Perfect Piece

by Rebeca Seitz

  They gathered hands across the plastic waiting room chairs and bowed their heads.

  “Lord, we’re coming to You with some mighty heavy and anxious hearts.” Daddy’s voice rumbled around them, washing over Tandy, cloaking her with a sense of comfort. “My little girl’s in there and I’m asking You to be with her. Put Your hand on her and give her some of Your strength and power, God. We trust You and rest in the knowledge that You know everything that happens and have a purpose for each minute of our lives. Meg needs You now. Give her Your presence and tell us what You’d have us do. We bring these words to You in the precious name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, Amen.”

  Tandy echoed Daddy’s amen. She couldn’t fathom why God had allowed this to happen, but Daddy was right— everything that came into their lives was something He’d allowed, something for which God had a purpose.

  She just hoped the purpose wasn’t to teach them all how to deal with loss.

  Again.

  * * *

  JAMISON STOOD JUST outside a thin, blue curtain. A nurse had put him there, her hands firm on his arms, her voice leaving no question about whether he would obey. She’d wanted him to go to the waiting room. He couldn’t do his wife any good here, she said. He’d only be in the way of the doctors.

  But he couldn’t bring himself to turn around and leave Meg lying there. He’d snatched the briefest glimpse before being spotted by the doctors and pushed out. Doctors. Plural. More than one worked on his wife on the other side of this curtain. Why more than one? Did she have multiple things wrong?

  Why didn’t someone tell him what was going on? He blinked, rubbed his eyes. Better that they take care of her than him. Let them do what they’re trained to do. Let them see to Meg. They could take all day if it meant she was fixed and whole and healthy and coming home with him.

  The nurse poked her head out. “Jamison, we’re going to take her upstairs for an MRI.” Only then did he realize it was Sarah, a girl he’d graduated from high school with. “Go on to the waiting room and tell your family we’ll know something in a bit.”

  He looked at her. Sarah the cheerleader, now Sarah the nurse. Sarah the nurse was taking care of his wife.

  “Jamison.” Sarah touched his arm. “I’ll come get you as soon as I can. Go on now.”

  The idea that she wanted him to return to the waiting room slowly penetrated his mental fog. “Okay.” He thought about arguing. About telling them he wanted to go with Meg to the MRI room.

  But James’s little face flashed in his mind and he remembered he had to go get the Coke his little boy had no doubt found by now. “Okay,” he said again, and headed for the double doors to the waiting room.

  Three

  Jamison crossed his arms, then uncrossed them. He looked out the window. Saw a car pull into the hospital’s parking lot. Laid his right foot over his left knee. Put it down. Left foot over right knee. Put it down.

  He checked his watch … again. Eleven minutes since he’d been shown into the doctor’s office and told to take a seat. Six hundred and sixty seconds not by Meg’s side, spent scared out of his mind that the doctor would come in to tell him to prepare to lose his wife.

  How on earth would he break that to the kids? The sisters? Jack?

  He shook his head, then felt stupid since no one could see him. But whatever IT was that had decided to threaten his family’s happy existence, IT needed to know he would refuse its admittance into his life—IT could just go away, IT couldn’t have them. Not Meg.

  The door behind him opened and he stood. A doctor in a white lab coat smiled what Jamison supposed was a “set-the-mat-ease” smile, but what really made him grind his teeth.

  “Hi, I’m Dr. Ruskya. Please, sit.” The doctor walked around his desk and settled into the wine-colored leather chair on the far side. “I’ve looked over Meg’s MRI scans and, barring your disapproval, we need to take her into surgery today.”

  Jamison opened his mouth, but the doctor went on.

  “She has a small tumor the size of a golf ball that we must remove. Has she said anything about having a headache? Been different than her usual self?”

  Jamison nodded. Her complaints over the last few months, the pain he saw in her eyes … how could he not have sensed what was going on? “She’s had migraines for weeks now. She thought she wasn’t drinking enough water.”

