Before I Go Page 7

  I look at the counter where I plug my cell phone into the wall every night, but the end of the white cord is empty. I must have left it in my shoulder bag. I walk down the hall to our bedroom and hear the water running. Jack’s in the shower. I move faster. I can probably call Dr. Saunders before he gets out and he’ll never have to know.

  I retrieve my phone from its pocket and see that I have three missed calls and two text messages from Kayleigh. One of them says: Are you alive?

  I clear the screen and dial the main office line at the cancer center. My heart thumps in my chest as it rings. Dah-dump, dump dump. Dah-dump, dump dump.

  “Athens Regional Cancer Center,” a woman’s voice says. I ask to speak to Dr. Saunders.

  “May I tell him who’s calling?”

  “Daisy Richmond.”

  “Hold, please.”

  The line clicks and flowery music fills my ear.

  After a few minutes, Dr. Saunders’ voice breaks in. “Daisy,” he says. “I’m glad you called.”

  I’m a little surprised that it’s him. I didn’t really expect that I would get to speak with him simply by asking for him. Doctors have an elusiveness about them; almost celebrity-like. You can talk to their handlers and they’ll set up an allotted time for you to be in their presence, but you can’t call them directly whenever you want. They’re much too important for that. But then, Dr. Saunders has always been a bit different. More accessible.

  “Yes, well, I had a quest—”

  “Can you come in this afternoon?” He cuts me off. “I’d like to talk with you about something.”

  My grip on the phone tightens. Oh my God. Maybe the diagnosis really is a mistake and he already caught it. Maybe he wants to tell me about it in person; make sure I don’t intend to sue the hospital for mental distress. My heartbeat speeds up. Dah-dump-dump-dump-dah-dump-dump-dump.

  “Daisy?”

  “Yeah, yes. Of course. But, um . . . Can’t you just tell me over the phone?”

  You screwed up. Say it. Say it.

  “I’m sorry, I have to run. I have patients. Stay on the line. Martha will set up a time.”

  Martha? Martha doesn’t even work for you anymore, I want to shout, when the classical music starts up again. Then my flare of irritation settles into self-satisfaction. I am downright smug. Because if Dr. Saunders can’t even remember that his receptionist retired, then it’s all too conceivable that he could confuse a couple of test results.

  The receptionist suggests 2:30 and I agree, because my day is inconceivably devoid of activity. As I hang up, Jack walks into the room, a towel around his waist, his hair still wet. He shivers.

  “Who was that?”

  “Dr. Saunders,” I say. “He wants me to come in this afternoon.”

  “Did he say what for?”

  I shake my head no. And then, instead of telling Jack about my successful handling of the broom, or Dr. Saunders’ inability to remember that Martha no longer works for him, I leave the room, because all at once I’ve turned into a seven-year-old who doesn’t want Jack to tell me there’s no Santa Claus.

  THE LAST TIME Jack and I stood in the Athens Regional parking lot together was right after my final radiation treatment more than four years ago. He surprised me with an obnoxious number of balloons—so many that I thought he might get whisked into the sky if a strong wind blew. “Did you miss the turn for the circus?” I asked him.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, nodding at my bald head. “Aren’t you the strongman?”

  “Very funny,” I said. We stood there grinning at each other. I had known Jack for only two years then, but he had stuck by me through all the cancer stuff, and we had made it to the other side. “You’re done,” he said. “I’m done,” I agreed. He uncurled his fist that was holding the balloons and they started floating upward. Then he held out his hands to me. “Let’s go.”

  Today we head toward the entrance in silence. I slip my hand into his and we walk through the parting glass and down the corridor to the heavy wooden door of the cancer center. Not-Martha looks up as I sign in. “Dr. Saunders is running a few minutes behind today,” she says. I nod and go sit down next to Jack.

