“I don't think so.”
“I wish I were sure of that.” Liz laughed at him again. “I'm not so sure I'm exempt. … I think a mother is a mother is a mother. …”
“Never fear. I won't let you …” He patted Alexander's behind as he lay sleeping on his mother's chest after she had nursed him. “Don't worry, kid, if she shows any early signs, I'll beat the hell out of her for you.” But he bent to kiss her, as she sat comfortably in their bed, in an ice blue satin bed jacket his mother had brought her.
“She spoils me rotten, you know.”
“She should. You're her only daughter.” And she had given Liz the ring that Lou had given her when Bernie was born thirty-six years before. It was an emerald surrounded by small, perfect diamonds. And they had both been touched by the importance of the gesture.
They stayed for three weeks, at the Huntington again, and Ruth helped her with the baby every day while Jane was in school, and then in the afternoon she took Jane out for special treats and private adventures. It was a huge help to Liz, who had no one to help her and refused to let Bernie hire anyone. She wanted to take care of the baby herself, and she had always cleaned her own house and done her own cooking. “I couldn't stand having someone else do it for me.” And she was so adamant about it, that he let her. But he noticed that she wasn't really getting her strength back. And his mother said as much to him before she left for New York.
“I don't think she should nurse the baby. It takes too much out of her. She's just exhausted.” The doctor had warned her that that would happen, and Liz wasn't impressed when Bernie told her he thought she'd recover more quickly if she gave up nursing.
“You sound just like your mother.” She scowled at him from her bed. After four weeks, she was still in bed most of the day. “Nursing makes all the difference in the world to the baby. They get all the immunities they need …” She gave him the party line of the nursing enthusiasts, but he still wasn't convinced. His mother had worried him about how tired Liz was, and whether or not it was normal.
“Don't be so California.”
“Mind your own business.” She laughed at him and wouldn't hear of giving up nursing the baby. The only thing that really bothered her was that her hips still hurt, which surprised her.
He went to New York and Europe in May, after his parents left, and Liz was still too tired to go with him, and wouldn't consider weaning the baby. But he was upset when he found her just as tired when he got back, and even more so at Stinson Beach that summer. And he thought she was having trouble walking, but she wouldn't admit it to him or the doctor.
“I think you should go back to the doctor, Liz.” He was beginning to insist. Alexander was four months old, and a strapping baby with his father's green eyes, and his mother's golden curls. But Liz was looking pale and wan, even after two months at the beach, and the final straw came when she refused to go to the opening of the opera with him. She said it was too much trouble to go in and pick out a dress, and she didn't have time anyway. She had to start teaching again in September. But he knew just how exhausted she was when he heard her make arrangements with Tracy to sub for her part-time until she felt better.
“What was that all about? You won't go downtown to pick out a dress, and you won't go to Europe with me next month”—she had turned that down too even though he knew how much she had loved Paris when she went with him before—“and now you only want to work part-time. What the hell is going on?” He was frightened, and that night he called his father. “What do you think it is, Dad?”
“I don't know. Has she been to her doctor?”
“She won't go. She says it's normal for nursing mothers to be tired. But he's nearly five months old for chrissake, and she refuses to wean him.”
“She may have to. She might just be anemic.” It was a simple solution to the problem, and Bernie felt relieved after he had spoken to him but he insisted that she go to the doctor anyway and he was secretly beginning to wonder if she was pregnant.
Pretending to grumble all the way, she made an appointment the following week, but her obstetrician couldn't find anything wrong with her gynecologically She wasn't pregnant again at any rate, and he sent her to an internist for some simple tests. An EKG, some blood tests, an X ray, and whatever else he thought was indicated. She had an appointment with the internist at three o'clock in the afternoon, and Bernie was enormously relieved that she was doing it. He was leaving for Europe in a few weeks, and he wanted to know what was going on before he left, and if the doctors in San Francisco couldn't figure it out, he was going to take her to New York and leave her with his father, and see if he couldn't find someone to figure out what was wrong with her.
