5
Sienna
At six o’clock Friday evening I come in from working outside all day and allow myself to relax. The doctor or hospital or pathologist, or whoever was supposed to call with the results of my biopsy, didn’t, which means that for one more weekend I am a relatively normal twenty-five-year-old woman with both breasts and a new saddle that maybe I’ll pull into the living room and work on while Dad and I watch some NCIS. I sit down on the boot bench just inside the back door with a heavy sigh, then roll my shoulders and neck in hopes of working out some of the tension. I’ve been trying to process the building anxiety by working like two men; it hasn’t helped as much as I’d hoped.
I pull off my boots, hang up my coat, and step sock-footed into the kitchen, where Dad is reading the newspaper and making notes about something on the legal pad he uses like a day planner—probably stock sales he wants to make sure we get on the calendar. We have seventy-two yearlings to sell off this year, and though we usually wait for the fall, depending on price per pound, sometimes it’s in our best interest to sell sooner. Dad’s medical bills still make us itch, and there’s no telling if the price of beef will stay up. Grandma Dee used to say that ranching is little more than legalized gambling with water and frost instead of chips and cards.
Dad didn’t give me a letter from Mom this morning like I thought he might if in fact he’d just forgotten. I could ask him about it, but after last night I don’t want any more awkwardness between us. I was too pushy, and anyway, if he knew something he’d have told me. I might try to find the answers another way, though I’m not sure how. Probably Google.
“I finished up the fencing on the south side,” I tell him as I fill a glass with water from the sink. We have our own well, and it is the clearest, purest water I’ve ever tasted.
“That’s fantastic, CC,” Dad says, taking off his reading glasses to smile up at me. “That was the last of the fencing, right?”
“Yep,” I say, turning to rest my hips against the counter and take another drink. “We’ll be ready to move the cows over tomorrow morning—Malachi and Uncle Rich still coming?”
“And Malachi’s boys,” Dad says. The boys are fourteen and twelve, so hardly any help, but they’re good riders and they’ll do what I tell them. Unlike some ranches, we own all our own land, which makes our roundups infinitely easier than it is for those who have BLM permits that end up scattering their herds over thousands of patchworked acreage. We’ve had the herd in our east winter pasture—eighteen hundred acres—since September. Now we need to move the cows into the calving pasture, where the prairie grass has been growing for months, and they’ll be easier to monitor during calving. “Rich asked if he could use his four-wheeler. You okay with that?”
“You’ll be on one too, right?” Grandma Dee didn’t allow any vehicles during roundup—horses only. I prefer stock to engines too—vehicles spook some of the cattle—but Dad hasn’t been on a horse since his surgery, and Uncle Rich is seventy years old. I can’t do a roundup without them, and I’m certainly not going to make them get onto a horse if they aren’t comfortable there.
“Well, I might start out in the saddle,” Dad says in a casual tone that betrays the anxiety he’s trying to hide.
My eyebrows go up.
“Just to start,” he says sheepishly.
I want to argue that roundup is no time to push himself, but I don’t because I know what it’s like to go months between riding, and if he’s feeling up to it, that’s great. We’ll have to take the bigger horse trailer so there’s room for Kobe Giant—Dad’s gelding—but that’s not a big deal. “Awesome,” I say. “Just don’t be a hero.”
He smiles and nods before putting his glasses back on and turning again to the paper. He pauses, then looks at me over the frames. “I can do dinner tonight. You’ve had a long day.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “And I’m craving fish tacos.” What I mean is that I’m not craving scrambled eggs, which has been Dad’s go-to “meal” all of my life. He can cook other things, but he doesn’t very often. I take after Mom in that I love good food and I enjoy cooking for the people I love. Dad says that she would get up to cook him breakfast before he went to work and would be working on dinner when he got home. He felt as if it was too much work for just the two of them, but she loved to do it. I wonder where Mom learned to cook. If her mom was a deadbeat, who taught Mom to set a table and make a meal? I learned from Aunt Lottie mostly, and some from Grandma Dee. Did Mom have a grandma who helped out when she was little? Did that grandma die of breast cancer?