  He picks up a Sports Illustrated and I start to rifle through a Highlights for Children, but it’s clear that neither of us is actually reading the words on the pages in front of us. I’m mentally practicing what I’m going to say to Dr. Saunders when he admits to the mistake. I try angry: “How dare you? Do you know how freaked out I’ve been?” Or I could be happily surprised: “Really? Are you sure? Oh thank God!” And then, of course, there’s kind understanding: “These things happen.” I’d nod. “I just feel so sorry for the other woman. That poor thing.”

  Lativia finally calls my name and we both stand up and follow her through the waiting-room door and down the hall to Dr. Saunders’ office. Before we walk in, I decide to go with kind understanding, because really, I like Dr. Saunders, and it is just a tragic situation for everyone.

  He stands up behind his desk when we enter and sticks his hand out to Jack. “Been a few years, huh?” he says.

  “Yes, sir,” Jack says, shaking Dr. Saunders’ bear paw.

  “I’m glad to see you, though I wish it were under better circumstances,” he says, addressing both of us.

  I bob my head in a move that I hope oozes with somber empathy, so he knows that I’m ready to graciously accept his news. Jack and I sit down in the chairs across from him and wait.

  Dr. Saunders removes his glasses and sets them down on the desk between us.

  “Daisy, I know it’s not even been twenty-four hours since you were here last, and that’s not a lot of time to process the information I gave you, but I’d like to start with any questions you may have.”

  I look at him, confused. I feel like Dr. Saunders and I are actors in a play, and he’s embarrassingly forgotten his lines. I need to prompt him.

  “I do have a question,” I say, glancing at Jack. “Are you sure those are my test results? I’m thinking they may have been switched with another patient.”

  He doesn’t even wait a beat before responding, and I get the feeling I’m not the only person to have ever thought this. “Yeah, I’m sorry Daisy, but no. We have a system. We’re very careful with that sort of thing.”

  I open my mouth to ask how he’s certain, but Jack clears his throat and sits forward, cutting off my thought. “So what’s the plan here? Daisy said something about brain surgery?”

  Dr. Saunders leans forward and steeples his fingers, elbows propped on the desk. “I can refer you to a neurosurgeon. He’ll want to look at the film and discuss the risks. I only recommend it, though, if you’re going to go whole hog on treatment—chemo, radiation. Some people in, uh, Daisy’s situation choose not to.”

  He drones on, repeating more or less the information he gave me yesterday and Jack pipes up with questions every now and then. I hear them speak, back and forth like a tennis match, but they might as well be discussing irrigation systems in third world countries. This is how little it feels that their conversation is about me. And I sit in my chair, simmering. The theory that the test results are not mine is a dead horse, and I have the inexplicable urge to beat it. Dr. Saunders didn’t even pretend to double-check. Just like the surgeon in the operating room didn’t double-check before lopping off the wrong foot. Stupid, arrogant doctors think they’re so infallible, but they’re not. They make mistakes all the time, goddamn it, and they need to start owning up to it.

  “YOU DIDN’ T EVEN KNOW THAT MARTHA HAD RETIRED!” The words erupt from somewhere deep down in my gut. And then the room goes absolutely still. Dr. Saunders and Jack both turn to look at me. My back is ramrod straight and my fingers are gripping the arms of the chair so tightly that my knuckles have turned white. And I have no idea what to say next.

  Dr. Saunders breaks the silence. “I know this is hard,” he says, his voice gentle. “But really, nothing about you is different today than last week or last month. You
just have this new information now. And like I was saying, if you choose this clinical trial, it could give you another six months, a year—maybe even more.”

  I look up. “What clinical trial?”

  “Daisy,” Jack says, laying his hand on my arm. “The one Dr. Saunders was just talking about.”

  I turn red. “I wasn’t listening.”

  Unruffled, Dr. Saunders repeats himself. He says a professor at Emory is researching a new drug, BC-4287, that in a lab has shrunk tumors in cancer-ridden rats. He says it’s in phase one of human testing, and I’d be a perfect candidate. He says I couldn’t pursue other treatments while taking it.

  But all I’m hearing is “another six months.” I realize that I’m supposed to be happy about this—ecstatic that my life expectancy could jump from four months to possibly twelve, but all I can think is: what a shitty negotiation. I want fifty years, and all I get is a few extra months? It’s like asking your boss for a five-thousand-dollar raise and he nods and says, “I can give you ten cents.”

