The Moonglow Sisters - Lori Wilde Page 0,12
her after Madison.
“Please have a seat.” Looking somber, the woman directed them to the couches.
They settled in.
Madison was on the corner closest to the coffee table where the doctor perched, her knees cocked as if ready to run for an emergency at a moment’s notice. Gia sat beside her sister. Hesitating, Darynda slid down next to Gia.
“I’m Dr. Hollingway. Your grandmother’s neurosurgeon.” She shook their hands, and they all murmured hellos and nice-to-meet-yous, which seemed both silly and inadequate in the context—civil, polite, and utterly worthless. Then the doctor launched into the details of the nine-hour surgery.
Gia fixated on Dr. Hollingway’s feet, noticed specks of blood on her shoe covers and the hem of her scrubs. Grammy’s blood? Her gut reeled, and she wished she hadn’t drunk that coffee without something in her stomach.
The doctor crossed her legs. “Your grandmother is a fighter. Her resilience will go a long way in her recovery.”
Darynda made a small sound, a tiny, tight eep like a hiccup. Gia reached over to take her hand and Darynda clung to her like a tether.
Dr. Hollingway cleared her throat. She directed her gaze straight at Madison.
“Yes?” Maddie’s voice sounded strong, but Gia could detect a faint tremor. Madison fiddled with the crystal necklace at her throat, rubbing it like a talisman.
“I was able to resect the entire tumor.”
“That’s good news, right?”
“It is excellent news. But—”
“But what?”
Gia wanted to yell at Madison and tell her if she’d just shut up for half a second, and let the doctor finish, they’d find out faster.
“With complex brain surgery we expect complications—”
“Such as?” Madison leaned forward as if getting closer would pull the information from the doctor faster.
The doctor ticked off the points on her fingers as she spoke. “Swelling of the brain.”
“Oh dear,” Darynda exclaimed and sagged against Gia.
“Brain swelling is . . .” Dr. Hollingway held her hands parallel in front of her, palms cupped as if cradling a human brain. “Part and parcel of brain surgery. So please, don’t get overly alarmed.”
Gia rubbed her hand up and down Darynda’s back to soothe herself as much as the older woman. Darynda was trembling. So was Gia.
“Continue.” Madison’s gaze never left the doctor’s face.
“Because of the swelling, we’ve put her in a medically induced coma. Brain surgery is a lot for the human body to cope with and recovery takes time. When she regains consciousness, we need to watch out for complications—”
“Such as?” Madison tapped a fingernail on the couch arm.
“Weakness, dizzy spells, poor balance, seizures.”
“She had those symptoms before the surgery,” Darynda said.
Madison shot Darynda the side eye. “She had seizures?”
“Once. A big one. At Walmart. There was this flashing sign—”
“Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you call me?” Madison’s voice sounded like gravel dragged across concrete.
Darynda seemed to shrink into the couch. “Helen asked me not to.”
Madison pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes. She looked as if she had gone Marie Kondo on her closet, sorting things into a “keep” or “discard” pile based on how much joy the items brought her and Darynda had fallen solidly in the discard pile. Gia kept quiet for fear of joining Darynda in the reject heap.
Madison whipped her gaze back to the doctor. “Survival rates?”
“From the surgery itself or the cancer?” The doctor steepled her fingertips, studying Madison with cool eyes. She was not afraid of ending up in any discard pile.
“Both.”
“Her heart is in excellent shape, and she has a ninety percent chance of recovering from the surgery.”
“And the cancer?”
“Talk to her oncologist about that,” Dr. Hollingway deferred. “But I can share that resecting the tumor has bought her extra time.”
“She could live for years, right?” Gia’s knee bumped up and down in a nervous jerking of its own accord. “If we got her on a healthy diet and juiced vegetables and gave her supplements and fed her probiotics. There was a woman on YouTube who—”
“Anecdotal.”
“What does that mean?” Gia asked.
“There’s no proof that juicing cures cancer.”
“But we could try, right? It’s something.” Gia’s knee bounced higher, the muscles in her leg drawn tight.
“It won’t hurt,” the doctor conceded. “But I caution you against getting your hopes up.”
“That’s what hopes are for, right? To give you strength when all seems lost—”
“There’s hope . . .” Dr. Hollingway’s voice softened, but the look in her eyes said it all. She was a surgeon. She cut. Bedside manners weren’t her jam. “And there is delusion.”
“So the cancer will kill her.” Madison’s face was flint.
Dr. Hollingway’s lips pulled taut. “Talk to