I exchange my work gear for a shower, then yoga pants and a county fair T-shirt left from my roping days. Dad’s in his office when I start dinner. Last night unsettles me every time I think about our argument, but lucky for me there are plenty of other things to think about. I’ve been checking the herd here and there these last few weeks. The cows have mostly migrated west on their own, where we’ve been putting out hay now that the forage is low, but we’ll have some stragglers we’ll need to hunt for tomorrow. That’s my favorite part of roundups. Dad and Uncle Rich will manage the bulk of the herd through the gates leading to the west acres while Malachi, his boys, and I go after the outliers. We’ll put out fresh hay and water after we finish up on Saturday to draw out any head that we miss. When it’s breeding season, we turn the bulls out with the heifers first, then keep those first-time mamas in the ranch pasture so we can keep an eye on them through the winter and make sure things go the way they should through calving. After the heifers have been served, we turn the bulls into the cow herd. This keeps the cows and heifers from calving at the same time, and we can more efficiently divide our time between the ranch and the calving pasture located forty miles away.
I’m moving through the time line for tomorrow in my head while the fish sizzles in the cast-iron pan when my phone rings on the opposite counter. Beck had texted earlier to see if I wanted to come over tonight, and I never gave her an answer because I didn’t take thirty seconds to think about whether it was a feasible idea. Since I hadn’t made a decision earlier, I think about it now for the time it takes me to cross to my phone. It’s been a long day and my forearms are killing me from working the crimp on the fences. Tomorrow will start at sunup and, quite frankly, I’m worried that Beck will try to pick up where we left off on my birthday, and I just can’t.
I wipe my hands on a dishtowel before I pick up my phone, an explanation warming up on my lips, then pause at the unfamiliar number. It’s a Wyoming area code, but I can’t remember the last time someone not already in my contact list called me. The energy drains out of me as I realize that it’s likely the lab. I forget to breathe, then I inhale sharply and glance over my shoulder to make sure Dad is still in his office. The keys on the computer keyboard are clicking in rhythm, assuring me that he’s not paying any attention to what I’m doing. I hurry toward the front porch with my phone in hand and heart thudding at the base of my throat. The wind that dogged me all day in the high pasture takes my breath away when I step outside and close the front door behind me.
“Hello?” I say, moving to the corner of the porch best protected from the wind. We’ve had a few days in the midfifties this week. Spring tease, we call it, but temperatures like that never hold once the sun goes down, and I am reminded that March is closer to winter than it is to summer.
“Sienna Richardson?” It sounds weird to hear Richardson as my last name since I’ve fallen back to using Chadwick here in Lusk. The professional voice confirms my fear that I didn’t get a weekend of clemency after all. “This is she.”
“This is Amy from Laramie Women’s Medical Center. I’m calling with the results of your biopsy. Dr. Sheffield said you already approved a phone call rather than an in-clinic review.”
“Yes, I approved a phone call.” I wrap my free arm around my waist. Tight. It doesn’t protect me from the cold or make me feel strong and capable. The sky is dusty gray, only the barest glow of sunset still clinging to the top of the hills in the distant west. I focus on taking even breaths and fight off the sudden impulse to jump on Rosa and ride as far away as I can. But this phone call is a mountain lion, a predator that will eventually catch up with me and tear me from the saddle.
Amy keeps talking. “I want to preface my call with the reminder that Laramie Women’s Medical Center is a leading institution in breast cancer research and treatment in the Intermountain West. We have a talented staff dedicated to addressing all the physical and emotional needs of our patients. It is our mission to—”
I use Amy’s script reading to brace myself. This is it. In a matter of seconds, I’ll never again not know. My future, which has turned blurry and vague already these last several months, is going to become even more unclear. I put a hand on my belly, the way I used to when I’d talk to the clinic in Chicago about treatments and test results that centered around my having a baby. If this is cancer, where does that leave my potential for ever conceiving?
