by Sarah Price
Chicago. Frances knew what that meant. For over a year his company had been trying to acquire the Brineman accounting firms in Chicago. Its acquisition would propel Nicholas’s company to a whole new level, making them the largest independent firm in the country. It was a big deal.
But it also meant that Nicholas would be traveling more than ever, and apparently that was starting next week. The timing of the acquisition couldn’t have been worse.
“Is that what you wanted to talk to me about later?” she asked.
He nodded. “Not only will I be traveling more, they’re even discussing setting up an apartment there.”
“What?” Andy dropped his fork and stared at his father.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be home on the weekends.” Nicholas gave his son a reassuring smile, one that was full of affection. “It will only be until everything’s finalized.”
“You’ll miss my football games!”
“Only during the week,” he reassured Andy. “And I wouldn’t miss your big Thanksgiving Day game for anything. You know you’re my number one priority.”
Frances glanced at her daughter, too aware that she was watching the exchange. If Andy was the number one priority, who was number two? And the even bigger question: Who was number three? As much as Carrie bemoaned social injustice and how no one was doing enough to help the downtrodden, poor, and uneducated, Frances often wondered how her daughter expected any of them to address those particular issues when they couldn’t confront the preferential treatment prevalent in their own home.
“Well,” Frances said slowly. “I’m sure your father will make time for both football and ballet when he’s home on the weekends.”
For an excruciating moment no one spoke. Andy stared at his plate, focusing on shoveling food into his mouth. His appetite seemed to be growing as fast as he was. Nicholas reached for his wineglass again, and Frances waited, hoping that someone would say something, anything, to ease the tension that had filled the room.
Taking advantage of the break in conversation, Carrie cleared her throat. “Mom, don’t forget about that field trip on Friday,” she said as she dished a second helping of mashed potatoes onto her plate.
“Field trip?”
With a heavy, exaggerated sigh, Carrie rolled her eyes and set down the serving dish next to her plate. The spoon slipped and fell onto the tablecloth, so this time Frances quickly reached over to pick it up and wipe away the food before the butter could stain the fabric.
“Honestly, Mom! Don’t tell me you forgot!”
Frances shut her eyes, just for a second. In truth, she had forgotten. So much had happened over the past weeks. And now, with chemotherapy, she would have to reconsider chaperoning the class trip to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
She looked at her daughter and was met with angry eyes.
“You always do this! You forget the most important things!”
“Carrie, that’s not fair—”
But Carrie cut her off. “How many times did you forget about Halloween? We had to scramble to get costumes at the last minute! I was always the laughingstock of the entire class!”
“Carrie.” That was all the warning that Nicholas gave, but it, too, went unheeded.
Frances felt as if the floor had fallen out beneath her feet. “That’s not true. You know I always help you with your costumes. You just can’t decide until the last minute.”
But her words fell on deaf ears. “I don’t get it!” Carrie shoved her plate away in disgust. “It’s not like you actually do anything. Isn’t that the point of being a stay-at-home mom? To take care of your kids? Well, you sure do everything for Dad!”
His fist came down on the table. “That’s enough, young lady!”
“Well, it’s true!”
He leaned forward and pointed a finger at her. “One more word and you’re going to your room!”
“That’s what I wanted in the first place.”
Frances cringed as Nicholas narrowed his eyes and glared at their daughter. “You don’t speak to your parents that way. Go on upstairs.”
“Gladly!” She shoved her chair back and stood up, but not before picking up her plate.
“Leave it! Just go upstairs.”
“I was taking it with me.”
“I said, ‘Leave it,’” he snapped at her. “And you’re grounded until next weekend.”
“What?” Carrie’s eyes grew wide as she looked back and forth from her mother to her father. “She forgets my field trip and I get punished?”
Frances grimaced. The one thing she hadn’t wanted had just happened: Carrie had ruined the dinner, and faster than usual. If only she could learn to control her tongue. Unfortunately, the older she became, the saucier her tone of voice and biting comments. Having a strong opinion without life experience to justify it could be a dangerous thing.
Nicholas shoved his plate forward and reached for his wine. This time, he drained it. Like oil and water, Carrie and Nicholas had clashed the moment she was born. The fantasy of Daddy’s Little Girl had disappeared when Carrie came home from the hospital and cried for hours on end. She was inconsolable. Unlike with Andy, Nicholas rarely lifted a finger to help with her midnight and early-morning feedings. While Nicholas wouldn’t leave Andy’s side when he was an infant, it was a constant struggle to get him to even hold his daughter, let alone help with bathing or diaper changes.
“That’s just great, Frances.” He stood up, shoving the chair backward. “Like I needed this tonight?” Abruptly, he crumpled his napkin before throwing it onto his chair. “I have work to do. I don’t need these distractions. When are you going to learn?”
Dumbfounded, Frances stared at him as he stormed out of the dining room, grabbed his briefcase, and headed into his office. The door slammed shut. She heard the lock turn and realized that, once again, she’d missed the opportunity to tell him. Her shoulders slumped forward as she stared at her half-eaten plate of food.
“Hey, Mom.”
