Cancer just wants to be alive...
Hazel and Gus are two teenagers who share an acerbic wit, a disdain for
the conventional, and a love that sweeps them on a journey. Their
relationship is all the more miraculous given that Hazel's other
constant companion is an oxygen tank, Gus jokes about his prosthetic
leg, and they met and fell in love at a cancer support group.
“Van Houten,
I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently.
Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease.
I want to leave a mark.
But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.
(Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.)
We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other.
Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either.
People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm.
The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invented anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox.
After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.
A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.” A desert blessing, an ocean curse.
What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.”
-Augustus Waters-
“My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great sat-crossed love of my
life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won't be able to get more than a
sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew.
Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because-like all real
love stories-it will die with us, as it should. I'd hoped that he'd be
eulogizing me, because there's no one I'd rather have..." I started
crying. "Okay, how not to cry. How am I-okay. Okay."
I took a few
deep breaths and went back to the page. "I can't talk about our love
story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know
this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and
.112 and infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a Bigger
infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million.
Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to
like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the
size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get,
and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus,
my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I
wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the
numbered days, and I'm grateful.”
-Hazel Grace Lancaster-