“Um, thank you,” I say when the other end of the line goes silent, though I’m not sure what I’m thanking her for. “You have my results?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m afraid the biopsy showed some abnormalities—”
“Abnormalities?” I repeat, afraid to breathe for fear it will disrupt this new bubble of hope. Abnormalities could be a cyst or . . . something else abnormal. “Not cancer?”
“Oh, well, uh . . . cancer is an abnormality.”
Exhale. Bubble of hope sufficiently popped. “So, it is cancer.”
Amy says nothing for a few beats.
“I signed a paper consenting to hear my results over the phone.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Amy says. “I’m sorry.”
“So, it is cancer then.” Maybe she’s apologizing for something else.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I take a deep breath and then let it out slowly as the words seep through my ear, into my brain, and then go out by messenger through my nervous system to the rest of my body so that every part of me knows the identity of that cloaked figure hanging out in my breast tissue. I had expected it would be cancer—confirmation should not surprise me—but my insides start shaking like they did in Dr. Sheffield’s office three days ago. Apparently, some part of me had placed side bets against the diagnosis. I have cancer, I say in my mind, attentive to the diction of the word. Can-sir. A bit more of the twilight disappears along the horizon, further casting the shadow of night over the prairie. It is too cold for crickets, and I can’t hear the yearlings in the pasture behind the ranch from here. The silence feels punishing.
Amy finds her words and starts talking again. “Dr. Sheffield would like to see you Monday afternoon, the first of April, and took the liberty of scheduling you for a lumpectomy Tuesday morning, the second, at nine a.m. You’ll need to call your insurance first thing Monday morning of this next week to make sure your authorizations are in place, but we’ve already sent them all of our referrals and outlines of care. If Tuesday the second doesn’t work, I can help you set up a different time, but she wants you in by Friday the fifth at the very latest.”
“What stage cancer do I have?”
“Without a full assessment—”
“Please.” Normally I wouldn’t want to make this woman uncomfortable by being insistent. But this isn’t normal. My hand is still on my belly, protecting what isn’t there. I think of the six remaining embryos in Chicago. Will I ever be able to try again? Is this the end of the road to motherhood that I have been staggering down for three years? The hand clenches into a fist. “What stage did Dr. Sheffield guess?”
The woman pauses in surrender. “It says here that the mammogram and ultrasound did not show additional tumors, which is why a lumpectomy is the prescribed course of treatment. After the procedure, a full evaluation of the removed tissues will allow a more reliable determination, at which point additional treatments will be discussed.”
“Thank you for that, but can you please tell me what stage the doctor believes my cancer is?” My cancer. Like “my car” and “my candy bar” and “my dad.” Part of me. Belonging to.
But when the leaves hang trembling . . .
I can feel my pulse in my hand from gripping the phone too tight, but every muscle in my body is tight right now, holding me together. Keeping me in.
Amy continues. “Invasive ductal carcinoma, negative HR, HR2, and BRCA, low-grade, stage one.”
I don’t know what all of that means, but stage one is better than two, which is better than three. Mom had probably been stage four when she’d been diagnosed. What had it sounded like in Mom’s ear when she’d been told? Had she pulled her young daughter tighter against her infected chest? Had she asked, “How long do I have?” with tears in her eyes and Dad holding her hand too tight? I hate that Dad doesn’t remember that moment—he’s the only person who could.
“Thank you,” I say, staring at the barest glow of light now outlining the western horizon. It looks as though there is a big party taking place on the opposite side, with floodlights and a live band I can’t hear. Life feels like that a lot these days, as if everyone else is living it up while I watch from the sideline. An owl hoots in the distance, and I look toward the sound. The silent flight and white underbelly of barn owls makes them look like ghosts at night. As kids, Beck and I would sleep in the backyard during the summer and count the owls as they soared above us. The most we ever counted was fifteen, though it was a faulty experiment since we had no way of identifying one owl from the next. For all we knew, it could have been the same owl over and over again. The owl I heard will be hunting tonight. Another predator on silent wings.
