the truth is you don’t know how they really feel about you and it’s probably better that way.
And while I don’t know if I can face this alone, I know I would rather try that than involve my mother. I haven’t told her a word of this and I don’t plan to. If I die, she’ll find out when someone invites her to the funeral.
So, what I’m saying is that I just don’t know that I am ready to go back to the doctor and hear all of it and ask the questions and get the answers and begin the treatment all by myself. I’m sure I will change my mind tomorrow or the next day. I’ll go back because I have to. But it would be a lot easier if there was someone with me. To take notes. And ask questions I don’t think of. And maybe hold my hand. No one has held my hand in a long time. I know we have never met, and so I am a little embarrassed to say this, but right now I think you may be the best chance I have. Probably because you’re the only chance I have. So if you want to meet in the city tomorrow, maybe I could buy you lunch and we could talk, and who knows what might happen next.
You just might save my life.
* * *
Person2Person
From: Samantha R.
To: Katherine E.
BreastCancerForum.org
* * *
What time and where?
SAMANTHA
I HOPE I DIDN’T do too blatant of a double-take when the maître d’ led me to the table. It’s just that if you had given me the choice of any of the women in the restaurant—Michael’s on the East Side—I think Katherine would have been the last one I’d have guessed. She looked so healthy, so well put together, she didn’t look at all unwell or uncertain, or un-anything. She isn’t a beautiful woman but she is striking, and younger than I expected.
“I’m Katherine Emerson,” she said, rising, as I approached. She had a deep voice, not masculine, more like she might sing opera in her spare time.
“Hi,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else.
She extended her hand and I shook it. Her grip was firm, the way my father shakes hands, but when it was time to let go she didn’t. She held my hand a beat longer than I know she normally would have. That’s what having cancer does. It makes you hold someone’s hand a beat longer than usual, no matter how fabulous you look.
“It’s good of you to meet me,” Katherine said.
“It’s funny,” I said, as I sat opposite her at a sunny two-top with a gorgeous centerpiece of white lilies, “I feel as though I should be saying that to you. I know that makes no sense, but somehow I feel like I’m the one who should be grateful.”
I laughed a little. Katherine did not, she didn’t even smile. Actually, she didn’t look like she smiled much, even before she had cancer.
“Here’s my story,” she said. “I’m a single woman. I quit my job the day I was diagnosed, literally the same day. The timing of that didn’t work out so well for me, but there isn’t much I can do about it now. I had plans to go out West to be with a man I just met, and that doesn’t seem to be in the cards now either. In a nutshell, I am all alone and I have to deal with this, and something inside of me is saying that if I don’t have someone to encourage me, then at some point I’ll just decide it isn’t worth it. So, I guess that’s what I’m looking for, someone to tell me it’s worth it on days when I’m not so sure.”
I heard a clinking sound and thought for a moment someone had dropped some change on the ground, then I realized it was Katherine’s silverware. Her demeanor was placid, her voice calm, her facial expression stoic, but her fingers were in a frenzy. She was puttering with the left side of her place setting, the forks rolling frantically in her hand, and I don’t think she even realized it, or heard the clinking, or anything. It made me think of when I was a little girl in the country and my father and I saw ducks swimming on the pond, and my father told me ducks were his role models.
“Their feet are paddling like crazy beneath the surface,” he said,