Chasing Charlie

by C. M. Newman

CHAPTER FIFTY: I BELIEVE YOU

  After Charlie’s last day of first grade, Vince decided he wanted the family to sit down to a nice dinner and have Jenna as a guest. Though things were still somewhat strained, no one could say she wasn’t trying. Once Charlie was in bed after starting his journey into Narnia with his dad, Jenna asked for a private moment with Vince. Angela retreated to the bedroom and Mitch went outside for a cigarette.

  “What’s up?” Vince asked, sitting down in the living room with coffee for both of them. He had long ago given up the battle between staying awake and keeping his stomach calm. The former was much more valuable to him and became even more so with each passing day.

  “I’m going to Madison this weekend to see everyone. I didn’t want to ask in front of Charlie in case you weren’t okay with it, but could I take him with me? I think it would be nice for him to have a trip somewhere this summer. And with this whole…everything going on, summer’s not going to be much of a vacation for him. But I know things are getting down to the wire especially now that you’ve stopped your chemo, so it’s totally up to you.”

  Vince mulled this over, running his thumb over the edge of his coffee mug. Jenna was all too right in both respects. It was no longer a game of counting months, but a game of counting weeks, and before long, weeks would become days. Two days without Charlie did have a more measurable impact than they might have before Vince had decided to cease treatment. On the other hand, he knew Charlie deserved at least one fun memory after making it through the rest of the school year. Having a feeling that doing what was best for Charlie was going to get harder and harder with time, Vince decided he couldn’t quit now. He would never make it through the next couple of months—if he even had that long—if he lost his ability to make this kind of sacrifice.

  “Yeah, he can go. If he wants to,” he added with a shred of hope that Charlie would prefer to stay home with his dad. “And as long as you speak with everyone ahead of time to cut the trash talk. This needs to be a positive trip for him.”

  “Of course.”

  With a promise to pick Charlie up in the morning if she got the go-ahead, Jenna left. Mitch reappeared a few minutes later and took Jenna’s place on the couch. “Everything all right?” he asked.

  Vince nodded. “She wants to take Charlie to Madison for the weekend, thinks it’ll be better for him there than it will be here. I agree.”

  Mitch slowly nodded along with his brother, narrowing his eyes but not saying anything about Jenna. “You gonna let him shave his head?”

  “No. I don’t need any more competition.”

  “Don’t worry about me, you pull it off better. I don’t have as full of a beard. I’ll have to grow mine out if I want it to be a real contest…You all right?” Mitch asked after a while.

  “Fine,” Vince barely said. “Coffee’s not really doing anything. I think I need to turn in for the night, sorry.”

  “Hey, don’t apologize. That’s a new rule. Do what you need to do. See you in the morning.”

  “’Night.” Vince grabbed Mitch by the head and jostled it in his own strange appreciation before padding down the hall. He found Angela sliding their bed sideways, as close to the wall as she could, while still leaving herself room to move about.

  “Just trying to make room for people to walk around in here. When the time comes, you know,” she explained when she saw Vince quietly shut the door behind him. “Ready for bed?”

  Vince nodded and walked into the bathroom to take his nightly medications and brush his teeth. “Jenna’s taking Charlie to Madison for the weekend.”

  “Are you okay with that?” Angela asked.

  Vince shrugged. “I’ll miss him, but it is his summer vacation and he needs to have some fun. Things aren’t going to be pretty around here.”

  Angela offered no argument or support, simply sliding in next to Vince and helping herself to an open arm. “Guess what,” she said, interlacing fingers with him and kissing his chin.

  “What?”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too. Not to ruin the moment, but there’s something I’ve been meaning to bring up. A couple of things, actually. And I want to get the hard stuff out of the way while we can handle it, if that makes sense.”

  So there’s easy stuff? Angela thought dryly. “Of course. What is it?”

  “Uh…funeral stuff. You up to it?”

  “Sure.”

