Jennifer

  “He wrapped five minutes ago.”

  “Let’s see if he can cover this evaluation for me. If not Kevin, ask Nathan to step over and handle it. And we may need to bump my one o’clock to after four p.m.”

  “Jennifer?”

  “I don’t know. I’m heading over there now. Call me if the world falls apart here; otherwise I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Jennifer was sick? Something had happened to one of her patients? To someone in her family? Tom listened to her phone ring as he drove, and he wanted to toss the phone across the car when she didn’t answer on either the house line or the cell phone she carried with her everywhere. He’d already paged her and hadn’t gotten a reply. Tom turned onto her street, seconds later pulling into her drive. Her car was there.

  He vaulted up the porch stairs two at a time. He knocked on her front door but got no answer. The door was locked. The windows didn’t show him much beyond curtains. He searched the pot of cactuses and located the key she’d shown him hidden there. He unlocked the door. “Jennifer, it’s Tom. Are you home? Are you okay?”

  He strode through the house, feeling a growing sense of panic. She wasn’t curled up on the couch fighting a headache or in the bathroom feeling sick. He headed upstairs.

  “Jennifer?” No answer.

  He backtracked, spotting color where it shouldn’t be. She was in her office, sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall between the bookshelf and the file cabinet. A half-empty Kleenex box was beside her, the quilt from her bed had been pulled into a mound around her, and the phone cord twisted around her fingers. She looked up at him. Tears were streaming down her face.

  His heart stopped. And a new litany of terrors swirled through his mind. Someone had gotten into her house and hurt her. Someone in her family had died. The worst of the worst possibilities slammed into him in the same heartbeat. He pushed aside the desk chair to reach her. “Honey, what’s wrong?” He knelt in front of her.

  She wrapped her arms tighter around her knees and shook, sobs the only sound she made. He forced her chin up to see her eyes. “One of your kids died?”

  She wasn’t even close to being able to answer him. He sat down heavily on the floor beside her and tried to wrap his arms tight around the bundle of quilt and woman. He didn’t know how to help her or even how to try. He rested his head against hers and felt her tears drenching his shirt. He’d never in his memory seen someone so achingly hurting as Jennifer was right now.

  “One of your family?” he whispered.

  “I’ve got cancer, Tom. Late stages, malignant, around my spine and already touching my liver.”

  Her whispered words sliced into his chest like a knife. His breath didn’t go down right.

  “Tina broke the news.” Her hand shook as she straightened her fingers against her raised knee and the fabric of her jeans. “That stupid backache I’ve had for months, that . . .” She started crying again.

  He leaned his head against hers and closed his eyes.

  “I did okay, last night, after she first told me. I really was all right. And then this reaction started in this morning, and it just won’t stop.”

  “She told you last night,” he murmured, shocked it had been twelve hours ago or more and Jennifer hadn’t called him.

  “I’m scared, Tom.”

  He cupped her face with his hands, searching for signs of pain, for signs of courage, for signs of the will to fight this. And what he saw frightened him. The shock in her was so intense and deep. “I love you, Jennifer.” His hand shook too as he brushed her hair back from her face. “I love you. This won’t touch that fact. We’ll talk to the doctors. We’ll figure out how it can be treated.”

  “I don’t want you to have to walk this path with me.” The words ended with a wrenching sob.

  He sorted her hands out from the covers in order to hold them, and they felt incredibly cold. He enclosed them in his. “It’s not your choice. You won’t walk through this alone.” He refused to consider the idea.

  “I’m just so scared,” she whispered again.

  He struggled to get his thoughts around what he had to do first. Get information, lots of information, and some plan that helped her—and him—get through this. “We need to go see Tina together.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t. Not yet. Not today. I need the denial for another twenty-four hours, not the reality. I can’t take hearing the words again. You can call her; I told her it was okay to talk with you.”

  He needed facts, and Jen was right. She wasn’t up to hearing this conversation yet, was in no shape to handle it right now. He eased the quilt up around her, wondering if she’d been right here most of the night. “Rest here, just a little while more, then I’m tucking you in somewhere more comfortable and getting something hot to drink into you. I’ll be right back. Okay?”

  She nodded and lowered her head against her upraised knees. He ran a trembling hand across her hair, then rose and left her there.

  He found a phone in her spare bedroom, called his own office, and had the call transferred to her doctor. “Dr. Landers, it’s Tom Peterson.” He sank onto the bedside and pulled out a pad of paper from his pocket. “I’m with Jennifer O’Malley now.”

  Jennifer wasn’t where he had left her. The quilt had disappeared with her. Tom walked down the hallway, searching for her, and heard a faint noise from downstairs. He headed down.

  He found her in the kitchen, quilt around her shoulders, trying to fix herself a cup of tea. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and hugged her, resting his chin on her shoulder to watch what she was doing.

  “She told you.”

  “Yeah. I’ve got us an appointment to see Dr. Everett at four o’clock if you’re up to it.”

  She leaned into him. “You’ve got surgery scheduled.”

