Slow Burn

  “We?” Rylee interjects with the question that’s on my tongue, but I can’t seem to get over the disbelief.

  “Yes, my colleagues and I,” she says. I catch Dr. Blakely glance at Rylee and give her an appreciative smile before meeting my eyes again. “I actually was having a meeting with them about another case and asked them to review yours, as well.”

  I stare at her, mouth agape, eyes vacant. I feel like a deer in the headlights, but the difference is, I’m not sure if I want to move out of the way or get taken down in one fell swoop. I blink my eyelids, and it feels like they are scraping over sand as I try to process this all and come up empty.

  And I find that strange, considering my mind knew this; family medical history predicted this. But it’s one thing to feel it and think it, and a whole different thing to hear it stated as fact, have doctors meeting about you—or your file, rather, because your contaminated body isn’t there.

  “So, what was the consensus?” Rylee again, her voice strong as she plays the role of patient counselor, which she does every day of her life in her job, except this time it’s for her best friend instead of one of the abused little boys she’s responsible for.

  “We believe we need to act fast. Looking at your family history, the cancer your sister and mother experienced was aggressive in all facets, so we want to make sure to hit this head-on and knock it dead without giving it a fighting chance.” I want to believe the conviction in her voice, the competency behind her diagnosis that we can knock it dead but have a hard time mustering up the enthusiasm to match it.

  I zone out as she goes on about further lumpectomies followed by chemo and then radiation courses to force a response and then hopefully remission. I listen to time frames of treatment, and my head spins, thinking it’s not possible because I have a few more days before I can secure the Scandalous deal. Then my mind wanders to the health insurance plan I was luckily able to secure a few months ago to cover myself and any new hires I add on.

  I keep half an ear on the conversation, knowing they are talking about my body, my life, and yet I can’t connect, can’t believe that I’m about to go through what I helped Lexi through. The brutality of it, the complete obliteration, the devastation of it.

  And then I think of my parents. Oh, God, my parents. Having to tell them, scare them, watch them suffer through this for a fourth time in their lives, my mom blaming herself all over again as she did with Lex. How she carries her death on her shoulders as if it were her fault. I fist my hands so tight that my nails break the skin, the sting welcome because I’m actually feeling something again instead of this droning buzz holding my body hostage.

  I selfishly think of my body. My body, which will soon look like Frankenstein’s monster’s body, jagged pieces sewn together to make a whole. I know it’s vain, but the horrid images of Lex’s scars on my body that flash through my mind knock me back a step farther than I already have been.

  And yet Rylee and Dr. Blakely keep talking about the logistics, the scheduling of it all, and then I think of Maddie, and it nearly breaks me. When the sob catches in my throat, both of them turn suddenly to look at me, and my decision has been made.

  Screw the lumpectomies.

  I want to live.

  “I want a double mastectomy.”

  I watch the approval flicker through Dr. Blakely’s eyes as Ry’s hand squeezes my forearm. “While this was going to be my next suggestion and the best course of action, I must advise you and make you aware—”

  “I’m aware that my breasts are going to kill me if I keep them. I want them gone.” I make the assertion with more confidence than I actually feel, but my courage makes up for the difference because I’m scared so fucking shitless that my voice should be wavering with nerves instead of the tiny break it had. “Nothing helped my sister, but I want the fighting chance … so I want them gone as soon as possible. I need drastic. Lexi was gone in six months. Six months. I have a life I want to live. Things I need to do, and I can’t do them in six months because I haven’t even planned them yet, so …” My voice trails off as all of the things I’ve ever wanted to do flicker like a slide show through my head. The tears come now, a wave of hope trying to ride the rampant storm of emotions waging inside of me. “I haven’t even planned them yet,” I tell them both again through the broken sobs.

  I’m focused on the sky above us. The clouds float there so nicely, form a set of shapes, and then float some more to change to a different one. Wouldn’t it be so easy to be like that—change, shift, adjust—without so much as a thought of the next storm about to roll in threatening to decimate you.

  Rylee allows me the silence to think, and I use it to listen to birds chirping and the leaves of the trees all around us rustling in the breeze. This section of the park is vacant at this time of day, and I’m so thankful that she knew I couldn’t face reality just yet.

  She sighs, and I hear the sniffle she tries to disguise as she turns her head away from me where we lie flat on our backs on the grassy hill, looking up at the sky.

  “I have to tell my parents,” I whisper, barely breaking the silence.

  “We’ll go there next. I’ll go with you, okay?”

  I murmur in agreement. I’m thankful she offered because I know she’ll be able to be the voice of reason when hell breaks loose.

  “We have three weeks before the surgery and then two weeks after that before chemo starts.” I appreciate her matter-of-fact tone, her businesslike efficient approach to my treatment schedule makes it seem like it’s not happening to me. “We’ll figure out a schedule in the next week or two so that between your parents and me and Becks and whoever else wants in, you have all the help you need after—”

  “No.” I can feel her body startle in awareness next to me at my outburst.

  “No, what?” The caution in her voice tells me that she fears what I’m going to say next.

  “I don’t want anyone to know besides my parents … and you …” My words trail off as my thoughts wander.

