Still, I raise my gaze, reach for Dad’s electric razor, switch it on and press it to my hairline. Its vibrations seize my forehead, the buzzing burns itself into my eardrums.
I hold my breath, press my lips together, grip the razor more tightly. Then I slowly move it backward and know that I will never, for the rest of my life, forget this buzzing it makes as it cuts my hair down to two millimeters.
I blink, feel my tears hurling themselves off my cheeks into the abyss. Feel that they can’t put up any resistance against the fall, feel how powerless they are, at the mercy of the laws of nature.
They fall and fall and fall. And I fall with them.
Hearing from a doctor that you’re suffering from a life-threatening illness is one thing. But seeing it in the mirror and being able to touch it with your hands, knowing that you’ve just lost a part of yourself, that is something completely different. And the thought that it could happen again—maybe in just a few days at my next checkup—makes everything inside me freeze.
‘What are you thinking?’ Lucy nudges my shoulder. ‘For my part, I think you should grow your hair out.’
Lost in thought, I stare into the mirror, wanting to see the woman with the hip-length braids, but all I see is the woman with the bald head.
‘I think it’s time,’ I hear my hairdresser say, as if from far away.
Fifty percent. That’s the probability with which I’ll lose my hair—if it even grows as long as it used to be—through another round of treatment. That’s how high the risk is that I’ll have to go through again what tore my heart apart back then in the bathroom.
My fingernails dig into the leather of the salon chair. ‘No, please keep it short again.’
An hour later I ’m standing with my freshly cut pixie cut and a stack of mail from the letterbox in front of the front door of the shared apartment where June, Olive, Sonora, Autumn, and I will be living together from now on. I’ve barely opened the door when the voices of Sonora and June drift over to me from the room that will one day be our living room, along with the smell of fresh pizza and damp paint.
‘Got it. June’s heart belongs solely to her work, which she’s going to marry one day so she can be the best diagnostician in all of Nova Scotia,’ jokes Sonora, who’s starting her job in surgery at Halifax Harbor Hospital tomorrow.
‘In all of Canada.’ That was June. I can practically see her lifting her index finger and tilting her head to the side so that her Barbie-blond mane falls into her face.
Smiling, I set the mail down on one of the moving boxes that populate the hallway and decide to keep my shoes on. The apartment is still a wild mess and the floor is anything but clean.
‘If you say so,’ replies Sonora as I reach the living room.
The two of them are sitting amid paint buckets, brushes, and covered furniture on boxes that have been repurposed as stools. Sonora is wearing overalls speckled with dusty-rose paint stains, June a chic blouse, her hair tied up in a high ponytail.
June waves at me. ‘Where were you?’
‘Had to take care of something,’ I answer, eyeing the pizzas in the takeout boxes. They smell amazing. ‘By the way, there was mail in the mailbox. It’s on the stack of boxes in the hallway.’
‘Damn,’ grumbles Sonora. A piece of the spinach pizza she was just holding is suddenly stuck in her curls. ‘It’s always the same. I’ll be right back.’ With that, she disappears through the doorway.
Before I can join June, high heels clatter in the hallway. That can only be Olive.
‘Hey, Olive, we’re in the living room!’ I call out to her, and a second later she’s with us. Complete with her perfectly drawn eyeliner and elegant Marlene Dietrich trousers. No one seeing her like this would ever believe she’s an ICU doctor. She looks more like a model: too perfect to be real.
She discovers the improvised dinner. ‘I’ll get plates and cutlery,’ she announces, and June and I burst out laughing at the same time.
I gasp. ‘You’re seriously the only person who doesn’t eat takeout pizza with their fingers.’
Olive shrugs. ‘There has to be order. You’ll be thanking me soon enough when I make sure this flat-share doesn’t descend into chaos.’
She definitely has a point, but before I can tell her that, I already hear Autumn calling to us from the hallway.
A few seconds later she’s in the living room. Her book bag slung over her shoulder, a mild smile on her face, her fiery red hair glowing in competition with her green eyes.
‘Got it!’ She presents her employment contract for the specialist position in pediatrics, and the rest of us respond with jubilant applause. Her gaze falls on the pizza boxes. ‘Is there a Margherita too?’
‘What do you think?’ June signals for all of us to help ourselves.
But instead of reaching for a slice, I just eye the pizzas. White flour, saturated fats, hardly any vitamins or minerals, but all the more salt. High blood pressure, cardiovascular problems,weakened immune system, unnecessary strain on kidneys and liver.
Someone says something; I look up.