  “I don’t really have many requests, but the ones I do have are very important to me,” Vince prefaced. “First, I…I can’t even believe I’m asking this of you, given everything you’ve done and how much I truly do love you. But…I have a cemetery plot already, and it’s next to Kate’s.”

  Angela immediately tried to ward off any sort of jealousy that might creep its way in. “Oh.”

  “Burial isn’t all that important to me, but it was important to her, so we bought plots next to one another. And not only would it be honoring her memory for me to be buried there, but I think it would be good for Charlie to see his parents side-by-side. His—his family is so broken. He needs to see that solidarity. If it’s okay with you—”

  “Of course it is. I understand.”

  “I did look, and there’s a plot on the other side of me—”

  Angela shook her head. “I’m being cremated. I don’t want any big thing.”

  “Neither do I,” Vince said. “That’s my other request when it comes to my funeral. Please don’t make it some big elaborate affair. I don’t have any special songs I want sung or anything like that. Give people a chance to get their closure, make sure that it’s right with God, and leave it at that. Does that sound feasible?”

  “Whatever you want is okay with me,” Angela said truthfully. “Less is more.”

  “You know, I thought that conversation was going to be a lot harder. Thank you for being so understanding about the burial.”

  Angela draped an arm over Vince’s stomach. “Of course.”

  Vince drifted off in no time. Angela hoped he would continue to get the sleep he needed so easily. It completely evaded her, though. Thinking of funerals, caskets, endless days spent hiding under the covers with no baby to be seen, blocking everybody out—none of it was conducive to falling asleep. So she lay there.

  —

  “Your doctor’s not happy,” Angela said midday a couple of weeks later. The sun was shining in through the windows and the birds were singing, but none of that was enjoyable. Vince was still hacking up a lung in their bedroom. “He said as long as you’re not coughing up blood, it’s okay, and he sent over a prescription for something to reduce your mucus production.” Angela watched helplessly as Vince’s face nearly turned purple at his relentless coughing.

  It seemed like ages before the bout finally passed, leaving Vince crumpled at the edge of the bed. When he tried to tell her he was fine, he found that his voice was missing.

  “I’m sorry, we shouldn’t have…” She couldn’t finish. “Your doctor even said we should probably stop.”

  “Worth it,” Vince whispered with a smirk.

  Angela didn’t find his lightheartedness the least bit funny or soothing. “That’s the second time this has happened, Vince. I think maybe it’s time we…you know…say a very fond farewell to that part of our relationship. While it may feel good in the moment, you need your rest.” She handed him his antibiotics. “I just don’t like feeling like I’m hurting you or making it harder for your body to fight this.”

  “When are you due for your period?”

  “Saturday,” Angela said quietly. “We’ll see. But I’m not going to get pregnant three days before the end of my cycle anyway, so don’t even worry yourself about that.”

  Vince’s mouth fell. “How do you feel? Do you think maybe…?”

  Angela shrugged. “I’m having a hard time keeping thoughts and hopes separate when it comes to that. I want it badly enough that I can probably convince myself I’m pregnant if I’m not careful. So let’s just…w
ait for Saturday and see if I’m late again.”

  “They have those tests that’ll tell you sooner than that, don’t they?”

  “The earlier they tell you, the more money they cost, and they’re less accurate. I’m not spending half a week’s gas money so I can know now what I’ll know Saturday with more certainty using the one cheapie test I already have leftover from last month. You weren’t this anxious before. What changed?”

  Vince shrugged. “Last time, we knew it probably wouldn’t happen, but we could keep trying. The stakes are a lot higher if we decide we’re done trying.”

  “Well, I would love to know sooner rather than later,” Angela admitted. “But in all honesty, I don’t know if I have money to spare for something like that right now. Even if I did, I’d rather spend it on a necessity. And since I have the privilege of being your wife, I also have the privilege of knowing that you’re pretty broke, too. Think you can wait?”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Gives us more time to pray about it, too.” Vince couldn’t help but sprawl his hand across Angela’s abdomen. She looked down, sucking on her lips. “Can you imagine? Our baby…” he fantasized aloud.

