The Girl With Nine Wigs Read Online Free PDF Page B

bathed in sweat. Concave belly, heaving rib cage. Everything soaking wet, either from sweat or tears. “Tumor fever,” they call it. For me it starts every night at nine. This morning, at four A.M. , I peeled off another drenched T-shirt reeking of tumor sweat. There are four others beside my bed, two dirty and two clean. My mother unfolded a fresh T-shirt and helped me pull it on. My body leads a life of its own, responding to something I can’t see that has taken control. It’s times like these that my disease is closer than ever.
    I’ve been sleeping in my parents’ bedroom. Not something to brag about at age twenty-one, but it’s just the way it is. I’m back to being the little girl I once was.
    â€œI’m so scared,” I whispered into my pillow last night.
    My dad wrapped his arms around me. “Sophie, you mean everything to me.”
    I released myself into his big embrace. My body was damp to the touch. After a while my mother joined us.
    â€œWhat if I die?” I held them tightly and looked over my father’s shoulders through a slit in the curtains. The slit was just wide enough to see the night. A bare tree, a piece of the not so friendly gable stone of the house on the opposite side of the canal, a sliver of moonlight, a dark backdrop.
    â€œYou are not going to die.” My mother’s voice.
    â€œBut what if I do? What if my tumors don’t go away? I am so afraid of the scan.” My whole body felt as if it were weeping.
    â€œSo are we, Sophie, so are we.” My father looked at me helplessly. I felt relieved that he let me speak about my greatest fear and didn’t try to brush it away. It’s exhausting to put on a brave face when behind it there is only fear. Still I keep on trying.
    *   *   *
    The few hairs still clinging to my scalp itch like crazy and look ridiculous. I decided not to wait any longer and called up Sis to see if she can help me out with the task. She’s at the door half an hour later with an electric razor. Maud gets up and leaves us alone.
    â€œThis is supposed to be a really good one, I just picked it up from a friend who works as a hairdresser,” my sister says.
    She and my mother hold up a mirror while I switch on the razor. We are sitting at the kitchen table, three pairs of eyes fixed on my hands steering the machine carefully but determinedly over my scalp. Although there’s not that much left to shave, I feel a burst of strength running through me: shaving myself into a skinhead before the cancer can do.
    In a few minutes’ time it’s done. While shaving, I managed to look only at my hair and not at my face. But now that it’s finished I am as bald as a bowling ball. I look revolting. I tell myself that G.I. Jane did the same thing and she was still a hot chick, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. For the next few weeks I avoid every mirror. I hate my new head, with or without a wig.

 
    MONDAY, MARCH 14
    S IX WEEKS HAVE PASSED since my first admission to C6. Today I’m back in the hospital to be admitted for the second time. I have to be admitted twice in a nine-week cycle, in the first and seventh weeks. During the in-between weeks, I go in for my shots and injections at the day-patient ward, which takes a few hours. This routine is only for the first block—the first nine weeks; in future blocks I’ll go in for more day treatments.
    My schedule is demanding and I barely understand it. Doctors like to make things complicated, it seems. When I’m not doing chemo, I spend most of my time resting or going back to the hospital to get my blood checked. In short, my life as a patient is almost as busy as it was as a full-time student, running between classes, dates, and part-time jobs. I’m starting to enjoy things more and more when I’m not in the hospital: brushing my teeth, doing the grocery shopping, getting dressed, watching TV.