As You Wish

"You spent a lot of time giving me hell," she said. "And almost as much looking after me. It's how I learned to be so good at it."

I snorted, but didn't say anything.

"Jere. Talk to me."

And I just... did.

I told her everything that I'd worked so hard to keep from my mom. From the moment I'd met Noreen to all the things she'd done. How she'd gone out of her way for us. For Ethan. Being there for me and making me feel fucking normal once in a goddamn while. Staying at a job she'd already quit just to make sure he was taken care of and spoiling him rotten with treats and presents. How it didn't seem to matter to her that I was...

"You know, fucking broke," I muttered. "She never made it feel like she was patronizing us. You would've loved her, Shayla. You two would've gotten along like a freakin' house on fire."

Her face, which had a cautiously hopeful expression on it, clouded over. "Why is that past tense?"

"Because this is the worst possible time for anyone to get into something like... like this."

"Are you serious?" she asked. "You... Jesus, Jeremy. You know you don't have to be a fucking martyr, right?"

I looked up at her, eyebrows raised. "That so?"

She huffed and leaned back in her chair, glaring at me. "You have some woman you seriously adore and cut her out because the timing is bad? Right when you need someone like her? Are you serious?"

"Wow, I didn't know you thought so highly of me."

"What?"

I half-laughed. "To just assume I'm the one who ended shit."

She stared at me. "Wait, she..." Her mouth hung open for a moment before her eyes narrowed. "What kind of heartless fucking--"

"Don't."

"She broke up with you right after--"

"Shayla." My voice was tired, but it was enough to silence her. "There's no right answer, like you said. She's got her own trauma to deal with. She works at the fucking Wish Mission. She's seen kids dying for years and that's on top of whatever... whatever. I don't know. She has some other... We didn't talk about it. I couldn't even bring myself to ask her. This isn't her fault, okay?"

"She could have waited," Shayla choked, anger still written across her face.

"And hurt herself even worse than she already was?" I shook my head. "She was torn up about it and I made it worse."

"How could you have made it worse?"

I wasn't sure how to explain to my sister that I'd been so emotionally exhausted, I could barely process what Noreen had said. That she'd been suffering and I'd barely noticed until she said something. That I'd tried to tell her I understood, but it came out like I didn't care and like she meant nothing to me.

That I'd let her walk away without so much as checking to make sure she was okay. After all Noreen had done, I'd...

I would never, ever regret putting Ethan first. Ever. I could've handled things better, but he was always first.

"Her taking care of herself doesn't make her heartless," I said. "Just like me taking care of Ethan doesn't make me heartless."

"I guess when you put it like that..." She sighed. "You're right. It just fucking sucks."

"It just fucking sucks," I agreed.

Neither of us were looking at each other, but I saw her bring a hand to her mouth out of the corner of my eye.

"Don't chew your nails," I said.

She snorted. "Okay, Mom."

I almost smiled.

"What does that mean for, um, the whole 'wish' thing?" she asked after a moment. "Is he still gonna go to Spain?"

I shrugged. "Dunno. Guessing probably not." I sighed, sitting back in my chair. "Maybe if there's some kind of miracle with the insurance, but if Noreen's not our wish granter anymore, I dunno if there's even anyone to take it on. That place is so busy and we've already got so much from them."

"But he's..."

"He has time, Shayla. His doctor said..." My voice was barely above a whisper, which was as loud as I could make it, but somehow the words I hadn't been able to say started coming out. "Okay, look. You might understand it better, but basically, the treatments--the chemo and stuff--it's not working. It's not getting rid of the cancer. It was making him more sick. I mean, that shit is... it's poison. And then when we were between cycles, the cancer... I dunno. Grew or whatever. The meds he's on now are helping, but they're not a cure. They're so he doesn't hurt and he can just be as happy as possible until--"

My resolve failed and Shayla reached forward just as my heart shattered for what felt like the millionth time.

"I know," she said.

"Wouldn't it be better for him not to know?" I looked at her, pleading for some assurance or justification.

Her hand was on my arm and she squeezed, then shook her head.

"It might be," I said. "Or maybe... what if the doctors told him? Wouldn't that... how am I supposed to tell him?"

She pressed her lips together again, then sighed. "Look, this is gonna hurt to hear as much as it hurts to say, Jere--"

Fuck.

