Living With No Regrets

by Jayton Young

  Don’t let him sneak up on you!

  The phone on the bedside table rang; causing her to jump from the sudden noise of it. Picking up the receiver, Leigh heard the one voice that could and would lift her spirits with-out fail. As she talked with Randy, him excitedly recounting what he and Russell had been doing, she had to flip through the entries in the notebook to see when she’d introduced him to his father.

  Tears were silently falling down her cheeks. How was her memory so bad that she couldn’t even recall something like that? Leigh decided to cut the call short so she could read more and hopefully understand what was going on a little better. Though she wanted to talk to her son very badly, she was afraid she would say something wrong and worry him more than he should be.

  “Daddy shaid we’d be going to where you are thish afternoon when we done with the horshes.”

  “Really? When did he tell you that?” Leigh couldn’t imagine why she would agree to that when Randy had just reminded her that school was supposed to be starting that Monday.

  “Lasht night after he talked to you.” She heard someone speak in the background. “Daddy wantsh to talk to you. I love you Momma!”

  “I love you too, baby. Go ahead and put him on the phone.”

  Leigh’s heart picked up its pace when she heard his deep voice over the line. “Did we call too early?” he asked. She was surprised that there was no anger or derision in his voice. He sounded genuinely concerned, and Leigh looked to the book in her hand wondering, again, how much of how many things she was forgetting.

  “Not at all,” she said slowly. “I’ve been up for half an hour or so already.”

  “Has the doctor been in already?”

  “Not yet,” taking the phone from her ear she looked at the receiver as if it would answer her questions for her. Why was Russell talking to her? Civilly and with concern in his voice? He hated her didn’t he? “The nurse said he would be in a little later this morning.”

  Russell must have heard something in her voice, because he asked her if she had her journal and if she’d read it yet.

  “You know about that?”

  It was silent on the other side for a moment, and she wondered if he was still there, but he finally answered sounding slightly hesitant. “You stayed here the night before last with Randy. When you woke up, there was a little excitement until Randy called Marc to bring you the journal. You had forgotten it at your house.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You didn’t know where you were, how you’d gotten there, and you were hysterical until Randy heard you and came out of his room to calm you down.” His voice seemed to hitch, but Leigh figured it was just her imagination. “Randy explained, with Marc’s help, that you kept a journal of things you needed to remember, and that you took it everywhere with you and tried to make sure it would be where you’d see it when you first woke up.”

  She felt her cheeks fill with the heat of embarrassment and thought about what to say to that. She decided to just answer the initial question and just think on the rest of it.

  “I have only just started reading it,” she said. “Can I ask why you’re bringing Randy today, when he has to back and rested for the first day of school on Monday?”

  “Um,” Russell took a moment before answering, and Leigh knew that he was probably getting tired of their short conversation already. “He was upset about not being with you, so you said he could come today. We talked about getting the school’s permission to do his schooling half in/half out so that he could be close to you and Mary Leigh while y’all are getting whatever treatments they deem necessary.”

  “You think they’ll do that?”

  “I don’t think we’ll have any problem getting approval for it.”

  They talked for another moment before Russell told her they needed to finish what chores on the ranch that had to be done so they could make the drive to Charlotte. After hanging up, Leigh got back to reading the entries in the journal.

  There were a couple more entries about Bill. Out of all the things Leigh had forgotten, why couldn’t that whole thing be one of them? Why did the good Lord let that memory be one she couldn’t get rid of?

  Another thing she noticed was that Russell had only seemed to be mad at her that first day. In her entries she wrote of the accusations he had made when he had first met Randy out by the pond on her mother’s land. The next day she had noted the difference at the end.

  Russell seemed almost depressed while we were speaking. I know he will always wonder what actually happened that night, but I can’t bring myself to speak of it at all. Back then yes I blamed him for not trusting me. I realize now that I have held that grudge against him for all of this time, even against my own philosophy. I can preach about not regretting the past because it makes us who we are in the present, but I realize that I have not lived that way myself. Please forgive me, Lord. I will endeavor to do better from here on out. I am glad that it seemed to help Russell, though. Neither of us deserved what happened back then, but he has suffered for all of this time just as I have. A different suffering then I endured, but suffering none the less. Russell Kennedy has always, and will always hold my heart. My trust and faith are a different matter.

  She spent a few more minutes reading the rest of the journal when, as she is on the last page, her mother and Marc enter carrying her some breakfast from Hardee’s.

  “Oh, good!” Mary Leigh said cheerfully as she came in. “I was hoping you would be up by now, but Mark said you’d been sleeping later here recently.”

  Leigh threw Mark a scathing look. She didn’t believe that. For one, with her business, she would have put that in one of her journal entries, and for another, even if she was sleeping later than normal, there was no reason to tell her mother about it. All it would do would be to cause her more worry. Between her mom’s cancer relapse, and what Leigh was now being tested for, her mother had enough to worry about. She hadn’t even told them about the lump in her breast. Right then it was the least of all concerns.

