Page 39 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper

Jocelyn

Still, today had been a particularly hard shift.

Brandon, a five-year-old boy with leukemia, was looking worse and worse, the sharp juts of his bones visible now beneath his skin.

His parents looked barely any better; the dark circles below his father’s eyes and the gaunt hollows of his mother’s cheeks almost broke Jocelyn as she led them into the treatment room. Jocelyn had a five-year-old son, too.

As she took the key from the lock, something scuttled across the sidewalk and blew into her legs.

It was a yellow paper rose, slightly dirty where it had careened against the ground but otherwise in good shape.

Jocelyn had seen people with them here and there, not enough to know where they came from, but enough that she knew there was always a message inside.

She scooped the origami up off the sidewalk. It was made with lemon-yellow paper with smiling dinosaurs on it. Jocelyn immediately thought of Brandon, and of her own son, Alex, who both loved dinosaurs.

The paper rose unfolded easily, the design chosen exactly for that purpose.

Inside, the note read:

Today has not yet been written. And you can choose how to tell that story.

Beneath the quote was a drawing of a miniature, heart-shaped rosebud.

Tears coursed down Jocelyn’s face before she even knew she was crying. But it wasn’t despair. It was because of the beauty of this simple truth.

Every day in her job, she faced bleakness.

But every day, she also got to see extraordinary love.

Sometimes it was parents sacrificing everything for their kids, like Brandon.

Other times, it was friends there to support each other.

And sometimes, it was the unexpected—like two years ago, when a Goldman Sachs investment banker accompanied his secretary to every appointment for her leukemia.

She hadn’t had anyone else, and the man—who was nothing like the arrogant finance bros so common in Manhattan—had brought her in a nice black town car each time, as if they were going to a fancy event and not chemo.

He’d been a taciturn one, but whenever his secretary looked at him, his moss-green eyes had softened. He had truly cared.

Jocelyn had stopped seeing them when the secretary went into remission, and she hoped all was well with both of them.

Now, as she looked at the paper rose, she realized how the flowers could also help her patients, just like the families and friends—and even bosses—who lent their strength during treatment sessions.

If Jocelyn could find the flowers’ source—if she could bring a handful of them every day to offer from her desk at reception—it could make a difference.

Every small bit of love did.