by Ka Hancock
Owen Peters and a woman, probably a nurse, were suddenly there, talking loud as I inhaled the biting stench of ammonia. They helped me into a wheelchair and the nurse spoke sweetly to me. “Put your head down, hon, and take some deep breaths. Are you feeling better? Are you okay?”
“I think so. I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened.”
“No problem. Here, you’re shaking.” She covered me with a warm blanket, and I pulled it close around me. Owen then handed me a consent form. “Um, I’m pregnant and don’t want any medication that could hurt my baby,” I said as I took the clipboard.
“I understand, ma’am,” he said without looking at me. As he wheeled me into Operating Room One, the robotic PA provided me with an impressive explanation of the local anesthesia that would numb my left breast. He was a font of information.
I was transferred to an operating table, then covered with a drape, except for the breast in question. I imagined the aerial view of me lying there. I imagined how I must seem, completely reduced to just that breast, nothing more. Through a fog of anxiety, I gave Priscilla’s telephone number to whoever might be listening and asked them to call my sister.
As I lay there helpless to do anything else, I imagined crouching over my baby, pulling her to me, protecting her with the meager shield of my body. I was so lost in this image that Dr. Matthews had to address me twice to tell me it was over. I was then suddenly aware of the feeling of heaviness on my chest. Ice. I was quickly wheeled into another room and left alone. I closed my eyes.
“Are you in any pain, honey?” I looked into the warm eyes of a woman I assumed was a nurse and shook my head.
“Can you sit up? I have some juice for you.” She helped me, telling me to take deep breaths so I wouldn’t faint again. “When’s the last time you had anything to eat, sweetie? Are you hungry?”
The juice tasted wonderful. “This is fine. Thank you.”
“Well, some crackers then.” She placed some saltines in my hand. “Now, do you have any questions for me?”
“Where do I start?”
The woman shook her head. “You poor thing. I can just imagine your day.” She sat down and smiled. Her name tag said GAIL and she was probably about Charlotte’s age. She was blond and top-heavy in her blue scrubs. “I understand your doctor sent you over with some slides, and the next thing you knew, we were doing a biopsy.”
“That’s about it. Did they find anything?”
Gail shook her head. “Dr. Matthews performed two biopsies, a fine-needle and a core-needle aspirate on a small area at the back of your breast. He collected several hundred cells and is running some tests. He’ll be in touch with your doctor.”
“Why two?”
“He’s just very thorough. And he must really owe your doctor a favor to have seen you on such short notice. You’re in very good hands.”
“Well, that’s good to know.”
“Now, his PA is something else. We think he runs on batteries.” I chuckled, and Gail helped me back into my blouse. “Thank you,” I said, amazed at the power this woman had to calm my fearful heart. “I mean it. Thank you.”
“You eat some more of these.” She filled my hand with crackers. “And if you feel okay in ten minutes, I’ll let you leave.”
As I sat there in my curtained enclosure sipping my juice, I heard a commotion in the hall. Priscilla was whisper-shouting my name. Apparently she was searching behind every curtain for me. Finally she found mine.
“Lucy, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Priss.”
“What are you doing here? Tell me what happened.”
“Charlotte felt something. She saw a shadow on the ultrasound and sent me over. But it’s probably just because I’m pregnant. It’s probably nothing.” I heard my own voice crack and felt Charlotte’s promise break. I stared at my sister, lip quivering, tears stinging my eyes, feeling foolish and exposed.
Priscilla put her arms around me. “It’s okay, Lu. I’m here.”
It felt so good to hand my turmoil over to my sister; let her hold it for just a minute while I pulled myself together. Priss stroked my hair as I pressed my face into her silk blouse and tried not to cry. I was scared and tired, but better now that she was here. After a few deep breaths I convinced her I was okay. Priscilla smoothed my shirt and combed through my hair with her long fingers.
“Lucy, you’re a mess.”
“I know, and I’ve got to get it together before I see Mickey.”
Priscilla groaned, “Oh, of course. Where is he? Is he here?”
“No, he doesn’t know anything about this.”
