Not that I think they all really believe what they’re saying, she goes on, but they obviously believe it’s what they should say. Quite a few people tried to convince me not to stop working. You have to make every effort, she says those people said to her, you have to keep working. You have to carry on was what they meant, she says. Carry on as if all were well and maybe then all will be well. Like, fake it till you make it, says my friend, laughing herself out of breath. Chemo might give you acne and a mouth full of sores, but you must keep putting on lipstick.

The only way people seem able to deal with this disease, she says, is to make it a hero narrative. Survivors are heroes, unless they’re kids, in which case they’re superheroes, and even doctors, who are just doing their goddamn job, are said to be taking heroic measures. But why should cancer be some kind of test of a person’s mettle? I can’t tell you how much trouble I’ve had with that, she says. There’s almost nothing anyone’s said to me that hasn’t been some banality or cliché. I quit social media because I had to get away from all the noise. Some of the worst comes from the cancer support community—think of your cancer as a gift, an opportunity for spiritual growth, for developing resources you never knew you had, think of cancer as a step in the journey to becoming your best self. I mean, seriously. Who wants to die listening to that crap.

An exaggerated shuddering motion as she catches her breath.

There comes a point, she goes on, when, if it’s really what you want to hear, your doctor will give it to you straight. Incurable. Inoperable. Terminal. Personally, she says, though no one ever uses it I prefer the word fatal. Fatal is a good word. Terminal makes me think of bus stations, which makes me think of exhaust fumes and creepy men prowling for runaways. But back to what I was saying: I’ve done my research. I know what I’m in for if I let nature run its course. Palliative care can only do so much. I don’t see the point of lingering in hospice, getting more and more helpless until I can’t do anything for myself anymore. People ought to be able to understand that this is my way of fighting, she says. Cancer can’t get me if I get me first. And what’s the sense in waiting, she says, when I’m ready to go. What I need now is someone who understands all this and who’ll promise to stand by me and not go and do something idiotic like flush the pills down the toilet while I’m asleep.