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Kali sank to the floor against her apartment door. She put a hand to her mouth and stifled a moan. Theo stood in front of her, terror in his eyes.
“It's okay, Sweetie. Mommy's okay.” She cradled him against her. “I've got a headache, that's all.” She squeezed him and brushed the hair out of his face to kiss his forehead. “Go back to your game.” She lifted him off of her and he stood, uncertain. “It's okay. Really. Go.” He shuffled away, eyes still on her. “Baby, go. Mommy needs some alone time.”
She kept her smile on until Theo was out of sight then let it collapse, both palms to her forehead.
“Meningioma.” The neuro-ophthalmologist had explained, not that Kali needed an explanation. She'd seen patients live and die with it. She knew the word. What it meant. What it could mean.
It was the other words that left her reeling. The possibilities. The specifics of her case.
A brain tumour could be nothing. An inconvenience, or not even. But those other words. Inoperable. Blindness. Death. Not likely, but possibly, death. Those words left her gasping. Not that Dr. Manning had brought up death, nor Dr. Pickles either. Kali had brought up the word to each of them, and neither had said it was an impossibility. Unlikely, highly unlikely, but ...
Kali didn't know what to fear more: blindness or death. No. She knew. Death. Obviously, death was worse. Of course it was worse. But blindness, or legally blind, even? She was twenty-four. She had an almost four-year-old and no one else, except an old damaged man who refused to come inside, refused to live even the semblance of a normal life.
How would she support herself? How would she support Theo? Would Marvin step out of his self-inflicted prison to take care of them? Was that even possible?
Kali’s head fell. She was getting ahead of herself, seeing a future that didn't have to exist.
“Your condition is rare,” Dr. Manning smoothed back some stray hairs, “very rare.” But sometimes, she said, as if reciting from a textbook, tumours have intense periods of growth. Some suggest these periods can be triggered by stress, hormonal imbalances, sickness, but really the cause is something we can't pinpoint. The theory, though, is that after the triggers are gone, the growth can settle, slow.
If Kali was lucky, that's what the recent weeks of sudden symptoms had been: intense growth triggered by stress. She'd lived with rats. She'd lost her apartment once, then twice. She'd moved in with a stranger. She'd faced the fear of being kicked out any day.
And now that the stress had faded?
Only it hadn't faded. How was she supposed to relax with this diagnosis looming over her? How was she supposed to relax when she knew if she didn't the tumour might not settle? Not that the doctor had said that ... it was Kali’s own thoughts, own paranoia; she’d seen it in patients countless times, taking a suggestion, a thought, and turning it into the end of the world.
What Dr. Manning said was that though Kali’s recent symptoms over such a short period of time may suggest fast growth, they couldn’t know the rate of growth without more tests, and that growth could slow. That, possibly, some of the symptoms she’d experienced could fade. It could be months, even years, before a strong growth phase happened again. She could be fine—for now.
But a year from now, two, twenty, the tumour could rear its debilitating head again, even with treatment.
Always there. Always waiting.
Her sight seemed fine at the moment—looking straight ahead at least. But if she closed her right eye? Anyway, she didn't have to close it. So it was fine—besides the fact that the peripheral vision in her left eye was disappearing, besides her pounding head and teary eyes. This pounding, she hoped, was from the tears, not the tumour. The tumour made her head feel full of pressure, her brain too big for her skull, made her head ache. It wasn't this pounding pain. Or was it? A new development, perhaps?
This would be her life—trying to determine what pains were natural and what meant life as she knew it was slowly ebbing away from her. Already, her life would never be the same. Dr. Manning never said the tumour wouldn't grow. She just said it could take years before the growth became a major problem. And already, a significant amount of her vision was lost.
Kali could feel herself in the clinic room again, a woman she'd worked with as a colleague sitting across from her. But there were no jokes today. No smiles or words of support or encouragement from either side about a job well done.
Kali had rubbed her hands, squeezed, rubbed.
“We'll keep a strong eye on this, Kali.” Dr. Manning looked uncomfortable. Uncertain. She looked like she'd rather be anywhere else. “Monitor you every week for the next several months. Hopefully, the growth ceases or slows. We have no reason to think it won't.”
And no reason to think it will.