“Well, that’s just great, Lucy. So what now—you’ll pretend life is fine? Is this the next big secret Mickey won’t be able to handle?”
“What are you talking about? Mickey’s not here because I didn’t want to worry him.”
“I’ll never understand. Never. What’s the point of—”
“Priscilla, please. Don’t start.”
She shook her head. “And you’re pregnant. Lucy, what are you thinking?”
Now I was mad at myself for calling her in the first place. “I’m thinking you should be quiet now and take me to get something to eat.”
Priscilla has always punctuated her harsher statements with body language—a disapproving slump, lengthy looks of reproach, eye-rolling. But this time an alien softness transformed her face and she took my hand and kissed it. “I’m sorry, honey. You don’t need a lecture right now. I’m just so glad you called me.”
We drove separately to the Olive Garden down the street from the hospital. I was hungry, but suddenly the smell of Italian food turned my stomach. I ordered soup and a breadstick and sipped my water as Priscilla flirted with our waiter. She flashed her gleaming caps and rubbed her diamond-studded earlobe. I kicked her under the table, and she glared at me.
When he came back with our food a few minutes later, clearly expecting a reprise, I felt bad for him because Priscilla was checking the messages on her BlackBerry. When she didn’t even acknowledge him, he walked away, looking wounded.
After a lengthy monologue about Priscilla’s incompetent assistant who’d left her four messages, she threw her phone in her purse and looked back at me.
“Are you scared, Lu?”
“A little. But I’m just going to assume everything’s all right until Charlotte tells me it’s not.”
Priscilla looked pointedly at me and shook her head. “You’ve been here before, Lu. So have I. We both know the empty sound when they say it’s probably nothing. It stops your heart.”
Her blunt appraisal felt like a kick in the stomach and I had to work not to cry. “I’m trying not to be afraid, Priss. Not now. I’m pregnant, and I don’t want to be scared!”
Priscilla narrowed her eyes at me. “What are you going to tell Mickey?”
I looked at my untouched soup. “Hopefully nothing. Hopefully I won’t have to tell him anything.”
My sister looked like she had something to say, but she swallowed it and reached for my hand. She stared hard at me through her dark-green eyes with an expression that could be intimidating. It wasn’t working. Especially when tenderness crept into her icy glare. “What have you been thinking about?” she said softly.
“To be honest, mostly Mom. All the way here, I just kept thinking how hard she tried to stay with us. How hard it was for her to leave her daughters.”
“I sometimes still blame her.”
I sighed. “Why do you do that to yourself, Priss? You’ve been mad at Mom your whole life. She’s been dead for sixteen years. Let it go already!”
“I just don’t understand her. Why would a woman have kids only to leave them this legacy? What she’s done to us, in my opinion, is almost unforgivable. Look at our lives. Look what we have to go through.”
“And the alternative, Priscilla?”
“I know. I know. But she knew she came from a long line of cancer and still chose to have three daughters.”
; I shook my head. “I swear, sometimes I think you are mentally ill.”
“That’s not funny. But if it were true, I could probably attribute that to Mom, too.”
“Well, at least you’re luckier than most menopausal women,” I snarked. “At least you can identify the exact person responsible for your misery. But it’s cruel to blame Mom, and you are mentally ill if you can’t see that.”
“You might be right. But at this moment—this moment that none of us ever wanted to revisit—I just need to blame something . . . someone. Cut me some slack, Lucy.”
I slumped. Being loved by my sister took a lot out of me. Priss paid our bill and took my hand as we walked outside where we were parked next to each other. When we got to my car, Priscilla turned to me and squeezed my fingers. “So, Lucy, tell me the truth. Have you seen your friend lately? Have you seen her today?”
“No.” I shook my head.
“No pretty specter? You promise me?”
“I promise.”
Priscilla pulled me close. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” She walked over to her car and shouted at me above the roof of her Beemer, “By the way, you little snot, I am not menopausal.”
I waved at my sister and we parted ways at the intersection. The drive back to Brinley took about forty-five minutes, and I drove straight to Partners. I just wanted to see Mickey, bask for a minute in his lazy smile. But when I walked into the club, I could see he was having a bad time of his own. By the look on his face, I realized I must have looked as bad as Priscilla said I did. “What’s the matter, Lucy? Are you sick?” he asked, his voice gravelly with irritation.
