a moment, “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”
That makes me laugh and it makes me cry, both at the same time, and I ask the kids to excuse me and I run to the powder room and turn the faucet on full blast. I am pretty sure it drowns out the sounds of my crying.
I don’t even remember going back to the table, or what I said, or how I explained my tears to the children. The next thing I know they are fast asleep in their beds, and I am in the small hallway that separates their rooms. I can see them both resting peacefully in the shadows. There is no sight on earth more beautiful than my sleeping children. They are perfect and they are all mine.
“What more could a woman want?” I ask, aloud.
Then the phone rings. I am ready for the call. It will be Scott and I know what he’ll want. And I will give it to him. It doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, actually, quite the opposite. It sounds like something very normal, and right now normal sounds really good.
“Hey, big fella,” I say as seductively as I can manage, sinking between the sheets of the bed we share. “What can I do for you?”
The conversation doesn’t last long, it almost never does. Then I am alone in my room in the dark, staring at the ceiling, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. And I am thinking of a book I love, with a heroine I love. The book is called The Hotel New Hampshire, and the girl is named Franny. And one time when Franny is sad and someone asks if they can do anything for her, she says: “Just bring me yesterday, and most of today.” And I realize now that is exactly what I want. Yesterday, and most of today.
THE NEXT CHAPTER BEGINS two days later, when the phone rings again. The voice on the other end is one I do not recognize.
“Hi, Brooke, this is Dr. Downey calling.”
For a moment I cannot recall any Dr. Downey. Then I remember the throat infection I had two years before. He is a primary care physician, and when my husband’s company switched insurance companies, I had to choose one, so I listed Dr. Downey. Even though I haven’t seen him since then, his name is on all my insurance papers. And so it is that the call I have been waiting so impatiently for comes from, essentially, a total stranger.
“Hello, doctor,” I say, my throat barely open.
“I was hoping you could come into the office this morning,” he says. “I have the results of the test you took the other day and I think we should talk about them.”
Then I am in his completely unfamiliar office, staring at his completely unfamiliar face, listening to his completely unfamiliar voice. “We see breast cancer,” he is saying, “and we do see an invasive cancer. That means it is the kind of cancer that could involve your lymph nodes. We think it is localized but we’ll need some more tests to know for sure. I have the name of an excellent breast surgeon here in Greenwich and I recommend you visit him. Of course, if you have another surgeon you would prefer to see, by all means you should see him or her. But seeing a breast surgeon is the next step in this process.”
If I were you, this is the part where I would put the book down. I hate it when things like this happen to characters I like. I can’t count the number of books I haven’t finished because I didn’t like where they appeared to be heading. So if this was a book I was reading, I wouldn’t want to read any more. But when you’re the lead character, you don’t have that choice.
If you’re still reading, you’re braver than I am.
The next scene takes place six days later, first in the operating room, where the breast surgeon is performing a lumpectomy and a sentinel node, which is where they take out the lump in your breast and, while they are in there, inject a dye that makes its way into a specific lymph node beneath the arm. And then they take me to the recovery room and I wait. And wait. And the seconds feel like hours, much as they did when the twins were small and I was home alone with them, and