  “Okay.” She draws the word out, confusion lacing her tone. “I’m not following you here, Had, but you’ve been through a lot today, so I’m just going to go with the flow until it settles in and you realize what an idiot you sound like.”

  I don’t take the bait she’s using to draw a reaction from me. She knows I have a volatile temper, knows I usually react without thinking, and since I’m not reacting at all, it’s scaring her. This is the best and worst part about having a friend who’s so close to you. You know what to expect from them, and they know what to do to get a reaction out of you.

  But right now I’m still so numb, I don’t react.

  “Okay,” she repeats again in the same exact way that’s starting to annoy the hell out of me. “So then it’ll just be your parents, me, and Becks that—”

  “Becks isn’t to know.” The words come out with conviction—the first real thing I’ve said since walking into Dr. Blakely’s office—even though my head and heart are at odds with the decision that I thought about numerous times during my sleepless night. I close my eyes and chase away my visual of the drifting clouds in order to let the guilt in, but it just falls by the wayside in favor of the fear. My fears are all valid now.

  “What do you mean, Becks doesn’t need to know?”

  Because he said he loves me. My head screams the words, but my lips remain sealed, etching the path of lies so deep, that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to climb out of the groove.

  I hear her body shift to a seated position and can feel the heat of her glare daring me to open my eyes, but I just keep her waiting. Instead I silently reiterate all my reasons, which I went over last night. The same ones that I had initially stood by, but I’d let falter when I allowed new emotions to get in the way. To cloud my judgment.

  I can’t bring Becks into this. I can’t ask him to step into my ticking time bomb of a life and hope the timer doesn’t detonate prematurely, bringing both him and me down in different but equally deva
stating ways.

  And then I think how arrogant that is of me. To assume I’d be the one in his life. That we’re soul mates.

  But for some reason, I just know. It’s that goddamn click.

  Besides, I won’t have the time or emotion to invest in a romantic relationship when my thoughts are going to be selfishly on myself and trying to survive. That’s not a fair situation to put someone in even if he tells me to let him make the decision for himself.

  I can’t let him fall in love with me as I have with him. Hearts may heal with time, but accepting someone’s love when you’ve experienced the brutality of this illness firsthand yourself is the ultimate act of selfishness.

  And I may be self-centered at times, only think about me, but this is one time in my life when I am thinking one hundred percent about others. About Becks and that smile that reaches his eyes and the gentleness of his touch and that solid-gold heart of his that some woman—some healthy woman—deserves to have. One who will love him without the sky falling down around them.

  I realize that I’ve opened my eyes and they’re scouring the grass for some reason, focused there instead of looking at Rylee, and then it hits me. I’m looking for a dandelion, a sign from my sister that things are going to be okay. But I can’t find a single one.

  And as silly as it seems, that reinforces my decision.

  But how do I tell Rylee all of this? I know what she’ll say. She’ll tell me I’m crazy. That I need to stay positive, that my mom beat this beast. That I’m only hurting both of us by shutting Becks out when I need more people in my corner than ever before. She’ll add insult to injury and try to use peer pressure to make me open the doors and let the world in when all I want to do is shut everyone out and hide in the dark for a while.

  So I lie to my best friend. Buy some time. Derail her tirade of stubbornness.

  “For now. Please?” I open my eyes again and meet her confused look. “I just need some time to accept all of this, deal with this before I can bring someone else—lots of someone elses—into this situation. I don’t want the assessing looks of pity, the constant phone calls where people talk in circles because they’re too chickenshit just to come out and ask my prognosis, or the unexpected knocks on the doors with another foil-covered Pyrex dish as if a frickin’ casserole will cure me.”

  Rylee nods, and yet I know she still doesn’t get it. But it’s not her decision to understand. And frankly I’m sick of having to explain myself. My schizophrenic emotions return with a vengeance. Grief giving way to anger, anger turning into disbelief, disbelief somersaulting into a feeling of welcome isolation.

  I can’t keep track of them anymore, and I really don’t care to.

  I shove up off the ground, needing to move, to embrace the rage I have but still can’t feel. I try to calm myself and focus on what I can feel: the tightness in my chest because I need to cry but can’t seem to urge the tears to come.

  I want to tell her that my body’s already broken but just know she’ll arch her eyebrows and give me that “you’ve gotta give me something better than that, Montgomery” look she has mastered to perfection over the near decade we’ve been friends.

  “Remember that goulash crap the neighbor across the street brought after Lex’s …” Her words trail off before she says funeral but the memory of that awful food has the corners of my mouth tilting up in a smile.

  “The stuff that looked like dog food?” I turn to look at her.

  “It smelled like it too.” Her nose crinkles up, and I don’t know what it is, but the laughter bubbles up. The first sounds of it fall from my mouth and hit my ears, sounding so strange against the tumult in my head.

  But I can’t stop it.

  I can hear the hysteria, can hear the anxiety weaving there, and yet I still laugh loud and deep, the breeze carrying it away and into the distance.

  When I look up, Rylee is laughing too, but hers is physically contradicted with tears sliding down her cheeks as her eyes hold steadfast on mine.