His tone caught me off guard. “Yeah, maybe. I think I’m getting a cold on top of all my regular complaints,” I said hesitantly, placing his big hand on my belly. “But other than that, we’re fine.” I stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the chin. “Just came by to see you and give you a kiss.”
He settled down and gave me a half grin as he bent toward me. “Why don’t you stick around, and we’ll have some dinner. It looks like I’m going to be here until closing. One of the bartenders called in sick and we’re short an act tonight, so I’m filling in.”
“Really? You don’t look like you’ve got much comedy in you right now.” When more annoyance surfaced in his eyes, I cut my losses. “Where’s Jared?”
“On the phone with the damn faking-sick bartender.”
Mickey’s looking ornery and overwhelmed gave me the perfect excuse not to tell him where I’d been. I’d tell him tomorrow when Charlotte called with the good news. “I guess I’ll just see you when you get home. Are you good?”
He nodded. “I’m okay. I’m sorry to grouse. I just need to figure this out.”
“It’s okay.” I kissed my big, ornery husband again and headed home to put this day behind me. I took a bath, gingerly sponging around my tender breast, and went to bed with a bag of ice. If I was awake when Mickey got home, maybe I’d tell him about it. But probably not. I fell into my pillows hoping to drift quickly to sleep, but something was nagging me, something annoying and indistinct, but familiar. I ignored it until I couldn’t stand it another minute, then I got up and turned the bathroom light on.
I’d been avoiding it since before Priscilla had asked. Now I stood looking at myself in the mirror, scrutinizing all the space around my silhouette. It was the mirror I had watched my father shave in every morning. It was the mirror my mother’s face had grown pale and gaunt in. Now it was the mirror that would warn me of what was ahead, so I looked hard for the messenger.
I searched, not wanting to see her. Not now, not when the world was lovely and my future held a little girl. And I didn’t see her—I hadn’t even seen her when I was sick before. But for the first time since I’d met Death all those years ago, I had the distinct feeling she was en route. That knowledge settled on me like a cool night on a garden. And the longer I stood there, the stronger the feeling grew. I ran a hand over my face, where a cold sweat had appeared, and told myself I was being paranoid.
I turned the light off and got back into bed where I rubbed my swollen belly. I was imagining things. Surely, I was imagining. But unbidden, warm tears dripped down my temples and into my hair. It took everything I had to tamp down the foreboding and push myself above it. I finally fell asleep in a much softer place, a place that smelled like a baby right after her bath. A place where the background music was a little girl’s giggle.
fifteen
AUGUST 5, 2011, 8:00 A.M.
Lamictal is used in some to lengthen the stable time between bipolar episodes, so I was happy it seemed to be working. But I still felt a little brittle, and for the past few nights I’d gotten by on fewer hours of sleep. I’d have to watch that. Last night I crashed on the couch a little after two, and by five I was in the shower. But I felt great, focused, tracking, my thoughts lined up in a nice straight line with no random ideas jumping ahead or sideways, which was good. Lucy was still asleep and I was ready for the day, but since it was too early to go to work, I pulled out my laptop and the newspapers I’d been saving. One of the things that helps ground me is watching my investments. I like to follow the stock market, the Dow Jones, the NASDAQ. I like to graph the activity; I like straight red lines tracking numbers across a perfectly white piece of paper. To me, it represents order in economic disorder. Lucy worries a little when I start doing this, but it’s just an interest, not necessarily the precursor she thinks it is.
When I woke up, I realized Mickey had already showered and gone downstairs and I wondered what time he’d gotten home. On the surface his getting up early may not sound like a bad thing, but when Mickey has a diminished need for sleep, it’s a rather large red flag. I threw back the covers and rubbed my stiff eyes. In the bathroom, I splashed cold water over my face and pushed thoughts of unseemly visitors away. More pressing issues were at hand than what may, or may not, have happened last night in this bathroom. For instance, I was seriously nauseated.