  Dr. Ruskya nodded. “Dehydration is a common cause of headaches, but no amount of water would wash away the underlying cause of your wife’s pain. Now the tumor could either be benign or malignant. We want benign.”

  “Want?”

  The doctor’s smile held irony. “Of course, we don’t want a tumor at all, but it’s clearly there. If we have to have one, we want benign because that means it isn’t cancerous and won’t grow.”

  “If it’s not growing, how’d it get there?”

  The doctor shrugged, which didn’t help. How was he supposed to trust and believe this doctor when he couldn’t explain what was happening?

  “It could have been there all her life. It could have grown and stopped. There are a million unknowns with regard to tumors, no matter how much research we’ve been able to conduct. We have to look at each individual case. With your wife’s, we won’t know for certain what we’re dealing with until we get in there.”

  “By ‘get in there,’ you mean go poking around in Meg’s brain?”

  Dr. Ruskya favored him with an understanding gaze. “I know this must be hard, but she’s going to need you a lot in the coming weeks and months. Brain surgery is hard to recover from. She likely won’t be the same person when she wakes up and she’ll need you to reassure her of herself.”

  “What do you mean … she won’t be the same person?”

  “The location of her tumor is in an area of the brain that affects personality. Tell me about the Meg you know.”

  Jamison leaned back in his chair. At last, something familiar, something safe to discuss. “She’s great. A caring mom, loving wife, laughs a lot, loves to spend time with her sisters, scrapbooks.”

  The doctor nodded. “When she wakes up, you may find that she’s the same woman you knew before. Though it’s rare, that does happen. But, more often than not, the patient experiences a subtle shift in outlook and mood. She may be angry, defensive, shy, quiet, unsure, rude, or even manic.”

  “Dear God.” Jamison pushed back the terror that grew with each word from the doctor’s mouth. “Will she be that way forever?” He tried to picture Meg throwing a temper tantrum, but the image wouldn’t materialize.

  Again Dr. Ruskya shrugged. “Only time will tell. She may revert to her former self as she recovers. She may be forever altered. We have an excellent counselor on staff who will help with the transition post-surgery. Gina Justice—we all call her Gigi—has been helping brain surgery patients for years. She’ll be a big asset to both you and your wife.”

  “Does she have to have the surgery? I mean, you said this thing could have been there all her life.”

  “Yes, but something about it has changed to cause these headaches and the seizure that brought her to us today. That means the condition cannot go unchecked any longer.”

  Jamison felt stupid for even suggesting it. Who cared if Meg changed a little bit? So long as she was still around to hold his hand, talk with him, and grow old with him, he didn’t care.

  “Can she die in the surgery?”

  It was Dr. Ruskya’s turn to lean back in his chair. “She could. There is always a risk with any surgery and the risk is higher when we’re talking brain surgery. I won’t lie to you. We may get in and find things that didn’t show up on the MRI. I wish I could tell you we’ll do X and Y so that Z will happen, but surgery rarely works that way. I can promise you, though, that we’ll do everything we can to remove the tumor and make your wife whole again.”

  Jamison tried to think through his options, but his brain didn’t want to cooperate. Here he sat, a successful accountant whose training and expertise made him in high
demand. A man who could manipulate and work numbers with ease, who could oversee massive amounts of money without blinking an eye.

  But none of that mattered here.

  He was being asked to decide on a course of treatment for his wife’s brain tumor. Not that he had any idea what caused it, what made it change, whether she’d get worse if he did nothing, whether she’d wake up still being Meg, or whether she’d even wake up at all! How was he supposed to decide anything without knowing all the answers?

  He sighed.

  “Mr. Fawcett, this is a hard thing you’re doing, but we don’t have the luxury of time. The tumor is pressing in on her brain. We need to determine a course of action and, if it’s surgery, get her up to Vanderbilt.”

  Jamison didn’t raise his head but cut his eyes up toward the doctor. “And you recommend surgery?”