Andy’s soft voice broke through her troubled thoughts. She looked at him, and he offered her a compassionate smile.
“I’ll help you clean up, OK?”
All she wanted was to be alone. She needed time to wrap her head around what had just happened. But the look on her son’s face touched her deeply. So rather than decline his offer, she merely nodded her head and knew that she would have plenty of time later, when she was alone in her room, to release the flood of tears that were building up inside her. And not just from tonight, or even the past few weeks, but from the past few years.
CHAPTER 10
Standing in front of the nurses’ station, Frances hesitated.
She couldn’t quite remember where she was supposed to go: to the gray chair or the nurses’ station? Everything that had been discussed with her during her tour had simply evaporated from her mind. She remembered nothing: not the sequence of events, not the name of the nurse who had spoken with her, not even the reason why she was standing there at that moment.
Oh, she knew it was because she had breast cancer. That was something she couldn’t forget. But why was she here? And on top of that, why was she alone?
She stared down the corridor along the wall of windows, taking in the lounge chairs, all of them gray and occupied, at least the ones that she could see from her vantage point. The people seated in them varied in age, gender, and ethnicity. Clearly, cancer did not discriminate. The main thing they all had in common, however, was that they each had a clear tube that ran from a machine into their chest or arm, and the machine was pumping toxic medicine into their bodies.
The second thing that they all had in common was the desire to live etched onto their faces. Even the more solemn expressions and haggard faces told a story of survival—or at least the will to still try.
Despite the different stories each face told, the patients had similar traits in common. Their skin appeared to be almost translucent, and their eyes were sunken into their faces, a
lready looking as if they were half-dead. Frances wondered why they were even there. Clearly, their chances of survival were limited at best. Was the minute gain of a few extra weeks or months worth the suffering that was so obvious? Why didn’t they just give up? More importantly, why didn’t she?
I’m here because of my family: Nicholas and Andy and Carrie.
Frances blinked her eyes and gave her head a little shake. At least the family she hoped they would one day become. Whether they knew it or not, they needed her. Even if they didn’t appreciate her, especially lately.
The realization made her take a deep breath and straighten her shoulders. She would not be one of those people in the gray chairs with ashen faces and parched lips, falling asleep during treatment with mouths hanging partially open and heads tilting to one side. She shook her head and did another scan of the room, hoping to see something more encouraging. But all she saw were wives or husbands who sat in a chair beside them, busily ignoring the patient while they tapped at a cell phone or read a magazine. Was that true love? If so, perhaps it was better that she had not forced Nicholas to find the time to listen to her.
“Excuse me,” Frances said, leaning over the counter. “I . . . uh . . . I’m here for my first treatment.”
The woman seated behind the desk looked up and smiled at her, her dark eyes peering over the top of her eyeglasses.
“You must be Frances!” She stood up and said, “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Frances raised an eyebrow as she met the woman’s gaze.
“You can just sign in here,” she said, pointing to a clipboard on the counter. “Eddie will be along in a moment to fetch you.” She gestured to a short brown-skinned man who was busy taking the blood pressure of another patient across the room. “He’ll take your vitals, and then you can have a seat in one of the reclining chairs.” She glanced around the room. “Hmm, we have a full house today, eh? I think there are some open chairs toward the far wall.”
“And then what?”
The woman gave her a compassionate smile. “We’ll come find you, Frances.”
Frances contemplated this. We’ll come find you. Like cancer had found her. Instead of commenting, she picked up the pen and scribbled her name on the sign-in sheet. Her eyes skimmed the list of names ahead of her: Marion Riley, James Johnson, Rita Sanders, Rod Bernard, Madeline Cooper, Steve Kapp. All people who, like Frances, were battling cancer. All of them were fighting for one reason or another. In that regard, they were all the same. Except not one of them was really like Frances. Not one of them was fighting to live for the same reasons.
Not. One. Of. Them.
“Mrs. Snyder?”
Frances jumped and turned around, startled by the man standing behind her.
“Oh!” Her hand pressed against her chest as she nodded her head. “That’s me.”
“Let’s get your temperature, blood pressure, and weight so we can get you situated, yes?” His accent was so thick that she almost didn’t understand what he’d said. He motioned with his hand for her to follow him around the nurses’ station and toward a scale in the back. “Shoes off, then step onto the scale, please.”
“Hundred and fifty pounds,” she said, not wanting to see the numbers on the scale, a reminder of the ten extra pounds she had wanted to lose but hadn’t. Just one more thing she hadn’t been able to achieve. Just one more reminder that she was not infallible, even though she tried.
Eddie stared at her as if he didn’t understand.
“I . . . I don’t need to get on the scale,” she explained, then nervously sat down. “I . . . I just weighed myself this morning.”
“I see.” He didn’t argue with her. “I’ll make a note of that, then.” He scribbled something on a white piece of paper and asked her to roll up her sleeve.
While he was taking her temperature and blood pressure, Frances glanced at the rooms that were curtained off from the rest of the center. Older patients who were bedridden lay there, white blankets covering their bodies. All of them wore simple caps on their heads. Frances assumed they had lost all their hair from the chemo.
