Not To Us (16 page)
Authors: Katherine Owen
He stands up and I turn around, facing away from him. I’m standing there waiting for him to undo my bondage from this dress…waiting…waiting. I finally turn around to see what’s keeping him from undoing the dress and he isn’t even there.
I’m fuming, now, completely pissed off. I turn off all the lights downstairs and check the locks at the front door and the French doors at the patio. I discover an open bottle of champagne and grab myself a fresh flute and slowly pour the liquid into it and take a long drink. Before long, I’ve finished the glass. I pour myself another and finish that one, too.
Swaying on my feet, I stand at the French door that leads to the back patio and look out at the view of the water. It shimmers in the moon light.
How did I get here?
I stand here in my beautiful crème-colored Vera Wang gown and wish for a magical answer. I just want to hear what the Doctors Chatham have to say. I just want to explore the options, if there are any. The truth is simple. I don’t want to die, but I want this baby and Michael.
I hear Michael come into the room and defiantly raise my third glass of champagne to my lips and swallow. In the dark, I hear him as he fills his own glass. Then, he comes over and stands beside me.
“I was waiting for you upstairs.”
“Well, I was
waiting
down here,” I say to him in irritation. I take another long drink of champagne. “I’m standing here, waiting for you to unzip my dress and you’re not even
here
.”
“You shouldn’t be drinking, Ellen Kay.”
“I shouldn’t be doing a lot of things. It seems.”
I finish my glass of champagne and move away from him toward the kitchen and set the empty flute on the counter.
He follows me. I can feel his sorrow and his apology; his feelings emanate from him to me. We’re connected. I feel his pain and he feels mine. I climb up the darkened stairs and hear his heavy footsteps behind me. We have to make this right. We cannot start off the first night of our marriage on this unsteady foundation. The champagne softens the edges of me. My anger at him from earlier begins to dissipate. Desperation takes its place.
I want to live. I really do. I want to be with him. I really do.
One by one, I stop and check in the doorways of my three sleeping children. I cover up Emily with the blanket that has been pushed down at the end of her bed; adjust the Mathew’s sheet so his gangly long arm is now covered; turn off the light that Nick has left on and retrieve the book from his hands that he must have reading. Michael follows me into every room. I can feel his anger for me disappear.
I walk down the long hallway to our master bedroom and he still trails behind me. He stops long enough to close and lock the bedroom door. I turn at the sound of the turning lock. He gives me a hesitant smile. It is time for me to speak. It is time for me to tell him, to remind him, again, why we are doing all of this.
“I have six wishes that are all I want and need,” I say. “You, Nick, Elaina, Mathew, Emily, and me.” He gives me this uncertain smile, now, and his blue eyes fill with fresh tears.
“I would like these bodacious tah tahs as opposed to imitation silicone. I know it’s vain, but it is two of my extra wishes. I would like this unborn child, too, but I’m not willing to make a trade for any of these wishes for the others.”
“And, if you only have one wish, what would it be?” Michael asks. The desperation in his voice surprises me.
“I wish for you.
You
. Michael. Just as you wish for me because that is what soul mates do.” So, I have to make it harder, more meaningful, because words are everything to me and I believe they need to be said. “There are no words to adequately describe what you mean to me,” I say in this brokenhearted voice. “I put my life in your hands because you complete me. I know that we may be tested and that there will be obstacles put in our way. That cancer will try to take me, but I will stay, here with you, because you’re all I want, all I need, all I see. I love you, Michael.”
My god-like husband looks troubled. “Ellie,” he says to me, now. “I just want you to be here, so I can touch you any time I want. That’s all I want. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that happens. I cannot live without you. I can’t. I won’t…be able to.
He has trumped me again with his words. The man is too perfect. I tell him this. He shakes his head and tells me no.
“I’ve been waiting all day to make love to you in this dress,” he says, leaning over me to undo the pearl buttons. “That’s why I didn’t want to help you take it off.” He smiles sheepishly.
“Michael,” I say as we fall to the bed in our magnificent wedding clothes. “Why didn’t you just say so? We could have been here and done this, hours ago.”
≈≈
It is almost dawn. We’ve gotten three hours of sleep. Michael sleeps right next to me. My legs are intertwined with his. His right arm curls underneath and around my waist and the other rests on my bare stomach. And it is then, that I feel this fluttering sensation in my abdomen. It takes me a full minute to realize what it is. It happens again.
Michael’s hand moves across following the movement. I turn and from the light of the moon that streams in our room from the large windows I see he’s awake. I don’t even have to ask if he felt the movement. I can tell by the look of wonder on his face that he has.
This is one of those life-affirming moments and we have just captured it together. He moves in closer to me, now. I lift my head and look at him.
“Do you want to know what it is?” Michael asks.
We’ve done every test under the sun allowable for this baby. I’ve had an amniocentesis, too. Yet, with all the testing that Michael has ordered done or had my own gynecologist do, I’ve not asked any questions. The girl who doesn’t like surprises has not asked the gender of this baby. To do so, would make it mean too much and letting go will be hard enough. But, Michael knows. I see this as I stare at him now in the semi-darkness of this early morning. I just nod.
“It’s a boy, Ellie.” His voice breaks as he says this to me.
A son would mean everything to Michael. I can tell just by his saying it out loud, the circumstances for this child have just changed. The pendulum just swung in the opposite direction. And, as if to prove that point, our unborn child flutters across my stomach again and, somehow, Michael feels it beneath his fingers, just as I do.
