She told us about the waiting rooms of various cancer centers she had spent time in. How she watched women and men with and without wigs or their natural hair being led in and out of double doors. She knew the drill, but still she couldn’t square why she had gotten mixed up with these people. She didn’t like to think of herself as a sick person.

“They’re very fancy, these cancer centers. You can tell they have money. You should see the art.”

She said she watched as one woman in particular, hair newly growing in, walked out of the double doors holding a certificate.

“And what do I do with this now?” the woman asked the nurse who was navigating her back into the waiting room.

Daphne said she watched as the woman’s fingers crumpled the edge of the certificate. When she dropped her hand, Daphne said she could see the loops of cursive, the woman’s name, Jane, written out in ink on a line in the middle. Like a good-effort certificate one hands out to kindergartners just for showing up, she said.

“You completed the program,” the nurse had told Jane.

“My radiation?”

“Yes, you should be proud.”

“Is the cancer gone?”

“Cancer goes to sleep, but it’s never gone,” Daphne told me, breaking from her story.

“I know,” I said.

“You know a lot about it. How?” She cut me off before I could divulge anything. “Not my business.”

She leaned down to pet Pierre.

“If they gave me that certificate you think I’d hang it on the wall next to my college diplomas? Please.” She laughed. “Like I want to remember where I’ve been.”

I stared at her and knew she didn’t.

“They ring a bell, too,” Daphne said. “The nurse led her over to a gong.”

“Why?”

“They wanted her to hit the gong in celebration,” Daphne said. “To celebrate her survival.”

Daphne said she thought about when she bought her first car from the dealership. How they had a bell to ring, too, so everyone in the dealership could cheer for you and make you feel like you had won something.

“This was winning more time,” Daphne told me. “I watched as that woman picked up the mallet. It didn’t seem like she wanted to do it, but she also didn’t want to disappoint the nurses. So she walked over to the gong, and I could see a light flash in her eyes right before she hit it. Like, in that second she believed she was a winner.”

I stared at Daphne as she waved her hand at the absurdity of it all.

“She hit it, though. She hit it as hard as she could and scared the shit out of everyone in the waiting room. Probably took a good year off from all of them. And guess what?”

“What?” I asked.