Regret Not a Moment

by Nicole McGehee

  “No,” he whispered huskily, “please stay.”

  Devon hesitated. “I—”

  “Please,” he said, but his tone was more one of command than supplication.

  Devon lifted her legs back into the bed and covered herself. Mason moved over so that he was on top of her, and she was surprised to find that he was once more ready to make love. Mason made use of Devon’s body with a fervor he had never before shown. For Devon, it was an oddly impersonal act, yet exciting for its very novelty. She found herself responding with a passion to match his own. They made love for a much longer time than usual, and when it was over, Mason pulled Devon to his side and wrapped his arms around her, clearly willing her to stay with him until morning. They knew it was the last time they would ever be together.

  CHAPTER 66

  “I CAN’T believe that’s our son graduating from college.” Jeremiah squeezed his wife Irma’s hand as Jesse’s name was called.

  Jesse, who had not known his direction upon entering college, had graduated in the top ten percent of his class, attending school even during the summer to cut his four-year program to three. And he would enter law school in the fall.

  “I can t believe the wedding’s just two weeks away,” Irma said, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. For Jesse had also found love. His fiancée, Celine Thibault, was the daughter of a Haitian immigrant, a baker who had taken his life savings of seven hundred dollars and transformed it into the second-largest chain of bakeries in the Washington area.

  “Inconvenient time they picked for a wedding,” Jeremiah teased. The Preakness was the following week, and a colt trained by Jeremiah would be the Willowbrook entry.

  Irma glared at him in mock anger. “You should be ashamed! Your only son graduates from college and gets married, all at the same time, and you can’t think of anything but that race!”

  “Well, you can’t think of anything but that wedding!” Jeremiah laughed and shook his head. He turned his eyes back to the stage and said, “Anyhow, I wish Jesse had been there for the Derby. That was a beautiful win!”

  Jesse had avoided Willowbrook for three years, and had avoided the Derby on the grounds that he was studying for final exams. It wasn’t that he was afraid to see Frankie again, he insisted to himself. He didn’t love her anymore. He loved Celine, wanted to spend his life with her. And he only rarely thought of Francesca. Almost never, in fact.

  Still, he felt apprehensive about seeing her the following week at the Preakness. But he had to be there for his father. So he would go. And keep Celine close by his side.

  “I’M ready to race and Kelly’s been ill. How can you think he’d be better than me?” Francesca stomped her booted foot on the old planks of the stable office.

  “We’ll have none of that, young lady!” said Devon firmly. “Jeremiah has said that Kelly will ride in the Preakness, so that’s the way it’s going to be.”

  “You’re the owner! You have something to say about this too!” cried Francesca.

  “As an owner I know it would he foolhardy to allow an apprentice to ride in the Preakness. You’ll he up against the most experienced jockeys in the country.”

  “I would have the same experience by now if anyone around here ever let me race!”

  “That’s not fair, Francesca,” Devon said calmly, “we’ve let you race. And you’ve done well.”

  “In races that don’t matter!” Francesca moaned.

  Devon gave her daughter a sharp look and, with a loud snap, closed the cover of the ledger book she had been studying. She carefully replaced her pencil in the top drawer of the oak desk. Only after she had risen from her seat, gone over to the mini-refrigerator, and taken out a Coke did she speak. Still standing, she turned to face her daughter at the opposite end of the little room. “Every race matters. Don’t ever let me hear you say otherwise. Every race means money spent and, hopefully, money earned. This is a business. A business I built. You do not presently have the judgment to make the business decisions necessary here. This… this caprice of yours—wanting to race in the Preakness—could cost me a fortune. It is absolutely out of the question.”

  “But I know the track at Pimlico as well as Kelly does—”

  “Francesca,” Devon said firmly, “that is my final word.”

  Francesca struggled to restrain her anger, knowing that a temper tantrum would only demonstrate her immaturity. Voice quiet, but shaking with rage, Francesca said, “When do you think I will be ready for an important race?”

