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Part 1 of Both Sides Now
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2024-05-27
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2,463
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1/1
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The Other Side Of Mt. Big C

Summary:

In 2002, Ice meets a little boy undergoing cancer treatment at the same hospital as him.

In 2020, Ice survives his second bout of throat cancer and that little boy pulls off miracle number three.

Notes:

Ice and little Jake blurb, I have no regrets.

If you would like to hear more about my theory of childhood cancer survivor Jake “Hangman” Seresin, please come say hi on tumblr @torchflies 🥹

It’s a ✨series✨!

Thank you so much for reading 💜😭

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

 

“And as if it doesn't suck enough to have cancer, practically every time you pick up a book or see movies where characters get sick — you know they'll be dead by the last scene. 

In reality, kids get all kinds of cancers, go through unspeakable torture and painful treatments, but [just might] walk away fine in the end. This book is about that descent into hell, with a safe return.

I dedicate it to everyone who has been there and back.”

— Amy Goldman Koss, Side Effects

 

 

Methotrexate is a funny word. 

It’s also called amethopterin, which makes Cubby think of a dinosaur with feathers like archaeopteryx.  

He’s two years old the first time a doctor pokes a long needle between the slats of his spine and floods his cerebrospinal fluid with methotrexate. He screams at first: screams, kicks, and bites the hand that holds down his face. But eventually, he stops fighting it — the dizziness and blinding headaches finally beat him into submission, into just laying there and letting them hurt him. When he turns seven, after two years of remission, the leukemia comes back with a vengeance and he learns that the word for the pokes that inject methotrexate into his CSF is intrathecal. 

Cubby is eight now, almost nine, and he’s dying. 

No one will say he's dying, but — Ma is working extra hours at their family vet clinic, ‘round the clock almost, so Pa can take off work from the station and they can fly together from Austin to Sloan-Kettering in New York City for weeks at a time. He knows it's because the doctors at St. Jude’s started to talk about palliative care and hospice, but that the doctors at Sloan-Kettering were willing to give him more chemo and to try for a bone marrow transplant if it failed. 

Nobody ever says the word dying around kids like him, but Cubby’s been sick since he was a baby. He knows what dying looks like.

It looks like him, in his bright red wheelchair ‘cause he can't walk anymore — his fried blond hair sticking up all over his head like a scarecrow, short and fuzzy, his lips swollen red from the mouth sores, the feeding tube tunneling down his nose, and the fluffy pillows that stop his skeleton body from slipping out of the chair. He knows he looks bad, really bad.

He's supposed to be starting ICE chemo soon — a really tough chemo cocktail that the other hospital said was too dangerous to try, that his body is too weak for — but first he needs a bunch of blood transfusions to even survive it.

He thinks his Ma and Pa will keep trying until he's — yeah.

They give him his transfusions in the infusion room with everybody else, but nobody will look at him. 

He isn't surprised, as he tucks his spindly legs into his chest and pulls his fluffy blue hat lower and over his ears. They're mostly grown-ups and grown-ups are really good at looking away when they see him, like his cancer is contagious or the sight of a kid being sick is too much to bear when they’re already scared.

Infusion rooms are usually boring colors, and covered with pictures of dumb stuff like sailboats and rivers. So the methotrexate drip across the room catches his eye — it’s neon yellow and the sight is enough to have him queasy on reflex. 

It's going into a guy who is sitting in his recliner like he's itching to get out of it. 

He's new, it’s obvious in the way his jaw is clenched tight and his foot keeps bouncing. There's also a tube in his neck, hot pink around the edges like it's still fresh. A tracheostomy, the tube is strapped in tight with a fresh wrap and he sits like it's uncomfortable against his skin.

Cubby frowns, he's seen trachs before, but the guy has a quarter-sized bald patch too, on the side of his head facing him and he looks like he hasn't slept right in forever. The two men with him look equally as scared, the smaller of the two is pacing in a way that he just knows is gonna make the sick guy puke and the bigger one is looking out the window like he can't stand the sight of anything in the room. Neither of them is holding the sick guy’s hand. 

Sometimes, the worst part of being sick is other people. 

Cubby knows what his Ma looks like when she cries; what his Pa looks like when he feels helpless; and what it looks like when they put on a show to make him feel better. It never does.

Sometimes, it only feels okay when someone holds your hand. 