  “Already transferred to my partners. That was the second call I made. Do you feel up to eating something? I could fix a sandwich for you to go with that tea.”

  “You’re crying.”

  He could feel the emotions gripping his chest, and the tears coming despite his determination to be strong and not give her the depth of his pain to add to her own.

  “You’re going to make me start crying again too,” she whispered, turning to face him and wiping away the tears on his face.

  “We’ll beat this, Jennifer. We will.”

  He could tell she was giving it her best to smile at him. “We’ll try.”

  She was breaking his heart. And his own tears didn’t want to stop. Tom gave up trying. He leaned down and gently picked her up, quilt and all, and carried her into the living room, to settle into the chair and just hold her. “Rest awhile, and then I’ll fix us lunch and we’ll go see the doctor together,” he said. “By then maybe I won’t be crying on you. I don’t think you slept last night.”

  “Not much.” She sighed and turned her face into his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re crying for me. It makes me know again I’m loved.”

  Within minutes he felt her drift to sleep, exhausted beyond what her body could fight. Heaven was supposed to be very beautiful. He cried at the very thought that was where she might be going sooner than he could stand.

  She slept, and she ate, and shortly before three he convinced her to shower and change and take time to find something warm to wear.

  She wasn’t in pain, she didn’t look ill, but her day had just gone dark. He couldn’t get a smile from her, even a sad one. His own heart was too heavy to be much help. That had to change, for more than anything he knew she needed someone to keep her spirits up. He felt so unequal to that task.

  “Say you’ll marry me,” he said. “I don’t want to wait.”

  “I can’t—”

  “No.” He cut her off with a gentle hand against her mouth. “Marry me. The most important moment in our lives together is not going to be pushed off by an illness.”

  “If—”

  He didn’t let her put out the reasons to say no. “Jen, I love you.
I have for weeks now. I’ve been shopping for a ring. Just say you’ll marry me. If the service has to wait until an opening in the treatment schedule, then we can at least get started on the wedding arrangements now. Just don’t break my heart by saying no.”

  “I don’t want you to watch me die.”

  The whispered words were accompanied by fresh tears down her face, and they ripped a tear in both his heart and hers.

  “You’re the most precious thing that has ever entered my life, and I’m going to enjoy a lifetime of loving you. There’s not an illness in the world that can’t be fought by some means or another, and we will find that for you, no matter where we have to go and who we have to see. You have to marry me, Jennifer. Please.”

  She rested her head against his chest. When she looked up at him, she struggled with her words, and her eyes overflowed with more tears. “I can’t answer you right now, Tom. I’m so, so sorry. I just can’t answer you right now.”

  And because he was afraid if he pushed any further, she would tell him no, he simply hugged her, held her, and tried to stay focused. “Let’s go see what Dr. Everett has to say.”

  They were halfway to the hospital and the appointment with Dr. Everett when Jennifer put her hand on his arm and shook her head. “Pull over. I’m going to be sick.”

  As soon as he could, he pulled out of traffic, but she’d gone white as a sheet by then. She stumbled from the car to the side of the road and retched up what little he’d been able to convince her to eat.

  He held her hair back and offered the napkins from the cup holder in the car. “I’m so sorry, Jen.”

  “Not your fault,” she whispered. “Take me back home. I just can’t do this today. Tests can wait one more day,” she pleaded. “Just one more day.”

  He couldn’t argue that point, not when it was obvious how hard the shock was still gripping her whole system. “We’ll go back.”

  When they returned to the house, she was neither ready to be alone nor to have someone with her. Tom insisted on staying the night on the couch downstairs, and she didn’t wave him off.

  She wished she could stop his worry, all the pain this was causing him. She wished she could talk rationally about what this meant and what her plans should be. But it wasn’t in her to have that kind of coherent discussion yet. She found sweats to wear to bed, for she was cold down to her bones, hugged Tom good-night, and went to bed to try to find the oblivion of sleep for a few hours.

  The house was silent. Jennifer pushed back the covers and moved quietly, not wanting to disturb Tom if he was able to get any sleep at all downstairs. She stepped into the master bathroom and turned on the lights, shielding her eyes against the brightness until her eyes adapted. She studied her pale face in the mirror, her hair in matted strands needing shampoo, dark depressions under her eyes reflecting the lack of rest. She’d slept, but only in a fragmented way.

  Not able to bear any longer the image she presented, she sat on the floor across from the sink and leaned against the wall. The spot wasn’t totally private, but with the door closed it was as close as she could get tonight. The tears were coming again, welling up inside like a surging tidal wave.

  “This is how you love me?” she whispered to God, starting to shake. She was enough hours past the news that the immediate shock was fading. Now the somber reality she had to face loomed before her, and with it was a wall of anger against what felt like a betrayal.

  She leaned her head back to look up at the ceiling. “I don’t understand, God. I don’t understand. You just ripped away my life.” She’d never felt anything so painful as this awful betrayal. Life itself was flowing away, and she couldn’t hold on to it.