After I retched absolutely nothing into the toilet and brushed my teeth, I went downstairs. Mickey was in the kitchen, the newspaper spread out in front of him, MSNBC mumbling from the little TV on the counter. I kissed his head, and he looked up at me sheepishly. “I got up early.”
“I know.”
He stood up, knocking a red pen onto the floor. “Lucy, you don’t look good.”
I reached for the oyster crackers and took a handful. “I’ll be fine in a minute.”
Mickey put his arms around me, and I just wanted to crawl into that hug and never come out. “Are you okay, Lu?”
“I’m not too keen on this morning sickness, but other than that . . .”
Mickey held me at arm’s length and studied me. “Lucy, I’m sorry about last night. I was mad at the bartender and I took it out on you.”
“You did?”
“I thought I did. And I thought you were still mad. Is it this? Are you upset about this?” he said, referring to the current props at hand: some graph paper, a red Sharpie, and a big stack of newspapers. “It’s nothing to worry about, Lu, I was just curious,” he insisted. “It’s been a while since I checked on things.”
I nodded as I walked out of his grasp and put some water on to boil. “Don’t dance with me, Michael. Should I be worried?”
“Absolutely not.” He returned to the project spread over the table.
When he was spinning, his “curiosity” about the economy had to be satisfied immediately, and his mood was dependent upon the numbers. When the indexes were up, his excitement could take over all reason. If they were falling, fear and catastrophe could do the same thing. Some days he checked the Dow Jones Industrial more than a hundred times.
It was too soon to be alarmed about this, I told myself, even as I wondered if Mickey was taking his medications. I shot for nonchalant when I asked him, steeling myself for the most telling sign of a problem: an eruption. But Mickey just looked at me and grinned.
“I’m right on, Lu. And I’m having my levels checked th
is afternoon.” When I didn’t respond outwardly, he got up and tousled my hair on his way to the fridge. “Don’t pretend you’re not relieved,” he chuckled. He knew me so well. I was relieved that since his discharge from Edgemont he’d pretty much maintained his gains. Still, changes in sleep usually forewarned of bad things to come, so I made a mental note to pay closer attention.
Mickey has always had compulsions to do strange things—feverishly tracking the seven-day weather forecasts across the nation or the price of gas and airline tickets. Sometimes he counted things—the blades of grass stuck on his shoes after he mowed the lawn, the number of commercials in a half-hour sitcom, red cars on the road. As many times as he’s appeared to escalate, he’s de-escalated, so these idiosyncrasies were not always reliable markers of his level of stability. Still, by the time he’s so compulsive he’s counting red cars driven by women with short hair and pierced ears wearing hoop earrings, he knows it’s time to have his meds adjusted. I could have it so much worse. Seventy-five percent of the time he takes care of business. You gotta love a guy like that. You just have to live always knowing that 25 percent of the time there are things that will push him toward the edge.
I smoothed my robe over my tender breast and decided this was one of the things that would do it for sure.
“You okay? You look worried.” Mickey reached over and kissed my wrist. “I’m good, Lu. I really am. But if I don’t sleep tonight, I’ll call Gleason.”
“That’s why I love ya.” As I sat there waiting for my stomach to settle, I watched him graph the nation’s economic activity, remembering a couple of years ago when he went all the way back to Reagan’s last year in office.
When the kettle whistled, I unwrapped a cinnamon mandarin tea bag and had a little internal debate with myself. What good could come from telling Mickey anything about yesterday until I knew there was actually something to tell? Probably none. But we’d made that pesky promise never to hide what we were going through. On the other hand, we’d already broken one promise for the better. . . . I steeped my tea bag and arranged the words I could say into the gentlest configuration I could muster. I haven’t been completely honest, babe. I’m really not okay, and something happened in the bathroom last night. Charlotte found a thick place and a shadow and sent me to Dr. Matthews, who thought it looked suspicious, so I had a biopsy. We won’t know for a few days what the results are, but, I gotta say, I’m a little terrified about what it could all mean. So, no, I’m not doing so great this morning, Mic, but it sure feels good to give some of my worry over to you, my big, strong, wonderful husband.