wouldn't come back here until tonight. And I wanted to be with Annabelle, I thought that's what you'd want.” It was partially true, and partially he just hadn't wanted to come back here. And she knew that.
“I came back to the room at four. Where were you?” She was relentless in her anguish.
“I was at the office, and then I went home to see Annabelle. I just put her to bed, and then I came back here.” He made it sound innocent and easy, and as though he couldn't have come back a moment sooner.
“Why didn't you call me?”
“I thought you were sleeping,” he said, looking nervous.
And then she looked at him and the floodgates opened. She cried as though she would never stop. Peter Herman had seen her when she came back from the recovery room, and he had told her everything, about the tumor, the mastectomy, the risks, the dangers, the nodes he had taken too, the fact that he thought, and hoped, that the tumor had clean margins and hadn't spread beyond them, which he thought looked very hopeful, and the fact that most likely in four weeks they would be starting chemo. From where Alex was looking at it, she thought her life was over. She had lost a breast, and she could still lose her life. She was disfigured now, and for the next six months she was going to be desperately ill on chemo. She would very probably lose her hair, and just as possibly be permanently sterile after the treatment. Right now, it seemed like there was nothing left, not even her marriage. Sam hadn't even been there for her when she woke up. He hadn't been there when the doctor had told her the devastating news. Herman hadn't wanted to wait to tell her any of it, he didn't want her worrying or guessing, or discovering that the breast was gone, or hearing it from the nurses. He was a firm believer in telling his patients everything, and he had. Alex felt as though he'd killed her. And Sam had done nothing to stop it, or help her.
“I lost my breast,” she kept saying over and over as she cried. “I have cancer …” Sam listened without saying a word, he just held her, and cried along with her. It was much more than he could cope with.
“I'm so sorry …it's going to be all right. He said he thinks they got it.”
“But he doesn't know” Alex sobbed uncontrollably, “and I probably have to have chemo. I don't want it. I want to die.”
“No, you don't,” he said sharply. “Don't even say that.”
“Why not? How are you going to feel when you look at my body?”
“Sad,” he said honestly, which only made her cry more. “I'm very sad for you.” He said it as though it was her problem, and not his. He was very sorry for her, but he didn't want this to become his problem. He didn't want it to kill him, as it had his father, once his mother had cancer. In his mind the two deaths were linked and he was fighting now for his own survival.
“You'll never want to make love to me again,” she sobbed, concerned with lesser problems than he was.
“Don't be stupid. What about blue day?” He tried to make her smile, but he only made her feel worse as she looked up at him in anguish.
“There won't be any more blue days. I have a fifty percent chance of being sterile after the chemo. I'm not supposed to get pregnant for five years, or it could cause a recurrence. And five years from now, I'll be too old to have a baby.”
“Stop thinking the worst about everything. Why don't you just relax and try to look at the bright side?” he said, trying to show an optimism he didn't feel. But Alex wasn't buying.
“What bright side? Are you crazy?”
“He says that losing the breast could mean saving your life. That's goddamn important,” Sam said firmly.
“How would you like to lose one of your testicles? How would that be?”
“It would be miserable, just like this is. I didn't want this to happen, neither did you. But we have to make the best of it.” He was trying, but she didn't want to hear it.
“There is no ‘best of it,' there's me too sick to move for the next six or seven months, disfigured for the rest of my life, and unable to have more