to sleep when she was a baby. The swing where Tommy and I sometimes sit with a glass of wine, talking about our days and trying to solve the problems of the world.
I tighten my grip on his hand. “You’re scaring me.”
“I’m scared, too.”
But Tommy doesn’t get scared.
I hold my breath. When he starts to speak, my world stops.
THE NEXT THIRTY minutes are the longest and slowest of my life. His words bounce around my head, refusing to stick: Small cell lung cancer. Stage 4. It’s not good.
“Lex?” he says my name as if it’s a lifeline, and I realize I haven’t said a word.
“How could this happen? You’re too young.”
“And too good-looking,” he says, trying and failing to lighten the mood.
“Why didn’t you tell me something was wrong? I thought it was just a bad cough.”
“The cough was just one symptom,” Tommy explains. “There were others, a little chest pain, shortness of breath. I didn’t want to worry you until there was something to worry about.”
Either he’s a better actor than CeCe, or I’ve been oblivious. But he didn’t say anything—I would have heard him; I would have noticed something was wrong. How long has he been pretending everything is okay?
“How long have you known?” I ask.
“They did a CT scan and a needle biopsy last week, but I didn’t get the results until Wednesday.”
“You had a biopsy? How the hell did I miss that?” I feel myself starting to hyperventilate so I focus on breathing, inhaling and exhaling with purpose.
“You were in New York for that big Dox presentation. I knew it was an important meeting.”
“Not more important than you,” I insist.
Tommy takes my hand and brings it gently to his mouth, forgiving me for what I didn’t know, what I didn’t do. “You needed your head in the game so you could impress that new bigwig. If you knew . . .” He stops and looks down at me, and I wish I could read his mind the way he always manages to read mine.
“If I knew, I would have been there.” I take my hand back and rest it in my lap, playing with a loose thread on the hem of my shirt. “You shouldn’t have had to go through that alone.”
“The whole thing took less than an hour, I was fine. Well, not that fine in hindsight.”
I shake my head. I would be furious with him if I wasn’t so scared. I should have been with him, to hold his hand, to wait, to be nervous, to try to stay hopeful. He should have told me.
“Why didn’t you tell me as soon as you knew?”
“I tried,” Tommy says, and I feel sick to my stomach. The email. He said he’d wanted to talk. “But honestly, I didn’t try that hard.” There’s a raspiness to his voice I haven’t noticed before. I should have noticed. “I think I just needed to come to terms with it on my own first. I knew you’d have questions, and I wanted to have the answers.”
I need more than answers. I need to know that he’s going to be okay; he has to be okay.
“I want to talk to your doctor.”
“I have an appointment Monday to get a second opinion. But he’s going to say the same thing the first one did.”
“And what exactly was that?” I need him to say it again.
“It’s lung cancer, small cell. Stage 4B.”
“How many letters are there?” I knew about the numbers, but I didn’t know there were letters.
“Just two.”
A and B. My heart sinks.
“It means the cancer has spread outside my chest,” Tommy explains in his shrink voice.
“Spread? Where? How much?”
“Pretty much everywhere. Lymph nodes. Liver. They even found a few spots in my bones.”
Our conversation the other night flashes in my mind. “Your patient. You never tell me about your patients.”
He turns his face away from me and lowers his head.
“But you said . . .” I can’t finish the sentence.
Tommy looks at me with those eyes—one blue, one brown—that see right through me. They look sadder than I’ve ever seen them before.
“We’re going to fight this.” My voice is shaky, which I know makes me sound uncertain, so I say it again. “We are going to fight this.”
He squeezes my hand.
“Say it.” I need to hear him say the words.
“Lex.”
“Say we’re going to fight this.”
“It’s too late,” Tommy says. “The doctor may not use those words, but he’ll tell us the treatment would be tough. I’ll lose my hair.” I narrow