He grunts, grabs his IV set with the stubbornness of being eight and three-quarters, and wheels himself right up to the sick guy’s side. The man jumps a little, his big blue eyes widening in surprise, when Cubby tosses a small whiteboard and a red marker into his lap. Cubby has a lot of stuff in the basket of his chair, he likes to doodle when he's feeling real bad and paper gets used up too fast. He also notices that the man has nothing to write with, only more evidence that the other two guys aren’t listening to him. 

Cubby wheels his arm back and flings his yellow marker at the cream-colored wall between the two other men, it pings off and disappears under the crash cart in the corner. 

“Hey!” He snaps when they look over at him, like a pair of deer caught in the headlights of his Pa’s Chevy. “You,” He points at the shorter guy with a shaky hand. “Stop walking around like that! Sit! The methotrexate is gonna make him real dizzy and he’s gonna barf if you keep marching around like that! Barfing with that tube down his gullet ain’t gonna feel nice either!” He points at the bigger guy, “And you!” His mouth hurts but he keeps going. “I know cancer is scary and all, but you gotta either nut up or shut up. So git on over here and hold your fella’s hand!” 

He’s huffing a little at the end of his tirade; he got blood clots in his lungs when his leukemia got bad last time and they messed him up inside. 

Cubby looks down when he feels a little tap on his hand, and the board is slowly slid back into his lap. There's writing on it now.

Thank you. Says the pretty cursive letters. They mean well, just nervous. What’s your name? Have you had methotrexte before?

“Methotrexate, you’re missing an a, and yeah.” He shrugs, using a green marker to fix the word. “It makes you wanna barf and your mouth might taste funny. But you’ll be okay.” He pokes at a particularly big sore in his mouth with his tongue. “I’m Jacob, but you can call me Cubby.”

Nice to meet you, Cubby. I’m Ice. 

“Cool name!” He smiles and doesn’t even mind the way it stings. “My chemo is called ICE too. I have leukemia, what’s wrong with you?”

The smaller man, now sitting, lets out a soft noise that Cubby can't really place. 

Throat cancer. The tube helps me breathe around the tumor. 

“Oh, so it’s big then? Carcinoma?”

Ice nods. Clever. Do you want to be a doctor?

Cubby laughs, itching at his feeding tube. “My birthday is in two months, I wanna be nine.” He says it like it's special, because it is. 

“Nine.” The tall man smiles from his window seat, his voice is all gruff and tough. “Practically an old man. What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“I like planes and dinosaurs.” He leans back against his chair, already exhausted. “But I mostly just wanna be nine.” He yawns, scrubbing at his sore eyes with the flats of his palms. “I’m dying anyway, so I think I’ll just be a grown-up at nine.”

The smaller man makes a sound like he's a whoopee cushion getting stepped on and he stands up to face the corner, arms crossed like he’s putting himself in time-out. It looks silly. 

I used to be a pilot, Ice’s board reads, and so is Mav. Sli was my RIO, he ran the radar and told me what was up ahead.

“Mav? Sli?” 

The smaller man in the corner lifts his hand, but doesn’t say anything else, his shoulders are shaking. 

“He’s Maverick and I’m Slider.” The tall man adds, looking anywhere but Cubby. He doesn’t mind, they seem really sad all of a sudden.

“Nice to meetcha.” Cubby chirps, eyes fluttering closed. He’s spent already. “Being a pilot sounds cool. I think if I grow up, I’ll be a pilot.” 

“A pilot?” He hears Pa ask and suddenly arms are lifting him up, cradling him against a big broad chest. He’d know the feeling of his Pa anywhere. “You wanna be a pilot, Cub?” 

He must’ve finished his meeting with Cubby’s team of doctors. He sounds tired. 

“Yeah! Ice and Mav are pilots!” He mumbles into his Pa’s chest. “Sli does radar stuff.”

“Oh. Isn’t that interesting?” He misses the way that Pa catches the eyes of the three other men over his head, his own turned wet as he mouths the words thank you. He then gathers up the detritus that having a sick kid brings and pushes Cubby’s empty chair and IV pole out the door in front of them. 

“Yeah.” Cubby hums. “I’m gonna fly too.”

 

 

The ICE chemo doesn’t work, but still — Cubby finds himself in his Pa’s arms three months later, a fresh nine years old as he rings the bell above the nurses’ station. 