  Thoughts flicker as I laugh. Fear festers up, and I shove it away momentarily because I need this moment—the sky, the breeze, my best friend. Something to hold on to, to pull back up when I need it on the dark days that I know will be coming. The ones that will try to steal my soul and blind my light.

  But this moment gives me the clarity that I’m gonna fight like hell.

  I’m gonna fight like a girl: lipstick on, hair done, and attitude in place.

  Because shit, I’ve got hearts to break still and heels to wear.

  Hearts and heels.

  Hearts and heels.

  Damn. I’m scared. Petrified.

  Trying so hard to keep my grip on reality.

  So fearful of the unknown.

  Chapter 26

  Emotionless, I stare at myself in the mirror. I take in my swollen eyes and the dark circles beneath them, noting the disbelief still in their hollow reflection. I can still hear my mother’s shriek from earlier when I told her, as well as see the stunned look on my dad’s face, followed by his gritted jaw and sudden departure so he could go break down in his bedroom over not being able to protect the only woman left in his life still untouched by the monster that has decimated his family.

  I shake off those painful recollections and begin tugging my clothes off, suddenly desperate to take a shower and scrub every single part of today from my body. My mom’s perfume lingers on my skin. The perfume that shouldn’t be there because I shouldn’t have seen her today.

  So I welcome the scalding water as I scrub and cleanse, even though I know I can’t wash this away. I tell myself I need to call Rylee later and apologize for being rude and brash rather than appreciative and gracious for all that she’s done for me. I know she understands why, but it still doesn’t make it right.

  I climb from the shower and grab a towel, which I twist around my hair and on my head. I grab a second, so emotionally drained I’m not thinking straight, and start to dry off and cross into my bedroom to grab my robe on my bed. As I near it, I look up and catch sight of my naked body in the mirror hanging on the wall beside my dresser.

  I freeze. Then I walk toward it, completely lost in my thoughts and drowning in the fear from earlier today. I can’t take my eyes off my breasts in the reflection.

  They’re pert and full with pink nipples. I stare at them and wonder how something that looks so harmless can hold so much power over me? I wonder how something that can bring pleasure, can nourish a baby, can also steal my life so easily.

  Then I begin to wonder what I’ll look like when they are gone. Will I look like a patchwork quilt of scars? Will they be able to salvage my nipples so that I don’t have to have fake ones tattooed on so that I can pretend to look normal? What will be physically left of this major feature that expresses my gender, my sexuality?

  I won’t even have my hair to help with that … so I’ll be a bald, flat-chested person with only makeup on my soon-to-be-bloated face to denote that I’m a female.

  The thought staggers me. Suffocates both my thoughts and my breathing.

  I like to think that I’m not a vain person, but everybody is in a sense. Is this God’s way of punishing me for always being pretty? For never going through that gawky stage as a teenager when every other girl was gangly and awkward and I was svelte and desired by the boys? The things I have always taken for granted, always been so comfortable with are going to be taken from me, and while I never thought I’d really care, all of a sudden I’m terrified of what I’m going to look like and how people will perceive me.

  The tears that I’ve kept hostage all day finally erupt into a maelstrom of sobs. I drop the towel as I bring my hands to my boobs and cup them, feeling the weight, the smoothness of the skin, their roundness. I’ve had them my whole life, and yet I don’t think I’ve ever thought to memorize everything about them. Such a weird thought.

  I tell myself through the exploding grief that when I get through this, I’ll have them reconstructed. That while I think my
natural breasts are pretty close to perfect now, when I’m sixty, they’d be saggy and flat, so I’m lucky because the new boobs I’ll get will remain perky and full well into my nursing home days. Rationalization at its finest.

  And then I start to laugh through the tears as I recall a Shel Silverstein poem I read to Maddie the other night. One about how a little boy shaved his head because he hated his wavy hair only to find out his hair was straight and it was his head that was wavy.

  I don’t know why the thought is so funny to me now, but I can’t stop laughing as I look at the mirror and wonder what I’ll find beneath my hair. Tears fall as fast as the laughter from my lips until the sound dies but I continue to cry.

  I stare again through my tear-blurred vision, my hair wet and stringy—my towel having fallen from my head during my laughter-sob fest—and my body still pink from the scalding water of the shower. This is the same body I’ve looked at for the last twenty-eight years, and yet I know that in the coming weeks it will no longer seem like or look like mine.

  I close my eyes, not wanting to focus anymore on what will never be the same. I crawl onto my bed and beneath my covers, trying to find some kind of solace, but I don’t think it’s an emotion one can hope for when facing a cancer diagnosis.

  Next I lose myself to my thoughts, suddenly questioning my knee-jerk decision this afternoon at Dr. Blakely’s office. Should I opt for a single mastectomy and save my other breast? Keep a piece of myself?

  That’s stupid. The remaining breast would just be a continually ticking time bomb. I made the right decision. I tell myself that over and over as the tears slide silently down my cheeks and wet the pillow beneath me.

  But the doubt still niggles its way into my psyche.

  I know what to do to reinforce my decision. I reach to the edge of the bed and grab my cell. Within moments my voice mail is activated, and Lexi’s voice is filling my ears.