There was no building next to the parking lot. The only hint of structure came from the bushes planted in a line along each edge of the pavement, forming a perimeter. Errant branches like wires extended from the plants, tangling and knotting into each other and creating the rails of a botanical fence, a reminder to any visitors of the areas they may not visit. Something about it made a sliver at the center of Julie's core slow, just as her car slowed to take the right turn onto the driveway.
Julie urged the steering wheel around, returned the car to the mouth of the parking lot, and made another right turn, back onto the street she'd been traveling moments before.
"What the hell?" Rachel said from the passenger's seat, pointing. "My appointment's and ten. And there's paperwork I've got to do."
"We have time," said Julie. "It's just--I want to get a cup of coffee with you before you go in. Can we do that? Do you mind?"
Rachel said, "Coffee. You really think my stomach can handle coffee right now?"
And Julie's hands, her knuckles night-white, twisted around the leather grip of te steering wheel as if she were kneading dough. "I know," she said. "I'm sorry."
The scenery outside, the trees and lampposts, old with all they'd seen, crossed Rachel's reflection in the window. "Tea," she said. "I can have some tea. Toast might be a good idea. Maybe an English muffin, I don't know." She shrugged. "I really don't knwo how this is going to go, you know?"
"I know," Julie said. "I'm sorry." No matter how many times she said them, the words never could make up for everything that was wrong.
The chairs in the diner booth had padded back and flat, hard seats--a little bit comfortable, but not entirely. Julie asked the waitress for coffee and, thinking of what Rachel had said in the car, an English muffin. Rachel ordered tea and an almond bear claw and lifted one of the short glasses of water brought for them to her cracked, grey lips.
"Why not, right?" Rachel said after the waitress departed. "I mean, I'm probably not going to be in the mood for a pastry afterward."
"It's whatever you want right now." Julie's smile was a thin film stretched across the surface of her face. "As long as it doesn't hurt you." The waitress came back with a mug of thick black coffee, topped with an iridescent sheen, for Julie and, for Rachel, a cup of tea.
They were seated at a table so wide that, if they were to try, they hardly would have been able to reach their arms across it. Except for a few stains and a chip that revealed layers of wooden pressboard, the tabletop was white, reflective despite the matte finish of its coating. It bounced cold morning light onto Rachel's skin as she rested her head atop her hand. Her skin bounced the light right back.
"You're having a pretty rough time with this," she said.
"I know," said Julie. "I'm--"
"If you say you're sorry one more time, I swear, I'm going to tell the cancer fairy to fucking visit you next."
"I'm scared," Julie said. The waitress returned. For what felt like a long time afterward, the English muffin and the bear claw sat on their plates between Julie and Rachel like two lonely islands in a hopelessly pale sea.
Julie reached out from her continent first. "I'm a horrible friend," she said.
"You'd be a horrible friend if you weren't afraid." Rachel pulled the bear claw closer to her and broke off a piece. "If you were happy about all of this? Then you'd be a horrible friend."
"I should be happy," said Julie. "You're getting treatment," she added when Rachel's eyebrows rose. "You have a chance to get cured. Like, completely cured. And I'm just sitting here thinking, 'Oh, but I don't know, I don't really get it.'"
"It's experimental. It's weird. Like I said, I have no idea how this is going to go."
"Then why aren't you worried? Why am I the only one freaking out right now?"
"Because your freakout's big enough to cover both of us." Rachel waited until Julie smiled and began to butter her muffin before she continued. "You know I'm terrified," she said.
"I know," said Julie.
"It's just that, more than that, I'm tired. Tired of being sick, you know? Tired of being tired, that's what they say."
"I know," said Julie.
For a while, they both looked out the window and ate in silence.
"It doesn't seem fair," Julie eventually said, "that you have to go through something so strange all alone."
This time, Rachel bridged the distance across the impossible-looking Formica-top sea between them: she took Julie's hand. "How can you offer to wait for me today and say I'm all alone?" she asked. "The parking lot's right there. I'm only walking a short way off. And all my brochures are in the bag. You can read up on the treatment while you wait, maybe make it seem a little less strange."
"I'm not just talking about the treatment," said Julie.
The words hung between them, heavy and full under the daylight. Rachel blinked as she smiled. "You," she said, "are a basketcase."
"I know," said Julie. "I'm--"
"--a very good, very neurotic friend who's going to pay for my breakfast and drive me to therapy," Rachel finished for her. Julie squeezed her fingers and felt her bones. "Come on, before I'm way the hell late," said Rachel. They stood up from the booth together and walked to the cash register arm in arm.
Julie parked the car two spaces to the right of the path that began at the east end of the parking lot. Rachel hugged her and set off on the path, which, Julie remembered from her reading, would lead Rachel to a glade a short way into the forest. The other details of the treatment Julie couldn't recall. Nor had she understood them when Rachel had tried to explain. On the other side of the lot's perimeter, the birch trees guarding the deepening path were slowly going white, their bark becoming a silvery skin starting at the branches' crowns. Julie didn't understand how birch trees did that, either. There was so much it seemed that she didn't understand.
At the edge of the lot, separating the world Julie knew from one she could barely imagine, a row of bushes sat with their branches entwined, as if they were holding hands.