I shook my head wildly. "Don't--"

"You need to hear it." She squeezed my arm again. "He's going to figure it out. He's going to know something's wrong. And you--you--are the person who needs to be there for him." Her grip on my arm loosened, but the fierceness in her eyes didn't fade. "I don't believe for one single second that you would actually let someone else have that conversation with him."

Guilt hit me almost immediately and I felt my face turn red. "Fuck. No, I just--"

"You're upset. And emotional. And saying things that are completely understandable given the circumstances." She stood, pulling me out of my chair so she could hug me. "I know you don't mean it, just like I know you can do this."

My sister's faith in me was unfounded, but I was grateful for it all the same. That faith got me through another sleepless night, this one on the living room couch. My old bed was long gone, given to some unfortunate neighbour who had a bout with bed bugs a few years earlier, and since Ethan was staying in Shayla's old room, I'd said she could sleep on the air mattress we'd set up in my old room.

So I relegated myself to the couch, which was fine because I wasn't sleeping much anyway. The house was silent and the only light left was the yellow glow of streetlights streaming through a crack in the dusty curtains covering the front window. With blankets tucked around me, I scrolled through my phone, trying to figure out how.

Just how.

I wasn't expecting much, which was good because after countless blogs and articles and forums, I didn't have any answers. Everything sounded wrong; the advice didn't apply to me, or I couldn't see myself doing what was suggested, or I couldn't imagine the words coming out of my mouth. My family had never been overly religious; we'd gone to church a few times when Shayla and I were kids, but that was more at my grandma's insistence and after she passed, it became less and less of a thing. So all the talk about heaven and Jesus and angels just didn't fit.

It was probably because they were just words drawn on a screen. Little symbols, void of emotion, letters sorted in a way that passed on information but not reality. I couldn't picture these people, no matter how much I tried. The mom of a little girl with some genetic disease was behind one article, but she was faceless to me. I knew mom_of_an_angel_82 was a real person posting for advice on a forum for kids with terminal cancer like Ethan's, but I couldn't...

I couldn't see her.

Shayla was right. I needed to talk to someone. I needed to use my own words to explain what was going through my head and my heart. Maybe these websites were useful to someone, but that someone wasn't me. I needed...

Noreen's face floated into my mind.

Well, to be fair, Noreen's entire figure floated into my mind because I couldn't seem to think about her without picturing the way she looked beneath me, hair sprawled across my pillow and pink staining the skin of her collarbone as she looked up at me.

Regardless, I thought of Noreen, even as I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to shut those thoughts out.

Asking her for help wasn't an option. The only reason I was thinking of her--other than just missing her like crazy--was because she was the only person I could think of who had been through this before.

And there was no way, no fucking way I could ask her for help with this.

I couldn't do that to someone, even if she'd want to hear from me.

But even as I agreed with myself that I couldn't bring this to Noreen, I found my mind wandering back to her again and again.

Before I even knew what was happening, I'd sent her a message.

If you don't want to hear from me, I get it. I just want to check in and make sure you're okay.

Then, before it had even finished sending, I sent her another one:

I'm sorry I didn't check on you sooner.

And then I flipped my phone over and grimaced, cringing in the darkness. Chances were that she didn't even want to hear from me, and on top of that, it was late. She was probably asleep. At best, it was pretty fucked up of me to send her a message like that in the middle of the night. At worst, it was inappropriate. Unprofessional. It would either wake her up and ruin her sleep, or she'd see it the next morning and it would ruin her day, or--

My phone vibrated.

I'm okay. Thank you for messaging. I wasn't sure if it was okay for me to contact you or not.

Swallowing hard, I typed up another message as quickly as I could, which was incredibly slow because I couldn't figure out what to say. Eventually, I settled on something that was nowhere near enough.

Yeah, it's totally fine.

She didn't respond right away and after a bit, I figured that was the end of the conversation. But she was just having the same trouble I was finding the right words.

I'm sorry.

Licking my lips, my reply was a lot faster that time.

I'm sorry, too.

And that was it. It wasn't much, and it resolved nothing, but it was enough. For the first time since that horrible fucking day, I put my phone down, closed my eyes, and slept so long and so deeply that I didn't wake up until Ethan bounced on my stomach the next morning.