  Angela wanted to tell him not to say things like that, but someone sharing her delusions made her feel safe from harsh realities. “Charlie would get to be a big brother,” she said, smiling dreamily despite herself. “He’d be such a good one.”

  “He would,” Vince said softly. He held Angela close for a few much-needed minutes and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Let’s go pick up that prescription. I need to get out of here for a while.”

  Angela grabbed on to Vince’s hand, though. “Before we go anywhere…while we still remember what just happened…we need to come to an agreement about that. I think we need to stop.”

  “For now,” Vince said.

  “You think things are going to get easier?” Angela said, not sure why she was so surprised by Vince’s stubbornness.

  “I don’t know, I just…I don’t want to give that up yet. Let’s just leave it open-ended. Now say okay, because you love me.”

  “Okay, because I love you and you completely take advantage of it.”

  —

  “Another date night?” Mitch asked when his brother handed him some cash on Saturday evening.

  “It’s not a date night. Nothing like that. We just need to discuss some things,” Vince replied with an anxious stomach. Angela’s period hadn’t made an appearance that day; she was out running errands and would take a test once she got home.

  “Fair enough. I don’t want your money, though. I can afford to take my nephew out for dinner and a movie.”

  Before Mitch could react, Vince tucked the money into his brother’s shirt pocket. “Take it, please. It’ll make me feel better.”

  “Fine. C’mon, Charlie,” Mitch called. “Let’s go see a movie. Want forty bucks?”

  Once Vince had the apartment to himself, he took advantage of a few minutes alone to get out his insurance statements and hospital bills. With Angela no longer working, the opportunities to take care of these matters privately were rare. But that week, he’d finally started to sense the bottom of his emergency savings and had requested an accelerated death benefit from his life insurance policy. That was all money he’d planned on leaving for Charlie, not money he thought he’d be spending on his own. There was no more ignoring the increasing copayments and denied claims. He knew he only had so long before Angela returned, so he hurried.

  “Vince?” she called all too soon.

  No further ahead of the mystery that was the healthcare industry, Vince rushed to gather the papers off their bed before she found him.

  “What’s all that?” she asked just as he was tucking everything into a folder.

  “Just insurance stuff. Trying to organize,” Vince said.

  “And in quite a hurry to put things away. Is there something I should know?”

  Vince turned whiter than he already was, which was a feat. “It’s nothing, okay?” he said desperately. “Just trying to make sense of my copays, that’s all.”

  “Need a second set of eyes?” Angela offered.

  All he could do was give her a dismissive shrug, hand over the folder, and hoped she went easy on him when she figured out his secret. She dropped her purse on the bed.

  “Why do you only have two scans billed to your insurance?” she asked, forehead furrowed. “You had more than two. And I thought your doctor said that Emend stuff was covered? Wow, that’s expensive…”

  Vince gulped. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” he said.

  “They’re open on Saturdays,” Angela said, examining the back of an insurance statement. “Let’s just give them a call and ask what this reason code means.”

  “Angie,” Vince said, trying to slide the folder from her grasp. But he wasn’t fast enough.

  “What’s this about…experimental treatment?” she asked. “You’re not on anything experimental. Or are you?”

  “This is why I wanted to figure this out myself,” Vince explained.

  “So you could hide something from me?” Angela sputtered, flipping through the statements and bills over and over again, as if that would help her understand. “Vince, I mean it—what are you not telling me? Where’s your chemo on here?”

  “The chemo is the experimental treatment,” Vince finally confessed. He walked over to the window and looked out on a perfect late spring day. “It doesn’t actually get billed to my insurance. It’s paid for by the study I’m participating in.”

  “Since—since when? Since the beginning?”

  “Since my second round.”

  Angela forced her jaw shut and folded all the statements back up. After a long while, she said, “It looks like they’re upping your copays and not paying for some of your drugs because of the experimental treatment.”

  “I know. I’m just trying to figure out a way to—”

  “Were you participating in a blind study? Did you know what chemo drugs you were on? Do you know now?”

