Chapter Text
Dani lacks scientific prowess, but she is an academic. A scholar.
To condense The National Cancer Institute’s words, cancer is defined as “a disease in which some of the body’s cells grow uncontrollably and spread to other parts of the body.” She likes the phrase some of the body’s cells. Vague. Democratic. It suggests choice, as though the cells were simply being uncooperative. Like, awwww, look at you, you poor cells. (If it were a grandma speaking, this would be the moment where she pinches your cheeks and offers you freshly baked cookies, pretending you're still a kid with bruised knees and a permanently glue-stuck smile. Or at least, she assumes so. She wouldn’t know). Were you having a bad week? It’s okay, don’t worry, we understand. Spread cells! Spread cancer! To the infinity.. and.. beyond!
A small tumor is less than two centimeters in diameter, she reads once, yet that tiny little grapefruit could kill a human in a snap.
That is the paradox: the infinitesimal capable of ruin.
Dani is a scholar.
Dani understands paradoxes.
Paradox: defined as “thought-provoking statements or situations that seem self-contradictory or ironic.”
She finds comfort in these definitions. Words are reliable. Words are unfeeling. When all else fails, when nothing seems to flow, the words spill off the page, the words keep—
The room smells faintly of disinfectant and printer ink. She thinks she can hear the fluorescent lights hum (Personification, her brain distantly echoes, by personifying the light I am creating tension. I am unfamiliar with this room. I am… I am..).
Her oncologist sits across the desk, flipping through a file as though he’s leafing through a mildly interesting article. It’s her file, that she knows. Her entire life, reduced to one singular file.
She recalls answering the questionnaire:
The constant paddling (Pita-Pata-Pita-Pata.. onomatopoeia. Words that phonetically imitate sounds) of doctors rushing past, mixed with the cries of nauseous, sick patients, drummed in her ear.
There’s a tang of recirculated air with every breath she took, and Dani — she tried to stop herself, she really tried — but she can’t stop her lip from curling in displeasure.
Her name is Missy.
Missy: How are you feeling?
She hates that question. How are you feeling today, Dani? Is everything okay? How’s the fever? How’s the potential tumor growing in your stomach? The demon baby growing in your stomach that will kill you? How are you — She’d find kinder mercy in them forgoing the complementary greetings entirely and simply plunging a blade into her stomach, et tu brute? style.
Dani: Fine.
Missy: (checking her watch, a huff, as if this is all a waste of time. Dani almost wants to laugh) Alright, good. Your general health?
Dani: Fine.
Missy: Great. Okay. Great. Full name?
Dani: Daniela Avanzini.
Missy: How old are you?
Dani: Twenty-four.
Missy: Are you married?
Dani: No.
Missy: Are your parents living?
Dani: No.
Missy: How’d they die?
Dani: In a car crash, both of them. Sudden.
Missy: Any other immediate relatives?
Dani: No.
Missy: Well, that’s your life.
That’s your life.
That file — everything a medical professional considers relevant to know about her.
“The biopsy confirmed adenocarcinoma,” he says. “Ovarian, stage three. For potential survival, it’s best if we start treatment immediately. Combination therapy: carboplatin, paclitaxel.”
He doesn’t look at her. His eyes skim the chart.
Combination therapy, she thinks. It sounds cooperative. A duet. The cells are uncooperative children, and the treatment is a choreographed dance performance, apparently. This is what her health has succumbed to.
He continues. “We’ll insert a central line for easier access. Six cycles, three weeks apart. We’ll monitor your counts. Expect nausea, fatigue, hair loss, possible neuropathy. We’ll manage symptoms as they arise.”
She watches his mouth form the words. The cadence is practiced, the pauses precisely timed.
“Survival rate?” she asks.
He hesitates just long enough to appear humane. “Roughly forty percent five-year.”
Forty percent. That’s a fraction. Less than a half. A coin flip has a statistically higher chance of landing heads or tails (fifty percent) than she does of survival.
She imagines herself as a coin. Or, well, eighty percent of a coin — forty percent allotted to both sides. Heads, survival. Tails, otherwise. She flips it in her mind. It lands. She doesn’t look.
She says none of this out loud.
Her gaze drifts to the calendar on the wall. The numbers seem arbitrary. They are, of course, arbitrary.
She is a scholar.
She is a scholar, but she is more than that.
She recalls a New York Times sent to her by a colleague once (Sophia, a fellow English professor, though more focused on ventures Dani thought beneath her. Sophia seemed to believe they had a blooming friendship. Kept texting her: Hi! Thought of you! Hope you’re doing good! We should grab a coffee soon! Dani begged to differ): Daniela Avanzini — starting at 21, the youngest English professor to grace Columbia in history.
In history.
She recites: Combination therapy. Carboplatin, paclitaxel. Central line. Six cycles, three weeks apart. Counts monitored. Nausea, fatigue, hair loss, neuropathy. Manage symptoms as they arise.
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, she whispers under her breath. For you as yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.
