Novice Braiding

Dressed in her bulkiest raincoat to ward off indoor Russian school chill and hide her figure, Elsie sat in a chair against the infirmary wall, a little bit slouched. She was making a deliberately large braid with the front of her hair, deliberately in front of her face. She'd combed forward the test of her hair with her fingers so it hung forward on either side of her part, shadowing a bit of each side of her face, and more so when she leaned her head forward to braid. She was unknowingly biting her tongue so it stuck out, focused on her thin strands of blonde hair at a length they'd never been before.

The highlights in her hair were juvenile, something new she was proud of. They tucked in and out of the braid in front of her. In an ironic turn of events, she actually knew how to braid. Neither mom of hers had ever done it to her hair and she had never done it herself- because, of course, she'd been bald.

The sunny locks she had now had been a completely anonymous color before she was about 6. She'd lost it to the cancer she'd been born with.

She looked out from under the braid, scouting out the boy at the very corner of her eye. Still, fortunately, immersed in a book. She sighed, disturbing the little wisps yet to be braided.

"She's anemic," Her birth parents were told, after blood tests and two days before her second birthday. This following two weeks of Elsie refusing to be with anyone but her mother, complaining, crying, aching beneath her young skin with no way to put it into words. Usually cheerful, her attitude change and a fever set her worried parents off to a pediatrician appointment.

They told her parents she was anemic, and after two more examinations, the doctors urged her family to bring her to the nearest medical center for an ultrasound- for just the beginning of the downwards spiral that began.

She had a tumor around her kidney, and off the bat they presumed it Wilm's Tumor, a common kidney cancer among kids. Her parents' worry for her was stretching as far as their love for the child they only just knew, and in their low class state, they began dreading the debt closing in on them- monetarily, and the potential emptiness of Elsie's old spot in their lives. They would weep when the doctors met her alone, keep close together when they received news or results.

Thus, close together with arms around each other's bodies trembling slightly with fear and love, their child's biopsy came back with the results of neuroblastoma, a rare cancer of the sympathetic nervous system.

She poked her finger losing track of which strand went over which next. She got a shiver when she heard the word outloud, or thought too long on it. She didn't hate much at all. She was a welcomer. But she hated cancer.

Checking up on the boy and his school book, she confirmed he was still nose deep and her thoughts were still safe inside her mind. Elsie peered at the door leading to a healer's office, the one she'd been talking to about the precautions her moms had told her and them to take, and that should she have any worries she should return to them as trustworthy support.

She trusted them, of course. Aniva was a safe parachute, so their nurse staff should rightfully be composed of some of the kindest souls for regions. She simply had never been away from her mothers before.

Complex and worst-case scenario, the cancer caught too late had spread to her bone marrow, and by this time, her mother and father were already putting forward any money than could savage from what was to their names. This, heartbroken one night before the next step in fighting for their daughter's cure, would not be enough for the rounds of therapy.

She interrupted her braiding with thoughtless, twiddling twisting.

They couldn't handle their child- their love for her was priceless, but her the cost of her life had been tagged with a heavy price in red marker. They couldn't make the next step even after quickly selling plenty of items and miscellaneous belongings, vowing to take on longer work hours the following month to pay off the expenses and live off only nutrition essentials for time to come. They wouldn't be able to care for her even if she survived.

They had to give her up. They knew it, without saying, and spent a night sleepless and cold, feeling cruel, for their daughter could never love them if she died and never love them if she lived. They were ashamed of their both physical and emotion inability, but left her, moved away shortly to a much smaller home that was only just in their price range, confining themselves to dwell in their austere love for one another and the absence of both a child and her love.

Elsie dropped the braid, hitting her nose. She squeezed her knee softly like her father would. She loved them, nonetheless.

There are two kinds of people: the miracle workers, and those who need them. Her birth parents had been in need of, but Chelsea Lach and Mireille Leon were miracle workers. They were in the very midst of looking for a child to adopt, and grasping Elsie's story from one of their friends working at the cancer center, they instantly volunteered to pay the remainder of what her parents hadn't left her, and met her the day after her third round of chemotherapy in the first round of treatment in her high-risk situation, induction, and learned, among other things, she would soon meet with a surgeon to have the primary tumor removed.

Sick and tired, the baby hair she'd barely had gone in tufts, she managed a lazy smile and thanked them before passing out for the night, which left the partners with hopeful vibes, contagious and constantly emitted by the girl of only two years.

She underwent the stem cell transplant, and then follows up with treatment that would train and encourage her immune system to fight off the surviving neuroblastoma. They were painful, as were other procedures surrounding it, but Elsie had adjusted, as Mireille had said, smiling whenever she could manage and grateful for every ounce of support.

The braid of her thin hair had deteriorated once dropped, and she blew on it, making an unfortunate bubbly sound with her lips. The boy's head snapped up, but she refused to look back. She continued and transformed the sound into a vocal trill, lessening it to a hum, then to silence, and although weirded out, the boy disregarded her. Success.

The Lach-Leons, having officially adopted her right before the end of the last portion of her treatment protocol, now suffered their share of news-receiving that only her birth parents had had to endure. Signaling a relapse, they found a small tumor in her brain. Surgery commenced immediately, chemotherapy fast behind.

In the mess, it was clear to the Lach-Leons that with Elsie, they did not lift her up to get her through. She lifted them up. All of them, as a whole and a family to be. With 8H9 treatment and less pain, she began getting truly better.

Always a few measures short of average height and with high-frequency hearing loss, she went home with the Lach-Leons, and in a few years, lived with her mothers as well as her blind brother Luke and the girl who never seemed to get older, Eloise. She was beyond it.

"I'm beyond it," she said to herself, sitting in the hospital wing for it.

She breathed, shaking her head and then brushing back her hair, the raincoat rustling accordingly.

"You've been here awhile," the depth of the boy's voice was alarmingly unfamiliar.

"Those silly nurses," she said, and he shrugged, agreeing, oddly enough.

"The purest intentions," he noted, "But also usually the kind of people who could be your dentist, and amidst cleaning your teeth, try to talk to you."

Elsie laughed, and the nurse who'd been speaking to her opened the door from her office.

"You're all set. Sorry to keep you waiting, didn't know if we'd need to talk more. Good night, love."

"Good night."

((OOC: I KNEW ABOUT THIS BUT WHEN YOU PUT IN WRITING IT BROKE MY HEART A LITTLE))

(((OOC: WHAAAAAT NUUUUUU DONT DO THIS. IT'S TOO SAD.)))

((OOC: OHMYGOD WHAT SADNESS AND FEELS)))

///OOC: SORRY LOVES. ///