Hello, Sunshine

 

Given two years to live, he beat the odds. The cancer had just disappeared. No one could explain it. Not the doctors, the nurses, or the specialists, and there were no faith healers to take credit, or prayer groups praising Jesus. Mick wasn't a praying man and he certainly wasn't the type to curse and carouse and booze all his life just to go to church asking God for a miracle when he needed one, so he didn't ask God for nothing.

It was a goddamn miracle, he said to himself over a beer.

Cut down at 42 would have been a hell of a thing. Cancer in a brain he never knew he had, he liked to joke. It only would have been stranger had they told him it was in his heart he was sure he didn't have. Mick wasn't one for therapy or groups, but he had no one to talk to and someone telling you that you're going to die before the next presidential election is a grim prognosis for anyone, so he went to a group. He had ex wives and ex kids but they weren't around anymore. His drinking and womanizing had chased them gone.

It was a sad thing. Being in a room of people who were going to die soon. All sitting there like potted plants with coffee and donuts talking about all the things they wanted to do if they had the time to do them. Commiserating, you could call it. It was the one unifying deficiency among them. Time. It was the one thing no one could buy or sell.

Most of them had cancer of some sort. A few were suffering advanced stages of AIDS. There were a few other diseases ravaging a few of the more hollowed soon-to-be corpses, things Mick never heard of and certainly couldn't pronounce as he ate his usual cherry jelly donut. He never would have come back to the group after the first time had it not been for her.

Amber was 24 and dying like the rest of them. Much too soon. She had a neurodegenerative disease, similar to Huntington's, and she was dying from the inside. Each day she awoke, her body was one step closer to her untimely death and there was no stemcell treatment or anything in the world that would save her. Unlike Mick, she had family and friends cheering her on, but that only did so much. When you're dying, cheerleading only brings you so much cheer.

Mick was late to group most days. And it was Amber who always greeted him when he came in the same way every time.

"Hello, Sunshine!" she said with a gleeful grin.

It always made him smile. Even though cancer was eating his brain, those words, that smile and her innocent optimistic cheer made him feel better. It was worth the drive, worth the cost of parking, worth the headache of coming to the meeting he reluctantly came to week in and week out. Just those two words and that smile. She always saved him a seat next to her and there they sat for one hour twice a week listening and talking about the inevitable. Their common thread.

It was said that talking about it would alleviate the fear of it. Make it something less than what it was. Devalue its peculiar worth. Make it more of something usual like eating breakfast or going to the mall. Just another thing. Some times Amber would hold Mick's hand and Mick would breathe deeply as though he could inhale all her goodness and beauty and be better for it. As though there was a garden in himself and she was the sunshine and rain that fed it. Indeed, she was to him. And indeed was it a beautiful a garden that only he could see.

When he found out the cancer disappeared, he was skeptical. His doctor was skeptical as well. Four or five doctors reviewed scans of his brain and blood samples and one talked about cutting open his head to see for himself what defied logic and science. Of course, Mick declined that doctor's curiosity. Still, despite skepticism and logic and the natural or unnatural order of things, Mick was cancer-free. The sand in his mysterious glass had been refilled and his life expectancy was recalibrated to the unknown.

He planned to tell the group, at first. Maybe to give them hope. But it would be false hope for, as the doctors said, he was an anomaly. He thought of not going back. Just not showing up next Tuesday. Maybe sending a card. Then he realized he couldn't do that. And if he told them his cancer was gone, he might not be welcomed back. He wasn't one of them anymore. He wasn't dying like they were dying. His journey to death was that of a gradual walk, whereas, theirs was still the fast breakneck slope. And he knew he couldn't just not go. He had to see her again. At least, one more time and one more after that. Maybe he would tell her. Just her. Over a jelly donut on break. Maybe he would ask to see her outside of the group.

"Hello, Sunshine!" she smiled a little weaker than before. Her eyes looked tired. Still, she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen and the life in her, despite her rapidly-approaching death, was brighter than it was in anyone he had ever met. She was a bottle of whisky without the hangover. A jolt of electric without the shock. She was the circus when he was a kid. The tiger through the flaming ring. The beautiful Hungarian acrobat on the highwire.

So Mick kept his secret. Week after week. He didn't ask her out. The nerve never came. That door or window of opportunity never opened for him. Perhaps, it was the thought of rejection. Maybe it was more than that. Or less. A simple impediment. Whatever it was, it was and it wasn't.

It was two months later when he walked in and there was an empty chair where she normally sat. There are not words enough to describe that hollow feeling in his gut seeing that empty seat. She had never missed a meeting. Never been late. He had never walked in and not heard her say that same greeting to him. But there it was. That dreadful orange chair, woefully vacant.

He sat next to it anyway, hoping she was just running late. It wasn't unusual for there to be vacant chairs at the group. It was sort of to be expected by the nature of their commonality. That one day you'd come in and the group would be one less, or two. But there were also new people coming so it wasn't that someday there would be none. New people who got the terrible news that there time in this world was limited and the sand in their glass was in short supply. Shorter than was previously expected by the averages of life expectancy in all the medical journals.

There was usually an announcement before the group began by the moderator, a grief counselor named Austin, about the empty chairs. So and so passed away over the weekend. They were with their family. They passed away peacefully in their sleep or surrounded by loved ones. Something like that. But there was no explanation of Amber being gone. And as Austin began the group, Mick interrupted and asked about her.

"Where's Amber?"