Instinctively, she reached up and touched her newly shorn hair.
How long will it take?
“OK, Mrs. Snyder, you’re all set.” Eddie handed her a slip of white paper and gave her an encouraging smile. “Go find a chair,” he said.
When he motioned toward the row of patients receiving treatment, Frances nodded and, with the paper clutched in her hand, walked away from him. Each footstep felt heavy, and her heart began to pound. She felt as if she were floating above herself, watching as she walked past all of these people. She tried to place the names from the list to the faces, wondering if one of the men was Steve or Rod and the next woman Marion or Rita.
Just as she had been told, there were a few empty chairs toward the back of the room. Frances sighed, then selected one closest to the window. Setting her bag on the floor, she eased herself into the chair and shut her eyes.
Relax. Cancer, not chemotherapy, kills people.
Still, when she opened her eyes, she was struck, once again, with cancer’s commitment to equal opportunity selection.
A few of the patients looked at her, or perhaps they’d been watching her all along. Chemo Chick Walking, she’d thought in a lame attempt to ease her palpitating heart. Now, as Frances caught them watching her, she could see sympathy in their eyes. Perhaps a few of them felt as if they were the lucky ones because they’d lasted as long as they had, escaping the cancer diagnosis until they hit sixty or seventy. At forty-two, Frances was, without a doubt, the youngest patient in the room.
Should she feel pride in that distinction? She didn’t.
In the next chair, an older woman turned toward her. It was the same woman that she’d had a conversation with during her tour of the chemotherapy center. Somehow, she recalled that her name was Madeline. That was what the man had called her during Frances’s tour of the Chemo Cocktail Lounge. Her tired blue eyes gave Frances the once-over, as if she were sizing up her new neighbor. Right away, Frances knew that the woman was a busybody. It was all too obvious by the way her eyes inspected Frances’s handbag and shoes.
“First time?” Madeline said.
Frances responded with a muffled “Mmm-hmm” that she hoped would indicate her disinterest in socializing.
Apparently not. The woman gave her a quizzical look, the wrinkles under her eyes becoming even deeper. “First time and you’re alone?”
For a split second Frances contemplated moving to another chair. The last thing she wanted was to turn her chemotherapy treatment into a social event. Instead, she concentrated and tried to get into her zone, the place where she always sought refuge when things were too unpleasant to face. She had the ability to retreat into her mind, envision happier days, and remove herself from almost any situation. When she was younger and in church, she taught herself to appear to be actively listening while escaping to her zone. Now, if she could only find it today, the chemotherapy could begin and end without unnecessary stress on her mind. And then she could get home and begin her new normal.
Despite having booked her appointment for early morning, she knew she’d only have a short time to rest before the children returned home from school. And then it would be back to smiles and listening to stories about their day. For everyone else, it would be a normal day in the Snyder household. With Nicholas leaving for Chicago soon, she had decided to wait, yet again, to tell him until he returned. Telling him now would mean that he would have to cancel his trip. At this point, she just didn’t want to deal with the ramifications. Not right now. So, for today, there was no time for cancer to derail Frances’s plans. This was just one more event, a thing that she knew must be dealt with—no matter how unpleasant—a scheduled appointment that she could cross off her list the moment she walked out those double doors, heading into the crisp autumn sunshine.
A nurse in pink scrubs walked over to her. Unlike the other people that Frances had e
ncountered, she did not smile, nor did she greet her with a cheerful tone. Instead, she hastily clipped a clear bag of fluid to the pole behind Frances’s chair. She pressed a few buttons and then began removing sterilized items from a plastic container. After putting on purple latex gloves, she grabbed a plastic tube with a round end on it.
“Your port is on the right side?”
Frances nodded, her hand instinctively rising up to cover the area where her port had been surgically implanted. The skin was still sore, and she dreaded the thought of the needle being inserted into it.
“It’s not that bad,” the nurse said, patiently waiting for Frances to remove her hand. Then, the nurse pushed Frances’s blouse to the side and assessed her chest. “Ah, yes. There it is.” She began swabbing the area with antiseptic before she lifted the round object toward the port. “You ready?”
“For what?”
There was no time for the nurse to answer a routine question. She pressed the round piece that was connected to a needle into Frances’s chest and, breaking skin, snapped it into her port.
Frances grabbed the arms of the chair, her hands clawlike in their grasp, and winced at the pain. It was sharp and unexpected. The suddenness of the piercing felt invasive, spreading a new sense of reality through Frances.
“Sorry,” the nurse said as she ripped two pieces of medical tape to cover the needle. “Trust me. If I give you a warning, it’s worse.”
“I bet!” Frances wasn’t certain if she was grateful or irritated. Her skin stung and her heart began to race. This is happening. It’s really happening. For a moment everything felt surreal, and she prayed that she would wake up and all of this would be just one long nightmare. But then it dawned on her that she really had cancer.
“Now, when I flush the line, you might taste something metallic in your mouth,” the nurse said after drawing a tube of blood, which she promptly put aside. “Nothing I can do about that.”