Donne. John Donne. Holy Sonnets. Metaphysical conceits.
I teach this. She imagines herself standing at the podium. Lights dimmed. Projector humming. Students adjusting in their seats. Notes ready. She would diagram the lines. Annotate. “There is a paradox,” Dani would say, “in the aggression of intellect against the inevitability of death.”
Now, perhaps, she would say, “There is a paradox,” a pause, “in the potential road of my ruin.”
Dani says nothing at all. She just nods.
Forty percent. It echoes in her brain, darting like a pinball. Numbers do not bend for desire. Numbers do not flinch. Numbers do not lie. Numbers simply are.
Math and English professions are often portrayed as the antithesis (antithesis, literary device, to be complete opposites of each other. Life and death) of one another. Math with rigid numbers, rules, and a single path to solution. English, to the common mind, seems its clear foil, with flowy prose, hidden meanings, and multiple interpretations.
But, just as numbers, words simply are.
She watches the oncologist scribble a note. His pen scratches the page like a metronome marking some rhythm she cannot hear. He does not look at her.
Authority resides in disinterest, after all.
Disinterest. An interesting word. A scholar should notice the nuance. Neutrality and precision. Cold, but functional.
I am still a scholar. She repeats this in her head like a mantra. I am a professor. I study John Donne.
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend. She traces the syllables with her eyes. The words do not comfort. They do not soothe the burn of the doctor’s words. They demand. They insist. They challenge. Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
Donne’s Holy Sonnet Fourteen, 1609. From the Ashford edition, based on the Gardner.
Donne questions the most questionable aspects of life: death, God, salvation.
Dani can almost see the lights dimming, almost feel herself up on that platform.
She is lecturing.
The sonnet “Batter my heart, three-person'd God,” appears on screen. Dani recites:
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
The speaker of the sonnet reeks of desperation; desperate to change his fate, desperate to forge a new path, desperate to break free from sin. He addresses God (Apostrophe, she adds, unhelpfully, because no, no really, she can’t stop), pleading with him to release the Satan that has occupied the speaker’s heart.
It explores a key paradox — that is, the speaker’s belief that he can only find true freedom if God forcefully conquers his will, ridding him of sin.
Dani blinks back to reality.
The office hums. Fluorescent lights. Air conditioner. A receptionist typing. Footsteps echoing in the hall. Dani imagines the tumor, a tiny, uncooperative entity, performing a dance opposite her, the steps measured, deliberate. The treatment will battle against it, soon. It’s a new season of So You Think You Can Dance? (Cancer Edition).
She thinks she’s going crazy.
Forty percent. Forty percent. The rest unknown.
She leans back in the chair. Cold vinyl against her palms. The calendar. The clock. The clinical efficiency of a hospital that exists in sterile, fluorescent pauses.
She’s repeating words. Dani hates doing that. Then again, Dani hates using the word hates (It’s unrefined, for God’s sake. We did not make a dictionary with over 300,000 words to simplify our emotions to hate and sad and boring), but she’s always been a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to the English language.
Her oncologist rises, gathers the folder. The efficiency remains.
She is alone once more.
Her meeting with the oncologist ran to 5pm, which, lucky her, is when the subway is at its busiest.
Dani resigns herself to her fate and boards the train anyway. The car is humming under the combined weight of its passengers, wheels clacking against the rails like a heartbeat she didn’t ask for. The air smells faintly of metal and sweat, the residue of a hundred bodies trying to get somewhere, anywhere.
She presses the strap of her tote tighter against her shoulder, as though it might shield her from the world, from germs, from tiny, invisible probabilities of disaster.
She finds a corner seat, bag on her lap, eyes half-closed, counting the vibrations through her fingertips, letting the rhythm lull her somewhere between awake and not.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Breathe in…
…
…
Yeah. This doesn’t help.
Sue her. Dani never studied psychology for a reason.
She stands.
The metal poles vibrate under her grip, like it’s breathing, like it’s alive, like it’s judging her. Perhaps it knows about her recent diagnosis. This same pole has most definitely been touched by the grippy, slimy, sticky hands of hundreds of cancer patients — this pole alone could cause a pandemic — so, she has to wonder, can it be felt in Dani’s touch?
Her head hurts. Too much caffeine, too much stress, too many medical terms ricocheting in her skull. A small tumor the size of a grapefruit could kill her. That’s science, people.
A tap on her arm.
“Dani?”
She looks up. Ugly orange scarf, check. Cheeky grin, check.
Dani, with all her willpower, keeps her groan in check.
Lara Raj. Lara who somehow manages to look like she just strolled out of a fashion show, a stark contrast to the plethora of tired faces standing cramped in the subway car.
Lara leans closer, just enough to make Dani aware of the warmth of another body in the metal-car coldness, one hand brushing against the strap of her bag by accident or by design. “Sorry, sorry, Professor Avanzini,” Lara says, playful tilt to the head. “You look… heavier than usual.”
“Excuse me?”
Lara smirks. “Metaphorically, maybe. Also, probably literally. Long day?”
