Lightning

by Danielle Steel

  “Why don't you do it, Mrs. Parker? She will love to see you.”

  “I can't,” she said in a voice that sounded more dead than alive. They had killed her.

  “Yes, you can. If you want, I will go with you. Come … we go together …” She led Alex back to her little dressing room, and took out a loosely knit dress and held it out to her. “Annabelle likes this.”

  “I can't, Carmen. I can't do it.” She started to sob again, but this time Carmen clung to her shoulders and held her.

  “Yes, you can.” They were both crying by then. “I will help you.”

  “Why?” Alex wanted to give up and die, but Carmen was holding her and wouldn't let her.

  “Because we love you. We are going to help you until you are strong again. You will be fine very soon,” she said confidently, trying to give Alex courage. But Alex only shook her head as she stepped into the knit dress Carmen held for her.

  “I won't be fine. They're going to give me chemotherapy.”

  “Ah no …” She looked horrified, and then, “All right … we will get through it.” Carmen was determined to help Alex. She was a good woman, and a good employer, and she didn't deserve this. She had a husband who loved her, and a little girl. She had to live for them, and Carmen was going to help her do it. “We go to pick up Annabelle, and then we have lunch. And then you take a nap, and I will take Annabelle to the park.” She was speaking to her like a child, and Alex responded to it from the depths of her anguish. She had never seen anything as ugly as what the surgeon had left her.

  But she went with Carmen to Annabelle's school, and then they walked home quietly. Alex was silent, but Annabelle didn't seem to notice. And once they were home, Carmen gave them homemade tomato soup, and a turkey sandwich for each of them. And then she tucked Alex into bed, and told Annabelle that her mother needed a nap, which Annabelle thought was a game. She helped Carmen tuck her Mommy into bed, and then they went to the park and played.

  She told her Daddy about it late that afternoon, and he wondered if Alex had been playing invalid again, as he put it.

  “What's up?” he asked casually, after Annabelle went to bed. “You sleeping all afternoon?” In his voice was a barely concealed tone of disapproval. He didn't want her languishing in front of Annabelle, he had lived with that as a boy, and the memory of it still drove him crazy. Even as an adult now, he had an almost phobic hatred of illness.

  “I just took a nap. I was very tired. I went to see Dr. Herman.” Her voice was lifeless as she looked at him, and her eyes gave away nothing.

  “Are the results of the pathology reports in?”

  “Yes. Four of my nodes are involved. I need chemo,” she said in a dead voice. And then, “He took off my dressing.”

  “Great. That's a step forward at least. That should have cheered you up.” He spoke enthusiastically, as though to spur her on, ignoring the fact that she needed chemo, and she looked at him as though he came from another planet.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Why not? Was there a problem?”

  “Not really.” Only a small one …my breast seems to have fallen off with the dressing …

  “So what's the big deal? Why are you so tired?”

  “What do you want from me?” she snapped at him. “Polaroids? Can't you figure it out for yourself for chrissake? I lost a breast. It's a big deal, to me, if not to you, and I don't buy the idea that it's no big deal to you either. You've been acting like I have leprosy ever since I got home, standing halfway across the room from me. I get the message. You don't think this is so cute either.”

  “I never said it was. But it doesn't have to be the tragedy you make it.”

  “Maybe not, pal. But let me tell you one thing, it sure ain't pretty.” She looked venomously at him, filled with all the horror of what she had seen in the mirror.

  “Don't make it such a big deal. He told you, you can have it rebuilt eventually.”

  “Sure, if I want to go through another very painful operation and a bunch of skin grafts and tattoos, and silicone implants, which are dangerous. This is not exactly the tea party you make it out to be.”

  “Fine. But don't be such a crybaby for God's sake. Losing a breast is not the worst thing that could happen.”

  “What is?”

  “Dying,” he said bluntly.