  Leigh was just about to finish the last journal entry, when Dr. Hickmon walked into the room. She took a big breath and let it out slowly. With the way her life had been going lately, she was preparing herself for the worst.

  Chapter 9

  When the doctor came in, Mark backed off to the corner of the room trying to be unobtrusive. Mary Leigh sat in the recliner beside the bed after scooting it close enough to be able to hold Leigh’s hand. He and Mary Leigh had talked, on the way over that morning, and they both had the sense of foreboding that made them think the news was going to be bad. Of course there really isn’t a way for it to be anything but bad news. It was a brain tumor. They didn’t know if it was benign or malignant, but with the Hampton’s medical history of cancer – from both of Leigh’s parents’ families. A double whammy if there ever was one.

  Mark felt like Leigh had been hiding something ever since her appointment with Dr. Klein back in June. She wasn’t a good liar, so her nervousness every time someone tried to talk to her about her diagnosis was indicative of something else being wrong. The guilty look that crossed her features, when the doctor asked if she was alright discussing the results with him and Mary Leigh in the room, gave credence to that assumption.

  Leigh looked over at him, and then to her mother, before answering. “No, they’re family. It’s alright.”

  Dr. Hickmon took out what looked like x-rays from an oversized manila folder and walked over to the board that lit up so you could see them, then he turned back to Leigh. “Do you remember the scans that Dr. Klein did in June?”

  “Not really, no. Just vague impressions I got when I read my journal from that time.”

  “Alright. These are the scans he had delivered to me when he sent me your case.” Dr. Hickmon took a dry erase pen and circled something on the scan. Mark moved closer so he could see. “Here’s the tumor. Note the size of it and that it doesn’t seem to be effecting the brain much. Not putting pressure on it or a
nything. You can see in this one,” and he circled a different view frame. “Where there is a miniscule amount of space between the tumor and the brain tissue. That was a good thing in the fact that it wasn’t growing on the brain, just in the skull cavity. Are you with me, or do you have any questions?”

  Mark knew what the doctor was explaining, but wanted to make sure he got the full picture of how all of this was affecting Leigh, or would affect her later. “What exactly is the difference? She is still having headaches and memory loss.”

  “I’m about to show you the difference, and the headaches were from the foreign matter – the lump – that is there. By that point Ms. Hampton was having some memory loss, but just small matters like a forgotten conversation, yes?”

  “Yeah. That’s how I talked her into getting a check-up.” Mark answered slowly. He wanted to make sure he knew where the doc was heading with what he was saying.

  “And her memory has progressively gotten worse in the two months since?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Let me show you the scans from yesterday, and you’ll be able to see the difference.”

  Dr. Hickmon went to the nurse’s cabinet that had their fold down desk and computer screen in it. Mark grabbed Leigh’s and Mary Leigh’s hands because he knew something bad was coming. Worse than even they had thought. He also knew that both ladies were wound tight with nerves; Leigh’s hand actually shaking in his. Running his thumb over her knuckles, Mark tried to silently remind her that she would not go through anything alone. He would be there with her the whole way just as she had been for him and Charles.

  After a moment of the doctor typing away on the keyboard, he took the remote and changed the channel. More pictures of brain scans came up on the TV hanging on the wall. These scans were already marked and circled, and Mark could see the differences. Using the mouse on the computer, the doctor stated his observations.

  “First, I want you to note the difference in the size of the tumor,” he used the mouse arrow on the screen to point to the image in the middle of the nine square scans it showed. “In the two months since the first MRI, the tumor has more than tripled in size; which is a very rapid rate of growth.”

  Mark was shocked, and looking over at the women, he saw the same reaction in them. Pain dominated both of their expressions as they took in what was being said. He squeezed their hands and turned back to the TV. The image changed, just as he looked, and became a progression of the head; showing how the MRI broke the scan down into layers of Leigh’s head.

  “I want you to watch these two different views, and then I will slow it down and explain more. If you will notice, there is still that small space between the tumor and the actual brain.”

  Dr. Hickmon watched both scans with them. Something Mark noticed was that the space surrounding Leigh’s brain was no longer black like it had been in the scans on the wall from June. He glanced back and forth just to verify he was remembering right, which he was. In the new scans, instead of the black space, it was more of a cloudy look; not quite solid or white as the brain tissue and skull bone looked. He was going to ask about that, but the doctor had noticed him looking back and forth and asked him what he was thinking.

  When Mark stated his observations and questioned them, the doctor nodded. “That was one of the things I was hoping all of you would notice….Ms. Hampton, are you with me?”

  Mark looked back down at Leigh and noticed the glazed look to her eyes, and he knew she was having a hard time holding it together. She never liked to show her feelings on the outside. She was one to stew in them and master them before talking to anyone. He had thought he had broken her of that habit, but he guessed not. But then looking at Mary Leigh and seeing the tears falling freely down her cheeks, he understood that he was trying to hold it together for her mother.

  “Um…yeah I’m with you.” she answered. Her voice was thick with the emotion she was keeping in check.

