40 41 THE CEDARVILLE REVIEW cells lining the digestive tract, and hair follicles. Side effects of the drug include low blood counts, mouth sores, nausea, and hair loss. The body becomes a battleground in the war against cancer, and healthy cells are the casualties. After all, mustard gas is an agent of chemical warfare. *** Doxorubicin, bleomycin, vincristine, etoposide, prednisone, cyclophosphamide. The words have been tossed around me from late November to mid-February. They haven’t quite left me yet, but I can feel them fading away in the whispers of the ocean and the whip of the wind, slowly sailing across the Long Island Sound all the way to the distant thread of Connecticut on the horizon. I am finally seeing the ocean again. It is cold and beautiful. My parents and I walk down the rocky, shell-filled beach. There are bare twisting trees on our right and lapping green-blue waves on our left. Overhead, streaking puffy white clouds contrast the deep blue sky, and lone gulls soar across the water. The air is wonderfully salty. As my parents and I walk, we happen across our neighbor, Yve, with a friend of hers and her shaggy black dog with graying fur. My parents’ greetings to her rapidly fade into confusion as they notice her distant but decided guard of a small gray lump several feet away. There’s a baby seal stranded on the beach, fuzzy-looking and helpless. Yve loves everything in nature, and I remember my mom saying that she used to be Buddhist. Or something ambiguously spiritual. Whatever her beliefs, she cares deeply about every living thing, as evidenced by her current worried chattering about the seal’s situation. She’s been trying to call a wildlife hotline, but the service on the shoreline is weak. Her dog is intrigued by its fellow creature, and she makes sure to keep him back. The seal pup shifts its head about but doesn’t try to move anywhere. I can tell he’s alive, though, with how his little nose wiggles in gentle snorts and how his back occasionally scrunches up and down. We wonder where his mother is and if he’s unconcerned by her absence or simply petrified in fear. Though we all give him a wide berth, I want to walk up to him and get a closer look at his dark gray fur speckled with white spots. But I know better than to frighten him, and I respect his vulnerability. Later that day, Yve calls my mom to let her know that the wildlife experts think there’s nothing to be concerned about. The seal’s mother was probably out hunting and left her baby on the shore for a little bit. He seems to be patiently waiting for her return, content to lay there on the sand under the waning sun. I think about waiting, about newborns, about taking walks in hospitals and on beaches, about the warfare that it is to be alive, and I understand now that I am
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