All You Could Ask For A Novel - By Mike Greenberg Page 0,74

you worry that your husband will not be able to handle this? Do you worry that it will strain your marriage? Do you worry that he won’t love you anymore? Because it almost sounds to me like you do, and if that is the case I can answer your question about what more a woman could want. A woman could want a husband who can handle this.

You have to do this, Brooke. What can I do to help?

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Person2Person

From: Brooke B.

To: Samantha R.

BreastCancerForum.org

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Help me?

What on earth has given you the impression you can help me? And, while I’m at it, where on earth do you get the nerve to judge me and judge my marriage? I don’t want to remind you that one of us in this conversation has been married a little longer than the other, so it seems if there is marital advice to be given, I’m the one who should be giving it.

You don’t know me, and you don’t know anything about my life. The fact that we were born in the same town does not make us alike. I thought perhaps it gave us the ability to understand each other, but it is clear to me you don’t understand me at all.

When I was in middle school, we went on a survival trip in the woods and I sliced my hand on a tree branch. The counselors tried but could not get the bleeding to stop, and so they told me I was going to have to come out of the woods to get it stitched up. But even though I have hardly any tolerance for physical pain, I was not going to be the one who let my team down. I gritted my teeth and doused the cut with alcohol to prevent infection, refused to scream, despite a sting that would have stopped an elephant in its tracks, and stitched it up with a needle and blue thread I found in my backpack. It was not until after we had won the competition that I went to the hospital, where the doctor looked at my hand, laughed, and told me to come back in a week to have the stitches removed.

As for my husband, what you are really asking is: How wonderful can this man be if he can’t handle what is happening to me? And my answer is that I never said he couldn’t handle it. It is me who cannot handle it. There is a big difference.

So, I ask you not to reply to this message. If you do, I am not going to read it. I need some time to make up my mind how to proceed and I already know where you stand. I am not telling you I never want to hear from you again, but I am going to have to first get past the way your last message made me feel. When I have done that, I will let you know, and I will tell you then what I have decided to do, and you can think of it whatever you wish. I don’t know how long this will take, all of it is just as new to me as it is to you, so I’ll just be in touch when I’m ready. Until then, be healthy, be strong, and please leave me alone.

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Katherine E.

BreastCancerForum.org

Greenwich, Conn

Date joined: 9/30/2011

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Hello? Is there anybody out there?

I am in such desperate need of someone to tell me I am all right, that the last three weeks of my life aren’t the beginning of the end of me. I am looking for someone to talk to, to understand. Do they have that here?

My name is Katherine. I just turned forty. And I just finally met the man who was going to change my life, to give me exactly what I am telling you I need now, a partner and a lover and a friend. Someone to take care of me in a way I’ve never been taken care of before. I waited all my life for him, and then a week after he showed up my life imploded. I suppose this is what they mean when they say it wasn’t meant to happen. I hate to think of it that way.

I have worked on Wall Street for twenty years, and without getting into detail I’ll simply say I’ve done very well. Money is not going to be an issue for me, even now. I suppose I