess’s face when I puked in the car. I thought she was going to heave her guts out. It was great.” He laughs weakly.
I smile too. I can just imagine how she reacted.
“You’re going to have to tell Bess about what’s really going on,” I say as I sit down on the closed toilet lid. I’m afraid if I leave he’ll fall and I won’t be close enough to catch him.
“After I tell Sam. I have to tell my daughter first. Then I’ll tell Bess.”
“Are you sure?” I’m not convinced it’s a good idea to let Bess think these chemo sessions are going to fix him.
“I’m not done working on Bess yet. I need a little more time.”
“Time for what?”
He turns to face me. He has a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, his lips all foamy, and a drop of toothpaste foam falls from his lips to the floor. I kick a dirty towel over to smear it up. “She’s waking up, Eli,” he replies around the foam. “Can’t you see it?”
“She wasn’t asleep,” I retort. “She just hates my guts.”
“She doesn’t.”
My stomach does a little flip. What does he know that I don’t know? “She has told me enough times that she does. I believe her.”
He spits into the bowl and raises some water to his mouth in his cupped hand so he can swish. “She’s lying,” he finally says, and he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
What’s bad is that I desperately wish that what he’s saying could be the truth.
“I’m going to lie down for just a little bit,” he says.
“I think that’s a good idea.”
He pulls back the covers and falls onto the bed like a great big oak tree that has been felled. The bed rattles and the legs knock against the wooden floor.
“Can I come in now?” Bess jiggles the doorknob.
He’s only wearing his boxers since he washed, but he’s under the covers. “Do you want her to come in?” I ask him.
“What he wants doesn’t matter!” Bess yells through the crack in the door. “If I wasn’t worried about being permanently scarred by the sight of his junk, I’d already be in there!” She waits a beat. “And I have his meds! He needs to take them before he falls asleep.”
Aaron groans long and loud. “Let her in.”
The door wasn’t locked, but now that he’s given permission, she freely turns the knob. She walks to the bedside carrying a juice pouch and a handful of pills. She places the pills in his palm and stabs the straw into the juice, then hands it to him. He sits up a little to drink, and the covers fall down around his waist.
She stares at his lap. “Please tell me you’re not naked under there.”
“I’m not naked under there.”