  “You love me, and yet this is the first thing you put me through? Jennifer, you’re dying. How could you do this to me, God? How could you do this?” Her frame shook, and her throat hurt at the words.

  She rubbed at the tears streaming down her face. She fought sobs that were making it hard to breathe and tried to calm herself down. Blood dripped onto the bathroom tiles, and she wiped at the nosebleed. She tried to stand, but her shaking was too overwhelming, so she sat back down on the floor and leaned against the wall again, her whole body trembling.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  “Don’t, honey.”

  She heard the whispered words as Tom sat down beside her, but she didn’t want to hear them. She didn’t want Tom to see her like this, to watch her falling apart. She didn’t want to hurt him like she knew she was doing by crying this way. She just couldn’t take it. She couldn’t.

  He didn’t bother to say anything else. He pressed a Kleenex into her hand for the tears, and a warm rag for the nosebleed, and just sat holding her while she cried.

  She eventually took a deep breath and then another one, and let the explosion of emotions flow into the past. Her head ached. She sat still, considering the fact her eyes were swollen and her jaw hurt, and the floor was hard. Tom’s arm around her hadn’t moved in the last hour, and it was a comforting grip. She could feel herself regrouping, too numb to feel any more new emotions.

  God, even if I don’t believe, you are still God, she thought, knowing He heard her unspoken words. It’s an awful position I find myself in, unable to not believe in you now, unable to deny what I know to be true. You’re still God. But I don’t know how to trust you anymore. And if I can’t trust you, I can’t survive this. Why, of all things, this? Cancer—the one thing I know so well I can’t have false hope?

  She thought about the months before her now, and she couldn’t find anything but fear as she thought about what was coming. She’d watched too many patients over the years make this journey.

  The one thing she sought in her patients more than anything else was hope, for from that came courage and the ability to face the decisions head-on. As awful as the medical options were before her, she had to find the ability and the will to fight. She just didn’t know where to find that strength.

  I came to know you, God, as good. Was I wrong?

  Heaven tonight felt almost tangible. She was surprised to find that under all the shock still rested the certainty, “Jesus loves me, this I know . . .”

  Somehow God was still God even in this. She knew it, as firmly as she did anything else about life. The truth was still the truth.

  She drew a breath. For the first time since the news came, she felt decisions beginning to form.

  I’m not going to pull Tom down with this, or my family. Even when the days get incredibly hard, I’m going to try to protect them from the worst of it. I have to. I can’t let this destroy their lives too. I love them, God. I have to protect them somehow. That’s likely going to be the last thing I can do for them.

  She struggled against new tears as she thought about the future, about the odds this could be beaten, the odds it could not. Somehow there had to be optimism if she was going to walk this road, and she didn’t know where to find it.

  “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so . . .”

  “Please make me well, God. Please.” The prayer was more broken than a whisper.

  She turned and studied Tom, asleep as he sat beside her, his body forcing what his mind had refused to let him do, sleep. She wanted to marry Tom and enjoy life with him. She had to find the courage to live the life she did have as full and deep as she could. She slid her hand into his.

  “Tom, it’s dawn.”

  12

  Jennifer hesitated in the kitchen doorway, watching Tom fixing breakfast. “Good morning.”

  He looked over, and she was relieved at his smile. “I fixed you some breakfast if you feel up to trying to eat something,” he offered, studying her.

  “I feel pretty good, all things considered.” She looked at the eggs now cooking. “I’m kind of hungry too, so I might try some of everything. They want another CAT scan, and Tina has set up an appointment for me to see Dr. Everett this afternoon.”

  He shut off the heat on the stove and came over to her.
He put his arms around her. “I’ll join you for all of that if you will let me. My day is open.”

  She hugged him back. “I was hoping you’d say that.” One decision she had made was that she wasn’t going to push him away, not even when she might want to protect him from the hurt this was going to bring. She reached for his hands and tightened her grasp. “Will you marry me, Tom?”

  The joy that filled his expression overcame the sadness of the day. “You know I will. Thank you, Jennifer.” His voice broke on the words.

  “I love you,” she said, emotions overwhelming her words. “The cancer may in the coming days dictate my energy and what I’m able to do, but it won’t dictate my life. I want to love you and have a good life with you. If you can accept the fact it may be shorter than either of us would wish, I would really like to marry you.”

  “We’ll have that together, Jennifer. A very good life,” he promised softly. “I already found an engagement ring almost as beautiful as you. And we’ll go shopping so you can find a wedding ring for me.” He leaned down to seal it with a kiss. “A short shopping trip.”

  She laughed. “I’m getting the better of the deal.”

  His smile widened. “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “The wedding date . . . we’ll see where we’re at once the doctors figure out what my options are.”

  He eased her into a more comfortable hug and just held her. She could feel his breath stirring her hair. “There are going to be options, Jennifer. There always are. Prayer works, and the will to fight, and we’ll find the best doctors to consult.”

  “And if the prayer doesn’t get answered?”

  “God always answers.”