back with her at nine o'clock, and he noticed that she still hadn't eaten the sandwich that had been on her desk since lunchtime. She had been drinking coffee all day, and now she was drinking a big glass of water.
“You're going to get sick if you don't eat,” he scolded her with a look of concern. She looked even worse than she had before. She was almost gray now.
“I wasn't hungry …actually, I just forgot to eat. I was too busy.”
“That's a lousy excuse. You're not going to do Jack Schultz any good if you get sick before his trial date, or in the middle of it.”
“Yeah, that's a thought,” she said vaguely, and then she looked up at him with worried eyes, “I guess you could take over for me, Brock, if you had to.”
“I wouldn't think of it. You're the attorney they want. You're what he's paid for.” It was exactly what she had said to her doctor that afternoon, when she said she couldn't do the biopsy until after the trial. People were depending on her …and then she thought of Annabelle and Sam and had to fight back tears again. Her engine was running low, and she was suddenly overwhelmed by everything that had happened. The mammogram films were in an envelope on her desk, but what she had seen there was emblazoned in her mind forever.
“Why don't you go home?” he asked gently. “I'll finish up. You've got everything a lot more in control than you think. Trust me.” He was gentle and kind, and half an hour later, she decided to go home. She was just too tired to make sense anymore, or do intelligent work. She felt as though she'd been run over by a semi. And for the first time in years, she didn't even take her briefcase. Brock noticed it, but he didn't remind her. And as he watched her go, he felt sorry for her. It was obvious that something was wrong. She had never looked worse, but he didn't know her well enough to ask her, or offer to help her.
She laid her head back against the seat of the cab, and she felt as though it were a bowling ball, and it was just too heavy to hold up anymore. She just couldn't do it. And when she got home, she paid the cab, and walked into the building, feeling like a thousand-year-old woman. She rode up in the elevator, wondering what she was going to say to Sam. This would be terrible news for him too, for all of them. A bad mammogram was nothing to take lightly, and statistics about breast cancer kept leaping into her head, and none of them were good news. She couldn't even begin to imagine how she would tell him.
He was watching TV in the living room when she walked in, and he looked up at her with a smile when he saw her. He was wearing jeans and his white shirt from work. His tie was still lying on the table.
“Hi, how was your day?” he asked cheerfully, reaching out to her, and she sat down heavily on the couch beside him. She suddenly had to fight back tears again, just seeing him had brought all the terror back to her. She just couldn't bear it. “Wow …looks like a rough day …” And then he remembered the hormones she'd been taking. “Oh poor baby, those damn pills making you emotional again? Maybe you shouldn't take them.” Between that and the trial, she really had a lot to cope with. He pulled her into his arms, and she clung to him as though she were drowning.
“You look worn out,” he said sympathetically when she looked up at him and dried her eyes. He was right. The pills were making this even harder than it should be. Or were they? “You must be going crazy before the trial.”
“I am. It was a hellish day,” she admitted, as she lay back on the couch next to him, exhausted.
“I hate to say it, but you look it. Did you eat?”
She shook her head. “I wasn't hungry.”
“Great. How do you think you're going to get pregnant if you starve yourself. Come on.” He pulled her to her feet, or tried to, “I'll make you an omelet.”
“I couldn't eat. Honest. I'm beat. Why don't we just go to bed?” That was all she wanted. She wanted to see Annabelle, and he next to him,