The last two words Nena Hutchins heard before everything blurred were “colon cancer.”
Dr. Van Zante kept talking, but Nena heard little of it, just bits and pieces, like scattered raindrops that occasionally land on your nose, catching your attention. She heard “MRI” and “ultrasound,” “surgery” and “chemotherapy.” But they were just isolated words, foreign almost. Her ears registered the sound of them, but to her brain they made no sense.
She looked at Jim, her husband, the man who had fought for her all those years ago and risked his life and won. The man who had never left her side because he’d promised he never would. His eyes were glassy and distant. He nodded in time to what Dr. Van Zante said, but he too appeared to be in some other place, a place where couples grew old together and enjoyed reasonably good health, where they traveled and spent lazy afternoons walking outside or sitting on the front porch, where they spoiled their grandchildren.
A place where people weren’t blindsided by cancer.
He held her hand, but she didn’t feel it. Her body was numb, paralyzed. She wanted to get up and run out of the room, but she couldn’t. It was as if she was glued fast to the seat of the chair.
Memories came clanging into her head, just images really. Her father sitting atop Warlord, his prized Arabian. Her mother on the front porch of the house, rocking on the bench swing as a summer evening breeze played in her hair. Rocking her baby girl, her youngest daughter, and singing her a lullaby—“Baby, my sweet, don’t you cry. Baby, my sweet, don’t you fear. Mommy will take care of you, I’m here.” Her children, grandchildren … how long had it been since she’d seen them? And the ranch? What would happen to it? She had managed to save what was left of it; what would happen now?
As these thoughts drifted in and out, that word, that awful word—cancer—clamored around like an old noisy cowbell, demanding her attention. She hated that word. It had taken her father from her and left her to run the ranch, a ranch that was dying a slow death of its own. It had taken her grandfather, the only man she genuinely identified with (except for Jim, of course). The word itself sounded like a death sentence, like Dr. Van Zante was not really telling her, “You have colon cancer,” but instead, “You’re going to die.”
The room began to spin then, as if it had an axis running right through the middle of it. Slowly at first it revolved in a perfect circle, then faster and faster and off-center. Her head suddenly felt as light as helium, and she thought she would vomit.
“Nena, honey, you okay?”
It was Jim, holding her with both arms. Had she fainted?
“That’s enough for now,” Dr. Van Zante said. He too was near her, his hand on her shoulder. “Nena, we’re going to fight this thing; we’re going to throw everything at it.” He handed her a paper cup of water.
She nodded and took a sip.
Jim helped her to her feet, but her legs were weak and the ground undulated beneath her.
“We’ll set things up for the MRI and surgeon,” Dr. Van Zante said. “Someone will call you with the appointment times.” He bent forward and looked Nena right in the eyes. “Nena, do you need a wheelchair?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m fine. Jim will help me.”
“Let me get Becky to get you a wheelchair.”
“No. I’m fine. I just need to get outside and get some air.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m fine. Jim can help me.”
But could he? Could he help her this time? It was cancer, after all, the same cancer that had taken her father and grandfather. A monster in its own right and one that had tasted blood—and not anyone’s blood, but her family blood.
She nearly blacked out again, and the next thing she remembered was sitting in the truck with the seat belt pulled tight against her chest. She hooked a thumb under it and pulled it away, allowing her rib cage to expand and draw in a deep breath. The window beside her was open. She inhaled the cool air, filling her lungs.
“Nena, it’ll be all right.” Jim hadn’t started the truck yet. His hand rested on hers, but she still couldn’t feel it.
It would be all right. How did he know? He didn’t, that was the plain truth. Those were the words everyone said, the words everyone would say to her. It’ll be all right.
Jim turned the key and the truck’s engine turned over and growled to life. “Did you hear what the doctor said?”
She shook her head again. “No.” Her throat felt like it was the size of a straw and the word just made it out.
“He’s going to set you up for an MRI to see if it has spread to any other organs. Then we’ll see a surgeon and talk about getting it out of you.”
It. He couldn’t bring himself to say the word: cancer.
“The surgeon will set us up with the oncologist,” Jim said.
“And then what?”
“Radiation, chemo.”
“More tests, prodding, poking, cutting.”
“Probably. But I’ll be right next to you the whole time. We’ll beat it, Nena. We will.”
“Maybe it’s not that bad,” she said. The words sounded so hopeless, like someone lying there with a compound fracture, their bone jutting through the skin, leg cocked at a sickening angle, saying maybe it wasn’t that bad, maybe it was just a sprain. “Maybe it’ll just be a matter of cutting out the tumor and being done with it.”
Jim looked straight ahead, out the windshield and across the parking lot. The doctor’s office was a couple miles outside of town, and the lot faced the Winthrop ranch and its acres and acres of rolling green hills dotted with the occasional Tree and sectioned off with white ranch rail fencing. “Maybe.”
Frantic Page 26