"Oof," I grunted as Spike bashed me on the forehead.

"Morning, Dad!" he said brightly. "Wanna watch Scooby with me?"

I almost laughed. "You don't wanna wait for Auntie Shayla to wake up?"

"Nah, she's still sleeping, but I wanna watch with you."

He let me sit up just enough to give him some space on the couch, then tucked himself under the blankets and leaned against me as he flicked the TV on.

It was a turn. He wasn't at his best, but he wasn't at his worst. Shayla was only staying in town for a couple of days before heading back to school, but Ethan was feeling well enough that we actually went out a couple of times. Nowhere major, but for ice cream and walks through the park. His immune system wasn't great so certain things were off limits, but it was...

It was okay.

Shayla being there helped. She played with him, treated him like a kid, knew when things were too much and rolled her eyes at me when I fell into my habits of treating him like he was glass. Mostly, she gave me someone to talk to and gave me the opportunity to reset. I was sleeping again, as much as anyone can sleep when a seven-year-old wakes them up by bouncing on their stomach every morning.

But it was enough, thankfully.

It was enough that the morning of Shayla's last day in town, when Ethan woke me up with a slightly less energetic bounce than usual, I was prepared.

Well, as prepared as anyone can ever be for that kind of question.

"What's wrong, bud?" I asked, not quite groggy but not quite awake.

He fidgeted with Spike's arm, but didn't say anything.

"Buddy? You okay?"

He twisted his lips to the side, not looking at me.

"Dad, where do people go when they die?"

Fuck.

I sat up a bit, giving Ethan space to come to me if he needed to. For the moment, he sat still, staring at Spike.

All the articles and blogs came back to me. All the advice that had been meaningless, all the suggestions to use euphemisms and suggestions not to sugarcoat things. All the bullshit that I knew wasn't going to work.

I took a breath, then let it out.

All I had to do was answer the question.

"No one really knows, bud," I said. "But lots of people think there's something that comes after. Heaven, or some kind of afterlife. Some people even think they come back and get reborn as someone else."

"Really?" he asked.

"Mm-hmm. But it's not something we find out until it happens."

He was quiet for a moment, then twitched Spike's arms back and forth. "And everyone dies sometime, right?"

"Yeah, bud."

"So like, once people die, they're not... alone?"

"No, no. They're not alone." When he didn't say anything right away, I forced myself to continue the conversation. "What do you think happens after people die?"

I expected him to shrug or just sassily mumble that he didn't know, which is why he was asking, but he surprised me by chewing on his lip thoughtfully for a moment.

"I think everything starts again," he said. "Just somewhere else. With lots of cake, like the kind Gramma makes, and you can eat it forever and there's always extra frosting. And you get to do all kinds of fun stuff and there's pirates and horses and--" He stopped and frowned. "Dad, do you think people go to Spain after they die?"

I had no fucking idea how to answer that question.

"Maybe," I said. "But you can also go to Spain before you die, too."

He let that process for a minute, then grinned. "Cool. Maybe I'll get to see Spain twice."

With that, he snuggled in, and I had absolutely no idea if the conversation went well or not.

It went well enough that it had opened a door. After Shayla left, Ethan and I went back to our apartment, much to Mom's chagrin, but that apartment was our home. And people always feel more comfortable at home, which is probably also why Ethan started asking more questions. They jarred me at first, those sudden questions, but I slowly got more used to them.

"Why doesn't Noreen come over anymore?" was one that I had a hard time answering.

"I think she's busy," I said. "But I'll, uh, text her and ask if she can stop by."

"Can she take me horseback riding again?"

"Maybe, bud. I'll ask."

"Do people know when they're going to die?" he asked one day while we were eating supper.

"Sometimes, but not always," I said as evenly as I could. Then, when there was no follow-up question, I swallowed hard and hoped he couldn't hear my heart pounding. "Do you think it's better to know when it's going to happen, or not to know?"

It felt like a monumental question, but Ethan just shrugged, chomped half of a chicken nugget, and told me through a mouthful of semi-chewed food that he'd been sad when he first realized he was going to die but that he didn't feel too scared about it now.

So that's how I found out he knew.

It didn't make the questions any easier. It was harder because now he wanted to know specifics--what would happen when he started again.