“In the meantime, we’ll certainly look into treatment. It's getting to the tumour that will be a problem.” Dr. Pickles had hinted at this, but Dr. Manning went into detail, about the way the tumour had attached itself to just the right spot ... or wrong, between Kali’s optic chiasm and optic nerve, affecting both her field of vision in one eye and peripheral vision in the other. How rare this all was, how usually this type of meningioma presented itself either on the optic chiasm or the nerve, not both. “Junctional Scotoma,” she said. And, as a result, Kali’s vision, though not gone, was going.
“So rare.”
“I get it,” Kali snapped.
Dr. Manning cleared her throat, smoothed the now non-existent stray hair. Honestly, she said, Kali was lucky her symptoms weren't worse. But she should watch for more. Lack of balance. Increased nausea. The list went on.
And yet the risk of surgery was higher than the risk of letting the invader grow. Surgery wasn’t an option, but there was treatment. She’d send Kali to a radiation oncologist to discuss that. There was hope.
And then the questions started, more intense than those of Dr. Pickles. Dr. Manning tensed when Kali told her about the medication the other day, almost giving a patient the wrong pill. But Kali couldn't keep it secret. Her job was not worth someone's life. And if she'd given that sweet old lady the wrong med at the wrong time ... well, the woman probably wouldn't have died. But another mistake, with another patient; It could be deadly.
“That's the only time something like that happened?”
Kali nodded.
“You must keep track of that.”
Another nod. Did Kali look like Theo, nodding like that but saying nothing? Did her eyes widen the way his always did? Is this what it was to have so much you wanted to say, needed to say, yet the words wouldn't come?
“At this point I don't think there's a need to take away your license—”
Kali tensed.
“Or even to tell your employer. After the next couple of scans, that may change.” Dr. Manning looked to her notes, more, Kali was sure, to avoid looking at her. “It's possible, if the growth progresses faster than I anticipate, you may wake one morning with vision loss that’s substantial. That doesn't return.” She looked to her notes once more. “Which is why we’re going to get you an MRI as soon as possible, an appointment with a radiation oncologist, and I’ll book another appointment to see if there is any change in your vision in a week or two.”
Dr. Manning took a breath, her lips squeezed tight. “Your visual field is already decreasing in your right eye, and well, you know about the left. The coming and going you mentioned, the blurriness, that's likely unrelated. Strain. Tiredness.” She looked up from the notes. “Yet ...” She shook her head. “I don't think it's necessary to start preparing for more intense vision loss; you have enough on your mind—and hopefully treatment will halt or even reverse what you’ve already lost, to some degree—but know that day may come. The day to prepare.” She pushed out a smile. “Some people find it helpful, comforting, to start taking some steps, or to at least think about them. Making sure your home is as safe and accessible as possible. Even closing your eyes sometimes and trying to navigate that way. Make a game out of—”
Kali's expression must have stopped her. Dr. Manning formed a fist over her mouth and coughed. “This isn't my area of speciality, but the CNIB has fabulous services. Do you have someone at home to help if need be?”
Kali lied. And shortly after she left Dr. Manning’s office.
That was just hours ago. Less than two hours. It seemed like a dream.
Kali squeezed her knees to her chest and pressed her back into the door, needing the firmness of it, needing something in her world to be solid. This could be nothing. All of it. An inconvenience. An annoyance. Treatment. Regular checks for a while and then, if all was good, maybe once a year. Just an inconvenience ... until it stopped being an inconvenience, because unless something else killed her, there was a chance that one day her tumour would grow. She closed her right eye again. It wasn’t nothing. Not at all. She had already lost a significant amount of vision, and she may never get it back.
That future loomed before her: Dark, terrifying. And if it came sooner than later she'd never see her son as a young man, as a father, never look into his eyes the moment after he'd looked into the eyes of his own child.
She was getting ahead of herself. Again.
Kali pressed her head against the door, almost tempted to open it, to run down the hall after Lincoln, and tell him what? She was terrified? She needed him? Ridiculous. He'd laugh. He'd run in the other direction.
She didn't need him anyway.
She'd figure it out. Always had. Always would.
Not that she should have to, not on her own at least. For the millionth time, she cursed Derek. Cursed his hero complex. Cursed him for jumping into that ocean. For thinking strangers meant more or as much as family. For everything that came afterward.
Protect your own. That was the way to live. He'd made her fall in love with him, convinced her to marry him, put his child inside of her, and then abandoned them. He'd made his choice. He hadn't protected his own. And now she was alone.