  “We’ll think about it,” Jack says and stands up, my cue that the conversation is over.

  JACK ONLY SAYS one sentence on the drive home: “We’re getting a second opinion.” The rest of the time he spends casting me long sideways glances, as if he’s the zookeeper and I’m an elephant that could snap at any second and crush him with my sandpapery tree trunk of a hoof. Or maybe he’s just looking at me to make sure I’m still there, and I’m grateful I’m not the only one concerned that I might abruptly disintegrate, pieces of me drifting up toward the sky like those balloons so many years ago.

  When we pull onto our narrow street, a brown van is occupying the space in front of our house where Jack typically parks. As Jack maneuvers the car into the gap behind it, I read the logo on the back door: “Prices so low, you’ll be simply floored.”

  Shit. The flooring estimate.

  I get out of the car and walk up beside the van to the driver door, ready to apologize for being late, but the seat is empty. I look around, but Jack and I are the only people in sight on our street. Then I hear our front door open and I turn toward the house. A burly man with hairy arms, wearing a dingy white T-shirt that leaves an inch of his potbelly exposed, walks onto our stone front porch. The same porch that’s slowly pulling away from the house due to the weight of rainwater that collects in it and needs to have a new drain installed in the center of it. It’s on my to-do list.

  A number of questions pass through my head at once. Did we leave our house unlocked? And even if we did, what kind of contractor just lets himself in? Is the weight of this guy going to cause our porch to buckle once and for all? Do fat people just not feel the cold? This guy looked comfortable in short sleeves, and tucked into my favorite black parka, I was still shivering.

  Sammy appears in the open door behind the floor guy. At first I’m equally surprised to see her, and then a few answers click into place.

  I gave her a key when we first moved in, because she gave us one and then stared at me until I had no choice but to reciprocate.

  “There you are,” she says, waving her sausage fingers in my direction. “This guy was standing on your porch in the freezing cold. Thought I’d let him in. That’s what I love about small towns—don’t you? Being neighborly. Couldn’t ever live in Atlanta or New York. Heck, even Savannah’s gotten too big for its britches. A cousin lives down there, says there’s more shootin’s than borrowin’ sugar these days.” She hooks a thumb in her belt loop and tugs back and forth.

  Jack and I reach the porch steps. “I’m going to go let Benny out,” he says, squeezing past Sammy and the floor man. He disappears into the house.

  “Well, where have you two been? I never see Mr. Smarty Vet during daylight. Thought he was a vampire when y’all first moved in.” She laughs at her own joke. Adjusts her pants again.

  “At the doctor,” I say, then turn to the floor guy. “I’m sorry I’m late. Did you get all the measurements you need for the estimate?”

  He opens his mouth to speak, but Sammy cuts him off. “The doctor?” Her eyes are bright and shiny. “Don’t tell me. Are you two . . . oh, I shouldn’t ask. It’s none of my business.” My mind is still foggy, which is why it takes me a second before I horrifically realize what she’s thinking.

  Don’t say it. Please don’t say it.

  She says it, her chubby cheeks swelling into a smile. “Is it a baby?”

  I freeze, just now realizing the other implication of the Lots of Cancer. Jack will not be buying ant farms. I will not be a mother.

  I slowly shake my head and the floor guy takes advantage of the silence. He says he’s measured all the rooms. He says he doesn’t often see original wood floors from the twenties. He says they’re beautiful. He says he can easily restore them to a high-gloss shine for $1,875, including materials and labor but not including sales tax. Then he asks if we’ve noticed the hump that runs lengthwise through the den and the kitchen.

  “May be the sign of a structural problem,” he says.

  I look at him.

  “You know? Something wrong with the foundation? I’d get that checked out. Don’t want the whole house to crumble down on you while you’re sleeping.” He chuckles.

  He holds out his business card.

  I take it.

  And then I start to cry.