The words painted above it are in the same loopy script as Ice’s scribbles on the whiteboard: 

Ring this bell 

Three times well 

Its toll to clearly say, 

My treatment’s done 

This course is run 

And I am on my way!

“In the Navy,” Ice tells him once as they pass by the bell, rolling down the halls together as Ice learns to speak around recently repaired vocal cords and his tube. “We ring a bell to signify a job is done. So, I guess it makes sense that chemo is the same.” Ice’s voice is strange to hear at first, high-pitched and slurred, squeaky at some points and low at others. But Cubby holds that voice close and squishes it into a hug, the same way he cuddles his Chemo Duck. He hopes that Ice remembers him forever. 

Mav shouts the loudest when it’s time to sing the goodbye song, “We love to see you every day, but now it’s time for us to say — pack up your bags, get out the door, you don't need chemo anymore!” Cubby thinks he shouts to hide the tears in his eyes, he probably wishes Ice was done too.

Slider cries openly though, snapping pictures with an old Polaroid camera, and Ice reaches out from his own wheelchair to squeeze Cubby’s foot from where he's held aloft in Pa’s arms. They smile at each other in a way only they could ever understand and when it’s time to eat goodbye cake, a pair of golden wings is pressed into his small swollen hands instead. 

“Just until you have your own.” Ice says, like Cubby isn't going home to die. 

He hugs the ever-living-daylights out of the three men he loves so much, with a strength he thought he'd lost weeks ago, and whispers, just so they can hear: “I’ll save a spot for you, Ice, but I hope I don't see you for a really long time. I’ll be okay. You should go flying instead whenever you miss me. I'll fly over there and you'll fly over here and maybe we’ll pass each other in the sky!” 

Ice says, “I’d like that, Cub.”

Ice doesn't have hair anymore either and he’s almost as skinny as Cubby now, but there's still fire in his eyes and Cubby just knows he’ll be okay. Ice is strong and mighty; Cubby knows he’ll fly again. Besides, he doesn't think the angels want Ice in Heaven, he’d beat them all by flying the best on the first day.

Cubby waves goodbye from his wheelchair, his face moon-swollen from the steroids, eyebrows and eyelashes long gone, and unable to walk.

But somehow, with Ice’s wings pinned to the front of his pajamas, Cubby feels like he's going on a special mission instead of losing the fight. 

 

 

Lieutenant Jacob Seresin, sometimes Jake and mostly Hangman, lazily stands in front of the official portrait of the COMPACFLT in the belly of NAS Miramar. 

He takes in the broad strokes of the man he knew nearly two decades ago, this Ice has more crow's feet than Jake remembers and his hair is a thick sweptback gray with only hints of the blond he'd had in his early forties. But he looks healthy, there's a roundness in his cheeks but it isn't bloat from steroids and his neck bears the scars of a tracheostomy — obvious to anyone who knows what to look for, but just wrinkles and spots to those who don't. He knows from the Navy rumor mill that Ice has just finished a second round with his cancer but that all seems well. 

Yeah, Jake nods to himself, if anyone could survive round two and still come up swinging, it would be Ice. 

Maverick is different too, tired and more weathered, but he still smiles like the man who attached cardboard wings to Jake’s wheelchair and tore through the halls with terrible impressions of jet turbines.

He wants to ask about Slider, who must have gone batty with the endless rounds of Go Fish that Jake made him play. He's gone commercial now, according to the prodding that Jake did and he hopes the old fart’s happy. 

They were only in his life for a few months, but boy did they leave an impact, a crater more like. 

Probably because they gave him a dream — nobody had ever done that before. Jake was always sick and his life expectancy had been little more than the next ten minutes at that age. He had never imagined a future in any iteration.

But then, there were wings on his chest and maybe, just maybe, a future of flight. 

He wants to say thank you, but knows that they won't remember him — it's been eighteen years. 

Still, it feels like they gave him his wings, in more ways than one. 

It's the least he can do to use them right and get their boy back home safe, back on the ground again. 

“Hey Bradshaw, wait up!”

 

 

Notes:

Oh also, the bell quote is a poem by Rear Admiral Irve Le Moyne for the exact reason that Ice gives in the fic.

Jake mentions having a Chemo Duck! Chemo Duck didn't actually start this early, but its an amazing program for kids with cancer and teaches them about the implanted devices that help during their treatment. More info linked below!

https://chemoduck.org/

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