I grin at Kate over my plastic punch glass. She raises hers up, a toast.

"To us," she says, and we down our glasses.

"Tastes like platelets," I say, and I wink at her. When she laughs, she lights up inside. The curve of her lip is the bow of crescent; her eyes close, and her eyelashes seem impossibly long. She glows.

Instinctively, I look around. Under the dim lighting, I see catheters and wheelchairs and IV poles and little kids with no hair and sickness and everything, everything that isn't Kate, because Kate goddamn glows.

All of a sudden, I am sick of acute myelogenous leukemia and cancer and platelets and chemotherapy, especially chemotherapy, because I fucking like having hair.

Then I'm angry, and it's the kind of anger that can knock you over. I have read about APL and its treatments and its survival rates. The irrational part of me is screaming and I know Kate will survive, because I want it and I need it and there is no rational part of me anymore and I can't think of anything else because Kate is fucking glowing.

"Kate," I say, "let's get out of here."