The internist who checked her out seemed to think she was all right. He did several ordinary tests. Her blood pressure was fine, the electrocardiogram looked good, her blood count was low, so he ran a few more elaborate tests, and when he listened to her chest, he suspected she might have a mild case of pleurisy.
“And that's probably what's been wearing you out.” He smiled. He was a tall Nordic man with large hands and a big voice and she felt comfortable with him. He sent her to a lab for a chest X ray and at five-thirty she got home, and kissed Bernie, who was reading Jane a story as they waited for her. She had left both children with a sitter that afternoon, which was rare for her.
“See …I'm fine … I told you so.”
“Then how come you're so tired?”
“Pleurisy. He sent me for a chest X ray just to be sure I don't have some weird disease, and other than that I'm great.”
“And too tired to go to Europe with me.” He still wasn't convinced. “What's this guy's name anyway?”
“Why?” She looked at him suspiciously. What was he going to do now? What else did he expect her to do?
“I want my father to check him out.”
“Oh, for chrissake …” The baby was crying to be nursed and she went to his room to pick him up while Bernie wrote the check for the babysitter. Alexander was fat and blond and green-eyed and beautiful and he squealed with delight the minute she approached and burrowed happily at her breast, patting her with one hand as she held him close to her. And later when she set him down to sleep again, she tiptoed out of his room, and found her husband standing there waiting for her. She smiled at him and touched his cheek, looking up at him. “Don't worry so much, sweetheart,” she whispered to him. “Everything is fine.”
He pulled her into his arms and held her tight. “That's how I want it to be.” Jane was playing in her room, the baby was asleep, and he looked down at his wife, but she looked too pale to him, and there were circles under her eyes that never went away anymore, and she was much, much too thin. He wanted to believe that everything was fine, but a gnawing fear inside him kept saying that it was not, and he held her for a long time, and then she went to cook dinner, and he played with Jane. And that night, as Liz slept he looked down at her fearfully. And when the baby woke at four o'clock, Bernie didn't wake her up, but made up one of the bottles with the supplement he took, and held the baby close to him.
Alexander was satisfied with the bottle and cooed happily in Bernie's arms as he smiled at the child, changed his diapers eventually, and then set him down again. He was becoming an expert at that sort of thing, and that morning it was Bernie who answered the phone when Dr. Johanssen called. Liz was still sleeping.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Fine, please.” The voice was not rude, but curt, and Bernie went to wake her up.
“It's for you.”
“Who is it?” She looked at him sleepily. It was nine o'clock, on Saturday morning.
“I don't know. He didn't say.” But he suspected it was the doctor, and it frightened him as Liz read the fear in his eyes.
“A man? For me?”
The caller identified himself as quickly to her and asked her to come in at ten o'clock. It was Dr. Johanssen.
“Is something wrong?” she asked him, glancing at her husband.
But the doctor took too long to answer. It couldn't be. She was tired, but not that tired. She glanced at Bernie involuntarily, and could have kicked herself.
“Can it wait?” But Bernie was shaking his head no.
“I don't think it should, Mrs. Fine. Why don't you and your husband come in to see me in a little while?” He sounded much too calm and it frightened her. She hung up the phone and tried to make light of it for Bernie's sake.
“Christ, he acts like I have syphilis.”
“What did he say it is?”
“He didn't say. He just said to come in an hour from now.”
“Okay, we will.” He looked terrified while trying to pretend that he was not, and he called Tracy for her while she got dressed. Tracy said she'd be over in half an hour. She'd been doing some gardening and she was a mess but she'd be happy to sit with the kids for an hour or two. She sounded as concerned as he felt, but she didn't ask any questions when she arrived. She was cheerful and business-like and sped them on their way.
