Tessa had written in one of her posts that she was on a chemo regimen called ABVD.
Nolan knew that one of those drugs can scar the lungs, so patients on it have regular breathing tests, pulmonary function tests, PFTs.
“How are your PFTs looking?” he asked.
Tessa blinked at him.
“My what?”
There was a pause.
“Oh,” she said. “Yeah, those. They’re fine.”
In the car on the way home, Nolan was quiet for a long time.
Then he said, “Everybody on that drug knows what a PFT is. I run them. They hate them.”
Stop.
I said, “She’s exhausted. She’s on a dozen medications. She’s not going to remember the name of every test.”
Okay.
He didn’t say anything else.
I lay awake that night wondering why I had told him to stop so fast.
In the middle of January, Tessa had her fourth treatment.
Round four, she called it.
I offered to drive her.
She texted back, “Mom’s got this one. Thank you though. Love you.”
At Sunday dinner a few days later, Mom mentioned that Kayla had driven Tessa that Friday and that Tessa had stayed at Kayla’s apartment for the weekend because it was closer to the hospital and she couldn’t stand up.
I didn’t say anything.
I figured I had misread the text.
That Sunday night, Tessa posted a photo.
A hand resting on a blue quilted blanket, an IV line taped to the inside of the wrist.
The caption said, “Round four done. Can’t keep anything down.
Thank you for every prayer.”
That photo went everywhere.
Aunt Patty shared it.
The church shared it.
[snorts]
Women I had never met left comments full of praying hands and Bible verses.
My mother printed it out and put it on the refrigerator.
I looked at that photo for a long time, too.
Everyone did.
But I was looking at the blanket and at the hand and at how tired it looked.
I wasn’t looking at the wrist.
Mom thought Kayla drove her.
Tessa told me mom did.
Nobody thought to compare notes.
In February, my mother quit her part-time job at the pharmacy counter of the grocery store.
She’d worked there 11 years.
She said Tessa needed her home.
In April, Tessa told us the scan showed a spot.
They were adding more treatment.
She cried when she said it, and dad went out to the garage and didn’t come back in for an hour.
The fundraiser passed $24,000 that month.
In July, I noticed my mother paying for groceries with the credit card she used to keep for emergencies.
I offered to help with the mortgage.
She shut it down in one sentence.
It’s handled, Gina.
Then sometime in August, my mother changed.
I couldn’t have told you the exact day.
It was more like the weather turning.
For 10 months, she had posted in the church prayer group every Sunday night.
Tessa’s counts are good.
Tessa is tired but strong.
Tessa says, “Thank you for the casserles.”
And then nothing.
The prayer group went quiet.
She stopped going with Tessa to treatments.
She changed the subject whenever anyone asked how Tessa was doing.
In September, she called me at work.
Let her drive herself now.
Mom said she needs to feel normal.
She’s on chemo, mom.
She shouldn’t drive on treatment days.
Gina, let her drive herself.
In almost a year, my mother had never once told me to do less for my sister.
By Christmas of 2025, something had changed in the rest of my family, too.
Aunt Patty is my father’s older sister.
She’s 68.
She runs the women’s Bible study at her church, and she has always liked me.
When I was a teenager, she used to slip me $20 bills and tell me not to tell my mother.
That Christmas, she walked into my parents’ living room, hugged mom, hugged dad, hugged Tessa for a long time, hugged Nolan, and walked right past me.
She had a pink button pinned to her sweater.
Tessa strong.
Later, I was refilling the ice bucket in the kitchen when she came in behind me for a diet coke.
“Some people show up for family,” she said to no one in particular.
“Some people just show up for dinner.”
Then she walked out.
her daughter, my cousin Megan, gave me a long look from across the room.
Megan is 34.
We grew up at the same Thanksgiving tables.
She looked like she wanted to say something and couldn’t.
I stood there holding the ice bucket and tried to figure out what I had done.
I had given my sister $18,000.
I had driven her to the institute 11 times.
I had spent something like 40 hours in that parking garage.
