Vincristine
ALANNA WILLMAN
Characters
Two friends:
Abby Norton, 20 years’ old
Sarah Wan, 22 years’ old
Scene opens to ABBY and SARAH, walking through a large field with large buckets in hand. ABBY holds a large water balloon in her arm.
ABBY: So where did you say your brother is?
SARAH: He told me he had to volunteer at the church. They’re going into town to feed the homeless today, apparently.
ABBY: Oh. Well, I guess that’s okay, it’s just his loss. The look on Mr. Smith’s face will be worth a hundred soup kitchens.
SARAH: [Laughing] The look on the cow’s faces will be worth a hundred churches!
ABBY: I’m not so sure! They might actually appreciate it. It’s been so damn hot lately; I feel like I’m going to melt even when I stand in front of my box fan. Nan says it’s “God, trying to burn off our sin” since only the churches seem to have good air conditioners now. I feel like that’s some kind of other sin.
SARAH: You’re telling me. My hospital room was an oven last night. I told the nurse I saw my IV fluids bubbling and she laughed at me and told me to stop being so dramatic. She wasn’t the one who was having lava pushed into her bloodstream.
ABBY: Even I think that’s a little ridiculous, Sarah.
SARAH: [Unhappily] Well, that’s what it felt like. If you were there, you would have agreed.
ABBY: [Nodding absently] Sure, I guess.
SARAH: Well, you’re my friend, right? That’s what friends do. Stick up for each other.
ABBY: Really? So where were you when Cody Barnes threw me into the lake because he felt like it?
SARAH: I was busy with my cousins; I’ve already told you that a hundred times. Andy is back on drugs so the cousins had to stay with us until their momma got back here to take care of them.
ABBY sighs and doesn’t say anything.
ABBY and SARAH walk in silence for a few moments more. A large barn appears in the distance.
SARAH: Are you hot right this moment?
ABBY: What does it look like to you? I’m sweating enough to fill another bucket of balloons.
SARAH: [Stops, grins, and gestures to the large balloon in ABBY’S arms]. Bite the water balloon, Abby. Just pop it!
ABBY: What? No way! I spent twenty minutes at the hose for this one. It’s got the prize heifer’s name written all over it!
SARAH: Oh come on! You need to cool down and I need a good laugh. “Laugh at everything” is also on my bucket list, so you have to.
ABBY: I don’t have to do everything you say! What I do have to do is carry this balloon across this godforsaken field, climb up on Mr. Smith’s barn, and drop it on his best cows. You can stand here and laugh at me just the way I am if you like, but I’m not wasting this water balloon.
SARAH: [In a joking voice] I’m dying Abby, you have to or I’ll never get my list done in time for my untimely demise of pancreatic failure.
ABBY: Now you’re just being ornery.
SARAH: Now you’re just being selfish.
ABBY: I’m being selfish? This was all you could talk about for the past two weeks! [In a mocking voice] “Let’s go down to the farm and throw shit at the cows! Mr. Smith is such a cheapskate; let’s terrorize his animals with projectiles!” I was supposed to meet Daisy at the river today but I cancelled because you insisted it needed to be this day in particular and not a day later or earlier.
SARAH: Well it just needed to be today, okay? Every last day counts and Daisy gets to be alive for at least another eighty years. You can muck around with her all you want when I’m six feet under.
ABBY: Will you just stop talking like that? It’s not a joke, Sarah.
SARAH: Well you don’t seem to take it any more seriously. Last week when I told you we were going to go hike Lost Mine, you were so upset and told me my good friend Vincristine could come with me instead.
ABBY: You know I didn’t mean...
SARAH: Yeah, I know. You don’t mean a lot of things. Me neither.
ABBY: I just wish you would be more serious about this. Then maybe everyone else would be too.
SARAH: I don’t have enough time left to be serious or give it much thought. I have too many cows to pelt with water balloons to give a shit about it. Right now I just want to see some confused cows and laugh for the rest of the day. Then, I want to go home and eat fried pickles and watch the soaps until I can’t keep my eyes open anymore.
ABBY: Well at some point you have to start giving a shit. You can’t keep being days behind your treatments and skipping check-ups. It doesn’t work as well that way.
SARAH: It doesn’t even work at all, Abby. If it did, I wouldn’t have to wear this stupid thing.
SARAH stops, sets down her buckets, and tears off her wig. Wadding it up, she throws it as far away as she can. ABBY looks on with a mix of horror and amazement.
SARAH: It’s too damn hot for that thing anyway.
ABBY: Your mom cut all her hair off to make that wig for you.
SARAH: I don’t know why she did. I told her not to.
ABBY: Because she cares about you and wants you to be comfortable out in public. She remembers what it was like to be bald, too.
SARAH: Well good for her. Hats and bandanas are cheaper to buy than wigs. Maybe if she didn’t get that useless thing we could afford more treatment.
ABBY: You know that three hundred dollar wig wouldn’t have made a lick of difference. You just want to find something to be mad at her about so you won’t feel bad about the wig later.
SARAH: Yeah, sure. Whatever you want to think.
SARAH picks up her buckets and starts walking to the barn again. ABBY waits for a moment before hurrying to catching up.
SARAH: Why were you so upset?
ABBY: About the wig?