  Dr. Ruskya nodded. “I do.”

  Meg had told him time and time again to listen to the experts. When they’d added on to the house, she was the voice asking for a contractor instead of drawing up her own plans. When they landscaped the yard, she called the nursery for advice. When she got pregnant with their first child, she read every parenting magazine from here to the Mason-Dixon line.

  So, he’d do this Meg’s way. If the expert said surgery, then he’d trust the expert. And he’d let Meg rely on this Gina Justice woman afterwards. Meg would like having an expert to talk with. “Okay, let’s do the surgery.”

  * * *

  JAMISON SAT BY Meg’s hospital bed, his laptop warm on his legs, her deep breaths of sleep assuring him of her life. A brain tumor. A selfish, evil mass right there in his wife’s brain. No wonder she’d been short-tempered lately. The doctors told him the tumor’s location would have affected her personality.

  And caused migraines.

  He should have paid more attention to the headaches. But didn’t all women get headaches a lot? Of course they did. They were always doing fifteen things at the same time. Who wouldn’t have a headache from that? He’d told Meg to slow down. Told her and told her.

  But it hadn’t been the rapid pace of their lives. It had been a tumor. He glanced back down to the glowing screen, rereading information about brain tumors. In just a few hours, dawn would break as a surgeon removed her tumor He’d been told to hope for a benign tumor. They didn’t want a malignant one. Malignant meant it could continue to grow, to invade other parts of her body, to end her life.

  Lord, please … let the tumor go away completely, benign or not. But if it has to be there, let it be benign. He closed the lid on the computer and set it on the table at his side. Leaning forward, he took Meg’s hand in his, careful not to rouse her from the depths of slumber.

  He reached forward and ran his fingers along the light golden hair splayed out across her pillow. It lay in waves, casting a crown around her head. Her hair had been his undoing the night they met. Their good night kiss that first date might never have been had the evening breeze not floated a lock of it in his direction. All he could do was step forward and do what everything in his being told him was right.

  She still gave those sweet kisses to him each morning before he headed off for work. Even if they fought the night before, even if the kids were hanging from the ceiling and every television in the house blared news that the world would be coming to an end by mid-day, she stopped to give him a kiss. Said it was the glue that held her day together.

  What would hold him together if she didn’t kiss him any longer?

  He followed her hairline down that long, graceful neck that blossomed with color whenever he embarrassed her, which was often in their beginning days. He hadn’t known how to handle such a wonderful woman, but she knew enough to see his caring underneath. She’d forgiven him his bumbling attempts at romance, laughing alongside when he sent red roses instead of her favorite sunflowers and saying, “I love you” after his torturous ten minutes of words hadn’t let the phrase cross his lips.

  The grace of his life summed up in one word: Megan.

  He touched her temple, wanting to reach in and remove the invader that lay just beneath her delicate skin. Her soft skin passed beneath his finger as he traced a tiny blue vein that snaked its way into her hairline. She stirred and smiled in her sleep. He sat and stared, drinking in her presence like a man who knows this could be his last sip of all the earth has to offer for beauty and peace.

  Megan.

  Four

  Tandy glanced around the waiting room of Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville. Joy sat in a corner, a sleeping Maddie in her arms. Daddy filled a corner seat, his elbows resting on knees and face toward the ground. Tandy thought he might be praying, but every couple of seconds he tapped Clayton’s baby seat and set it to rocking. Clayton slept on. Scott stood staring out the window, where he’d been since walking in the room and announcing they’d taken Meg back to surgery.

  The last time she’d been here, Kendra lay in one of these rooms, her leg encased in dressings and a tube down her throat.

  Kendra now sat in the corner holding Darin’s hand, her leg scarred but healed.

  Oh, God. Heal Meg like You did Kendra. Please, I don’t think we can live without her. I know I can’t.

  Clay’s hand squeezed around hers and she looked up into his beautiful eyes. He smiled, filling her with hope that almost blocked the dread that had taken up residence since seeing her sister collapse.

