He cares about more than just surgery and biopsies. He's a human being, for a surgeon.”
“Fine,” she nodded, still looking stunned. “I'll call him tomorrow.”
“Why not this afternoon?” He was pushing her, but he wanted to, he didn't want her to use her work as an excuse, or get caught up in denial.
“I'll call him later.” And then she had a sobering thought, as she glanced at him again. She felt as though she had a ten-thousand-pound weight on her shoulders. “What if I got pregnant this weekend? What if I'm pregnant and have a malignant tumor?”
“We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. You'll know if you're pregnant around the same time you have the biopsy.”
“What if I have cancer and I'm pregnant?” Her voice was nervous and strident. What if she had gotten pregnant and she had to sacrifice her baby?
“We'll have to establish priorities, you're the most important.”
“Oh God.” She dropped her face in her hands, and then looked up at him again a moment later. “Do you think the hormones I'm taking have anything to do with this?” The thought of it terrified her even more. What if she had killed herself trying to get pregnant?
“I honestly don't think so. Call Peter Herman. See him as soon as possible, talk to him, and let's do the biopsy as soon as you can, within reason.” It seemed a reasonable course of action. And now she had to go home and tell Sam there was a mass on her mammogram. She still couldn't believe it. But it was there. She could see it on the film, and in the expression in John Anderson's eyes. He looked devastated, as she stood up and looked at him. She had been with him for almost an hour.
“I'm so sorry, Alex. If there's anything I can do right now, don't hesitate to call me. Tell me which surgeon you settle on, and I'll take it from there.”
“I'll start with Peter Herman.”
He handed her the films from the mammogram, so she could show them to whichever surgeon she chose. Just the word “surgeon” seemed ominous, and as she walked out into the October air, she felt as though she'd just been hit with a two-by-four to her stomach. She couldn't believe what she'd heard, or what had happened.
She picked up her arm and hailed a cab, trying not to remember everything she'd ever heard about mastectomies and lumpectomies, and women who could no longer raise their arms, and other women who had died of cancer. Everything he had said to her was suddenly jumbled in her head, and as she rode back to the office, she didn't even cry. She just sat and stared straight ahead, unable to believe what he had told her.
And when she got back to her office, the whole team was sitting there, Liz and Brock, the law clerk, and the two paralegals. They were waiting for her, and Liz had ordered her turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread, but she just couldn't eat it. She stood and stared at them, and Brock noticed that her face was deadly white, but no one said anything. They went straight to work, and went right through to six o'clock. It was only after that, when they were summing up, after everyone had left, that Brock even dared to ask her.
“Are you all right?” he asked cautiously. She had looked terrible to him all day, and her face had been deathly pale ever since she came back from the doctor's. And more than once, he had noticed that her hands were shaking when she passed him papers.
“I'm fine. Why?” She tried to look nonchalant, but she failed dismally. He was smarter than that, but he didn't want to press her.
“You look tired. Maybe you're burning the candle at too many ends, Mrs. Parker. What did the doctor say?”
“Oh, nothing. It was a waste of time. He just needed to give me the results of some tests, and they never do it over the phone. It was ridiculous really. He could have mailed it to me, and saved us all time.” He didn't believe a word she said, but it seemed to be important to her to say it. He just hoped it was nothing serious. If it was, going to trial in two days certainly wasn't going to help her. He would do all he could for her, but she was still the attorney of record and had to take all