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“Chasing Life” recap (1.13): Today or to marrow

Previously on Chasing Life, April got a new boss and he was a jerkface, Secret Sister Natalie showed up and she was a jerkface, Brenna tried to sneak into Greer’s house to see her but her parents were jerkfaces. Also Leo woke up from his coma.

But don’t worry, he soon joined the rank of jerkfaces. April goes to visit him in the hospital, and he is grumping at everyone who dares try to speak to him. He is confused as to why he had this surgery; last he remembers, he was perfectly fine living out the tumor on his own terms. April decides not to remind him exactly why he decided to get the surgery and goes to Beth’s to complain about how her cancer friend woke up on the wrong side of the coma bed.

Beth says their conversations have gotten rather strange, but even stranger still is her crazy roommate Morgan, who lets herself be bossed around by her stuck-up hipsterdouche boyfriend and sets the feminism movement back about a few decades. April tries to help by saying at least she’s not single and desperate, but Beth says she’d almost prefer that to the pushover who blares dubstep to cover the noise of their frequent bedrocking.

At work, April finds out that her latest piece got re-assigned to Danny, who is actually weirdly non-gloaty about it. April’s afraid she’s getting demoted, so she cons her way into Bossman’s office and asks him if he’s treating her differently because she has cancer. He tells her that he’s treating her differently because she botched the last assignment and that she’ll need to build up trust if she wants to get the same level pieces she got before chemo fried her brain.

Natalie and Brenna run into each other in the waiting room of the Cancer Center while their moms park their cars. They try to make small talk, Natalie asking if she’s there for moral support, and Brenna saying more like her mother has decided to be a human ankle bracelet and won’t let her out of her sight until school starts again. Natalie asks about Brenna’s lesbian lover and is surprised to find out that she’s not currently at lover status.

They make it clear to one another that there’s plenty they don’t know about one another, and that day drinking in Florida one time was not enough of a glimpse into either of their lives. Olivia walks in and Brenna meets her father’s mistress for the first time. Soon after, Sara whirls in complaining about some bitch who stole her spot and Natalie laughs because it was definitely her mom. Sara tries to brush it off and they go in to meet with Dr. Hamburg: Best Doctor Ever.

Dr. Hamburg says that Natalie is a half-match, which is good news because it means she’s better suited to donate because she’s younger and has never had kids, but bad news because it’s not just a blood draw, but a full bone drill situation. Natalie looks queasy at the thought of it but April promises that it’s not as scary or painful as it sounds and Brenna says it will be worth it because it’s saving April’s life.

Back home, George gets flirty with Sara while she gives him the lowdown and Emma catches them again, saying it’s not like she’s zipping around here all fast and quiet-like, so if she keeps catching them, how long before the girls stumble in on this secret? Emma doesn’t feel comfortable with the idea that one of the girls could be traumatized by this all sudden-like. Before they can get into it, though, Olivia calls Sara and asks to meet up; Sara is afraid this means Natalie is backing out of the bone marrow donation.

April goes to the hospital to visit Leo in physical therapy, and confesses that the reason he got the surgery is because, after convincing her she had to fight for her life, he decided to do the same. She even has the voicemail to prove it. Grumpy Leo doesn’t like the sound of this and asks her to leave while he thinks about this. I hope his physical therapist also helps him exercise his smile muscles.Olivia comes over and tells Sara and George that Natalie is scared. Sara tells Olivia just to force her to do it, but Natalie is too old to be ordered around by her mother. (According to the Chasing Life Wiki, she’s 22.) Their conversation gets tense and Olivia tells Sara to just let her have it, to say everything she’s wanted to say to her husband’s mistress since the moment they met, but Sara is a classy lady and simply will not. George tries to keep things from blowing up by suggesting they have a big family dinner, secret side family and all, and they can discuss it in more detail then.

Back at the paper, Danny gets props from the Bossman and April demands to be treated with some respect and given a decent assignment. Bossman says fine, write a cancer piece like the one she wrote before she went in for chemo. He wants her to make his wife cry, because they need to appeal to the “chick” demographic.

Natalie goes to visit Brenna at Kieran’s tattoo parlor where she works and Kieran thinks Brenna bounced back from Greer awful fast. Brenna explains that it’s her half-sister so shut up. Natalie tries to explain why she’s backing out, saying that Brenna wouldn’t drill holes in her back for her, but gives Brenna her phone number and invites her to a tailgating party, she wants to hang out while she’s in town. After Natalie leaves, Brenna asks Kieran to cover her shift; she wants to try to change her secret sister’s mind.

After April goes to visit Leo and finds out she was taken off the visitor’s list, she goes to talk to Beth again, making their conversation sound even weirder when she asks if she was projecting feelings onto a guy in a coma. Their conversation is interrupted by Psycho Morgan and more dubstepping, and April asks Beth why she doesn’t stay at her boyfriend’s place more often. Beth says she was doing it to avoid Dom, for her sake, but April says don’t bother. When Beth does go to Graham’s, she sees Dom being a playboy and tells him that he’s not the nice guy April made him out to be, and that’s too bad.