Dani shrugs, focusing instead on the window. The city blurs past, golden and grey streaks she doesn’t recognize anymore, a montage of heat and shadow. “Lecture. Papers. Students. Coffee.” Dani enumerates. Vague. Lame. Professional. A complete, utter lie. She didn’t have any lectures scheduled for today. But what Lara doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
“Ah, I see.” Lara leans on the railing, one hip cocked. “The scholarly weight of the world on your shoulders, huh? The woes of the prodigal genius of the English Department.”
The train slows. The brakes squeal.
Lara grins. “Well, I’ll see you around. Don’t be a stranger.” She drops a wink, earbuds back in, and slides toward the doors.
Arriving home to her apartment, Dani drops her bag with a sigh and unlocks the door. She shuffles in, peeling off her jacket and shrugging against the temperature (What was it left at? 69? 70?).
Unlocking her phone, Dani squints against the glare of the late afternoon sun streaming through the blinds, the heat of the apartment sticking faintly to her forearms. Her thumb hovers over the screen, viewing the jumble of notifications and half-read messages, a minor chaos of digital life she doesn’t have the energy to sort. She persists anyway.
Sophia Laforteza [5:03 PM]
hey hey, english dept meeting in two days.. 9:30 AM 😬 gotta be there, can’t skip it or they’ll roast us lol. also. u remember the agenda? prob just boring stuff. mostly forms. maybe some talk about curriculum? idk.
Sophia Laforteza [5:04 PM]
oh btw!! we should grab coffee after maybe? i need like a full recap on the syllabus bc i swear half the stuff went over my head last week. also!! i have a new pen and it’s basically magical i think u should see it. it’s blue. and glittery. maybe sparkly?? idk i was gonna doodle but then it wrote “hello world” perfectly so now i’m obsessed.
Dani blinks. She wonders briefly if the heat is making her vision a little fuzzy or if the words just feel like they’re tumbling faster than they should. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and rolls the phone lightly in her palm, listening to the faint hum of the city outside. Somewhere, a train screeches. Somewhere else, a car horn yanks her out of her daydream.
Dani [5:20 PM]
Okay. Got it. Thanks.
She contemplates, sighing.
After a moment's hesitation, Dani types up another message.
Dani [5:21 PM]
Coffee sounds good. 👍
She’s rather proud of herself for adding that emoji too, thank you very much.
The kettle hisses, the apparent kin of a cat. Steam curls upward, curling like little ghosts trapped in the small kitchen. Truly everything in this world can be a metaphor, Dani thinks. Are our thoughts forever one giant conceit, then? Conceit: a long, multiparagraph metaphor. Donne, “A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning,” wherein conceit is utilized to compare two lovers to the two legs of a compass.
Dani pours the tea, allowing herself to stir a healthy dose of sugar into her cup. The spoon clinks against the ceramic, over and over, each tap echoing in the near-empty apartment. She watches the swirl of cream and tea, hypnotized. If she stares long enough, perhaps the pattern might begin to spell out something meaningful. A secret.
She sits at the tiny kitchen table, the mug warm between her palms, feeling its heat seep into her fingers, into her wrists, into her chest.
Outside, a few cars hum past; somewhere in the distance, a dog barks.
It reminds her of a book: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Not poetry. Literary classic. A 2003 mystery novel where Christopher Boone, a fifteen-year-old, discovers his neighbor’s dog, Wellington, has been cruelly murdered. He sets out to solve the crime.
Paradox: while attempting to solve the crime, he is accused of the murder. A paradox? Is it? Irony, rather?
Perhaps both.
She closes her eyes for a moment and is pulled somewhere else.
She first read it in her father’s study, curled up on the old corduroy armchair that always smelled faintly of cedar and ink. It had been her father’s gift. She had been quite proud.
“You’ll like this one,” he’d said, sliding it across the table. “It’s about a boy who’s very good at noticing things.”
At ten, Dani had wanted very much to be good at noticing things too.
She had squinted at the first page, lips moving slightly as she read aloud. “The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears’ house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream.”
Her father smiled faintly, half-listening while correcting papers. “What do you think that means?”
“That… he’s good at details?” she offered, tracing a sentence with her finger. She liked the feel of the paper. Smooth. “Like — he sees everything. Every blade of grass.”
He chuckles, tapping his pen against his temple. “Observation is a skill, isn’t it. When you aren’t paying attention…” Quick as a cheetah, he boops her nose with the uncapped pen. Dani frowned instantly, knowing the permanent ink would take days to disappear, already ready to screech an indignant hey, before her father interrupts, “Told you. Observation is a skill. You have to always be watching. Sniffing for new things. Like a reporter, but without the.. overbearingness.”
He went back to grading, like a proper professor (Alliterative P — soft, emotional, entirely unbefitting. I love you I love you I love you I love) and she went back to reading.
Dani never needed an excuse to talk to him, but every few paragraphs she’d stop anyway, wanting to hear his voice, and ask:
“What’s metaphor mean again?”