They barely spoke at all on the way to the hospital where they were meeting the doctor, and they found his office there easily. He had two X rays clipped to a light box when they walked into the room, and he smiled at them, but the smile wasn't cheerful enough somehow, and suddenly, feeling a hand of terror at her throat, Liz wanted to run away and not hear what he had to say to them.
Bernie introduced himself and Dr. Johanssen asked them to sit down. He hesitated for only an instant, and then did not mince words with them. It was serious. Liz was terrified.
“Yesterday when I saw you, Mrs. Fine, I thought that you had pleurisy. A mild case perhaps. Today, I want to discuss it with you.” He swiveled in his chair and pointed the tip of his pen at two spots on her lungs. “I don't like the looks of these.” He was honest with her.
“What do they mean?” She could hardly catch her breath.
“I'm not sure. But I'd like to reconsider another symptom you mentioned yesterday. The pain in your hips.”
“What does that have to do with my lungs?”
“I think a bone scan may tell us more of what we want to know.” He explained the procedure to them, and he had already made arrangements for her at the hospital. It was a simple test, involving an injection of radioactive isotopes to show lesions in the skeleton.
“What do you think it is?” She was feeling panicked and confused, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know. But she had to.
“I'm not sure. The spots on your lungs may indicate a problem elsewhere in your system.”
She could barely think all the way to the hospital, absent-mindedly clutching Bernie's hand. All he wanted was to get away from her to call his father and there was no way he could leave her. He was with her when they administered the injection. She looked gray and terrified and it was only moderately painful. But it was terrifying as they sat and waited for the doctor to talk to them about his findings.
And his findings were profoundly depressing. They believed that Liz had osteosarcoma, cancer of the bone, and it had already metastasized to her lungs. It explained the pain she had had in her back and hips for the past year, and the frequent breathlessness. But all of it had been attributed to her pregnancy. And instead, she had cancer. A biopsy would have to confirm it, the doctors explained, as Liz and Bernie held hands tightly, and tears rolled down their cheeks. She was still wearing the green hospital gown, as Bernie reached out and took her into his arms, and held her with a feeling of desperation.
Chapter 17
“I don't give a damn! I won't!” She was almost hysterical.
“Listen to me!” He was shaking her, and they were both crying as they walked along. “I want you to come to New York with me …” He tried to fight for calm, for air …they had to be sensible …cancer didn't always have to mean the end …what the hell did this guy know anyway? …He himself had recommended them to four other specialists. A bone man, a lung man, a surgeon, and an oncologist. He recommended a biopsy, perhaps followed by surgery, and then radiation or chemotherapy, depending on the advice of the other doctors. He admitted that he himself knew too little about it.
“I won't have chemotherapy. It's horrible. Your hair falls out, I'm going to die …I'm going to die …” She was sobbing in his arms and he felt as though his guts were going to fall out. They both had to calm down. They had to.
“You're not going to die. We're going to fight this thing. Now calm down, dammit, and listen to me! We'll take the kids to New York when I go, and you can see the best men there.”
“What'll they do to me? I don't want chemotherapy.”
“Just listen to them. No one said you had to do that. This guy isn't sure what you need. For all you know, you have arthritis and he thinks it's cancer.” It would have been nice to believe that anyway.
But that wasn't what the lung man said, or the bone man. Or the surgeon. They wanted to do a biopsy. And when Bernie had his father call them, he said to go ahead. The doctors in New York would want that information anyway. And the biopsy told them that Johanssen was right. It was osteosarcoma. But the news was even worse than that. Given the nature of the cells they'd found, and the extent of it, metastasized in both lungs they discovered now, it made no sense to operate. They suggested brief and intense radiation, followed by chemotherapy as soon as possible. And Liz felt as though she had fallen into a nightmare and could not wake up. They had said nothing to Jane, except that Mommy wasn't feeling so great after the baby and they wanted to do some tests. They had no idea how to tell her what had been discovered.