  “Give me time, I might do that too. But in the meantime, I seem to have misplaced a few things I was rather fond of. One of them is my left breast, and the other one is my husband. You seem to have gone right out the window with my tit, or hadn't you noticed? Because I have. I'm sick and tired of your disappearing act, of your acting like I don't exist, because you can't cope with what happened.”

  “That's not true,” he said angrily, all the more so because it was and he knew it.

  “The hell it isn't. You haven't been here for me once since I got the news, and ever since the surgery, you've been treating me like your maiden aunt and not your wife. How long is that going to go on, Sam? How long do I have to do penance for the sin of losing a boob? Until I get it reconstructed so I don't scare you to death when I take my clothes off, or are we shot for good? It might be helpful to know so I don't hang around annoying you, or make you sick sometime when I take a shower.”

  “You make me sick with your analysis and accusations. You couldn't make me half as sick if they took both your breasts off.”

  “Really? Wanna make a bet? You have no idea how ugly this is. It's a lot worse than you think.”

  “It's as bad as you make it. You're the one turning this into an agony. You're the one who can't accept what happened.”

  “Are you sure?” She was suddenly unable to control herself a moment longer, and as she stood in front of him she unbuttoned her nightgown. He felt his heart pound as he watched her, but it was too late to stop her, and he knew he had goaded her into it. She slipped it brusquely off one shoulder and then the other, and then she let it drop to the floor without a sound, except a gasp from him. She hadn't bothered to replace the dressing, and he saw everything she had seen that morning. The angry scar, the missing breast, the bright pink flesh. Just as she knew, it was shocking, and his face showed how he felt about it. There was no way on earth he would have touched her. “Pretty, isn't it, Sam?” She was crying now, and gulping air as she sobbed, but he didn't come near her.

  “I'm sorry, Alex.” He walked across the room to her then, and held her nightgown out to her. “I'm sorry,” he said softly, and pulled her into his arms, as they both cried. It was just too awful.

  “I can't live with this, Sam,” she cried, wanting her breast back, wanting her life to be what it had been only a few weeks before. It was impossible to understand why any of this had happened.

  “It'll be okay …you'll get used to it. We both will,” he said softly, praying it was true.

  “Will we?” she asked sadly. “Do you want me to get it fixed?”

  “It's too soon anyway, why don't you see how you feel about it later.”

  “I hate it, and I hate myself,” she admitted as she slipped on her nightgown, and he helped her when she got it tangled. He wanted to help her cover it up as soon as possible, so neither of them had to see it. “I'm sorry I'm angry at you all the time. I just don't know how to handle it.”

  “Neither do I,” he admitted. “I guess we just have to give it time.”

  “Yeah,” she said sadly, looking at him, unable to believe he would ever resume their sex life. “Maybe.”

  “You'll feel better when you go back to work next week,” he said encouragingly as he turned the TV on, anything so they didn't have to talk to each other.

  “Maybe I will,” she said, unconvinced, but she would much rather have had her husband than her job back. And all he could think of as they watched TV was what he'd just seen. He wasn't sure that he could ever touch her again. It made the agony of wanting Daphne even more painful. And he felt guiltier than ever remembering how exquisite her breasts had been when he'd touc
hed them, and he remembered exactly how they'd looked when he took off her shirt and freed them. She was so young and inviting and alive, and her body was so perfect.

  “I don't feel like a woman anymore,” Alex said sadly as he turned off the light at midnight.

  “Don't be silly, Alex. A breast doesn't make you who you are. Losing it doesn't change anything. You're as much a woman as you ever were.” But nothing he did confirmed it. And as he lay in bed all that night, keeping well away from her, the only thing he could think of was Daphne.

  Chapter 11

  The only thing that brought Alex and Sam together at all was trick-or-treating with Annabelle the following weekend. She went as the princess, as planned, and she looked adorable in her pink velvet costume with sparkles and rhinestones. She wore a little silver crown, and carried a wand, and she had a great time trick-or-treating in their building. Alex usually dressed up too, but she hadn't put together a costume this year, and at the last minute she dressed as Cruella De Vil in a black and white wig and an old fur coat, and Annabelle loved it. And Sam brought out the Dracula costume he wore every year, and Alex did his makeup.