"I haven't heard anything," Mick replied honestly. "But I will follow up and make sure she is okay after group today." He had a clipboard with names, numbers and addresses he referenced. Mick shook his head in gratitude, though it didn't feel satisfactory at all to him to wait until Thursday to find out if she was okay. So when they had a break and Austin was using the restroom, Mick took his clipboard and got her number and address.

He wasn't going to wait. After the group ended, he stopped at a supermarket and bought some flowers. Then he drove to the listed address and before he could change his mind, walked up to the door and knocked. A beautiful older lady answered, looking at him curiously.

"I am from the group, um, the group Amber goes to and, well, she wasn't there tonight so, um, the group wanted to bring her these."

The lady was mum for a moment before she teared up and smiled. "Well, how very thoughtful!"

"Is she okay?" Mick blurted.

"She is not well. Not well enough to go to the group anymore, we don't think. We're not sure when or if she will be able to leave the house again. But, please, come in. If you would like, you can give these to her yourself. It might make her happy to see you. So very thoughtful."

Mick wandered inside awkwardly. He was shown to a room where she was lying down in bed. Her eyes were closed. There was a halo of light around her head and a slight smile on her face as though, even in her grave condition, she could be nothing other than her beautiful self. Her soul had a way of shining through her skin. She was radiantly beautiful in all ways.

The woman Mick presumed to be her mother gently woke her. She grinned seeing Mick standing there with a bouquet in his hands. And predictably, she said what she always said, "Hello, sunshine."

Mick gave her the flowers and she held them like a mother would a newborn baby. Cradling them in her arms. The woman left them alone with the excuse that she would find a vase.

"I wanted to see you," Mick admitted. "I felt I had to see you. I only came to that group because of you. You were, you are, what has kept me strong through all of this. I hope that it means something to you. It surely means something to me that I can't put to words."

Amber smiled. "It does. I prayed for you since we first met. I asked God to heal you. I never asked for Him to heal me or anyone else. Just you. I hope that you live a long and beautiful life and that you find the peace and the love that you seek."

"I already have," he replied. He didn't want to cry. Years of being a man. Men don't cry. Unless their dog dies or their truck breaks down or their team loses the big one. They don't cry like this. "I have to tell you, it worked. Whatever you did. The doctor called me a while back and said my cancer just disappeared."

Amber smiled and took his hand. "That is great news! I knew it would work. I've never asked God for nothing my entire life! Never one single thing."

"Well, why me?"

"Why not you? You're a beautiful person."

"There are others..."

"Not for me," she smiled.

"Where is it you told me you wanted to go?" he asked. He knew, yet he asked to be sure of it.

"Florida."

"I have some money. Would you like to go? Spend a month or so? Walk on the beach? Have the sun on your face? Your toes in the sand?"

The idea brought tears to her eyes. She smiled ecstatically and said yes over and over. She asked if she could bring her mother and Mick said of course. They would leave tomorrow. It was agreed upon and Mick said he would phone in the morning and be around by 10 to pick them up. He knew of a beautiful rental house in Ft. Lauderdale he could get cheap. A friend who was an eye doctor owned it.

He called the next morning but there was no answer. He figured they were busy packing so he came by wearing a god-awful beach shirt he was sure would make her laugh and sandals. It was an 18-hour drive, but he planned to humor her the entire way. Laughter being the best medicine. Her mother aswered the door and all he heard her say over her sobbing was, "Sometime in the night." And, "She didn't let me put those flowers in the vase. She was holding them when I found her."

After the funeral, Mick wanted to get away so he drove to Florida alone. He had already made all the arrangements, so he would stay there by himself and maybe something would make sense to him. He read of people finding clarity on the beach, as though it was some spiritual place, so he hoped it would help him.

He was at a beachside bar, one of those places without walls where the seabreeze blows in and it smells of sand and salt and tequila and limes. It was hot and beautiful that day. He had several drinks and tourists floated around him the way jellyfish float around you in the ocean or those little hospitable fish swim through your legs.

The night was soothing on his slightly sunburnt skin and he wore that ridiculous beach shirt, his torn jeans and those sandals. A band played the bar and tourists were dancing and a few residents who retired there and had yet to be disoriented by the oversaturation of the lustful paradise, watched them like predatory birds or larger fish.

Mick had a tequila and a beer and was in good spirits when she walked in. The bar was crowded but there was a seat beside him and she filled it. She was beautiful and in a white sundress. She too had the hint of a first-day tourist burn on her face and shoulders, but it accented her delightfully and failed to detract from that which nothing ever could. He looked at her and smiled politely to say hello.

"Hello, Sunshine," she said with a grin.

Mick nearly choked on his drink. The lime made its way into his throat, but he coughed it up and it fell to the sandy bar floor like a beached fish. Fat tears welled in his surprised eyes.

"Are you okay?" she gave him so playful taps on the back. "I know CPR," she joked. "How did you do it, Mick? I'm alive in a new body that is not much different than my last and I come in here and here you are. Is this Heaven?"

"No. It's Ft. Lauderdale. And I prayed. Like you, I had never asked for anything in my life before. Not a reprieve from a bad grade, a woman who didn't really love me, a bicycle for Christmas, not a single thing for myself or anyone else. But I prayed that you would live again. I don't know what will happen, if you'll be here forever or a night or two," he sighed, "but I'll take whatever I can get."

"And so will I," she cheered. "So will I." She drank vodka and he had tequila. They listened to the band holding hands, talking between songs. Then they walked the beach, this side of paradise, this side of Heaven that would wait for some time for a beautiful love story to be adequately written. There is little difference between the sun and the moon, between life and death, it is all just a matter of perspective.