“What’s a protagonist?”
“Why does he write the numbers of the chapters wrong?”
Later that night, she’d fallen asleep in that same chair, the book splayed open on her chest, one page creased under her thumb. Her father had gently picked her up, carefully marking her place in the book before tucking her in.
She remembers that most of all: his hand, the faint smell of graphite and paper and coffee, the murmur of his voice when he whispered goodnight.
Observation is a skill.
She’s been observing ever since.
But sometimes, she thinks, observing doesn’t help you understand.
The clock on her phone reads 12:43 P.M., and Dani is eating her lunch outside the Humanities building — if you can call half a turkey sandwich and a measly cup of coffee “lunch.” Nonetheless, it’s a small reprieve before her next lecture.
The building isn’t much. There’s peeling paint and half-dead ivy that no one’s gotten around to trimming since May. In spite of it all, it resembles more of a home than her apartment ever does. In her lap: “The Sun Rising,” John Donne, 1633.
Busy old fool, unruly Sun, she reads, Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Donne’s petulance toward the dawn always amused her students, but Dani reads it differently now. Is that it? Is she getting old? It isn’t rebellion from Donne, nor disdain, but fatigue. The way the poem scolds the morning for intruding on the private world of lovers feels less like joy and more like grief each time she reads.
She scribbles something in the margin: to rage at morning = to resent survival?
She takes a sip of coffee; it’s gone cold. The bitterness sits heavy on her tongue.
The sunlight above her doesn’t feel like a visitor today, but rather, surveillance. The day insists on continuing, indifferent to whether she’s caught up with it or not. She can almost hear Donne laughing at her. Or maybe sympathizing. He knew how to make eternity sound like an inconvenience.
Her phone buzzes. Sophia. Dani knows. Still, she ignores it at first, then relents.
Sophia Laforteza [12:45 PM]:
reminder: dept meeting tomorrow @ 9. syllabus updates, grades, your mortal soul, etc.
Dani [12:46 PM]:
Thanks.
Sophia Laforteza [12:46 PM]:
also i’m stealing your stapler.
Dani [12:46 PM]:
Again?
Hello?
No?
Last time you never returned it?
That’s my stapler?
Sophia.
When it becomes clear she’ll be purchasing another stapler, Dani puts her phone down, thumb still resting on the screen. The quiet hum of campus returns, a mix of the distant chattering of stressed undergrads & the faint percussion of construction nearby.
She glances back at the poem.
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
It’s such an arrogant claim, that love can resist time. Dani resists the urge to scoff out loud.
She used to believe it in the way only seventeen-year-olds do, when she first took a course similar to the one she now teaches. Back when her father had still been alive to tell her that Donne’s metaphysics were just elaborate ways of trying not to die. He had never been a poetry expert, however, and Dani had never been one for naïveté.
The line feels almost cruel now.
“Still lecturing the dead?” a voice interrupts.
“Not lecturing,” Dani says. “You don’t even work here, Raj.”
Lara ignores her remark, raising an eyebrow. “And how’s that ‘not lecturing’ going for you?”
“Badly,” Dani admits.
“Then you need a break.” Lara drops onto the bench beside her, the wood creaking in complaint. Her coffee smells faintly burnt, which somehow fits her.
“A break,” Dani repeats, eyes still on the poem. “From what?”
“From all this.” Lara gestures at the air, placing the blame of Dani’s problems onto the ivy, the chipped paint, the invisible weight of academia itself. “From pretending you’re not exhausted.”
“I’m not pretending.”
“Right,” Lara says, lips twitching. Dani recalls her fathers words — Observation is a skill — and takes a moment to stare at her. Lara’s dressed like she’s on her way to anywhere but a university campus (which makes sense; Lara doesn’t work here. How is she even on campus? Who let her in? She has an unfortunate inkling that Sophia, who can often be seen in a room looking far too close and personal to Lara to be purely friendly, has something to do with this intervention, but she blocks it out). She’s in an oversized button-down, dark slacks, silver earrings that catch the sun. She looks like she’s catching a flight to Vegas, not slumming around a university campus. “Anyway, I came to tell you: there’s an open rehearsal later this week. Beckett. Godot.”
“Oh, no.” Dani finally looks at her. “You’re directing again.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Last time, you staged The Tempest in a swimming pool.”
“And it worked.”
“It flooded the green room.”
“Art is messy,” Lara says, unbothered. “But this time it’s in a theatre. No water, I promise.” She slips a folded flyer onto the page of Donne. The words RAJ THEATRE TROUPE PRESENTS: WAITING FOR GODOT sit between “Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime” and Dani’s penciled note about resentment.
“I don’t do theatre,” Dani says automatically.
Lara hums. “I know. But you read Donne like he’s about to stand up, walk into the room himself, and present you the golden ticket of the chance to, like, eat his brain. That could be a movie. Instead of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory — John Donne and the Race to Death.” Lara gives a wry chuckle before righting her track. “Anyway, that's practically theatre.”