Bernie sat up late at night talking to Liz after the biopsy came back, and she sat in her hospital bed with patches over both breasts where the biopsies had been done. And she had no choice now, she had to wean the baby. He was crying at home, and she was in the hospital, crying in Bernie's arms, trying to express the sorrow she felt, the guilt, the regret, and the terror.
“I feel … I feel as though I would poison him if I would nurse him now …isn't that terrible? Think of what I've been giving him all this time.”
He told her what they both knew anyway. “Cancer isn't contagious.”
“How do you know? How do you know I didn't catch it from someone on the street…some crazy goddamn germ that flew into me …like in the hospital when I had the baby …” She blew her nose and looked at him and neither of them could believe the gravity of the situation. It was something that happened to someone else, not to people like them, with a seven-year-old and a baby.
He was calling his father five times a day these days, and he already had everything lined up for her in New York. Bernie talked to him again the following morning before he went to pick her up at the hospital.
“They'll see her as soon as you get in.” His father sounded grave, and Ruth was crying beside him.
“Great.” Bernie tried to pretend to himself they'd have good news, but he was frightened. “Are they the best?”
“Yes, they are.” His father sounded very quiet. His heart was grieving for his only son and the girl he loved. “Bernie …this isn't going to be easy … I talked to Johanssen myself yesterday. It seems to be pretty well metastasized.” It was a word he hated. But it was new to Bernie. “Is she in pain?”
“No. She just feels very tired.”
“Give her our love.” She needed that. And their prayers. And when he hung up the phone, Bernie found Jane standing in the bedroom doorway.
“What's wrong with Mommy?”
“She's …she's just real tired, sweetheart. Like we told you yesterday. Having the baby just made her get pooped.” He smiled, choking on a lump in his throat the size of her elbow, but he put an arm around her anyway. “She'll be okay.”
“People don't go to the hospital because they're tired.”
“Sometimes they do.” He gave her a sunny smile, and a kiss on the tip of her nose. “Mommy's coming home today.” He took a breath. It was time to prepare her. “And next week we're all going to see Grandma and Grampa in Ne
w York. Won't that be fun?”
“Will Mommy go to the hospital again?” She knew too much. She'd been listening. He could feel it, but he couldn't face it.
“Maybe. Just for a day or two.”
“Why?” Her lip trembled and tears filled her eyes. “What does she have?” It was a plaintive wail, as though she knew, as though some spirit in the depths of her knew just how badly her mommy was ailing.
“We just have to love her very much,” Bernie said through his own tears as he held the child. The tears fell into his beard as he held her. “Very, very much, sweetheart….”
“I do.”
“I know you do. So do I.” She saw him crying and dried his eyes with her little hand. They felt like butterflies on his beard.
“You're a wonderful daddy.” It brought the tears back to his eyes again and he held her for a long, long time. It was good for both of them, and they had a special secret that afternoon when he picked her up. The secret of a special kind of closeness and love and courage. She was waiting in the car with a bouquet of pink sweetheart roses, and Liz clung to her all the way home, as she and Bernie told her all the funny things Alexander had done that morning. It was as though they both knew that they had to help her now, that they had to keep her alive with their love and their jokes and their funny stories. It was a bond that laced them even tighter than before, and it was an awesome burden.
Liz walked into the baby's room and Alexander woke up and let out a squeal of ecstasy when he saw her. His little legs shot out, and he waved his arms, and Liz picked him up and winced as he hit the spots where the biopsies were.
“Are you going to nurse him, Mommy?” Jane was standing in the doorway, watching her, the big blue eyes wide and worried.
“No.” Liz shook her head sadly. She still had the milk he wanted but she didn't dare feed him anymore, no matter what they said. “He's a big boy now. Aren't you, Alex?” She tried to fight back the tears that came anyway as she held him and turned her back to Jane so she wouldn't see them. Jane walked back to her room quietly and sat holding her doll, staring out the window.
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