  “You look good with black and white hair,” he mused as he looked at her. She was wearing a slinky red knit dress. She was wearing a prosthesis now in her bra, which was heavy but looked surprisingly realistic. And Sam couldn't help but admire her figure. Even without the missing breast, she still had sensational legs, and the body of a model. He seemed to be noticing things like that more and more these days, especially on Daphne.

  He and Daphne had been behaving themselves admirably, though not without enormous effort. Only once, he had given in to the urge to kiss her when they were alone in his office. But otherwise, they had done nothing they shouldn't have, in spite of a number of meetings and business lunches together with clients. She was very helpful on some of their new deals, and remarkably knowledgeable about international finance. Interestingly, he had never mentioned her to Alex. Instinctively, he knew he couldn't. Alex would have sensed instinctively that there was something to this. His partners had wondered about it too, but no one had dared to ask, only Simon continued to make a crack now and then about how appealing English girls were, particularly his cousin. Sam always agreed with him but no one except Daphne knew how infatuated he was with her, or how desperately horny she made him.

  “You look pretty good,” Alex said as she put the last of his Dracula makeup on him. Standing in front of him in the bathroom under the lights was the longest they had been close to each other since her operation. It would have been the perfect opportunity for him to say something to her, or put his arms around her, or even kiss her, but he just couldn't bring himself to do it. He was too scared of what would happen after that, what she might expect from him, and he might not be able to deliver. Nothing about her turned him on right now. She was intrinsically too ill, her body had changed too much, there was too much fear and too many bad memories for him even to want to try it.

  She handed him his Dracula teeth, and Annabelle gave a squeal of happy terror when she saw him. “Oh Daddy, I love you!” she said, and then she giggled. He laughed, and Alex grinned. It was the happiest they'd been in a month, and the rest of the evening was just as pleasant. They stopped and visited friends, shared a glass of wine with them, ate candy with the kids, and by the time they got home, Annabelle was half asleep, and her parents were both in very good humor.

  “That was fun,” Alex said happily. It always was. Halloween had been magical ever since they'd had Annabelle. Before that, it had meant nothing. Thinking about it made Alex sad again, knowing that she would probably never have more children. It was just too unlikely now, with the statistics of sterility after chemo and the importance of not getting pregnant for the next five years. And by then, she'd be forty-seven. The prospect of another baby was over.

  She also knew that, at forty-two, she would probably go through menopause, as a consequence of having chemo. It was still difficult to understand the words, to absorb them, to make them hers, mastectomy, malignancy, chemotherapy, nodular involvement, metastasis. It was incredible. Her entire vocabulary had changed in a month, and with it her life and her marriage. There was no hiding from what it had done to them, and to her relationship with Sam. He was completely removed from her now, in all the ways that mattered. But he wouldn't admit to it, of course. He was completely committed to pretending nothing had happened, which made it even harder. How could you fix something no one would admit was broken?

  “Are you going to bed?” She looked surprised when he got undressed and got into bed after they'd gone trick-or-treating. It was only ten o'clock and neither of them seemed tired when they got home at nine-thirty.

  “There's nothing else to do,” he said as she looked at him. “I thought I'd turn in early.” In the old days, that would have meant a little romance, but now she knew he'd be asleep, or pretending to be, before she got out of the bathroom, as indeed he was twenty minutes later. He just couldn't face her, or bear to deal with his “obligations.” And that was the last thing she wanted anyway. If he didn't want her, she'd rather do without, forever if she had to.

  She read late into the night, she was feeling better by then. And she was going back to work on the Monday following the Halloween weekend. She had a lot of work to catch up on and a lot of organizing to do. She had two weeks until she began chemotherapy, two weeks in which to feel pretty good and do all the work she could, two weeks to get her office in order before her life turned upside down again. It was a lot to deal with.

