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joking with his colleagues. He’s clearly one of those docs who prefers to hide behind their medical jargon, without ever offering his patients a glimmer of hope. He wants nothing to do with the psyche or positive thinking; after all, you can’t measure that.
    But he is also my doctor, my hope, and my healer. My medical magician. I’m not talking a wand and disappearing bunny rabbits, though. No, he is pure medical science; honesty and persistence to help all his patients get rid of their cancer nightmares. When it comes to being my savior, nobody else comes close. Not even Dr. K.
    This is the first week I’m shuffling around the hospital with my bald head. I can’t decide which is uglier: Sophie with a beehive or Sophie as a skinhead. So I’ve wound a scarf around my head, and you wouldn’t be able to tell me apart from the cleaning lady who comes in each day with her bucket of chlorine and a mop. Nurse Bas calls me “Baldy” now. When he says it, it makes me laugh. I started calling him Nurse Betty—he’s the only male nurse on this ward and I feel that he deserves some special recognition. At eight o’clock he wakes me up with “Morning, Baldy”—like I’m the only one on this floor—and helps me pull on a clean top. It can be quite a challenge with all these tubes coming out of my wrists. After that he gives me a pat on the head and sits down for a chat as he changes the bandage around my wrist meant to keep all that tubing in place.
    â€œMaking a lovely mess again, I see.”
    â€œYou try moving around with all these tubes sticking out of you!”
    I am given two bags of blood to get my blood count back up and to replace sluggish me with active me. It’s a strange concept to be using someone else’s blood as a sort of drug to make me feel better. Maybe that’s the reason I feel so different these days—why I no longer like sweet pastries or licorice. And why I suddenly love writing. It’s all part of the changes brought by the cancer—Before, I didn’t like writing at all. I even paid Sis to write my school reports. This week I checked into the hospital with a laptop under my arm. Not for surfing the Web, but for surfing my thoughts. But now at night, lying wide-awake in bed, I get out of bed to grab a pen and a piece of paper with the urge to write some thoughts down. When morning comes, I have pages full of thoughts. Ever since, I can’t stop. I write down everything that happens to me, clinging on to the words that come as if I’m clinging on to life.
    Around ten thirty in the morning I take my shower. I take extra long to lather myself up with body wash, body lotion, and all my other tonics, just to kill time. Then I get dressed. Everything I put on goes up from my feet and then my hips, or else my IV gets in the way. I’m still as vain as ever; I brought all my prettiest camisoles with me in case Dr. K or another sexy doctor comes to visit. (Hey, I’m not likely to meet anyone else in this prison.) Every other day I have to leave the ward for tests elsewhere in the hospital. When that happens, I feel the attention I’m drawing: the cancer patient I don’t want to be, shuffling along clumsily with my IV pushed out in front of me, the bags of chemo swaying back and forth. As soon as the tests are over, I retreat to my hospital bed and try to forget where I am. Try to forget I will wake up in morning to discover all over again that there is not one hair growing on my head.
    â€œHi, sweetie, how are you feeling?”
    I turn toward the familiar sound and see a big purple orchid enter my room, followed by Annabel.
    â€œHoneybun!” I call out happily. “Is my wig on straight?”
    Annabel looks me up and down and smiles. She pulls my beehive that I have come to name Stella because of her elderly looks into place.
    â€œDo you ever think about what it would be like if I were