When April gets back to work, Bossman calls her into his office and asks why he gave her a piece on health insurance, not on her struggles as a 20-something with cancer. April says she’s a journalist at a paper not a teenager with a diary, but Bossman isn’t hearing it. Either make the readers cry or he’ll make her cry. (Okay he wasn’t quite that threatening, but he was still a douchecanoe.

Brenna meets up with Natalie at the frat tailgating party, and Natalie is pleasantly surprised to see her. When she hands Brenna a drink, Brenna looks at it suspiciously and Natalie laughs. She swears of all the bitchy things she’s done in her life, she’s never drugged anyone. And so, the Case of The Florida Incident is now re-opened.

April crashes Leo’s physical therapy session again, so Leo has to lay it out for her in no uncertain terms: He doesn’t want to be her friend anymore. She goes home and vents to George about it, and George says sometimes relationships just have obstacles. Sometimes it’s the absence of a tumor, sometimes it’s uppity parents with unrealistic expectations of their daughter, sometimes it’s the ghost of a husband/brother. And you either have to get past them, or decide it’s not worth the effort.

At the frat party, a boy full-body flirts with Brenna in the way drunk college boys do, and Brenna tries to get him to back off, and when that doesn’t work, Natalie steps in. She says she’s her sister and dumps a beer on his head, proving she has true Big Sister potential in her.

They start to bond, and Brenna admits to being really bummed about the Greer thing. Natalie opens up about her high school sweetheart, about how she was so in love, and got her heart broken into a billion pieces. But she salvaged what she could and soldiered on; and it worked out, because now he’s in prison. Natalie thinks there are multiple great loves for everyone, and tells Brenna that sure the Greer thing sucked, but she should just keep swimming. And while part of me wants to give her props for giving sisterly advice, the other part is shouting NO, FIGHT FOR GREER DAMMIT.

Natalie realizes that they’re late for family dinner and Brenna panics, saying she’s way to drunk to go hang out with her mom right now. Natalie gives her some gum and tells her to suck it up, but a little minty freshness doesn’t help with the unfocused eyes and mild swaying.

Natalie, ever the con artist, casually says they ran into each other on the way here, and they would have gotten away with it if Brenna wasn’t looking anywhere but at her mother. Sara yells at Natalie, but Natalie doesn’t know what the big deal is; they drank responsibly and looked out for each other and it’s not like they drove anywhere. Sara asks what Brenna, her UNDERAGE daughter was thinking, and Brenna says she just wanted to change Natalie’s mind. Sara lashes out at Olivia, who lashes back, saying her husband came to her because he felt trapped in his marriage, so Sara kicks everyone out. On the way out, Natalie tells Brenna she’s hurt that she was only hanging out with her for her bone marrow.

George finds Sara moping around in the backyard, and decides that now’s a good time to talk about their relationship. He had talked to Emma and realized that it’s probably not a good sign that Sara wants to keep the relationship a secret, and plus there’s that whole dead husband/brother thing, so maybe this relationship doesn’t have the best timing in the world. He tells Sara that he thinks it’s too soon and that maybe they should dial their relationship back down. Because apparently George likes setting fires at funerals.

Inside, April offers to help Brenna with the dishes, but Brenna says she needs the mom cred. April thanks her for trying to get Natalie to change her mind, and Brenna says it’s the least she can do since she can’t give her own bone marrow. April wraps her arms around her little sister and tells her to let go of that guilt, it’s not her fault, and she’s doing so much to be there for her in other ways.

Brenna confesses that she actually kind of liked hanging out with Natalie today, and that maybe the reason she was such a bitch before was because she felt used. April thinks back to how she felt when Bossman asked her to write about her suffering suddenly understands her secret sister a little bit more.

April goes to see Natalie and says she finally understands why she reacted the way she did. She hopes that, bone marrow or not, they can move past it and maybe someday be more like real family. Natalie says that this is ABC Family, not the Disney channel, a sappy speech isn’t going to make her smile and hug April and shove a needle in her back right then and there, but that’s not why April came, so she leaves it at that.

Inspired, April goes back to the Bossman and hands in her new piece. He says it’s not what he asked for; it might make his wife cry, but it’s not a sympathy piece, not a sob story. It’s not about the things she lost because of cancer, it’s about the things she gained. A Silver Lining story.

April once again uses her conning skills (that I imagine she learned while studying to be a journalist) and goes in to see Leo. She gives him a speech about how they were cancer friends and he never gave up on her so she refuses to give up on him. Losing him to the tumor would have been out of her hands, but she refuses to lose him to his ego. Leo cracks a half-smile and jokes that April just hates not being on lists. They tease each other like they used to and all is right in the world.

And on an even brighter note, Natalie went through with the testing and is in perfect condition for bone marrow donation, and better yet, is ready and willing to do it. Olivia is going back to Florida, but Natalie is going to stick around.

What did you think of “Guess Who’s Coming To Donate”?

Here are some of our favorite #ChasingLesbians tweets from this week:

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

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