Rocking the Pink (2 page)

“Act like ya been there before,” Brad had coached me for years, usually after I'd spazzed out, yet again, in response to some trivial accomplishment.

But nonchalance just wasn't my strong suit.

And so, one week earlier, as we had driven to the hospital to
biopsy the pea-size lump in my left breast, I hadn't been even a little bit concerned.

I'm not gonna get cancer just as my dreams are within grasp,
I had thought.
Real life isn't a predictable Hollywood movie.

And, anyway, bad things didn't happen to me.

Or so I had thought then.

Of course, later, I learned differently. