“I was,” he admitted. “Been having a lot of bad days since I got here. Still no excuse for making you pay the penalty.”
“And I’d appreciate it if doesn’t happen again,” she noted. “I did go home at the end of my day feeling as if I’d pretty well ruined everything in your world.”
“No, you had nothing to do with it.” He again smiled tentatively. “I was an absolute jerk, and I’m so sorry.”
She nodded. “Apology accepted. Now I’m here on Dani’s request.”
“Did she have to bribe you to come back here?”
At that, she burst out laughing. “Not so much.… You do have a bad rep though.”
“I’m sorry,” he said instantly. “I think it’s taken my sister’s presence here to see the error of my ways.”
She frowned, staring at him. “Your sister’s here?”
He raised both eyebrows. “And here I thought everybody knew and thought everyone had already gossiped about us.”
“I don’t know anything about it.” She frowned still. “I’ve been off for a few days though.”
“It certainly didn’t happen just over the last few days, but maybe not everybody cares.”
She laughed. “Most of us have dealt with some pretty cranky patients over time, so I’m pretty sure a lot of it’s been forgotten.”
“Maybe,” he muttered. “I don’t even know how often I’ve seen you.”
“Quite a bit,” she replied cheerfully. “It breaks my heart you didn’t remember.” However, her bright smile belied her words.
He smirked, shaking his head. “Most people think I’m memorable, and for all the wrong reasons.”
“Now you have a chance to change that,” she stated firmly.
He nodded absentmindedly. “If I care, that is.”
“You should care.”
He tilted his head. “Why?” he asked. “When I leave here, nobody will remember me. Or, if they do, it will be for more of the wrong reasons.”
“Is that how you want to be remembered?” she asked curiously. “I mean, if tomorrow were to be the last day of your life, is that how you’d want others to remember you?”
“No.” He stared at her. “And I’ll hardly spend every day as if it were my last.”
“And yet that’s what they tell us to do.” She gave him an odd smile. “Make every day,…liveevery day as if it were your last because you never really know. It could be.”
“That’s kind of a maudlin way to go through life,” he noted. She looked young for such an attitude.
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “Something my mother always tried to teach me. Of course I failed.”
“You failed because it’s a depressing thing to remember.”
“And that could be true,” she agreed. “Admittedly that could be true. I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers.”
“Why did she tell you that?”
“Because she was dying of breast cancer. Yet she struggled, and she fought, and she did the best she could to survive. Still, I think it was a battle that she knew, right from the beginning, that she couldn’t win. So she finally gave in. And I say,gave in, in an odd way, because obviously she didn’tgive in-give in. Cancer was just one of those things that she could no longer fight against. Her body was decaying faster than she could do anything about it.” A lopsided smile peeked out. “It always made me feel bad to see somebody so beautiful and so,… so gifted being taken from us in such a senseless way.”
“I think breast cancer is one of the worst diseases in the world.” He shook his head, wondering at her sense of calm. “And I’m so sorry for you.”
She shook her head. “Don’t be, because one of the things that I did get to do was watch her go through some of the most courageous months of her life, with a grace that I know I could never even possibly equal. She was incredibly beautiful right up to the end. No, not outside of course. Her body had completely succumbed to the disease, but the person she was inside was just so beautiful that, if I hadn’t had that experience, I don’t know that I would be as good a person as I am today.”