  JACK DOESN’T COOK . The first time I spent the night with him, he offered to make me breakfast. The eggs were runny, the toast was burned, and the bacon was chewy. Perched on a stool at the granite island, fork in hand, I was poised to tell him that it looked delicious but I just wasn’t all that hungry. He bit into the black, crunchy bread and put it back down on his plate. Looked at me. “Waffle House?” I smiled, relieved, and quickly ticked off my mental list of what I had learned about Jack in the past twenty-four hours: great in bed. Not great in the kitchen.

  So that evening, when Jack says he’s going to make me dinner, I’m not surprised when he presents me with a piping-hot bowl of chicken noodle soup. Even though it’s not organic, and strictly against my diet, I keep a few cans in the back of the pantry for when I’m sick. I’m actually looking forward to the salty broth, rubbery chicken, and mushy noodles. It’s what I used to make for myself when I stayed home from school, feverish, and the nostalgia is like a warm hug when I need it most.

  Sitting on the sofa, staring at the blue TV screen but not really watching it, I stick my spoon into the bowl, only to find the texture is gelatinous—more like a porridge than a soup. Something in me snaps. I look up at Jack, who’s positioned by my side like a maître d’ at an expensive restaurant, ready to fulfill my every need. “You have a PhD, for Christ’s sake!” I explode. “How do you not know that you’re supposed to add water to canned soup?” Then I start crying again.

  It’s not my finest moment.

  That night, Jack holds me until he nods off, lightly snoring in my ear. When I’m sure he’s asleep, I scoot out of his arms and lie on my back staring at the ceiling fan. It looks like a starfish: my ceiling, the ocean floor.

  And I think about dying.

  In high school, I used to lie awake at night, overwhelmed by the notion. It wasn’t the idea of actually expiring that struck terror into my heart, it was what came after that—the not being. Not existing. The Big Expanse of Nothing in the Great Beyond. Panic sped my heart until I could feel it beating in my ears and I would have to sit up and turn on the light, rid my room of the thick darkness that made it so hard to breathe.

  My senior year, a couple of girls in my high school were killed in a drunk-driving accident. Wrapped their truck around an oak tree. I didn’t know either of them, only vaguely recognized their faces as ones that I had passed in the hall. But the quickness of their deaths overwhelmed me. One minute they were here, the next they were gone. A catastrophic magician’s trick.

  And now I wonder, is it better that way? The not knowing? What would they have done differently if someone had tapped them on their shoulder and said, “Yo
u’re going to die tomorrow.” Probably nothing, because who would believe that? Considering death is one thing when it’s intangible, an event in the far-off future. But when it’s breathing down your neck? Impossible.

  I have Lots of Cancer and I am going to die. I repeat it in my head, wondering when the panic will set in, the grief, the acceptance of my fate. But my heartbeat remains unhurried. And I know this is more than denial. It’s Darwinism. My survival instinct has been woken from its slumber. You’re on deck, my brain tells it. It steps up to the plate and roars.

  I cannot die.

  I will not die.

  Then I look over at Jack in the darkness. The comforter rises and falls in time with his slow breathing. And as much as I try to keep the thought at bay, push it out of my head as I stare at my sleeping husband, like a seasoned thief, it sneaks in anyway.

  But what if I do?

  six

  WEDNESDAY MORNING, MY to-do list has only three items:

  1 Research options

  2 Make appt. with structural engineer to come look at floor hump

  3 Find doctor for second opinion

  As I press my pen to the paper to underline task three, Jack walks into the kitchen. “I made an appointment at the Northeast Georgia Cancer Center for tomorrow. They can do all your tests and give us the results by the end of the day.”

  Instead of underlining, I cross it off.

  My to-do list has only two items.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asks, his brow fixed in what now seems like a permanent wrinkle of concern. His constant attention the past twenty-four hours has been sweet but is starting to feel like a too-tight turtleneck.

  “I’m fine,” I say, a little too sharply. I concentrate on softening my words. “Why don’t you go try to get some work done? I’m sure you have a lot to do, and I don’t want you to get behind.”