  “Next year, I think.”

  Another year! Francesca had spent the last two years of her life working her way up to being a jockey. She rode King of Hearts every day during his training exercises. She opened her mouth to protest, but once again remembered to maintain an even tone. “Have you been watching me ride King of Hearts?”

  “I have.”

  “Do you have any criticism of the job I’ve been doing?”

  Devon was pleased to note the gradual shift in Francesca’s attitude. She was no longer demanding. She was behaving like a professional: inquiring about needed areas of improvement. The ambitious young woman’s dissatisfaction was still apparent, but her approach to it was far more mature than it had been just moments earlier.

  Devon sat down on the leather couch and invited Francesca to sit beside her. “You have the same problem as all good young jockeys. Your bravery is greater than your skill.”

  “You don’t think I have talent?” Francesca exclaimed, her stomach clenched at the possibility of such a verdict.

  “I didn’t say that,” Devon said soothingly. “Talent and skill are not the same thing. You have talent, you have bravery, and you have skill. Just not in equal measures. You need to polish your skills.” Devon reflected a moment before continuing. “Come to think of it, maybe there’s something we can do about that.”

  “What?” Francesca asked eagerly.

  “So far, you’ve been primarily involved in training our two-year-olds. That is, the focus has been on the horses themselves. I think the next step is for us to shift the focus to you as a jockey. Instead of working with Jeremiah, you should probably be working with Kelly. Work on improving yourself rather than the horses.”

  “When can I start?” Francesca asked excitedly.

  “That’s up to Kelly. I don’t want it to interfere with his training for the Preakness.”

  “He’s still in bed sick,” Francesca said, disappointed.

  Devon stood up from the couch and went back to the desk. “Well, the two of you work it out,” she said absentmindedly, “and I’ll let Jeremiah know.”

  “Do you think he’ll mind losing me as an exercise rider?”

  “Oh, you’ll still be doing that, too, my dear,” said Devon, with a grin, “you’ll just have to work twice as many hours from now on.”

  CHAPTER 67

  DEVON felt threatened the moment she saw the soot-covered brick building that housed Johns Hopkins University Hospital. It was forbidding, impersonal, and dark. And Dr. George Donatello’s office was no better. Painted an institutional green, the tiny room had obviously been designed for function rather than human warmth. Dr. Donatello was seated behind a scarred oak desk that took up most of the space in the room. Devon occupied an uncomfortable wooden armchair squeezed into the narrow aisle between the desk and a set of battered metal file cabinets. But at this moment her surroundings mattered little. Her entire being focused on Dr. Donatello’s words.

  "The lump is definitely suspicious,” he was saying, his manner one of professional detachment, “but I’m afraid that the only way to give you an accurate diagnosis is with a biopsy, Mrs. Somerset-Smith. We can check you into the hospital tomorrow and perform the surgery the day after.”

  Devon’s eyes, full of apprehension, met those of the smooth young surgeon who had just examined the small knot in her left breast. Her family doctor had referred her to him. Had called him “the best man in the region.” Why did she need the best man in the region?


  Because there was something ghastly and foreign invading her body. Something that didn’t belong there. She hated to touch it, hated even to look at her breasts nowadays. She just wanted the hard little lump gone. At first, she had awakened each morning and felt the spot, hoping that it would miraculously be gone. But it was still there. The same. Or was it just a little bigger? Was it growing? She had to know. And ultimately, the horrible anxiety had driven her here, to Dr. Donatello.

  Now, practically speechless with fear, she was able to utter no more than the word, “Tomorrow?”

  “I believe it’s advisable,” said Dr. Donatello formally.

  Devon stared numbly out the grimy window behind the doctor’s desk. Despite the dirty panes, the bright spring sunshine poured in through the little opening. Yet Devon was shivering. This is a nightmare, she thought. She had the feeling she was being pushed through a dark tunnel.

