Friday, March 28, 2014
“That’s bush league. I was promised dinner.” I frowned at Delores as she took my blood pressure.
“Dinner was hours ago, hun. We can get you a light snack or something, but nothing heavy. After being under anesthesia, you’d risk an upset stomach.”
I touched the bandage around my head, cringing at the twinge of pain. I was being rude, particularly since Delores had been so kind to me. But when someone’s fingers have been on the wrong side of your skull, you tend to feel a little bitchy.
Kyle rose from his chair beside my bed. “Babe, how about I run out and get you something?”
“If I’m craving pickles, will you judge me?”
His brow furrowed. “You want pickles?”
“Yes. Preferably fried.” I’d never had them before, but they sounded perfect. Don’t ask me why—I haven’t a clue.
Delores raised an eyebrow. “Not fried. Your stomach will have lots to say about anything fried. Regular pickles might be fine. Weird, but fine.”
Kyle nodded, tossed me a bewildered grin, and headed out the door.
I watched him go, my head angled to admire his perfect…stature. Okay, I was ogling his ass, but it’s not my fault. He was yummy and powerful, and I could use some power right now.
Lying in a hospital bed with needles in my arm was unnerving. This place was depressing, despite the nearby poster of a cat hanging from a tree branch encouraging me to hang in there.
My father was at O’Hare picking up my sister. I was missing him already, plus, I was dying to see Elly.
Poor choice of words.
“Mrs. Falls?” Dr. Page’s deep Santa-style voice boomed as he pushed aside the privacy curtain between the glass door and me.
“What’s up, doc?” My best Bugs Bunny impression won me a small twitch at the corner of his lips. It was almost a smile; I’d take it. I needed all the optimism and pep I could manage to fake right now. The usual creeping sadness was threatening to make its way back in and it was taking every coping skill my therapist had taught me to keep it at bay. Deep breathing, mindfulness, meditation—I was pulling out all the stops to stay positive, but, damn, life was pretty shitty at the moment.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’m okay, a little headache.” The worst part was over and that thought was carrying me through. Plus, the pain medications. Those were fantastic.
He glanced down at the papers in his hands and when he looked back at me, my optimism quickly tanked. Sullen and somber—this wasn’t good news. “As you’re aware, I was hoping to remove the entire tumor. That wasn’t possible as I discovered the tumor has spread feelers to other parts of your brain. I’m most worried about its proximity to your optic nerve.”
My heart thumped behind my ribcage, and I felt a wave of nausea pass through me.
“It gets worse, doesn’t it?” My expression begged him to tell me I’m wrong.
“The results aren’t what we’d hoped for,” he said.
I chewed on the corner of my thumb, trying to keep the nausea down. “My husband’s getting dinner. Should we wait?”
“That’s up to you. Whatever you’d be more comfortable with.” Dr. Page thumbed the papers again.
My stomach twisted in knots; wishing I’d picked a better time to be hungry. I couldn’t wait for Kyle. I had to know now. “Just tell me.”
“We rushed the results of your biopsy. It’s a Grade 2 Diffuse Astrocytoma.” Dr. Page hugged the clipboard to his chest, his sad eyes fixed on me. “It is malignant, and we must act fast to keep the cancer from progressing.”
Silence fell between us, only the beeping of the machines interrupting every few seconds.
“Well,” I started, blinking rapidly. I felt like a pierced balloon, deflating, scrambling to find my words. I only had one. “Fuck.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Dr. Page echoed.
Every fear from earlier was bombarding my thoughts, my heart, my stomach. I wished I had waited for Kyle. I wished I’d waited for my dad or Elly.
The first time I’d ever heard the word cancer was when my mother was diagnosed with it. Then my little sister was born, becoming my whole world. I’d heard the word thrown around a few times after that, but I had been so focused on my sister and being a kid, it hadn’t seemed a big deal. No one had ever told me to worry about it, or see it as something serious, especially since my mother went into remission soon after treatment.
When her breast cancer came back three years later, she wasn’t as lucky.
I was old enough the second time to understand how scary the word was. My teachers whispered it to each other, pity in their eyes when they looked at me. The doctors had always sent us from the room before speaking with my parents.
But my dad never said it. No one said it. Cancer. My mother had cancer.
Now I have cancer.
And the word seemed even scarier this time than it ever did before. Amazing how powerful just a word can be. I wanted to run from it—ninja jump out the hospital window like a skilled stunt woman from the movies so it couldn’t catch up with me. My father always used to tell me that I needed to stop running from things. “Face things head on, Tessa,” he’d say. That’s not really what my life was about up until now. I’d married the first man who’d seriously paid attention to me—thank God he happened to be the perfect man for me anyway—and I’d taken the first job to offer me a contract. I’d graduated college from the first school to offer me admission and moved in to the first house the realtor had shown us.
