First Love
Summary: Wilson tells a story about why he became an Oncologist to an audience of sick kids.
Rating: PG
Warning: Bring the tissue box...you might need it.
A/N: This was inspired by a general plot bunny of Wilson being at a cancer camp for sick kids, and the idea for the story just popped into my head.
Disclaimer: Do I sound like David Shore? Because if I do, it might mean that I have a brain problem!
Dr. James Wilson, Oncologist at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, loved Summertime best, because Summer meant Camp…particularly, “Cancer Camp”, as the kids who had cancer liked to call it.
All the kids from the hospital were there, ready to have a good time, and so was he; after such a stressful year Wilson was ready to kick back and relax and simply enjoy himself. This was the time when he could actually bond with the kids and see them as children instead of patients, and equally they could see him as a human being instead of “just the doctor who checked in on them from time to time about important tests and stuff”.
At camp, he was just a regular guy whose high point in his life was making sick kids feel happy.
One particular activity he loved during camp was telling stories around the campfire. The kids all agreed that he was the best, and so he put an extra effort in collecting what stories he was going to tell. This year, he had a special story in mind---one that involved himself at camp when he was young.
Once the fire was crackling away and lighting every child’s face aglow, Wilson got everyone’s attention by raising his hands in the air and saying, “Let’s begin” and an instant hush settled over the crowd.
The first time he was ever away from home for longer than two hours, he was seven years old. It was his first time away at a sleep-away camp and young James Wilson was terrified. He spent the first day not talking to anyone because he didn’t know any of the kids or adults there. The cabins smelled funny and his sleeping bag was hot and itchy. He hated the odor of bug spray and wasn’t at all used to being in the woods. Basically, James was miserable.
The counselors tried to pull him out of his shell and get him involved with the others in their activities. There were arts and crafts, boating, and swimming, but James didn’t know how to swim and he couldn’t draw, so during swimming and arts and crafts he watched his bunkmates instead. He was afraid to go out on the boats, so that wasn’t an option. There were walks in the woods, but he got caught in a spider web and freaked out so one of the counselors had to take him back to base camp, and he could hear the other boys laughing like hyenas in the distance the whole way back to the lodge.
He hated it there. There was nothing to do that he was good at, so he did nothing. He wore glasses back then and the other campers called him “four eyes”, and when he tried to join in when they played games, they ignored him. He felt like a loser and wanted to go home but nobody let him, so he moped around and thought about home instead of pathetically playing by himself.
One night they had a campfire just like the one they sat at now, and a counselor was getting ready to tell stories. He happened to sit next to a bunk of girls who were all his age, because none of the other boys wanted to sit with him. While the boys all laughed, one girl kept sneaking glances his way, and smiling at him, and it made him blush and feel strange all over.
She told him her name was Sue Anne, and she was beautiful---the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She was seven just like him. She had gorgeous dimples and a thousand freckles. Her hair was as golden as the most breathtaking of sunsets and when she looked at him he felt feint.
He told her his name was James, and when she said his name, it sounded like the most beautiful name in the whole wide world, and he loved her instantly. It seemed he hadn’t known what love was until then, but now that he did, he didn’t want to ever let go.
They took walks along the water’s edge and she held his hand and said she missed home, but he made it better. He kissed her behind her ear when she said that. They sat together when there was nothing else to do, and sometimes talked, and other times said nothing because nothing needed to be said.
She was the first girl who had ever spoken to him, and he was the first boy who she had ever spoken to.
When the time came to leave, he didn’t want to go home, and an ache filled his body that he’d never felt before. The ache was love. He knew what it was now, and while a part of him hated the feeling, a part of him didn’t want to go on without her.
They hugged each other when her parents came. She said she’d keep his address close and would write, and he promised the same.
She did write, and so did he, but eventually the letters stopped coming.
He discovered from one letter from her mother that she had become sick with a disease called Leukemia, and that if he wanted to come and visit her in the hospital, he could.
Visiting her was scary, but it was also nice to see her, even though they had warned him that she had lost all her hair. She looked so small and tiny in the bed, and when he held her hand, her hand barely grasped his.
“I love you,” he said, feeling brave, because he was there.
“I love you too,” she whispered, and then her mother told him she needed some rest, and that he had to leave.
“Will she be okay?” he asked her mother, lip quivering slightly as he said it, and a part of him didn’t know why he was feeling so scared, even though he knew the answer.
“We’re doing all we can for her,” her mother said gently, and he could tell that she was, and it made him happy to know that they were.
He didn’t visit her that year because her mother said she wasn’t seeing anyone, but if she was feeling better, that he could.
It seemed she wasn’t feeling better, because nobody called to tell him he could go, and suddenly the Summer was there, and he wondered if Sue Anne was going to be at camp and whether or not she had forgotten about him.
He went to camp, hoping to find her, and tell her that he still loved her dearly.
But she wasn’t at the opening ceremony that welcomed all the kids to camp, and she wasn’t by the lake where they used to sit.
When he asked about why Sue Anne wasn’t at camp, one of the counselors sat him down and very gently explained to him that Sue Anne had unexpectedly taken a turn for the worst and had died without warning.
He was shocked and heartbroken, and ran away crying. He ran down a trail not even knowing where he was headed. He ran until he couldn’t run anymore and suddenly he wasn’t running but flying, as a root had caught his foot off guard. He was down in the mud and the dirt and he heard someone coming but he didn’t want to be found.
The counselor picked him up from the ground and before he knew what was happening he was sobbing into the counselor’s chest, sobbing like a girl, and not caring who heard.
“It was just her time, son,” the counselor said. “It was just her time.”
He didn’t understand what that meant until later. He wished that it was his time too.
That summer at camp was one of the longest summers that he’d ever had. He moped around and thought of home. He thought about Sue Anne and how she’d made him smile even when he was homesick and wanted to go, and how she had made him change his mind and want to stay. He wondered why she’d had to die and hated that she had gone from him so soon.
When he got older, he learned that there were doctors who helped kids like Sue Anne, and he decided that’s what he wanted to do: be a doctor who helped kids who were sick. So that’s what he did. He went to med school and became an Oncologist. The whole time he knew he would be paying homage to Sue Anne and thanking her for how much she’d meant to him, and this way, she would never be forgotten.
When Wilson realized he’d come to the end of the story, he’d almost forgotten where he was, but then one of the other counselors put a hand on his shoulder, shaking him out of his momentary reverie. He didn’t realize he’d been crying until he saw the faces about him and they were blurred to the point of non-recognition. When his vision cleared, he noticed that some of the older kids were crying too, but some of the younger ones were sitting silently and staring at him, looking stunned and bewildered, while others were simply sitting in awe.
One of the kids did something then that he would never forget. She was a ten-year-old girl named Sandra and she had been diagnosed that same year with leukemia. Leukemia, which was the same dreadful disease that had taken Sue Anne, and when he was done talking, she came right over to him and put her arms around his shoulders, hugging him tight, and said nothing because nothing needed to be said.
He smiled through his tears when she did that, because it reminded him so much of Sue Anne, and he didn’t hesitate to hug her back.
He knew that Sue Anne’s legacy would continue to remind him that he was doing a good thing in being here at this camp, and that he was helping so many through his chosen profession.
He could tell from the kid’s faces that surrounded him that this would be one lesson they would never forget.