That was his euphemism; that was what he wanted to call it, so that was what we called it. I fretted a bit about whether it was the right way to think about it. After another evening of frantically searching Google for answers, I was confident in saying it was both totally fine and the absolute worst to refer to it that way.

But that was what Ethan wanted.

"Will I get a mom?" he asked one day.

When I was confused, he rolled his eyes at me and explained in that overconfidently incorrect way that seven-year-olds do that he didn't have a mom now, but maybe that meant he would get one when he started again.

I didn't handle answering that one super well, though I tried my best.

"If that's what you want, bud, I'm sure you can get a mom," I said.

He watched me for a moment, then fidgeted with Spike.

"Well, I only need one for a while," he said. "Just till you get there."

And fuck if it didn't take everything in me to smile at him before I excused myself to the bathroom and sobbed into a towel, hoping he wouldn't hear me.

It felt weird to say things felt normalized, but they did--so much so that I finally asked him if there were certain things he'd like to do before he started again. I couldn't promise him anything, of course, but I figured I could at least try.

I thought it would be things like Disneyland or that he'd bring up Spain again. When Ethan started blushing and couldn't look up at me, I didn't know what to do.

"What is it, bud?" I asked.

He mumbled something, staring hard at Spike.

"You know I don't speak caveman, Ethan."

He mumbled slightly louder and I sighed.

"Bud, you have to--"

"Can we go back and see Kennedy again, please?!" he said loudly.

I almost laughed. Almost. Like, it was really fucking funny, but I kept an entirely straight face and nodded seriously.

"I'll see what I can do."

I had never seen his face so red. It was all the way up past where his hairline used to be. He grumbled slightly, then sat on the couch and refused to talk to me until I brought over a bowl of popcorn a while later.

"You know what else I kinda wanted to see?" he asked, grabbing a handful.

"What's that?"

"That movie."

"What movie, bud?"

He sighed heavily. "The one Miracle Jim was making. About Westley and the king and Buttercup."

I ate a piece of popcorn thoughtfully. I'd been holding off showing him the movie, mostly because I thought it'd be kind of cool to watch after he'd done Noreen's whole Princess Bride experience thing. But now there was a time limit and it didn't seem like Spain was happening; even if the fucking insurance company pushed things through, who knows if Ethan would be up for travel. He was doing okay, but that could change in a heartbeat.

So maybe the movie would have to be enough.

"You know, bud, let me look into it," I said. "I think I heard Miracle Jim say it was almost ready to watch."

17 - Noreen

"This feels a little weird. I'm not sure what to call you."

He smiled and it was still devastating. I'd had a school-girl crush on him when I was last here and it was gratifying to know that I had good taste as a teenager. He was almost too handsome to be a therapist. It was distracting.

"Whatever you're comfortable with is fine, Noreen."

"Doctor seems a little formal. Is Phillip okay?"

"Absolutely. So, tell me what you've been doing with your life. Do you still ride?"

I shook my head. "No, not really. I have been lately, but nothing serious. I work in management for the local branch of The Wish Mission and..." I was silent for a moment. "One of our clients, he... I'm sorry." I tried to smile and failed.

"No need to apologize. Take your time."

"Riding and horses was part of what we put together for him. I've been doing enough riding with Ethan to remember how much I loved it. All of it, you know? Not just the riding itself, but bonding with the horses, the structure, the caring for the animals, the smells. Everything."

"Did you help arrange the riding for... It was Ethan?"

"Yes, Ethan. And yes, I did. It's an odd story. He loves Spain, or what he thinks Spain is. The owners where I used to ride had Andalusians. Are you familiar? The Spanish horses?"

"I am. Beautiful animals."

"I called them. They still had them and we arranged for Ethan's trips there."

"How much do you believe what you experienced was part of your decision to bring Ethan there?"

I paused. "What do you mean?"

"Noreen, after what you experienced, horses and riding were your refuge. You started riding almost immediately after losing your cousin. You found solace with the animals and praise for your riding from your mother. That replaced any solace or praise you might have tried to find in your father. Healing comes from hard, consistent work and you put the hours in, but we both know that the path to your healing went through a stable. Were you hoping some of that might rub off on Ethan? Maybe he could benefit as you had?"