Hello Stranger

And he listened to me. Thank God, finally, he listened to me.

He reached out and pulled me close, and his warmth was divine. The greatest thing I’d ever felt in my life.

“How could anyone ever refuse such an incredible little jitterbug like you?” he said, and my heart soared free.

Even in the cold hard shock, and the pain, and the fuck you, universe, fuck you, the universe was still smiling. Smiling right down on both of us, both Logan and me. Because that’s what love is. That’s what love always is. Whether it’s being on a beach putting your toes in the sea, or climbing a mountain in a wheelchair, or eating a fried breakfast in your boyfriend’s shirt, it’s every moment. Every single moment of joy in your life. And I was damn sure I was going to have a whole ton more of them with Logan Hall.53LoganThe girl was a diamond, shining through every piece of rough I’d ever known. Glowing bright, even in the misery, the shock and the pain.

We ate some of the leftover sandwiches, staring at each other in silence, and I felt a glimmer of something I hadn’t felt in years.

Hope.

It was just a glimmer, but I felt it.

I felt hope.

“When was the last time you made plans?” she asked me, and her question was genuine in the most stunning of ways.

“I do still make plans sometimes,” I managed a laugh. “I tend to take each week as it comes.”

Her shrug set my heart alight. “Then we should start making more of them. There’s so many things I want to do with you.”

There it was again, that optimism. Always a fountain of the most incredible sparkles, even in the darkest of times.

“We could take each day as it comes,” I said.

“Each day as it comes, sure. But days turn to weeks and weeks turn to months, and months even turn to years, no matter if you have CLL or any other miserable crap hanging over your head.”

I stopped munching my jam sandwich and looked at her through fresh eyes. The sweet little girl on the train who didn’t look like such a sweet little girl anymore. It looked like a wise old woman was staring out through her eyes.

If anyone had a soul, it was Chloe Sutton. I could feel it in every single one of her breaths.

“I guess I should make my own bucket list one of these days,” I said.

“A list. You should make a list. The bucket can go screw itself. We don’t even know what size of a bucket you have left. It could be a whole swimming pool for all you know.”

That was true enough. So was her comment on how my realism was fatalism. That had been clear enough when she’d drawn out every detail of my current diagnosis before we’d made our way downstairs.

I was dying. I knew that much. But I didn’t know how or when, not yet. Not set in stone.

“Please tell me you’re not going to write yourself off without a decent fight,” she said. “You’re Dr Logan Hall, you fight as hard a fight as you possibly can for everyone else with a bucket list, it’s the least you can do for yourself.”

“I’m not sure about that,” I told her again. “I’m not sure I want to fight another one of those scraps for myself. I’ve had enough of them already.”

“So do it for me.” Her eyes were gold dust. “Fight that fight for me.”

I finished my sandwich and brushed my hands together to get rid of the crumbs, and then I answered her.

“On one condition,” I said, and she was nodding her head in a flash.

“On any condition.”

I tipped my head. “I’ll fight for you, if you’ll fight for me. Become a doctor, Chloe. Go back and study to be a doctor.”

I saw her breath catch. “But I can’t… it’s complicated, and I’m not that much of a brainiac, and I might fail after all that work.”

“Who’s the fatalist now?” I asked, and she smiled around another bite of ham sandwich.

I watched her chewing, adoring her freckled cheeks for the millionth time.

“Alright then, Dr Hall,” she said. “You have yourself a deal.”

So we did it. We made a deal.

With her standing in my shirt, buttoned up halfway, with the last of her ham sandwich still in her mouth, we made a deal.

My fight, for her ambition.

We went into Franklin Ward next morning, but this time my grief wasn’t bound tight behind a barricade, it was free to flow loose. I felt myself choking up inside, and this time I didn’t force it back down, letting it prick at my eyes between consultations with no self-cursing.

It was liberating in the most blissful of ways.

I was different that day, saying hello to the nurses on the ward with a new little pang inside. Friends. They really were my friends. And so were the other people reaching out to keep in contact with me after Mum’s funeral. My diary was already filling up, faster than I’d ever known. And it was a good thing. It sure did feel like a good thing.