Raine (Gods of the Fifth Floor #2) - M.V. Ellis Page 0,107
go through day after day.
“Some of the special medicines Daddy was having did help him, and they gave him a little more time to spend with the ones he loved, and some of them made him very sick—even sicker than the cancer did—even while they were making him a little better.
“Apart from not feeling very good a lot of the time, one of the side effects of all the medicines is that they make people’s hair fall out. And even though Daddy had the most beautiful, thick curly long hair that Mommy liked to run her hands through whenever she could, he decided that instead of waiting for it to fall out in yucky lumps and clumps, he would cut it all off and do something good with it. So, he chopped it right down to his scalp, and donated his ponytail to a charity that makes wigs for children—some of whom are your age, or even younger—who also have cancer and have lost all their hair.” Dammit. A solitary tear leaked from my eye, but I knew it wouldn’t be the last, so I swiped it away quickly.
“A few weeks later he had a letter from a little girl called Missy, and in the letter was a photo of her with a beautiful curly blond wig on. Missy said that she was so happy to have the wig, as it made her feel pretty again after losing all her own hair because she was sick. Do you want to know something special?” Lila nodded, even though she already knew what I was going to say. “Missy survived her cancer, and grew up to be big and strong. Her hair grew back too, but every year she sends a letter saying how she’ll never forget how much that wig helped her when she was sad, and how grateful she was to Daddy for donating his hair.”
“Then one day, we had some news from Daddy’s doctors, and it wasn’t what we wanted to hear. They told us to call all of your daddy’s friends, and the people he loved, and tell them to come to the hospital to say goodbye.” As always, by this point in the story I was openly sobbing, and there was no biting my lip, or digging my nails into the palm of my hand that was going to stem the tide of tears. “They told us that if Daddy wanted to talk to a priest, we should call one.”
“But why?”
“Like I’ve told you before, sweetheart, some people find it comforting to talk to a priest, and tell them all their secrets before they die. But Daddy didn’t have any secrets he wanted to share.”
Once the cancer diagnosis was out there in the world, Raine became a balls-out open book. Some would say too much so. He would tell those people to go fuck themselves. That was if he bothered to dignify them with the idea that he gave even the slightest fuck what they thought, which was doubtful.
There was also the fact that, despite attending a Catholic boarding school for years, Raine wasn’t in the slightest bit religious. However, that kind of existential conversation could definitely wait until Lila was a little older.
“You know what he did do though, sweet girl?”
“Asked you to marry him.”
“He did.” I stroked her thick straw-colored curls. One of the many things that reminded me each day that she was her father’s daughter. “He got Uncle Beck and Uncle Nate to secretly buy me a ring, and he asked me to be his wife. He told me he knew we didn’t have long, but however long it was, he wanted to make sure that the world knew that he was mine forever, and I was his. What else did he do?”
“He asked you to have a baby.” She beamed, just as she always did at this point in the story.
“Yes, he did. And do you know that, more than being asked to marry him, that was the best question anyone has ever asked me?” What she didn’t fully understand yet was exactly what he was requesting.
One of the many #FunnyNotFunny moments we had along Raine’s cancer journey, was one before he was admitted for his first round of treatment, when he was strongly advised to make a number of ‘deposits’ at a sperm bank. This was, we found out, standard procedure for male cancer patients—given that the nature of many of the treatments could lead to infertility.