The Faces We Carry

Oncology waiting rooms are strange places. You sit there surrounded by people—hopeful faces, broken bodies—and after a while, you stop really seeing them. It’s a survival trick, I think. If you really looked at every single person, every limp, every hollow cheek, every set of nervous fingers tapping, you’d fall apart before they even called your name.

But today, that survival trick failed me.

I saw her. Alone. Perched on the edge of a chair like she was ready to bolt, feet tapping with enough energy to power the hospital’s lights. Small, fragile even, but still holding herself upright with a kind of dignity cancer hasn’t managed to steal yet. Thin hair. Paper-thin skin. A cane she leaned on like it was her last good friend.

And then it hit me—I knew her. Not this version of her, not this worn-down, cane-clutching, chemo-room version. I knew her from before. She was a woman who always swayed to the music and made the entire room come alive, entertaining us all. She lost her partner to cancer decades ago. Life had already sucker-punched her once, and here she was again, still standing—well, sitting—but damn it, still here.

As these things go, she disappeared into a lab, and I disappeared into the oncologist’s office. But later, chemo brought us side by side, two chairs apart, IV poles standing guard like silent executioners. Our escorts had been banished back to the waiting room (because some women do not share their strongest moments with the people they love the most – we need the space to breathe.)

The nurse asked her name, and I knew without a doubt the beautiful vital woman she had been. The woman she still was, somewhere inside.

I tried to talk to her, but chemo cocktails don’t mess around. They dragged her into that deep, heavy sleep we all know too well. So I sat. And I watched. And I remembered.

And then, without even meaning to, I prayed.

I prayed she’d have another chance to dance. To laugh. To feel like herself again.

Mostly, I prayed we’d all get even just one more shot at being the people we were before cancer barged in. Whole. Carefree. Alive in ways that don’t come in IV bags.

Because cancer wants you to think it’s all loneliness and loss. But sitting there, two chairs apart, I realized remembrance, hope, and healing are stubborn little things. They stick. Even here.