  Finally, Devon spoke the words that were spinning in her head. “So you must think it’s…” She couldn’t complete the sentence, holding to the ancient, irrational superstition that to avoid the mention of cancer was somehow to avoid the disease itself. Cancer, always spoken of in whispers. Oh God! Was that what was in store for her? She stared at the doctor, unconsciously shaking her head no, urging him to deny her worst fears.

  The doctor did not answer her directly. He looked up from the clipboard he was studying, seeming to focus on her as a human being for the first time. This time he spoke more gently. “Do you have any family with you today?”

  The words, and what they implied, were like a physical blow to Devon. For a moment she forgot to breathe. The color drained from her face. Struggling to maintain her equilibrium, she replied in a trembling voice, “I came alone.”

  Devon had been too afraid to discuss her problem with anyone. If she told Francesca and Laurel, they would interrogate her endlessly, push her toward action, urge decisions on her. She needed time to adjust to the possibility that the terrible disease had invaded her body. A disease of withering, wasting death. Slow and filled with excruciating pain. Was there enough time in all eternity to adjust to such a blow?

  The voice of Dr. Donatello invaded her thoughts. “Let me explain to you the procedure.” Devon nodded dumbly, desperate to find some shred of reassurance in his words. “Our first step is to biopsy the lesion. We can’t be sure it’s malignant until we’ve done that. We take a frozen section to the pathology laboratory while you’re still under anesthesia. Also a sampling of your lymph nodes. If there is a malignancy, we excise the lesion and perhaps the surrounding musculature and tissue. It depends on the extent of nodal involvement. If there are no lymph nodes involved, we would only remove the breast, not the surrounding muscle.”

  “You can’t mean you’d remove my breast the day after tomorrow?” Devon cried, fighting to control the fuzzy sensation of faintness that was making the room spin around her.

  “It’s standard procedure when we discover a malignancy, Mrs. Somerset-Smith. That way, you only undergo one operation, one anesthesis, one recovery. Provided, of course, there are no complications.”

  Now panic swept over Devon. What was this cool young man saying? Complications? Standard procedure? That she could wake up with her breast gone? Devon clamped her eyelids shut. She had to suppress the urge to run screaming from Dr. Donatello’s office. Unable to respond to the doctor, Devon slumped forward, one elbow on the edge of the doctor’s desk supporting her head.

  “Mrs. Somerset-Smith.” Dr. Donatello’s voice came to her, distant and tinny. “Perhaps you don’t realize that many people who have had cancer go on to live normal lives. That’s why I recommend quick action in cases like yours.”

  Devon could not speak. Her body seemed to be made of rubber—weak and wobbly. She did not have the strength to do other than remain as she was, her face hidden in her hand, as though the darkness could provide an escape from reality.

  The doctor was accustomed to reactions like Devon’s. People did not understand that great strides had been made in cancer care. He leaned forward and spoke slowly and deliberately, offering what he thought to be encouragement. “When the breast is removed early enough, and with proper follow-up care, we have had very positive results.”

  There was a moment of silence as the doctor’s words penetrated the mind-numbing fear that gripped Devon’s consciousness. Slowly, she lifted her head and stared at him. “What… what do you mean, ‘positive results’?” she stammered.

  “I mean no recurrence of the disease.”

  Impossible, thought Devon. Cancer was a death warrant. In a voice filled with bitter disbelief she said, “But everyone I’ve ever known with cancer has died!”

  “That isn’t so any longer,” Dr. Donatello said firmly. “If the disease is found in the early stages, then I think you have a good chance to make a full recovery.”

  Devon straightened in her chair, so that her eyes were level with the doctor’s. She searched his face for the truth, wondering if what he said was possible. “You mean,” she asked incredulously, “I won’t have cancer anymore?”

  He gave her a half smile that did not touch his eyes, then said carefully, “Well, sometimes the disease recurs. Sometimes not for five or ten years. But people quite often go on to live a normal lifetime.”