“That’s analysis. Donne’s the greatest poet of the 17th century. His wit is incomprehensible, even by me.” Dani corrects, “It’s—”
“Performance.”
“I teach metaphysical poetry.”
“Which is performance with better footnotes.”
Dani exhales, pressing the flyer flat with one hand. Waiting for Godot. She hasn’t read it since grad school. A student once asked her: Professor Avanzini? How would you summarize this play [Waiting for Godot]? She hadn’t answered him, but if she had, Dani would’ve said something along the lines of: “A parlor trick about time and futility.” She remembers hating it.
“I don’t act,” Dani’s final stance.
“Observe, then,” Lara says, standing, brushing nonexistent dirt off her clothing. “You can take notes. Analyze the lighting for irony or whatever it is you people do.”
“You people,” Dani repeats.
“Professors.” Lara’s grin is small but genuine. “Tonight at seven. Come if you want. Don’t if you don’t. Sophia will be there.”
Of course.
At the very least, she was right about Sophia being in charge of this scheme.
The IV drips. The nurse tells her to relax her arm. Dani nods. She is very relaxed. Completely relaxed. The most relaxed anyone has ever been.
She looks down at the line threading into her skin — a translucent vein, carrying translucent promises of extended life.
Combination therapy: carboplatin, paclitaxel. She remembers. She’d written it once on the corner of a notepad, next to a list that read laundry detergent, lemons, grade essays.
She didn’t cross any of those off.
The nurse, [Dani recalls walking into the hospital. She’s just finished her last lecture for the day, tired, a tad miserable, chalk still dusting the edge of her sleeve, ready to curl up on her couch and read whatever poetry curbed her hunger tonight. She finds herself here.
The receptionist looks up, adjusting her glasses and smiling gently. “Hi! Who are you here for?”
Dani liked that greeting. No ‘How are you feeling?’ No ‘Any pain?’ Simple. Just a Hi. Friendly, even.
“Doctor McCaffrey.”
The receptionist nods and types something in, the sound of the keys soothing something (Ha. There it is again. Alliterative S. Lyrical, melodic sound) in her heart (Can’t forget an Alliterative H). “You can take a seat, he’ll call you in soon.”
The waiting room could be from a movie. It’s as though she’s on a set, everything fake and manufactured. Dani uncomfortably sits between a wilted plant and a stack of outdated magazines, the kind with glossy covers that promise Ten Ways to Feel Younger.
Across from her, a woman flips through one, laughing too loudly at something on the page. Dani feels, absurdly, that laughter should be forbidden here. It feels like bringing color to a grayscale photograph.
A nurse passes by, clipboard in hand, shoes clacking against the tile. There’s a small pause, and then—“Daniela Avanzini?”
Dani looks up. The nurse is young, fresh-faced, curly brown hair pulled into a bun, eyes soft and searching and bone-deep tired. Alas, the price of working in the medical field.
There’s an accent to her voice when she says, “You can come with me,” but Dani can’t place the accent’s location (Europe. West Europe? Germany? France?).
Manon. The name tag flashes as she turns, the letters small and unassuming.
The hallway smells faintly of antiseptic and hand soap. It’s nothing like the comfort of her classroom, filled with the scent of chalk and coffee (Alliterative C, harsh sound, emphasizes the contrasting demeanor of the dingy, unwelcoming hospital and her holy sanctuary).
“You’ve done this before?” Manon asks gently.
Dani blinks. She’s pretty sure Manon knows the answer. She’s most likely seen her files — her apparent entire life, answered in a five-minute conversation. “No.”
“Well,” Manon says, “first time’s the hardest. After that, it’s all routine.” And from there...] adjusts the valve. “You might feel some pressure.”
Pressure. Defined as a continuous physical force exerted on or against an object. The body is the object. The object is under force. Dani files the thought away — MLA citation optional.
Unlike the hallway, the room not only smells faintly of antiseptic and hand soap, but a new, exciting orange rind. Incredible, truly. Someone decided that citrus meant clean.
She wants to ask how long this takes. She doesn’t. Instead, she watches the bag drip, drip, drip (onomatopoeia, mimicking the sound of a leaky faucet or falling water), a rhythm of endurance.
Her eyes wander to the corner of the room, where a television murmurs a muted soap opera. No one’s watching. The colors move without sound, all mouths and no meaning. She thinks of Batter my heart again, not the violence of it this time, but the surrender. Take me to you, imprison me, for I—except you enthrall me, never shall be free.
The irony doesn’t escape her: freedom through captivity. Healing through poison. Cancer is a curious thing. Donne hadn’t entirely been aware of its existence, not by the name and scientific facts we know now, but if he had, Dani thinks it would’ve full-throttled a few hundred poems. She greedily wishes he had been aware.
A pulse of cold trickles through her arm. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but it isn’t a feeling she quite enjoys either. She imagines the chemicals traveling her bloodstream like pilgrims, devout, each one whispering its own prayer of destruction.
