A Best Friend's Promise

Maya and I had been competing since the day we met. I was seven, Maya eight, when we first met on the playground and she challenged me to a race. I was the fastest girl in my class so I knew it would be an easy win. To my very frustrating surprise, she beat me. My seven-year-old self simply couldn’t handle the idea of losing and so I challenged her to a competition to see who could jump the furthest off the swings. I won that one, but we both walked away with skinned knees and smiles on our faces. And so our relationship went. We became inseparable. We found out we only lived 12 minutes away by bike ride—nine if you were speeding, which we always were—and spent most days with each other, avoiding homework on school days, and thinking up all kinds of crazy competitions on weekends. After the second broken bone our parents met to try and convince us to enjoy more subdued activities like painting. That ended with Maya’s walls being covered in blue and purple paint and our parents realizing it was a losing battle. We may have constantly been in competition with each other, but when we were on the same team, we were unstoppable.

As we got older, and to the utmost joy of our parents, our silly competitions turned to more fruitful endeavors: Who could get better grades, who could secure a date for homecoming first, who could get their driver’s license faster, who could make the varsity soccer team (spoiler alert, we both did). We pushed each other to do our best, we infuriated each other, and above all else, we supported each other. When my high school boyfriend broke up with me, Maya held me, comforted me, and with a devilish grin said “I bet I can throw more eggs at his house than you can.” She lost that bet. Our one unspoken rule to each other, was that we would never purposely let the other win. No matter what life was throwing at us, we would compete to our fullest potential.

We both got into our dream colleges, me at UCLA and her at USC. The fervid school rivalry was a natural extension of ours. Everything was going so well, we were doing great in classes, seeing each other regularly, and making friends who all seemed to get along. We had both wanted to spend the first year in the dorms, but were planning to find an apartment together halfway between the campuses for our sophomore years. We were living the dream, but like all dreams, things came to an abrupt and jarring end when Maya was diagnosed with bone cancer. It started with soreness which she brushed off, chalking it up to all the walking and intermural soccer she was playing. The soreness turned to pain which turned to pain she could no longer ignore. I was supposed to be meeting her for dinner after a study session in the library, but as I was leaving, she called me from the emergency room. She was at the gym and had felt a sudden, sharp pain in her leg and couldn’t put any weight on it. I rushed to the ER and waited by her side while she got the x-rays. She wanted to wait to tell her parents until she knew if it was anything serious. I could tell it was bad news the minute the morose looking doctor walked into our curtained-off sanctuary. We had been laughing about something stupid when he entered, and all the mirth was sucked out of the atmosphere. I remember glancing over at Maya to see if she felt it too.

The doctor, with arms too long for his body, bags under his eyes, and long curly blonde hair delivered the news like a butcher delivers a slab of meat. Maya had a tibial fracture, but they had found something else. The reason for the fracture was a tumor that had caused the bone to weaken. He recommended an urgent follow-up with the orthopedic oncology team, told Maya she’d be getting casted, and dashed out of the room like he hadn’t just delivered life-destroying news. We both sat there stunned as the ortho tech finished up her cast and sent us on our way. I took her back to her dorm and we called her parents together. They flew in the next morning and booked an Airbnb, for a week, hoping to have everything squared away by then. That was Monday. Maya managed to get an appointment with the ortho-oncology team on Wednesday. On the way into the appointment I bet her that I could hop one-legged from the car to the front door before she could hobble over there with her crutches. She gave me a sad smile and accepted the challenge. That appointment was one of the worst 45 minutes of our life. The doctor explained the next steps, speaking slowly and clearly with kindness in his eyes and sympathy in his voice. Clearly this was not his first rodeo. First would be a biopsy of the tumor to confirm the diagnosis, if it came out positive, which he believed it would, next would be an amputation of the leg, then chemotherapy. I willed and willed for this to be a joke. For a camera crew to pop in at any moment and tell us we were guests on some twisted new reality show. But the appointment came and went with nothing but stunned silence.

