“Okay, but just bear with me. It’s something I’m still working on and it might take a little while longer before it’s where I want it, but — well, you’ll see. Go sit down.”
“All right,” I answer, and go back to the living room.
“Are you sitting down?”
“Yeah,” I tell her, and plop down on the couch.
“Okay, just a second,” she calls.
All things considered, things are going great right now. Yeah, Grace is still denying me the random privilege out of sheer spite, but we’re together.
Her treatment, from everything she says, is going along just fine. Her oligodendroglioma hasn’t shrunk, but she hasn’t had any worsening symptoms. In fact, she told me a couple of days ago that she’s been without a headache for almost a week.
“All right,” she says from just around the corner, “are you ready?”
“I’m ready,” I tell her.
Grace comes around the corner, and at first, I’m wondering what it is that she’s trying to show me, but soon enough, it clicks.
She’s taken the towel off of her head, and she’s not wearing a wig. Her hair, while only a couple of inches long, is starting to grow back significantly.
“I can actually do stuff with it now,” she says. “Feel.”
This is the first time since Grace and I met that she’s not jerking away from me when my hand approaches the top of her head.
The hair is soft, smooth. It’s dark, and although she just got out of the shower, it almost looks styled.
“It’s wonderful,” I tell her. “Very beautiful.”
“Thanks,” she says. “I’ve never been that big on short hair — at least, when it comes to my head — but I’m pretty fucking proud of it right now.”
“You should be,” I tell her. “It looks great.”
“Doesn’t it? It was kind of cool to get to change my hair in every way on a daily basis, but it’s so much nicer to have my own starting to grow back.”
“I love it,” I tell her.
“All right,” she says, “I think I can let you out now.”
“Let me out of what?”
“The kennel,” she says. “I’ve decided to no longer be mad at you for trying to kill me at the top of the Ferris wheel.”
“I was not trying to kill you,” I start, but her left eyebrow is rising, and I take the hint.
“Anyway,” she says, “I have something to tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, you know how I’ve been trying to get my footing back at work since my boss decided not to retire?”
“Yeah,” I answer.
“I ran into one of the members of the board yesterday,” she says. “At first, she was a little hesitant to talk to me, because apparently, John’s been spreading some yellow press about me over the last little while.”
“What a jerk,” I scoff.
“Not my point,” she says. “I finally got her to relax enough to listen to some of my ideas, and she’s going to put together an exploratory committee to look into the feasibility of spreading our network into new markets.”