Manon looks up briefly. “You doing okay?”
Dani nods. She repeats: the most relaxed anyone has ever been.
She glances toward the IV pole again. The bag is half-empty now, clear fluid still dripping in perfect rhythm, pale and precise (Alliterative P, sharp, abrupt—), and names each sensation as if categorizing them will keep her calm. Pressure. Cold. Tremor. She files the words neatly in her head, prepared to inevitably forget them, in the same way the tucked take-out boxes in her refrigerator have gone abandoned.
Manon checks the monitor, jotting something down on her clipboard. “You’re holding up so well,” she says, her tone the kind used for children, or the elderly, or the sick — which she supposes she was now. Dear god.
Dani nods. “Thank you.” It’s the polite thing to say.
She hears the intercom request Manon, sharp and urgent, and watches her utter a quick “Sorry, one moment,” before leaving, the sound of her shoes fading down the hall. For a while, the only noise left is the rhythmic tick of the IV pump and the quiet breathing of the machines (Personification. Machines can’t breathe. The machines made significant enough noise to deserve a literary device attached to its description — queue applause. Congratulations). Dani exhales. The word relax repeats itself in her mind until it starts to sound mechanical.
It’s easier to think of this journey as observation rather than… experience. That’s always been her instinct. To understand, not feel. Her father used to tease her for it. “You’re too logical for your own good,” he’d said once, when she was thirteen and had just proclaimed that Shakespeare’s poems were overrated (“Too emotional, dad! All he does is reflect and hope. Everything is an emotion-based response. It’s melodrama mumbojumbo,”). She’d smiled proudly back then, delighted to be called ‘too logical for her own good’ by her father.
She thinks of The Extasie. Not the merging of souls. Not the love. Just the language, the rhythm. The bones of the poem. “We see by this, it was not sex…” she murmurs under her breath, and the words settle heavy in her chest.
Her phone buzzes faintly beside her. Dani doesn’t need to look to know who it is.
Sophia Laforteza [6:30 PM]
hey, are you alive? play auditions start @ 7. lara’s threatening to walk out if no one laughs at her jokes. please please please please please
Dani [6:31 PM]
I’m not even auditioning.
Sophia Laforteza [6:31 PM]
lara told me u were! & if u reallyyyy really dont want to (although i insist otherwise) come anyway so we can have some moral support
Dani [6:32 PM]
And I’m the star representation of Lara Raj Emotional Support?
Sophia Laforteza [6:32 PM]
oh absolutely not but thats why it’ll be so funny. plzzzzzzzzzzz thx kisses & hearts love u so so so much see u @ 7 dani
Dani stares at the screen for a while, the text glowing against the sterile light. She looks at the half-empty chair across from her. White, plastic, and utterly ordinary. But soothing, in a way, the kind you’d expect someone to sit in if they wanted to keep her company.
Manon returns. “All done,” she says, loosening the tape around Dani’s arm. “You might feel tired later.”
“I’ll manage.”
When she leaves, rushing to the next patient, Dani lingers for a moment before rising. The sleeve of her shirt sticks faintly to the crook of her arm. She stands still until her breath evens out.
Then she slips her phone into her bag without replying.
But, some bruised, bitter (Alliterative B, harsh—), part of her has already made up her mind. By the time she reaches the exit, the sky has turned a purplish shade of blue. A bus sighs (Personification. The bus is tired. Dani is tired) to a stop down the street. To get home, she’d go in the opposite direction, boarding the subway by the street corner’s bakeshop.
Dani hesitates, watching its doors open, the faint rush of warm air escaping into the chill.
She adjusts the strap of her bag, steps forward, and boards the bus.
When the automated voice announces the next stop, she doesn’t think. She simply pulls the cord.
The bus sighs to a halt outside the old Raj Theatre, its chipped letters half-lit in neon. Posters for Waiting for Godot paper the entrance, Lara’s name printed in bold beneath them.
Dani steps onto the pavement. The air smells faintly of cigarettes and street food, the sort of scent that makes a city feel homey, feel almost forgiving.
The air inside the theatre smells faintly of dust and hairspray. Someone must’ve been running fog machines earlier, because the haze clings to the ceiling in thin ribbons.
There are people scattered across the stage, half in costume, half in sweatshirts.
A few lines of dialogue echo off the walls — something about waiting, and God, and nothing to be done. Dani recognizes Waiting for Godot in that distant, literary part of her brain that still files everything under “classics to maybe reread someday.” She told herself she’d never reread this one, but look where that got her.
A woman in black jeans and a headset is perched on the edge of the stage, watching the actors with a faint smile. She notices Dani almost immediately.
“Hi! You here for auditions?”
Dani blinks. “No, I—sorry, I just…came to see.”
“Oh! You’re fine.” The woman waves her in anyway, already turning back toward the stage. “Take a seat wherever.”
Dani slides into a seat near the back, the worn velvet sinking beneath her. The faint hum of the lights overhead and the faint fog of the stage make everything feel a little unreal, a little suspended. She adjusts her blouse, trying not to fidget.