The next few weeks passed in a blur of procedures and planning. I was spiraling, but Maya was seemingly doing okay. She was positive and upbeat, making jokes with the anesthesiologists and surgeons. Even after the amputation, when I expected her mask to crack, she was all smiles and can-do attitude. She challenged me to guessing games in the doctor’s appointments and crossword puzzle challenges while I sat anxiously in the waiting room with her parents. “Bet you can’t complete the NY Times crossword puzzle before I’m out of surgery.” Meanwhile, I was fading. I just kept picturing all the things that would change about her life and how much more difficult things would be. I was worried people wouldn’t accept her with her prosthetic and thought about everything from how she’d have to re-learn to drive to if this would change whether she could find a husband. I knew those things were shallow, and many people who underwent amputation lived beautiful and full lives, trust me I had read up to my eyeballs in success stories and blog posts, but it didn’t stop the fear from creeping in. I was worried about the chemo too. From everything I had read, it was going to be a rough process. I tried my best to keep my fear from Maya—she had enough on her plate. So I started a new silent competition: Who could be the most positive.

Once the chemo started, things expectedly went from bad to worse. Maya started throwing up, losing weight, losing hair, and worst of all, losing her positivity. Buy maybe it was good that we had swapped places. When I was struggling, her positivity kept me going. So now that she was struggling, it was my job to help her through. I started heading up the competitions, most of them taking place within the drab walls of the hospital now. Who could think of the funniest name to write on the white board, who could keep a straight face longer when the nurses came in and addressed her by those names, who could eat the most ice cubes without getting a brain freeze. Slowly but surely, Maya’s smile returned. Somehow we got through it. The chemo treatments slowed and then stopped all together, her hair grew back, she became a champion physical therapy patient and was flying on her prosthetic, and just overa year after that initial ER visit, Maya got the all clear to return to normal life. But what was normal after living through hell? Maya found the return to life challenging. She had fallen behind in school, and was no longer sure what career she wanted to pursue. She felt distant from our friends, claiming they treated her differently after the cancer. She started staying in her room more and going out less.

It didn’t make any sense to me. She had survived the worst of it and now she could finally return to life outside of the hospital and I felt like she was giving up. I amped up the challenges, betting her that I could find an apartment for us to live in before she could, that I could decide what I wanted to do with my life before her, that I’d find a college boyfriend before she could, and that I’d attend more therapy sessions than her. That last one made her laugh. The first real laugh I had heard in a while. She said, “Deal, but my physical therapy counts towards therapy sessions since you didn’t specify.” We found a great apartment to live in and Maya mended her relationship with our friends, while also making new friends with a group on campus dedicated to amputees who could understand what she was going through. She even found a boyfriend named Ben through her group and made me begrudgingly admit that she was on a winning streak.

Years passed. I got my PhD in education and Maya got into medical school. She decided she wanted to be a pediatric oncologist and help kids going through the same thing she had gone through. She got engaged to Ben, and I was starting out in a new relationship. Two years into her residency, the worst happened. Maya’s cancer came back, and it was more aggressive than ever. Everyone who loved her—and that was so many people—were heartbroken and confused. We thought she was in the clear. The doctor’s had said she was in the clear. How could this possibly be happening all over again? Maya, her parents, her fiancé, and I cried together when we found out. We found ourselves back in the doctor’s office, the only difference is this time instead of stunned silence, we had one million questions for the doctor with the kind eyes. The answer we got: sometimes, this happens. Sometimes people are unlucky. The treatment would be the same except the chemo would need to be more aggressive. He was brutally honest. Even if Maya did all of this, went to hell and back for a second time, there was no guarantee it would work. We left with heavy hearts and hope distinguished.

Everyone wanted Maya to try to go through the treatment, selfishly I did too, but Maya wasn’t sure she could do it all again. One night I went over to her and Ben’s place to try and convince her that she couldn’t just give up—not my finest moment, I admit. Luckily, Ben intercepted me at the door and knocked some sense in to me. This had to be Maya’s decision, and even if we didn’t agree with it, our job was to support her. We also knew she had to make a decision fast, the longer she waited, the less likely the treatment would work.

Two weeks after the doctor’s appointment where we discussed the options for next steps, Maya called me and asked me to meet her at the beach. I knew I was going to get my answer, whether I liked it or not. We met at our favorite beach and got fruit cups with lime and Tajín. The first thing she did was bet me that she could finish her fruit cup after me. We had started this specific challenge years ago when we both realized we would scarf down our cups like we were drinking from the fountain of youth, and then be sad when they were gone. Sometimes self-control is best found within competition. As we walked along the beach and watched the sun beginning to set, I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything. “Hey Erin” she said, “I bet that I can have more fun than you for the rest of my life.” She won that bet.

We buried her three months later. As I stood over her gravestone I realized a piece of me would forever be missing. She had been my opponent in crime for as long as I could remember. She had been the best friend I could have ever asked for. “Hey Maya” I said, “I bet you—no, I promise you—that I will live every day of my life for the both of us.”