“Nine wishes, Michael. You, the kids, this baby, and me myself and I.” I point to each breast as I say, myself and I.” I look over at him a little fearful and try to smile. “Seven for certain, if I don’t get to keep my breasts, but nine if we get it all. Surely, we can have it all. We’ve waited long enough,” I say with hesitation. I move in closer to him.
“Nine’s a good number,” he finally says.
His love shines on me in the darkness. I reach out and hold on to him as if he might slip away from me.
≈ ≈ ≈
Sunday
O
ur first morning as a married couple begins with breakfast in bed served by my three children. The morning rushes by as we spend the majority of it packing the kids for a ten day stay at Robert and Carrie’s. The plan is to drop off the kids for this early afternoon because of my impending surgery tomorrow. Robert and Carrie are taking them all bowling for the day. She and I exchange conspiring glances at this plan. Nick and Elaina are not enthusiastic about bowling, but even Robert Bradford is putting on a good show about how fun it is going to be for all of them. I laugh as my ex-husband carries on about this. Carrie and he exchange these knowing glances. They’re about to feel the full impact of four kids, instead of just Elaina. I hand Carrie the schedule I’ve typed up and she has this dazed look as she reads through it.
“All
this
?” Carrie asks.
“It’ll be fine. The kids are great about calling. Thanks for doing this,” I say. I glance over at Nick and give him a knowing wink. He comes over to me and puts his arm around my shoulder. The pain shoots through a little, but I do my best to hide it.
“Mom, don’t worry about anything. I’ve got it handled. Just take care of yourself. Be nice to your doctors,” Nick says with a laugh as Michael comes up to us.
“She’s always nice to me,” Michael says, trying to laugh. “She’s going to be fine, Nick.” Michael looks only at me when he says this. “I’m going to make sure of it.”
I kiss and hug each child goodbye one more time as all four of them give me these long searching looks and put on my former-UW-Cheerleader-yeah-team-smile for them and kiss them all one last time before we leave. “We’ll call you tonight,” I say from the car as Michael drives us away toward the ferry dock to Seattle.
Our car ride is mostly silent. I’m lost in thought about only yesterday and these cascading emotions of uncertainty and elation that we’ve been through since we said “I do” less than twenty-four hours ago. Michael clinches his jaw the only outward indication that he’s stressed, though he keeps his eyes on the road looking straight ahead. On the ferry, we doze in each other’s arms, exhausted from the events of yesterday, and that stress of what may lie ahead. He looks over at me with this pensive look as he starts the SUV, then concentrates on negotiating the narrow lane and the cars ahead of us before taking the familiar route to Swedish Hospital.
“Michael,” I finally say, breaking the long silence between us. “We want the same things
—
you and I. Let’s just hear what the Doctors Chatham have to say. I just want to know all my options.”
“Ellie.” He looks straight ahead. “Okay,” he says after a while.
≈≈
“Ben saw it on a mammogram review six months ago
—
left breast, one point two centimeters in size. The biopsy tests confirm it’s malignant. A lumpectomy is performed on October 7th by Josh. The margins look good. The lymph nodes are clear,” Michael says.
He looks over at Josh Liston for help. Josh picks up the threads of the story, now, with the Doctors Chatham’s listening intently without comment.“We continued with regular check-ups to see if there were any more symptoms or occurrences. Ellie tells me that she is still experiencing pain. I remember thinking, well, maybe we cut more lymph muscles than we intended. I wrote a note in the chart to further explore this…”
He stops and gives out a copy of my chart to everyone. I can clearly see his handwriting regarding this. “We do radiation treatments as part of the treatment with the lumpectomy. That goes well. All follow-up films show no signs of cancer in the left breast.” I hear the way Josh is talking. His words are carefully chosen. I look at him curiously. The Doctors Chatham are looking at him this way, as well.
“Ellie’s pregnant during radiation,” Lisa states in this flat, all-knowing voice. Did you know that?”
“No,” Josh says.
“
I
didn’t even know I was pregnant. Believe me, I didn’t even think that was possible,” I say in defense of Josh. Michael won’t even look at me, now.
Michael clears his throat and says, “So, I see Ellie in January at her son’s basketball game and I’m noticing how she is favoring her left arm
—
her left side. She barely uses it. I haven’t seen her for three months, so I’m surprised by this. She should be feeling and doing so much better. So, Josh, Ben and I start looking at her films. We do a resection and check the margins. They’re perfectly clear. Everything looks good, clear, even her latest films of her left breast look good after the second surgery when we look at the margins,” Michael says in this low voice. “We can’t figure it out.”
“We decide to go back to square one. Do an upper torso scan with an MRI. We just can’t figure out what we’re missing,” Josh adds.
“Referred pain,” Lisa murmurs. She has already figured it out. Granted, she knows that I have a tumor in my right breast, but I get this uneasy feeling. I can tell that my male team of doctors is waiting to exhale, at this point. “And, she’s pregnant and you do an MRI,” Lisa says.
“Yes…we knew after the battery of tests that she was pregnant, but our focus still remained on Ellie and saving her life,” Josh says.
“It was
my call
,” Michael says, now. He has tormented look on his face and this remorseful tone. “I told Josh and Ben that we should proceed with the MRI. We couldn’t figure out what was going on with Ellie. We were missing something. I didn’t want… We were missing something. I didn’t want to lose her because we were
missing something
.”