I wasn’t picky. I wasn’t difficult. I was go-with-the-flow. But…was that really a thing? Or was I just avoiding life and making any decisions at all? Now here I was facing the potential end, and it would be nothing but choices from here on out.
Ironic.
“So, um, what now?” I faltered my words, still unsure, hugging my knees to my chest, the thin hospital blanket covering me. I could feel tears threatening to leak, but I took a deep breath and pushed them down.
It barely worked, but I was waiting for Kyle. I couldn’t break down alone. I couldn’t.
“I have a treatment plan outlined. I think we should get started right away if you’re open to it.”
“Kyle’s going to be back any minute,” I reminded him.
“I’ll bring him up to speed,” the doctor assured me. “Monday morning, you’ll start radiation. Five times a week for six weeks. After that, we’ll repeat the scans to look for changes. The goal is to shrink the tumor and its feelers. If those diminish, I can remove the full tumor during surgery. The goal is for you to be cancer free in a few months.”
I watched him. His beard bobbing with each word. Radiation. Surgery. Cancer. Words I feared would become too normal a part of my vocabulary.
“So, two months of radiation and another surgery,” I repeated.
He nodded. “Yes.”
I sat up taller, straightening my knees as I thought this though. I needed to keep it together, because I couldn’t spend the next few months miserable and pessimistic. It wasn’t who I am. I’m not that person. I needed to look for the silver lining as much as I needed air to breathe.
And the lining was that it was only two months. Nothing can be so terrible if it’s only for two months. This entire ordeal would be an ugly bump in the road behind us soon enough.
“Babe?” Kyle walked in with a small brown bag and approached the bed. “Doc? Did you get the results?”
My eyes swung from Kyle’s hopeful face over to Dr. Page, and I gave a small nod of approval. Dr. Page repeated everything in greater detail, and I watched my husband’s face go from hopeful to devastated to determined, and everything in between.
Finally, Dr. Page left and we were alone.
“What’s two months?” I plastered on a smile, hoping he’d see a confidence in me I didn’t feel in myself. “It’s nothing. You’ve been deployed longer and we made it through.”
Long eyes met mine, a depth in them I wasn’t strong enough to explore. “Two months,” he said, his voice soft and meek—something I’d never heard from him before.
I reached my arm to him, beckoning him closer, and he obliged my request. Crawling into the bed beside me, only the blankets separated us as he pulled me to his chest. I lifted my arms to his neck, careful to maneuver my IVs around us. My lips moved to his, and I spoke everything in my heart through our kiss.
I told him two months was so short, we’d barely notice. I told him two months was nothing compared to the rest of our lives, to our family, to Baby Falls. And I told him these two months sounded like the scariest thing I’d ever imagined.
When we parted, Kyle leaned toward the side table where he had set down the bag of food he’d brought in with him earlier. Beside it was my journal, which he must have brought with him because I hadn’t seen it before then. I smiled slowly, wrapping myself in good feelings at how well my husband knew me.
He picked up the journal and laid it on my lap. “Let’s write it down.”
I shook my head. “We’re not doing fertility treatments anymore, Kyle. We may never have a baby. What’s the point?”
“The point is you’ve always wanted to write a book. Now you’re going to have a few weeks off work, and knowing you, you’ll be bored. Take this time to write. It’s okay if it isn’t about parenthood.”
I considered what he said as I leafed through the pages. The big reveals of today made writing a book seem an impossible goal. I turned to a clump of pages stuck together with dried ink and pulled them apart slowly—the smeared ink blot from Dr. Hill’s pen.
I stared at the black words that weren’t words at all, and it was probably the truest thing I’d ever written.
“I can’t. I can’t write about this,” I said.
“Why?” Kyle pushed a stray hair from my eyes, pausing when he came to the bandages.
“I wanted to write a happy story for our child. Something he or she could learn from, love with, something to smile about. Nothing about this is positive.”
“Being positive has nothing to do with rainbows and unicorns, Tessa. It’s about putting your best self out there each and every day. You’re the most real and honest person I know; you can’t help yourself. Our future child isn’t the only one who could learn a thing or two from you or your book,” Kyle replied.
My head against the pillow, I looked into his deep green eyes. He was right. I’d had this beautiful journal less than a week. A giant black ink blot couldn’t be its last entry. I owed my dream more than that.
I owed myself more than that.
I think Kyle could see the agreement in my eyes because he handed me a pen from his pocket. Smiling, I took it and tucked myself closer into his side as I flipped open the journal to the next empty page.