David CookSix years ago, Turner Fordham met Jordan Dodd in geometry class at Northwest Whitfield High School. She was a quiet, dot-every-i, honor roll student; he, the never-met-a-stranger jokester who always forgot his pencil.
So each day, he'd turn around and ask Turner if he could borrow one of hers. (After a while, Jordan may have started forgetting his pencil on purpose.)
Soon enough, he asked her something else.
"To the sweetheart dance," Jordan said. "I wasn't sure she knew I existed other than I had about 15 of her pencils."
Turner said yes.
A thousand times, yes.
"It made a huge difference," Turner said. "I had lost a lot of my self-confidence."
A few years earlier, back in middle school, Turner had noticed some bruising on her left shin. Probably just a softball injury, she thought.
Then, more bruising on her right. The doctors did blood work, ran some tests. On a September day in 2005, the results came back.
"Acute lymphoblastic leukemia," Turner said.
It erased so much of her: her red hair fell out, her softball-basketball-golf athleticism withered, all that self-confidence shrank. When she should have been laughing through middle school, Turner was at Erlanger's Children's Hospital oncology clinic, receiving chemo, swallowing down nausea, cringing through headaches. Turner, who is tough in ways many of us will never know, prayed like she never had before.
"It is like a constant flu you can't seem to get rid of," she said.
(All across America, kids know this very feeling. September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, as if we should ever be allowed to forget.)
Soon, Turner's chemo stopped. She got better. And high school geometry class began.
And like a pencil, Jordan began to help Turner draw back the missing parts of herself.
"Hair or no hair, muscle or no muscle, I think you're beautiful," he'd tell her.
Through high school, the two dated, growing close and closer. Jordan, who had early on decided that Turner hung the moon, even stopped cheering for the Vols.
"We converted him," said Turner, whose parents - Louis and Donna - are Georgia alumni.
Turner and Jordan graduated in 2011, and both enrolled in the University of Georgia. It had been four-and-a-half years since they had found any cancer cells in her blood; doctors say that if you can make it for five years, the cancer's probably not coming back.
Days before Thanksgiving 2011, Turner went into the oncology clinic for routine bloodwork.
The eraser was back.
"A relapse," she said.
She had to start chemo immediately, which meant just months into her freshman year, Turner had to leave college and move back home to Dalton.
Guess who also dropped out of college and moved back, too?
"I didn't have a second thought," Jordan said. "Being there to support her when she needed it was at the top of my list. Nothing else mattered."
He'd bring dinner into the oncology clinic, if she wasn't too nauseated. They'd watch movies, if she wasn't too sick.
"You don't have to be strong with me," he'd tell her. "If you want to cry, just let it out."
In the fall of 2012, Turner finished treatments. They both headed back to UGA. Four years after asking that first question - "Could I borrow a pencil?" - Jordan started thinking about ways to ask another one.
Fast-forward to August, just last month.
Turner is at Erlanger for routine blood work. Jordan asks if he can come, too.
Turner has just finished her IV. Jordan walks in and pulls the hospital curtain shut. (That was the cue: all the doctors and nurses and his mom and her parents tiptoe in on the other side of the curtain, waiting.)
"I made you something," Jordan tells Turner.
He shows her a book. On the first page, he writes: Turner, it's time for your journey to end.
He asks her to close her eyes.
Jordan gets down on one knee. Asks Turner to open her eyes, and read the words he's written on the next page of the book: Our Journey, a true story of true love.
"Turner I would love nothing more than to start our journey together," he says. "Will you marry me?"
She says yes.
Ten thousand times, yes.
"I started crying," Turner said.
And from behind the curtain, a roar of cheers: parents, doctors, nurses. Some people propose by candlelight or moonlight. Jordan chose the oncology clinic.
"That whole journey battling leukemia is coming to an end," said Turner, "and we're ready to start our journey together through marriage."
They're back at college now, set to graduate in the spring with degrees in business. The wedding's in June.
"Define love? There is nothing in this world I would not do for her," Jordan said. "That's it, in a nutshell. I'm fulfilled if I can make her half as happy as she's made me."
"I trust him with my life," Turner said. "He's not only my fiancé, he's also my best friend."
In sickness, and in health.
Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter at DavidCookTFP.