A hand on her shoulder makes her jump. “Dani! There you are,” Sophia cheers, voice warm but hurried. “I was hoping you’d come.”
“Oh—hey,” Dani says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I just… wanted to see. Victim of Curiosity.”
“You don’t just ‘see’ anything here,” Sophia smiles, and in a classic rendition of ‘I’m not taking no for an answer,’ grabs her arm. “Come on. Lara wants you to audition.”
Dani glances toward the stage, where a figure moves briskly in the fog. Lara. Of course. Her grin appears before Dani even has a chance to speak.
“You're here," Lara says, swooping down beside Dani with her usual dramatic energy. “I’ve been waiting.” She leans closer, her voice low, conspiratorial. “I’ve got an idea. You’re going to do a dual audition.”
Dani frowns. “Dual?”
“Yes,” Lara’s face grows more mischievous as she brushes her hair back, silver earrings catching the dim light. “With Megan. Right over there.” She gestures toward a girl bounding toward them, waving a script like it’s a flag. Megan’s grin is wide, her energy impossible to ignore.
Which is like… woah.
This girl is at 180 mph; Dani’s working up the ability to be at more than 15.
“Hey! So we’re doing this thing together!” Megan exclaims, bouncing slightly on her toes. “I’m Megan. And you must be…oh, Dani! Right? Cool. Cool cool cool. You ready?”
Alliterative C— harsh sound. Typical of rejection. In this case, excitement?
Dani swallows. This is happening, isn’t it? She is not ready. She has not rehearsed. She has, in fact, spent most of the day thinking about chemotherapy and the probability of cells doing exactly what they want anyway — she thinks back, and decides yes, uncooperative children are a fitting metaphor for cells. “Yeah. Okay. Question: Do I need a country accent?”
Lara snorts. “It’s Beckett, not Oklahoma.”
Her and Sophia are now sitting on the edge of the stage now, legs swinging like kids waiting for the school bell to ring. The tech booth light glows a dull amber; someone’s running sound cues, and the occasional cow mooooooing echoes throughout the theatre.
Lara watches her. “You’ve read this a million times, right?”
“Twice,” Dani says. “Once sincerely, once to prove to a professor I could read sincerity ironically.”
Megan jumps in, clapping her hands together. “Okay, good! So, I’ll be Estragon — you’ll be Vladimir, right? Lara said we’re doing the bit with the boots.”
“The bit with the boots,” Dani repeats. “I suppose that’s better than the bit with the tree.”
Megan laughs too loudly, already crouching to fiddle with an invisible lace. Lara lifts herself up, leaning on the wall at the edge of the stage, script in hand, watching like she’s trying to will the scene into existence through sheer focus. Sophia scrolls on her phone, pretending she’s not recording this entire moment.
They begin.
Scene 1: [For the Raj records: AUDITION 3 — MEGAN AND DANI.]
[The stage is set: a barren country road, a twisted tree at center. Evening light bleeds through the windows. Fog clings to the floor. Dani sits stiffly on a low mound, script in hand. Megan is practically vibrating with energy offstage.]
LARA (offstage, yelling): Amber wash on the tree! Dani! Spine straight! Megan! Big energy! Big! Now!
[Dani adjusts herself, trying to look like she belongs in the scene. The mound is just a folded gym mat, the fog a cheap machine’s dying breath. Megan strides into view, barefoot, holding her boots like props. Her black hair glints faintly in the amber light, the pink streak at her bangs catching fire under the gel. There’s a thin scar running across the bridge of her nose, so faint it looks drawn in pencil. Dani catches herself staring. Dani wonders where she got it. She’s cute.]
MEGAN (as Estragon, tugging at the boot): Nothing to be done.
DANI (flatly, then warming): I’m beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I’ve tried to put it from me, saying Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven’t yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle.
[Dani looks up at her — Megan’s still crouched, panting lightly for realism. Her eyes flick toward Dani and something like a grin twitches across her mouth before she bites it back.]
DANI (continuing): So there you are again.
MEGAN (half-smiling): Am I?
[They hold each other’s gaze for a moment too long. Lara’s clipboard slaps against her thigh.]
LARA: Momentum! Keep it alive!
DANI: I’m glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever.
MEGAN: Me too.
DANI: Together again at last. We’ll have to celebrate this. But how?
MEGAN: Not now. Not now.
[Dani hesitates before her next line, watching Megan’s shoulders rise and fall, the edge of her pink hair trembling as she moves.]
DANI: May one inquire where His Highness spent the night?
MEGAN (grinning): In a ditch.
DANI: A ditch. Where?
MEGAN (without gesture): Over there.
DANI: And they didn’t beat you?
MEGAN: Beat me? Certainly they beat me.
[Lara’s voice floats from the back, quieter now.]
LARA: Good. Yes! Keep the rhythm.
