Lightning (8 page)

“I'll check it out today, I promise.” She felt so torn, so pulled sometimes, between her family life and her career. It made her wonder how she would manage two children instead of one, but other people seemed to do it.

She put on her coat and slipped out of the apartment quietly, it was only seven-thirty in the morning. And the cab ride down Park was speedy at that hour. She was in her office by a quarter to eight, and she felt a little tug at her heart as she thought of Annabelle and Sam having breakfast without her. But by eight o'clock, she was hard at work, and Brock Stevens had just brought her coffee. And by ten-thirty she was reassured, they really were fairly well prepared for Jack Schultz's defense on Wednesday.

“What about everything else?” she asked Brock distractedly, as she went down a list of other projects she needed him to work on. He had already taken care of most of them, but she had had a number of new ideas over the weekend. And she was just outlining them to him when Elizabeth Hascomb hesitantly opened the door to her office, and peeked in at them. But the moment Alex saw her, she shook her head and put up a hand to stop her. She didn't want any interruptions. Her phone was turned off and she had already told Liz not to come in or interrupt her.

Liz hesitated at the door, in spite of Alex's stern look, and Brock turned to see what was distracting Alex.

“Something wrong?” Maybe it was an emergency, but Alex looked very annoyed at the interruption.

“Liz, I asked you not to interrupt us.” Her tone was sharper than usual, but the pressure on her was enormous.

“I know …I …I'm terribly sorry but …” She spoke to Alex apologetically from the doorway.

“Did something happen to Annabelle or Sam?” For a moment, Alex looked terrified, but Liz was quick to shake her head and reassure her. “Then I don't want to hear it.” Alex turned away again, fully prepared to ignore her.

“Dr. Anderson called. Twice. He asked me to interrupt you.”

“Anderson? For heaven's sake …” Now Alex looked really annoyed. He had told her he would call her either way about the mammogram, and he was probably calling to reassure her. But asking to interrupt her was a real imposition. “He can wait. I'll call him when we break for lunch, if we do. Otherwise, I'll call him later.”

“He said he wanted to talk to you this morning. Before noon.” It was already eleven-thirty, and Liz was being a nuisance. But Dr. Anderson had insisted that it was very important, and well worth annoying Alex. So Liz had taken him at his word, and remained steadfast in her delivery of his message. But Alex looked anything but pleased. She felt sure that the call was just routine, and it wasn't worth throwing everyone into a tizzy for. For an instant, as she looked at Liz, she wondered if it could be bad news, but the idea of that was so inconceivable that she went back to being irritated instead of worried.

“I'll call him when I can. Thank you, Liz,” she said pointedly, and went back to the list she was explaining to Brock, but now he was looking distracted.

“Why don't you call him, Alex? It must be important for him to ask Liz to interrupt you.”

“Don't be silly. We have work to do.”

“I could use another cup of coffee anyway. Ill get you one too, while you call him. I'm sure it'll only take you a couple of minutes.” She was prepared to resist, but it was clear now that Liz had so unnerved everyone that none of them would get back to work until she called her doctor.

“Oh for heaven's sake. This is ridiculous. Okay …get me a fresh cup, please. I'll see everyone back here in five minutes.” It was eleven thirty-five, and eleven-forty by the time he and the paralegals cleared the room. They were wasting precious minutes. They had work to do. She watched them close the door behind them as they left, and she quickly called her doctor, anxious to get the conversation over quickly.

His receptionist answered the phone, and promised to put her right through to the doctor. The wait seemed interminable, as much because she had other things to do as because she was suddenly nervous. What if it
was
bad news? She felt foolish for even thinking it, but it was possible. Lightning had certainly struck others before her.

“Alex?” Dr. Anderson was on the line, and he sounded as busy as she did.

“Hi, John. What's so important?”

“I'd like you to stop by at lunchtime, if you could.” His voice gave away nothing.

“That's impossible. I'm going to trial in two days, and I have a stack of things to do. I've been in my office since seven forty-five this morning, and I probably won't leave here till ten o'clock tonight. Can we discuss it on the phone?”

“I'd rather not. I really think you should come in to see me.” Shit. What did this mean? She found that suddenly her hand was shaking.

“Is something wrong?” She couldn't bring herself to say the word, but she finally knew she had to. “Is it the mammogram?” She didn't have any lumps, so how could it be? But he hesitated for a long time before he answered.

“I'd like to discuss it with you.” It was obvious that he didn't want to do this over the phone, and she was suddenly afraid to force him.

“How much time do you need?” She was glancing at her watch, and trying to assess how much time she could afford. At lunchtime, even the traffic would be against her.

“Half an hour? I'd like to spend a little time talking to you. Could you come right now? I just saw my last patient of the morning. I've got a woman at the hospital, and I have a patient in early labor. This would probably be as good a time as any.”

“I'll be there in five or ten minutes,” she said tersely, standing as she prepared to hang up. Her heart was suddenly racing. This couldn't be good. But now she wanted to know, whatever it was. Maybe they had confused her results with someone else's.

“Thank you, Alex. I'll be as quick as I can.”

“I'll be right over.”

Alex sped past Liz, carrying her handbag and her coat, Brock and the others weren't even back yet. “Tell them to get something to eat, I'll be back in forty-five minutes.” She was halfway to the elevator by then, and Liz shouted after her down the hallway.

“Are you all right?”

“I'm fine. Order me a turkey sandwich.” And as Liz watched her disappear down the hall, she wondered if she might be pregnant. She knew they wanted more kids, and John Anderson was her obstetrician.

