by Jessica Pack
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you;
But when the leaves hang trembling
The wind is passing through.
The poem had always made her think of the line of poplar trees that separated the backyard from the ranch. When the wind blew, the leaves sounded like a river and shimmered like thin sheets of metal. Wind was invisible, but you knew it was there because of what it left behind.
“That’s the lump?”
Sienna nodded.
“Tender?”
“A little.”
“Hmm. Let me check the other side. Put your left arm over your head.”
Sienna closed her eyes and pictured the shimmery leaves of the poplar trees again, then added other images that gave her center. Acres of ranch land pulled tight against the horizon. Daddy riding bareback through the pastures. Tyson with his shirt off throwing bales of hay onto the trailer. She could see the memories but could not get lost in them the way she desperately wanted to.
The doctor finished examining the left breast and pulled the paper gown over that half of Sienna’s chest. She went back to the right side and moved more slowly for a second exam.
“Your mother had breast cancer?”
Inhale. “Yeah.”
“When?”
Sienna did the math in her head. Exhale. “Twenty-three years ago, I guess. I was two when she died.” The paperwork Sienna had filled out in the waiting area had asked about medical history, but not whether her mother’s breast cancer had led to Mom’s death. Sienna thought that an important oversight.
“Any other direct relatives with breast cancer? Aunt? Cousin? Grandmother?”
“I don’t think so.”
The doctor held her eyes and Sienna answered the unasked question. “I don’t know my mom’s side of the family. They’re in Canada. Mom was an only child.” So was Dad. So was Sienna. Sienna had determined she would be the generation to fill all six seats around a standard kitchen table. Each of the in vitro fertilizations had implanted three embryos and she’d fantasized that she might have to buy a bigger table. Each embryo had failed in one way or another. Were they to try again, which wasn’t likely, she and Tyson would have to start over.
“Do you know what stage your mom’s cancer was when she was diagnosed?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry for all these sensitive questions.” She was still palpating, pressing from angles Sienna had not known existed. “Do you know how long after diagnosis your mother passed away?”
“About six months.” Sienna had outlived Mom by two years now.
The centurion nurse holding her chart cleared her throat. “Her dad has had prostate cancer,” she said.
Sienna thought that sentence should have an exclamation point at the end for emphasis. Both of my parents have had cancer. My mother died from it.
“When was that, Sienna?” Dr. Sheffield asked.
“Last fall. They caught it early and Dad agreed to aggressive treatment. He’s doing pretty good.”
Dr. Sheffield nodded. “Did you notice in your self-exam that the lump moves?”
“Yeah.” Google said that was a bad sign.
“It’s small.”
“Yeah.” Google said that was a good sign.
The doctor pulled the right side of the drape closed, sat down on her rolling stool, and put out her hand for the chart. Paper charts—so twenty-first-century Wyoming.
“You can sit up, Sienna.”
Sienna sat up and pulled the paper gown tightly closed, trying not to feel violated. Not by the doctor—by the lump.
Dr. Sheffield looked up from the chart, her expression sympathetic. “Thursday is your birthday?”
Sienna shrugged. She’d been dreading her twenty-fifth birthday since before she’d found the lump because the day would end with a Mom letter—letters Mom had written on her death bed as a way to remain a part of the life of the daughter she would never see grown. Over the years the letters had become a reminder that every happy day couldn’t be all it should be because Sienna’s mother wasn’t a part of the day. Would this one also be full of advice about motherhood and enjoying the journey and treating her marriage as the most important relationship she would ever have?
On Sienna’s twenty-fourth birthday, a year ago, they had scheduled the third round of IVF and she’d still known what hope felt like. She’d added another half dozen items to her Amazon nursery wish list and imagined watching her freckle-faced daughter grow up the way her mother hadn’t.
This is not how my life was supposed to go, she wailed in her mind.
Deep breath.
Hold it together.
She had the whole drive back home to fall apart.
Photo: Erin Summerill Photography
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Josi S. Kilpack has been writing for twenty years and adopted the nom de plume of Jessica Pack to identify her first novel of women’s fiction. She and her husband, Lee, live in northern Utah and are the parents of four children. In addition to her writing, Josi enjoys reading, baking, cooking, and traveling.