Stranger Than Fanfiction(79)
“But why?” Topher asked. “Are you sick?”
“I have glioblastoma,” Cash said. “That’s a fancy stage name for brain cancer.”
Topher felt like the room was spinning and he slid into a chair at the foot of the bed. He was so dizzy he held on to the seat with all his might as if he was on a roller coaster with no seat belt.
“Brain cancer?” he said in shock.
“Sorry to spring the news on you like this,” Cash said. “Shit just got real human, huh?”
“Are you just finding out about it?”
The sick actor looked away guiltily and slowly shook his head.
“In April I started getting these really bad migraines,” Cash explained. “A doctor came to the set and recommended I get a scan. We were behind in production so the producers wouldn’t give me time off to get it done. In May, after we wrapped season nine, I finally went in for an MRI. They found a tumor the size of a grape on my brain stem.”
“And… and… and did you start treatment for it?”
“My options were limited,” he said. “Surgery was risky and could have potentially damaged my verbal skills—and you know how much I like to talk, so that wasn’t going to work for me. Other treatments might have left me paralyzed or impaired my memory and that didn’t sound like any fun. The neurologist said I had a good three months left if I did nothing, so I decided to make those count instead.”
“Hold on,” Topher said, and waited a moment to ask him the question he didn’t want the answer to. “Cash, are you saying that you’re… you’re… dying?”
The actor took a deep breath before confirming it.
“Yeah,” he said.
Topher closed his eyes and went silent as he processed the news. He didn’t want to believe it was real, but so many things from the week before began making sense and the dots practically connected themselves.
“So all that bad behavior… The partying, the drinking, the smoking, the dancing, the lawbreaking… All the stuff everyone was condemning you for… That was just…”
“Me squeezing life for every last drop,” Cash said.
“And the night at the concert, the morning after the concert, the crazy mood swings, the migraine, the gummy bears, the OxyContin in your bag…”
“Just symptoms and remedies,” he said. “I told you those pills weren’t what you thought.”
It all made sense, but that didn’t make it any easier. Topher tried putting on a brave face for Cash but it was impossible to shield the devastation coursing through his body.
“How much time do you have left?” he asked.
“They said it’s a matter of days,” he said. “The MRI I had on Sunday showed the cancer is spreading and growing pretty fast. The tumors are like Starbucks—there’s one on every corner now.”
“If you were so sick, why did you come on our road trip?” Topher asked. “Why would you spend your last days with total strangers? Surely there are much better things a dying man could do with his time.”
The actor smiled—he was hoping Topher would ask.
“There’s a black binder in my backpack,” Cash said. “Open it.”
Topher found the backpack on another chair by his bedside. He zipped it open and pulled out the binder. It was filled with dozens of letters addressed to Cash; some were handwritten and some had been printed off the Internet. Topher didn’t understand their significance until he recognized the handwriting and saw they were all written by the same person.
“Holy shit,” Topher said. “These are all mine.… You’ve saved every letter I ever wrote to you.…”
“I promise it’s not as creepy as it seems,” Cash said. “Nine years ago when the show started, you were the first person that sent me a letter addressed to my name and not Dr. Bumfuzzle. You didn’t act like the show was real, you didn’t pretend I was anything but an actor doing a job, and you never asked me for any favors. You just thanked me for the work I did and treated me like a person—and I didn’t get that very often. You were only eight when you wrote that first letter and I was only twelve when I read it, but your letter meant the world to me. I had the companies running my fan mail and website keep an eye out for anything else you might send. It was nice knowing there was someone out there who knew I was just a kid and not a quantum physics expert.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Topher said. “There are letters in here that I don’t even remember writing.”
“Oh gosh, I was like your therapist.” Cash laughed. “You wrote to me after the very first episode of Wiz Kids aired and told me how amazing you thought it was. You wrote to me the day you met Joey, Sam, and Mo and said how excited you were to make such cool friends. You wrote to me when your dad took his first teaching job in another state and told me how sad it made you. You wrote to me when your brother was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and told me how much it scared you. You wrote to me on your first day of high school and said how nerve-racking it was. You wrote to me senior year about how worried you were that you wouldn’t be your class valedictorian. Your letters were always so descriptive I felt like I was right there with you! They were the only thing that made me feel like I was a normal kid.”