  “Alright. That area you asked about, Mr. Lands, is fluid.” He turned back to the computer screen and moved the mouse around a bit and the TV screen went back to a certain frame of the scan that showed the fluid he was talking about, and then he walked over to the wall lamp and the scans that were hung there. “In these, you see the space is the minimal that everyone has between the brain and skull. Now looking at the new scan you see the noticeable difference. The fluid is building and putting pressure on your brain. On top of that,” he walked back to the computer and clicked the screen to another frame. “The tumor has grown to the point where it is now putting even more pressure on your brain.”

  “What does that mean?” Leigh asked in that same thick voice, and when Mark looked back at her, he saw that she no longer able to hold back the tears.

  “It means, Ms. Hampton, that what first came to me as a simple invasive procedure, is now very risky and complex. And it needs to be done as soon as possible, or the risks only increase, and the odds for a good outcome decrease.”

  Mark’s legs couldn’t hold him up anymore and he sat on the side of Leigh’s bed. The Hamptons were all he had. After his family disowning him when he came out of the closet and introduced them to his life partner, Charles, and then losing Charles to his battle of cancer, he had felt like he still had family with the Hamptons. He had a mother in Mary Leigh, who had always treated him as a son; he even called her Momma most of the time. His sister was also his best friend, Leigh, and his love for Randy was what he’d always thought a father should feel for his son, though his own father lacked in that area. The thought of how serious this was, was staggering. Mark didn’t even want to contemplate losing Leigh.

  Feeling a tug on both of his arms, Mark came out of his daze being pulled down into a family hug. Leigh, who had tears rolling down her own cheeks, was trying to comfort her mother who was sobbing like she had already lost her daughter. She had one arm around Mary Leigh, and was putting the other arm around his own neck. Mary Leigh’s arm around him completed the circle. It wasn’t until he rested his forehead against Leigh’s neck, that he finally noticed that his face was also wet with his own tears.

  Being the strong one of the bunch, as usual, Leigh finally started asking questions.

  “What exactly will you be doing?”

  “I will have to cut about a one and a half square inch section of your skull out and then will drain the fluid in the skull cavity, before removing the tumor. I should be able to replace the section of bone I take out, and it should heal like a broken bone does, but I will reinforce it anyway to prevent further complications.”

  As the doctor was talking, Mark and Mary Leigh both sat back up so they could pay attention to what was being said, since Leigh was likely to forget unless she wrote it down as soon as he left.

  “What were the risks you were talking about?” she asked.

  “I will want to keep you sedated in a coma for a couple of days at least. It will allow your brain to try and repair itself with the least amount of stress disrupting your recovery. I will keep constant monitoring on your brain functions and continued scans to keep track of the healing process.”

  “Will she be…normal when you bring her out if the coma? Will there be any damage or after affects?” Mary Leigh asked; speaking for the first time since the doctor had arrived.

  “To be honest, Mrs. Hampton, it is a miracle that your daughter is walking and talking right now. The pressure from the tumor should have her incapacitated right now, but the only symptoms she is displaying is the memory loss and the headaches that she is taking medication to control.” Dr. Hickmon had walked over to them while they were embracing each other and was standing at the end of the bed. “There is no way to know what effect the surgery will have because she is not reacting as she should be right now. Worst case scenario, is that Ms. Hampton will have permanent, either full or partial amnesia. She could wake to find that she remembers nothing, and that she has minor problems with her motor functions and speech. The part of the brain that the tumor is located at is mostl
y the memory center, but it edges on the areas that control certain speech and motor skills, so it is possible that damage will have been done even if she is showing no signs of it now. Those effects could be temporary or permanent depending on the level of damage. There just isn’t a way to know for certain.”

  They spoke with him for a while longer; each asking whatever questions came to mind, to make sure everything they could possibly think of was covered. Finally the doctor asked when she felt that they could move forward with the surgery.

  “My son and his father are coming her this afternoon,” she told him. “I would like to spend tonight and tomorrow with my son and family. I need to talk to him and explain what will be happening, and what is possible afterwards. Is Monday soon enough?”

  “I think waiting one more day would be alright. I will have the nurses set everything up and pass on the details. Would you like to check out of here and then come back in early Monday morning? Or do you just want to stay here?”

  “I’ll check out. We have a house here in Charlotte, so we’ll be fine, and I think it will be better for my son to be able to see me outside of here for a while before the surgery.”

  “Alright. I’ll sign the paperwork, put in the orders, and the nurse will bring it all in to you soon.”

  Mark helped Leigh get dressed and ready to go. They called Russell and told him that they would be at the new house, and told him how to get there. Within a couple of hours, they were headed out the door. There was a somberness to the air around them, but Leigh seemed determined to cheer them up any way she could. She talked to them about anything and everything except the elephant that was following them. They decided to spend the time that they were waiting for Russell and Randy, shopping for more stuff for her new house. Mark and Mary Leigh both seemed to know that she needed to ignore her problems for a while and just feel normal, so they helped in any way they could and had a superficially “fun” afternoon.