They don't warn you about the hair hat. The weird, liminal phase when most of your hair is technically no longer attached—just tangled and draped across your scalp like a borrowed wig. Chemo doesn’t take it all at once; it negotiates, collecting in clumps that appear on your pillow like tiny, disturbing snowdrifts.
After my second round of Doxorubicin, what remained was more debris than hair—like wearing a crown of wilted flowers. Still technically there, still technically mine - but only in the way a tree keeps its dead leaves. The bald patches were multiplying faster than excuses at a family reunion and I was one stiff breeze away from the world's most depressing big reveal.
It was time.
From 4,500 miles away in Virginia, Mary answered my FaceTime call on the first ring, like she'd been sitting there waiting for this moment, phone in hand, for days.
"Is it time?" My little sister asked, her face filling my screen with a seriousness typically reserved for bomb defusal experts.
"Yes," I confirmed, the word feeling heavier than it should for having just one syllable.
I propped my phone against the bathroom mirror, the unflattering fluorescents highlighting every patchy section of my head like some sort of medical crime scene. Before hitting the camera-flip button, I pressed play on my Bluetooth speaker and turned up the volume so both of us could hear the song I'd specifically chosen as the soundtrack to the occasion. As the synthesizer played the opening riff to Bette Davis Eyes, Mary's expression shifted from solemn to amused.
“Really?” She laughed. Her voice traveled across an entire continent and ocean to reach me in Hawaii, yet somehow arrived intact, carrying that particular blend of wry wisdom and unconditional love.
"It was between this and Devil's Haircut, but that felt a bit too—"
"On-the-nose?" Mary cut in.
"Exactly."
Mary's laughter blended with the buzzing of the clippers as I made the first swipe down the center of my head. There's something both terrifying and liberating about that first stroke—like jumping off a cliff into water you're pretty sure is deep enough.
"You missed a spot," Mary helpfully pointed out after my third pass. "Left side. Nope, other left."
Sisters remain sisters even when one is going through nuclear-grade poisoning and the other is directing a DIY haircut through a phone screen. The dynamic never changes; it just adapts to new, increasingly bizarre circumstances. I will never laugh with anyone the way I laugh with my little sister, even in places laughter shouldn’t exist. There's a silliness we bring out in each other that makes anything—even this—seem endurable.
As the last strands fell to the bathroom floor, I stared at my reflection—a stranger with my eyes looking back at me. I ran my palm over the smooth surface, surprised by the softness.
As I looked back at Mary, I was steadied by the absence of a smile on her face. Mary and I don’t wear wonder that way. When we feel something deeply, our expressions turn solemn, almost affronted, as if reverence and revulsion are twins.
“You look like a badass,” she said, her voice catching slightly. Not brave. Not beautiful. Any other word would have come wrapped in sympathy. Badass came with respect. And somehow, even now she makes me feel it. Not just seen, but held - loved in the most ferocious way.
“Like a warrior."
"I look like a thumb," I replied, and before she could argue, I added, "a sexy, sexy warrior thumb."
"Yes," Mary nodded. "In a thumb war."
What struck me wasn't the baldness itself, but how Mary's presence made it bearable—even beautiful in its way. How she could be simultaneously in Virginia and in my Hawaiian bathroom, holding my hand without touching it. How distance becomes meaningless when someone loves you enough to watch you shave your head while Kim Carnes sings about mysterious eyes.
As I swept up the fallout of my impromptu barbering, Mary stayed on the line, neither of us feeling the need to fill the silence. Some moments don't need words—just the absolute certainty that when you need them, sisters answer on the first ring.