But Alex knew full well that it wasn't that, as she rode uptown in a cab, agonizing over why he had called her. It had to be the mammogram, and then suddenly she thought of it. It wasn't the mammogram, it was the Pap smear. Shit. She had cancer of the cervix. How would she get pregnant now? Although she had a number of friends who had had treatments using freezing techniques or laser beams applied to precancerous conditions, and had still managed to get pregnant. Maybe it wasn't as bad as she feared, all she wanted to know was that her life wasn't in danger and she could still get pregnant.

The cab reached his office in record time, and she hurried inside to the empty waiting room. They were expecting her and they waved her straight through to his office. He was wearing a suit, instead of his white coat, and he looked unexpectedly serious when he saw her.

“Hi, John, how are you?” She was a little out of breath from hurrying and from the anticipation of seeing him, and she sat down in a chair with her coat on.

“Thank you for coming. But I really thought you should. I wanted to talk to you myself, in person.”

“Was it the Pap smear?” she asked, feeling her heart speed up again. And the palms of her hands were damp as she clutched her handbag. But he was shaking his head.

“No, it isn't. It's the mammogram.” But it couldn't be. She had no lumps, no bumps, no problems. He reached down then and put a piece of film on the light box behind him. He pointed to a frontal view, and then put another film up with a side view. It all looked very mysterious to her, like a weather map of Atlanta. He turned then to look at her, with a look of painful importance. “There's a mass there,” he pointed to it, and only because he showed her where it was could she see it. “It's very large and quite deep. It could be a number of things, but the radiologist and I are very worried.”

“What do you mean, it could be a number of things?” She was suddenly totally confused by what he was saying. It was as though all of a sudden she couldn't hear him. Why was there a mass deep inside her breast? What was it and how did it get there?

“There are several possibilities, but a mass of this size, at this depth, in this particular area, is never a good thing, Alex. We think you have a tumor.”

“Oh Jesus.” No wonder he didn't want to tell her on the phone, and insisted that Liz interrupt her. “What does that mean? What happens now?” Her voice was thin and her face pale, and for a moment she thought she might faint, but she forced herself not to.

“You need a biopsy, as quickly as possible. Within the next week ideally.”

“I'm going into trial in two days. I can't until after the trial is over.” It was as though she hoped it would go away by then, but they both knew it wouldn't.

“You can't do that.”

“I can't let my client down. Are you telling me a few days will make that much difference?” She was horrified. What was he saying to her? That she was dying? The thought and the terror of it made her tremble.

“A few days won't necessarily make that much difference,” he admitted cautiously, “but you can't afford to drag your heels on this. You need to choose a surgeon and get the biopsy done as soon as possible, and then you'll have to see what he recommends, based on the pathologist's findings.” Oh God. It was all so complicated and frightening, and so ugly.

“Can't you do the biopsy?” She sounded suddenly desperate and very frightened. She felt as vulnerable as she had feared she would when she went to the mammography lab and began to panic. And now, the worst had happened, or almost. It was happening. It was rolling out in front of her like a terrifying movie.

“I don't do biopsies. You need a surgeon.” He picked up a piece of paper from his desk then, and she noticed that she had already been there for half an hour, but suddenly her whole life had changed, and she wasn't ready to leave yet. “I wrote down the names of a few very good people, a woman and two men. You should talk to them, and see who you like best. They're all excellent surgeons.”
Surgeons!

“I don't have time for this.” She started to cry in spite of herself, it was all so horrifying, and she felt uncharacteristically overwhelmed and astonishingly helpless. She was torn between anger and terror. “I don't have time to go shopping for a doctor. I have a trial, I can't suddenly back out of it. I have responsibilities.” She sounded hysterical even to her own ears, but she couldn't help it. And then she looked up at him in genuine terror. “Do you think it's malignant?”

“Possibly.” He wanted to be honest with her. On the film, it didn't look good. “It could very well be. Or it could be fooling us into thinking it is. We won't know till you get the biopsy, but it's important that you do that quickly, so you can decide on a plan of action.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that if the biopsy is positive, you'll have to make some decisions about the course of treatment. Your surgeon will advise you, of course, but some of the decisions will have to be yours.”

“You mean like whether or not to take my breast off?” She looked appalled and her voice was shrill as she asked him.

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. We don't know anything yet, do we?” He was trying to be gentle with her, but it was making it worse. She wanted to face it now, she wanted him to swear to her it wouldn't be malignant. But he couldn't do that.

“We know I have a mass deep in my breast, and you're worried about it. That could mean I'll lose a breast, couldn't it?” She had him on the witness stand and she was relentless.

“Yes, it could,” he said quietly. He was deeply sorry for her. He had always liked her, and this was a terrible blow for any woman.

“And then what? That's it? The breast is off, no more problems?”

“Possibly, but not necessarily. It's not as simple as all that. I wish it were, but it isn't. It will depend on the type of tumor you have, the extent of its malignancy, if there is any, and the nature of the involvement. It will depend on whether or not your lymph nodes are involved, how many, and whether or not it has spread to other parts of your body. Alex, there are no simple answers. You may need extensive surgery, you may need a lumpectomy, you could need a course of chemotherapy, or radiation. I just don't know. I can't tell you anything until you have a biopsy. And I don't care how busy you are, make time to talk to these surgeons. You
have
to.”

“How soon?”

“Do your trial if you have to, if it's really only a week or two, but plan to have the biopsy in two weeks, no matter what. And we'll take it from there after you do that.”

“Who do you like best on this list?” She handed it back to him, and he glanced at it, and then handed it back to her quietly.

“They're all excellent, but I like Peter Herman. He's a very good man, and a nice one. 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?