[Dani pretends to read the next line, but she’s half-focused on the way Megan moves — her hands animated, her voice skipping between emotions. She’s taller by a head, and when she leans closer, the smell of some faint lavender shampoo cuts through the dusty air.]
DANI (as Vladimir, distracted): What are you doing?
MEGAN (yanking at the boot again): Taking off my boot. Did that never happen to you?
DANI: Boots must be taken off every day. I’m tired of telling you that. Why don’t you listen to me?
MEGAN (breathless): Help me!
DANI (smiling faintly): It hurts?
MEGAN (snapping): Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!
[Dani actually laughs this time. The sound surprises her. Megan looks up, eyes bright, like she’s pleased she managed to catch her off guard.]
LARA: Lights, shine brighter. Reflect the scene’s changing emotions.
[The lights turn up a notch. Simultaneously, the fog around their ankles thickens, softening Megan’s outline. Dani feels the heat of the lamps on her neck, the hush of the empty auditorium like a held breath.]
DANI: No one ever suffers but you. I don't count. I'd like to hear what you'd say if you had what I have.
MEGAN: It hurts?
DANI (frown painted on her face): Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!
MEGAN (tapping her head, picture-perfect nerd—all that’s missing is the glasses): You might button it all the same.
DANI: True.
[The lights begin to dim.]
DANI (quietly): Never neglect the little things of life.
MEGAN (lowering the boot): Why don’t you help me, then?
[Dani doesn’t answer right away. She studies the faint scar again, the one that pulls slightly when Megan smiles. It makes her look mischievous, or brave, or something Dani can’t name.]
DANI: Nothing—
[Before Dani can finish the line, the lights fade out. Black. One count. Two Count. Back in full force. Silence. Then Lara claps once.]
LARA: Cut there. I wanna see this again. Let’s reset from the “ditch” part after a short break. That was actually good. I’m not even lying.
She doesn’t realize how tightly she’s been holding the script until her fingers ache. Paper creases into a half-moon where her thumb pressed.
Dani exhales, letting herself sink into the stage edge. Megan flops down beside her, script clutched to her chest, still buzzing with energy.
The silence lasts for one, two, three—
“Hey,” Megan starts, still a little breathless, eyes wide. “For someone who says she doesn’t act, you were pretty fucking amazing. Seriously”
“I just followed your lead.” Observation is a skill rings in her head, a siren. “If anything, I should be surprised by your skills. What are you doing here? Why not Broadway?”
“Why not Broadway?” A smile tugs at Megan’s lip. “Why not the supreme leader global sensation Lara Raj’s Theatre house?”
Slight giggles sound out from both of them (unbefitting, Dani’s brain screeches, you do not giggle. You do not giggle with tall, weird, cute girls. You do not giggle whatsoever. You are a scholar. You—), but the silence comes back with a vengeance.
Megan leans back on her palms, legs stretched out, still grinning at nothing in particular. She looks good. The stage lights feel like electricity, spurred on by the cosmic beating of her heart.
From somewhere near the wings, Lara’s voice cuts through: “Five minutes! Hydrate, people! Megan, Dani, I want you to do it again before I make my decision.”
Megan doesn’t move. She tilts her head toward Dani instead, studying her face with a kind of absent curiosity. Dani feels the gaze before she meets it.
“What?” she says, sharper than she intends.
“Nothing,” Megan replies, but her smile softens it. “You just... you were really there for a second. You know? In it. Not everyone gets all,” she gestures around vaguely, “this stuff.”
Dani isn’t quite sure how to respond to that — she quickly learns she doesn’t have to, when Megan picks up right where she left off, spinning her script like it’s a basketball. “Anyway, I’m glad I’m doing Estragon. I think my left boot’s cursed. Every time I wear it, something awful happens. Once, the sole came off in the middle of a showcase, and I had to finish the scene barefoot.”
Dani blinks. “Tragic.”
“I know! You think it’s funny, but there’s theatre blood on that thing.”
“Pretty sure that’s just stage paint.”
“Stage paint is blood, philosophically speaking.”
Megan says it with the confidence of someone who’s never questioned their own charm. Dani almost smiles.
She thinks, suddenly, of Donne: If ever any beauty I did see, which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee. Not the desire, but the awakening. The way the poem insists that love isn’t found in sleep, but in the strange, mutual recognition of being seen.
Recognition. She thinks she understands what Donne meant, she thinks—
“Earth to Dani,” Megan sing-songs, waggling the cursed boot in her direction, successfully interrupting her Daily Donne (Alliterative D, harsher sound. Negative connotation) thoughts. “You praying for my shoe?”
“Exorcising it.”
“Same difference.”
From the wings, Lara’s voice slices through their little orbit: “Alright, let’s pick it up from the ditch! Dani, Megan, make it quick before I die of old age.”
Megan springs up, stretching dramatically. “You heard the boss.”
“We don’t even have the roles yet,” Dani mutters. Still, she stands, smoothing her pants, the echo of Donne’s line still caught somewhere behind her ribs.
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally.
She steps back into the light.