Between Two Kingdoms

After two months of isolation, Suleika stops treatments and returns to Saratoga Springs to gain strength before the clinical trial. She enjoys the freedom of being able to go outside but often feels too unwell to leave the house. Will’s parents visit and Suleika meets them for the first time. She worries that she won’t live up to their expectations. They assure her that Will is a better man since meeting her. On a walk into town, Suleika lags and drips with sweat. She tells everyone she feels fine, but she is feverish and too embarrassed to explain where she hurts, her vulva, hoping the pain goes away.

Several days later Anne and Will drive her to the emergency room. They wait in the reception area, and then her mother tells the receptionist, “My daughter has leukemia and a very high fever. [...] She is severely immunocompromised and if you make her wait any longer you will have blood on your hands” (85). Suleika notices that Will seems overwhelmed. Anne suggests that Will take a break. He agrees and goes to meet friends for a drink.

The next scenes come in fragments as she goes in and out of consciousness, fighting an infection that possibly turned into sepsis. In the memories, she is in the geriatric unit, feverish and disoriented. In the final memory, Dr. Holland tells Anne to call her husband to the hospital and says, “This could go either way” (88).

Suleika wakes up, relieved to be alive. Will comes to sleep next to her in a recliner. Jaouad writes, “Tonight, like so many other nights, he would sacrifice comfort for closeness” (88). Suleika suggests that they get married. Will agrees immediately, and they stay up planning a small wedding. Suleika moves to the oncology unit and tells Younique she and Will plan to marry in the next few weeks. Younique updates her on Yehya and Dennis. Both died in her absence: “Younique rubbed my back as I tried to process the news. All I could think was, I’m next” (89).

Suleika plans to begin the outpatient clinical trial. She tries to focus on the present and survival, but all she can think of is the grief Will and her family will feel if she doesn’t live. She sees that Will needs to live his own life: “The land of the sick was no place for anyone to live 24/7; I would never have wished that on my worst enemy” (92). She proposes that he get a job. Will agrees and adds, “But I don’t want you to feel like you’re alone in this” (92). Suleika tells him that she’s not going to be better any time soon and helps him prepare his resume. He looks for jobs in Saratoga, but not finding any, he eventually gets a job as an editor in New York.

Will heads to the city for the workweek, and after dropping him off at the train station, Suleika retreats to her room. She writes, “The world is moving forward and I am stuck” (93). She wants to find a productive way to spend her time, even taking the GRE, but cancer keeps her in bed. Even if she gets into graduate school, she won’t be able to attend because of her treatments.

Suleika questions whether the clinical trial is worth the side effects that frequently send her to the hospital: colitis, sepsis, blisters in her mouth, and constant pain. During one hospital stay, she tells the medical staff she is getting married. A social worker comes later and explains to Suleika and her parents that, since she is on her father’s health insurance, marriage could jeopardize her bone marrow transplant. They decide to postpone the wedding, “joining countless other plans and goals and projects that had been relegated to purgatory until further notice” (96). Suleika observes that the sicker she becomes, the harder it is to stay the “good-natured patient.” She begins to resent Will and everyone else for being able to have agency over their lives.

Suleika’s parents believe that she is depressed. She sleeps, experiences nausea, and watches Grey’s Anatomy. She finds comfort in the show’s hospital scenes because they numb her to her situation. The movie A Little Bit of Heaven brings her comfort, too. It follows a young woman who gets colon cancer, falls in love with her oncologist, and, in the end, dies. Suleika cries for hours every time she watches it.

Her parents want her to see friends or go to a support group, so Suleika reaches out to a friend named Molly. They decide to meet at the mall, and Suleika realizes that none of her clothes fit any longer. She puts on makeup for the first time in months.

Anne reminds her that she needs her chemotherapy injections before she leaves. Suleika dreads this routine and the pain it incites, and she finds it hard to be thankful for her mother’s willingness to give her the injections. Jaouad writes, “[T]he metallic tang of fear coat[s] my tongue at the sight of the needles” (99).

Suleika’s father drives her to the mall to meet her friend. Her father offers to walk her inside, but she dismisses him and feels everyone treats her like a child. Molly gives her a bag of marijuana before they go to a movie, and Suleika realizes that she forgot her anti-nausea medication. She throws up at the smell of the popcorn, and strangers comment on how wasted she is. She goes back to her seat and pretends that everything is normal. Molly drives her home, and when she arrives, Suleika notices how exhausted her dad looks. She gives him the marijuana saying, “You look like you could use it more than me” (103).