SARAH: No. When I said we were going to Lost Mine. You never get upset when we go other places. Did something bad happen there?
ABBY: [Sighs] No, I just got angry because you never ask anymore. You just show up on my porch and tell me we’re going to go places. I had plans that day.
SARAH: Well I really wanted to go. I knew my next treatment was coming up fast. Did you not want to go?
ABBY: No I did... I just— never mind.
SARAH: You can’t “never mind” me.
ABBY: [Pauses, then deeply inhales] I didn’t want to go because people keep doing whatever you want just because you’re... you know... I didn’t want to be run over by you like everyone else. Everyone else would break their back for you if you didn’t make them, y’know.
SARAH: [Growing angry] What the hell do you mean? I don’t make anyone break their back for me.
ABBY: So what about when my mom came and cleaned your whole place top to bottom while you were in Seattle because you wouldn’t stop complaining that your mom was useless and didn’t help? Even though she went to Seattle early to get everything ready for you? Or the day your brother skipped his college entrance exam because you called him and made him get your extra morphine from the hospital?
SARAH: I was so weak I couldn’t walk, Abby. How did you expect me to make it down to the hospital?
ABBY: But you had no problem playing racquets at the lake the next day with Daisy and I.
SARAH: [With sarcasm] Well then just leave the stupid water balloons if I’m breaking your back, I’m sorry being friends with me is so hard.
ABBY: Sarah, being your friend is not the hard part.
SARAH: Well then what is?
ABBY: I can’t say it, Sarah, I don’t know how to say it.
SARAH: [In an outburst] Maybe if you actually cared about the fact I’m dying as we speak you might be able to reach into that shriveled heart of yours and find some words.
ABBY: [With equal energy] Well maybe I would care more about how you’re dying if you actually pretended to care about yourself and the people trying to help you, and didn’t use it as a get out of jail free card for everything. Being sick doesn’t give you an excuse to be a jerk to everyone around you. You’re my best friend, Sarah, and I would do anything for you but you have to stop lashing out at us. It isn’t anyone’s fault that you got sick. It’s not my fault, it’s not your mom’s fault, and it’s not your fault, either.
SARAH: [Teary] Well I can’t help but be angry. If you were bald and sick and weak you’d be angry too.
ABBY: The world doesn’t care that you’re dying. It’ll go on without you. Get angry at the world. Pull up all the grass in the lawn. Throw your recyclables in the stinking landfill. Cut down a hundred trees if you need to. But you can’t be angry with the people that care that you’re dying because then pretty soon it’ll be too late.
SARAH pauses, and gulps audibly. She stops and sits down in the grass. ABBY stops and sits next to her, cradling the big water balloon in her lap.
SARAH: Last time I was in Seattle, the docs told me some things that made me really angry. I tore my IV line out and walked out of the hospital. The blood from my hand soaked straight through my jeans. My mom was so embarrassed. We were so mad at each other.
ABBY: What did they tell you?
SARAH: They told me how long I got left. All this time I never wanted them to tell me, I always made them tell Mom and I always threatened Mom that I would do something real stupid if she told me. No one ever did until this last time.
ABBY: Oh... How long?
SARAH: I don’t want to say. Every time I have to say I feel like I’m one day closer. They say it’s real soon now. I don’t want to believe it. I tell them I feel fine but then they say it’s just all the painkillers I’m on now to cope with the other drugs. God, I wanted to slap that doc who told me...
ABBY: Is that why you came home with a bucket list as long as the Mississippi?
SARAH: It’s an almost impossible list, but I tell myself I can prove them all wrong if I can finish it before...
ABBY: I know you can.
SARAH: I’m surprised you say that. Mom says going to Timbuktu is very expensive and I’m in no state to travel outside the US. I tried to get her to agree to Alaska, at least, but then she corrected herself to “the contiguous US” and I went back to picking Timbuktu. I shouldn’t sink just because someone else says I can’t, right?
ABBY: Right. [Pause] I’m glad you told me. I’m sorry for what I said before. I didn’t really understand.
SARAH: I’m sorry too.
ABBY: For what?
SARAH: Lashing out. Hurting you and mom and my brother. You’re all that I got now.
ABBY: We’re still here, and that’s what matters. We’ll be here until... A long pause.
SARAH: Do you know what?
ABBY: What?
SARAH: Now I wish I had known all along. Maybe I wouldn’t have thought I was so invincible. Maybe I would be more ready to die.
ABBY: I don’t know if anyone is ready to die. Even sick people.
SARAH: I don’t know- some days I feel ready. Some days I don’t.
ABBY: What’s today?
SARAH: [Pause] I love you too much to go.
ABBY: Me too.
SARAH: Even though I’m a jerk?
ABBY: Maybe just a little more when you’re a jerk.
ABBY and SARAH sit in silence for a moment.
SARAH: [Hesitantly] So which one is the best heifer? How will we know?
ABBY: I remember seeing that one at the fair back in May. Some fat cow named Bluebell, of all things.
SARAH: You don’t think that’s a good name?
ABBY: Not really. I’d rather name a cow Moo-rice [said like Maurice] than Bluebell.
SARAH: What kind of name is Moo-rice?
ABBY: A better name then Bluebell, at least. Why? What would you name your best cow?
SARAH: [Smiling] Vincristine.
CURTAIN