  “Normal…” Devon tried to digest the meaning of Dr. Donatello’s words. “Do you mean,” she asked, her voice tremulous with hope, “that people are able to do whatever they did before?”

  “Yes, for the most part.”

  Devon stared at the doctor as she tried to organize her thoughts. She was coming to the realization that the lump in her breast would not necessarily kill her—if she entrusted herself to this man. Yet for all this, there was another aspect that she found shattering.

  “There’s something I don’t understand,” she began, reflexively folding her arms across her chest as though to defend herself from an assault, “if I only have a lump, why does the whole breast have to be removed?”

  Dr. Donatello seemed interested in the question. He tapped the eraser of his pencil on his desk as he explained, “There are, I’ll admit, some advocates of removing only the lump in cases where there is no involvement of surrounding lymph nodes. But it’s a maverick outlook. In another decade or so, we may have studies indicating that a limited procedure results in a survival rate comparable to mastectomy. But for now, accepted practice is to remove the entire breast as a precaution against further spread of the disease.”

  Devon’s face clouded with frustration. He was talking about her body but she didn’t understand what he was saying! “What are these lymph nodes you keep talking about, for God’s sake?”

  “Under your arm, throughout your body, really, lymph nodes act as the filters for infections and other so-called invasions of your immune system,” the doctor said calmly.

  “But you’ll remove the ones under my arm if you find… cancer in them?” Devon’s voice rose again in alarm. “Then what will happen if I get a different disease? How will I fight it?”

  “It’s true that the risk of infection on that side of the torso will be greater,” the doctor admitted. “But we must balance that risk against the greater risk of cancer.” The doctor looked at his watch and stood up. “So that is my recommendation, Mrs. Somerset-Smith. If you’d like a second opinion, I can give you the name of a good man.”

  Why did doctors always say “a good man” when referring to one another, Devon wondered bitterly. Dr. Donatello seemed like an automaton, not a “good man.” Still, if her family doctor believed that Dr. Donatello was the best, why delay? As it was, she was living almost every minute in fear and suspense. At least if she knew the truth, she could move forward with a remedy. And there was a remedy—Dr. Donatello had said so.

  “No,” Devon said finally, taking a deep breath for courage. “Let’s go with the schedule you suggested. I just have one question: If my lymph nodes are all right, then am I going to live?”

  For a brief mome
nt, something like sympathy seemed to touch Dr. Donatello’s features. And Devon found that expression more frightening than anything that had preceded it. “I don’t know,” he said softly.

  Devon felt a sickening thud at the pit of her stomach. But she wasn’t ready to die! She was only fifty-seven years old! There were so many things she wanted to do yet!

  “Mrs. Somerset-Smith, will you be all right?” the doctor asked.

  Devon looked up and met his eyes. “That’s what I just asked you,” she replied wearily. Oh, she felt drained. Drained from the tension that made every muscle tight, every nerve raw.

  “Mrs. Somerset-Smith, if it’s any comfort, I have performed this operation a multitude of times. If we find that the lump is benign, or that the disease is contained within the lesion itself, then there is every likelihood that that will be the end of it. Or we may recommend radiation therapy. We’ll know more after the operation.”

  “But if it is… malignant… you’ll still remove the breast?” Devon asked, hoping irrationally that this time his answer would be different. But it wasn’t.

  “If there is a malignancy, yes.”

  “It’s crazy, I know, but I never thought about Mother dying,” Francesca sobbed into her grandmother’s orange blossom-scented pillows. “She always seemed so strong. She seemed immortal.”

  “Parents usually seem that way to their children,” said Laurel. She sat on the bed beside Francesca where the girl lay facedown on the down-filled comforter. Francesca felt her grandmother’s hand gently smoothing her curls, and the touch of the old woman quieted her tears somewhat. It was twilight, and Devon had just returned from Johns Hopkins to inform them of her news. With what had been for her an almost superhuman act of self-discipline, Francesca had suppressed her tears of panic until her mother had excused herself, professing a desire to be alone.