  And on Monday when she left for work, and dropped Annabelle off at school, she almost felt like her old self again, except that Sam barely spoke to her at breakfast. He never even took his nose out of the Wall Street Journal to kiss her good-bye, but she was getting used to it. And at least now she'd have her work to keep her busy, and her colleagues to talk to. The last two weeks had been the loneliest in her life, and she couldn't imagine anything worse than what had happened.

  “Is Daddy still mad at you?” Annabelle asked, as they walked to school. And Alex looked down at her with interest. It surprised her that even she had noticed.

  “I don't know. I don't think so, why?”

  “He seems different. He doesn't talk to you much, and he never kisses you, and he looks mad when he comes home from work.”

  “Maybe he's just tired.”

  “Grown-ups always say they're tired when they're mad. But they're mad. Just like Daddy. I think he is. You'd better ask him.”

  “Okay, Princess, I will. You were great on Halloween. Best princess in town.”

  “Thank you, Mommy.” She threw her arms around her mother's neck, and Alex nearly melted as she watched her run into school with the others. And with that she hailed a cab with her right arm, and hopped into it and headed downtown. Her left side was still a little sensitive, but she felt alive again for the first time in two weeks. It had been exactly two weeks to the day, almost to the hour, since her mastectomy, and she already felt better. Comparatively, she felt great. The only trouble was she hadn't yet started chemo.

  “Well, look who's here.” Liz Hascomb beamed at her as soon as she saw her, and came around her desk to give Alex a warm hug.

  And when Alex walked into her office, she found flowers on her desk from Liz, and neat stacks of the files Brock had worked on and completed.

  “Wow! It looks like you guys did just fine without me.

  “Don't believe that for a minute,” Liz reassured her. There was a fist of messages an arm long, most of them with the information as to how the matters had been resolved, some had been passed to Matt, some to other partners, and Brock had handled all of the details and research. There was a handful of names who had chosen to wait the two weeks for Alex, and she sat down and read the names and information, as Liz went to get her a cup of coffee.

  She looked up when Liz came back in, and smiled. It felt great to be back in her chair, to be here among friends, and to feel useful. She felt
up to it again, although she was still a little bit tired. But it was like getting an important part of her identity back again. It was only half of it, but it made a difference.

  “How're you feeling?” Liz asked quietly as she set down the cup of coffee.

  “Fine. Great actually. I'm really surprised. I just get tired.”

  “Give it time. Don't rush anything.” She went back to her own desk then, and Alex just sat there, looking around, savoring being back in her office. It was wonderful just being there. She sat back in her chair with a smile and took a sip of the hot coffee. And just as she did, Brock Stevens poked his head in.

  “Welcome back,” he beamed.

  “Thank you,” she smiled warmly in answer. He looked more than ever like a big blond kid. He was wearing glasses, and a lock of hair hung over his eyes, and there was a constant look of mischief about him. “It looks like you did all my work while I was gone. Maybe I should just go on permanent vacation.”

  “Not a chance. I've been saving all the hard stuff for you. Jack Schultz called about two hundred times, by the way, just to thank you.”

  “I'm glad we won,” she smiled. “He deserved it.”

  “So did you.” He'd never seen anyone work as hard as she did to win his case, and it couldn't have been easy for her. He knew now that she'd been sick when she did it. Sick or in some kind of trouble. He knew she'd been out for surgery, though he still didn't know exactly what had happened. But something about Liz's eyes when he asked about her told him that this was no small matter. “What are you going to do today?” He thought she looked thin and a little tired but very pretty.

  “Catch up on my files, read what you've done, try and figure out what's left for me to do now.”

  “Oh, just a few things here and there. We have two new clients, who are being sued by former employees. There are about four new cases that came in, there's a hot libel suit that came in from some movie star. Matt knows more about it.”