For 94 Days I Talked to Her Every Night on a Fire Lookout Radio. I Didn’t Know What She Looked Like. On the Last Day of the Season, She Said She Was Coming Up the Mountain

She made it to the bottom of the tower at 11:15.

Fifty-seven stairs up to the cabin.

She looked up at them. Then at me, standing at the top.

“You didn’t tell me there were stairs,” she said. Same voice. Same laugh, a little out of breath.

“Lookouts usually have stairs.”

“Shut up and come carry my pack.”

I went down and carried her pack. Then I walked up behind her, one step below, all fifty-seven stairs, the way you walk behind somebody you’d catch if they fell.

At the top, she sat in my only chair and pulled off the bandana.

She was fifty-two. Gray eyes. Strong face. A small scar under her collarbone where the port had been. Her hair was just starting to grow back, soft and silver, like the fur on a new lamb.

“Breast cancer,” she said. “Diagnosed eighteen months ago. Double mastectomy, chemo, radiation. My oncologist says I’m in remission. My ex-husband said he couldn’t handle it and left during round three. My health insurance said I’d reached my plan’s annual limit for something called ‘non-essential reconstructive services.'”

“So you went up a mountain.”

“So I went up a mountain,” she said. “Like somebody else I know.”

I sat down on the floor across from her. The cabin was so small our knees almost touched.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because for ninety-four nights, you were the one person in the world who didn’t know,” she said. “You didn’t talk to me like a patient. You didn’t talk to me like I was brave. You talked to me like I was funny.”

“You *are* funny.”

“See?” she said, and her eyes filled. “That.”

Outside, the wind moved over the mountains, and the whole tower creaked like an old ship.

“I almost didn’t come,” she said. “I was afraid you’d look at me and see the cancer.”

“What do you think I see?”

She looked at me for a long time.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Tell me.”