  Almost.

  She glanced at the big white clock whose hands created a droning sound as they made their inevitable way around the numbers. Over and over they swept. Doctors came and talked to families. The phone at the reception desk rang. People flipped magazine pages. And still, those hands swept on.

  They’d been sweeping for three hours now. Halfway through, if the surgery was going as the doctor planned. Tandy stood and paced to the other end of the room. Coming back, she counted the square tiles. Three more hours. At least. More if the tumor was more complicated than they’d seen on all those MRIs.

  How could such a thing invade their lives? Hadn’t they given enough to medical abnormalities when Momma had breast cancer? Despite that, or maybe because of it, Tandy thought the rest of them should be immune to big things like cancer and tumors. One per family seemed enough of a cross for any family to bear. One let her believe God might have had a purpose in it.

  But whatever lesson they should have learned from Momma’s death had been learned. What possible purpose could there be in allowing a tumor to grow in Meg’s brain? Three children needed their mother. Jamison’s eyes had taken on a lost look, as if she’d already left him. Left all of them.

  Why did God allow this to happen?

  Tandy shook her head. Trying to understand God in the midst of the situation was like trying to eat a cake before the eggs were even cracked. Her perspective and God’s didn’t come near to matching. He looked at eternity. She looked at getting through the next three hours, hoping that the next three hours would tell her God hadn’t decided to let another of their family members go to something besides old age.

  She pulled her cell phone out and dialed Jamison’s mother.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Tandy.”

  “Oh, Tandy! What’s the status?”

  “Nothing to report yet. She’s still in surgery. I just thought I’d call and check on the kiddos. Are they all right?”

  “James asks about her every few minutes, but Hannah and Savannah seem content with videos for now. I thought I might take them outside and play in a little bit, hopefully wear them out some.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “Well, I have to admit it’s helping me, too. Keeping them busy means I don’t sit here and stare at the clock.”

  Tandy shot another glance at those sweeping hands. “Tell me about it.”

  “You’ll call me as soon as you know something?”

  “The very minute. Talk to you soon.”

  “Thanks.”

  She flipped the phone closed and shoved it bac
k in her pocket.

  Two hours and fifty-four minutes to go.

  * * *

  “MEGAN FAWCETT FAMILY?”

  They rose as one and looked at the hospital volunteer as she set the phone back in its cradle. “She’s out of surgery.”

  Jamison finally moved from his position at the window and approached the volunteer’s desk. “Is she okay?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know anything other than she’s through with surgery and in post-op, where she’ll be for about half an hour. They’ll call me when she’s ready to go to a private room.”

  He swallowed the frustration and reminded himself this woman had no idea that the patient of whom she spoke held his world in her hands. “Will I know what room she’s going to?”

  “They’ll call me as soon as one’s been assigned and I promise to let you know.” The volunteer laid her wrinkled hand over his upon the desk. “Not long now. You’ll get to see her very soon.”

  So maybe she did know.

  He mustered as much of a smile as he could, then headed back to his spot in front of the glass. Outside the world spun on as if nothing had happened. As if nothing could happen. Cars came and went from the parking lot. Old ones, new ones, shiny or streaked with dirt. Patients and hospital staff stopped on the sidewalk to light a cigarette, an action he added to the list of things beyond his comprehension. Clouds scudded across the sky. The sun shone brightly. The day mocked him with its happiness and life.

  He tried to take comfort in the knowledge that Meg made it through surgery. A big victory and one he shouldn’t take lightly. He needed to let God know how grateful he was for that. Couldn’t risk alienating God right now. Had to do everything right. Had to do his part to keep Meg safe and healthy.

  Not that God could be bribed with good behavior. A part of him knew God was above that sort of thing. But another part of him whispered that he should try everything, no matter how ridiculous, how far removed from everything he’d ever known to be true before.

  Because if precious Megan could have a tumor, then everything else must be called in to question as well.