  “No, and I decided not to find out.”

  “Well, you need to, Vince. If you find out you were on your old regimen the whole time—one they probably approved in the first place—then maybe they’ll accept these claims.”

  “I’ll get it all straightened out. You don’t have to worry about it,” Vince sighed.

  “Yes, I do. When you die, all of this falls into my lap.” Though it was hot outside and they didn’t have the air conditioning running yet, Angela felt a chill. She whipped the papers down and stalked out of the bedroom.

  “Angela, I’m sorry,” Vince said, following right behind her. “I know it was risky—”

  “You think I’m upset because you signed up for a chemo study?” she asked, dumbfounded.

  “So you’re mad because I didn’t tell you.”

  “Of course I’m mad because you didn’t tell me. I would never blame you for a second for wanting to buy more time. I would’ve supported you either way—that part isn’t what matters to me. But I’m your wife now. I have been for three months. And what’s our policy?”

  “No secrets,” Vince muttered. “I know, and I’m…I’m sorry. I just didn’t want to get your hopes up. This isn’t a matter of me trying to hide something I’m ashamed of. I just didn’t want you to be disappointed if the whole drug trial didn’t change my outcome at all, or if it shortened things.”

  “So you don’t think I have the right to be upset with you?” Angela asked coolly, falling onto the couch and rubbing her forehead.

  “You have the right, you definitely do,” Vince said, swallowing his nerves as he took a seat on the coffee table. “I’m just…begging you not to exercise it. I promise, I don’t have any other secrets.”

  “Give me a reason to trust you when you say that,” Angela said, looking at him despondently. “You said we didn’t have any secrets before.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of things that might change our opinio
ns of each other. I didn’t think this mattered as much as it did and I can’t tell you how stupid I feel for not telling you sooner. Please…can you forgive me?”

  Angela twisted her hands into a knot she knew Vince wouldn’t be able to untangle. As easy as it was to be upset with him, though, she had walked in the door just a few minutes ago with the intention of finding out with him whether they were expecting a child. While she knew the chances were slim to none, she’d looked forward to that moment with him all the same. There would be no enjoying a positive result or mourning a negative one with him if she held in her anger.

  “It would be the Christian thing to do, wouldn’t it?” she said, staring out the window.

  “It would, but I don’t want to throw your faith at you. I’d rather you want to forgive me than feel obligated. Though to be clear, I’ll take the forgiveness either way.”

  Angela laughed dryly and finally glanced at Vince again. “I do want to forgive you. We need each other.”

  “Well, then? Can you just call me a few names and then tell me you love me?”

  Angela’s eyes turned to slits as she tried not to smile. “You’re pathetic.”

  “I know,” he said with a laugh. He brought her hand to his lips and kissed each knuckle. “I love you…”

  “Yeah, yeah. This is your one big screw-up, okay? No more.”

  He smiled from one ear to the other and leaned in for a kiss; she granted him one. “I promise. But I need to hear you say you forgive me,” he said.

  “I forgive you,” she said with finality. “Okay?”

  “And?”

  “And I love you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You get all anxious if we don’t say it at least three times a day,” Angela noted.

  “Trust me, some days I do actually keep count and I’ll sneak one in at the end of the day if I need to,” he confessed.

  “When did you become such a softy?” she asked when he moved to sit next to her.

  “When I learned I didn’t have much time left to do things right,” he said sincerely, pinching a lock of her hair and feeling it run like silk between his fingers. “Do you have…any idea how crazy I am about you?”

  “Of course I know. Every time I ask how you’re feeling and you grumble about how I ask you every three minutes, I feel like a princess,” she teased. “I’m just kidding,” she said when he looked truly ready to apologize for that, too.

  “I’m making myself pretty vulnerable here,” he said with a chuckle. “Care to take it easy on me?”

  “Sorry.”

  “What would you like for dinner?” he asked.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I take it Mitch took Charlie out for dinner?”

  “Still not answering my question,” Vince pointed out.