“So, does Tuesday the second at nine o’clock work for you?” Amy asks. “It will be an outpatient procedure done under general anesthesia with a two- to four-day recovery time. You should be back to normal activity in two weeks.”
Two weeks? In calving season with at least one more snowstorm in the forecast? Grandma Dee always said that work was good for what ailed ya, and thoughts of the ranch clear my head. For a long time, I thought she just wanted to punish me when I complained about some aspect of my life. Now the prospect of work rises up like the evening star I can just see in the eastern sky. The ranch needs me. Dad needs me. I have to be at 100 percent if I’m going to keep up, and that means I don’t have time for this. Amy said it was stage one, low grade. That gives me a little time to make a plan. “I’m afraid I can’t do either appointment.”
“Well, we have an open slot on Friday the fifth at eight a.m., but those are the only openings we have in the week.”
I can’t do Wednesday or Thursday or Friday. Or any day in March. Or April. Or May either. The ranch needs me and I need some time to come to grips with this. “I’m going to have to look into a few things before I can schedule anything. Can I get your number so I can call you back when I have a better idea of what I can make work?”
“Sure thing. The scheduling department for the Laramie Women’s Center is open from eight a.m. until eight p.m. Monday through Friday and nine until two on Saturdays. You can call us back at 307 . . .”
I huddle in the corner of the porch, letting each number fall to the planks of wood beneath my feet. During the summer there are sometimes moths as big as hummingbirds out here. Dad hangs our big bug zappers on the porch, Sometimes the bigger moths get stuck in the grate, and the zapper just keeps buzzing and buzzing and buzzing. Then Dad has to turn off the zapper and use a stick to pry off the carcass.
“Got it. Thank you,” I say when Amy finishes giving the number a second time.
Amy repeats the mission of the Laramie Women’s Medical Center. I thank her and hang up. The wind catches my hair as I step forward on the porch to grip the rail, no longer feeling the cold. I clench the rail so tight that my knuckles hurt, and I imagine the grooves and bumps of the rough-hewn pine being pressed into my skin. I let the wind slap me around a little and get funky with my hair while I attempt to make eye contact with the shifty gaze of reality.
Inside my body is a monster, tiny but fierce. Maybe my cancer is like a chicken trying to break out of its egg, or maybe it’s like a spider, one hairy leg and then another stretching out from a crevice and reaching for the next space it will overtake. Or maybe it’s all tied up in a box, safe and secure and willing to wait until I can take the time to confront it. I close my eyes and inhale some of that wind, wishing it could cleanse me even as I choose to believe the cancer is in a box—secure and patient.
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Stage one is good. Curable 98 percent of the time, according to that billboard that’s become scripture. I’ve never been extraordinary at anything; certainly I wouldn’t be in that 2 percent now. How many of those 98 percent lost their mothers to the same disease?
The questions Dr. Sheffield has asked loom even larger in my mind: What stage cancer had Mom’s been? Were there other relatives who had also had breast cancer? Did they die from it, as she did? I feel a pop of anger that Dad won’t help me find those answers, but I don’t want to waste energy on being mad at him.
Invasive ductal carcinoma.
Lumpectomy.
Additional treatments.
I hear a creak and turn to see Dad standing inside the screen door.
“Everything okay, CC?”
I pull my wild hair away from my face with one hand and smile to hide whatever else might show up in my expression right now. I had promised myself I would tell him once I knew what I was dealing with, but the fact that he’s blocked out so much of Mom’s cancer reflects how devastating mine will be once he knows. I’m all he has left, so I force a smile. “Yeah, Dad, everything’s fine.”
“I took the fish off the stove, but I may have been too late.”