  Angela finally shrugged. “Whatever you want. Hopefully your brother is feeding Charlie something more than popcorn.”

  “Hey now, give him a little credit,” Vince chided. “He’s pretty dedicated. He left his jobs, you know. I confronted him about it and he ’fessed up.”

  “Sure took you long enough,” Angela muttered. It wasn’t until her entire sentence was hanging in the air that she realized her mistake.

  “No secrets, huh?” Vince said with a playfully haughty laugh. “When did you find out?”

  Angela’s face felt hot enough to melt right off. “The night he got here. I tricked him into telling me. I’m sorry, I didn’t want to—”

  “Worry me?”

  “Okay, okay, we’re even,” Angela said dully.

  “No way,” Vince said with a cruel twist to his voice. He couldn’t suppress another jolly laugh, though. “You forgave me. Now you’re in the hole.”

  “You have to forgive me too, then,” she said confidently.

  “Says who?”

  “Says…the woman who drank a one-liter bottle of water so she could pee on a stick and tell you if you’re going to be a dad again,” Angela said craftily, nestling into Vince’s always ready arms. She tickled the inside of his wrist until his hand opened up for her.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t forgive you,” Vince said.

  “And why not?”

  “Because I’m not upset.”

  “You’re so annoying,” she mumbled, getting up and holding out her hand. “Come on, let’s go find if we’re having a baby.”

  “Let’s.”

  Angela took her test and capped it off in no time. She noted the time on the alarm clock. Vince was lying on top of the covers.

  “Whatever happens, I’m glad you convinced me to try,” he said as she got comfortable next to him. “If nothing else, at least you realized how much you still want to be a mom.”

  “Yeah…”

  “You’d be a perfect one.”

  Angela didn’t bother repeating that this was probably her last chance to bear anyone’s child. She just bore down hard on her bottom lip and tried not to let the very real possibility of a negative result completely shatter her.

  “Want me to look?” Vince offered when Angela told him their time was up.

  “I’ll do it.” She wrestled her emotions, pinning them to the ground long enough to reach out for the test herself. The Not Pregnant was just as clear as last time.

  “Angie, I’m so sorry,” Vince whispered, pulling her back in. She dropped the test in the trashcan by the bed, proceeding to do nothing but lie motionless in his arms. After their longest, most crushing silence so far, Vince couldn’t take it anymore. “We can keep—”

  “No, we can’t,” Angela said shakily, though her seriousness could not be missed. “You’re sick, you can’t breathe…it makes you sore…your body’s trying to say something.”

  “But I put this on my bucket list. That means I have to do it,” he said, trying to earn his way back in with a lighter demeanor.

  “What else is on your bucket list?” Angela asked.

  “Driving a Maybach Landaulet on the German Autobahn.”

  “I see. And have you done that or do you plan to?” Vince said nothing. “Case in point. Just because it’s on your list doesn’t mean you have to do it. Trust me, I’ll be okay.”

  “How can I trust that for sure?” Vince asked.

  “Remember my…experience that night? When God was in the room with me? Remember how I said it made me feel stronger?”

  “All right, I see your point,” he conceded. “But you’re going to need to share some of that with me. I’m not feeling so strong. I really wish we could’ve made this happen. I do.”

  “Tell me something,” Angela said somewhat distantly, using her thumb to cut off a trail of tears on Vince’s cheek.

  “What?”

  “Tell me…that you trust I’ll be okay. Tell me you have faith. If you believe that I really experienced God’s presence that night, then you should feel that strength, too. If He came to hold little old me when I hadn’t said a heartfelt word to Him in weeks, then you have to believe I’m going to be okay without a baby. My heart will break once you’re gone and the reality sinks in. No doubt about it. But I won’t be alone. I’ll be okay. Tell me you believe me.”

  Vince looked Angela in the eye, tucking his chin to his chest to do so. She still lay there curled up with him even though she didn’t need him. On any other day, that knowledge might have been a blow to Vince’s ego. But tonight, it was exactly what he needed to know. “I believe you.”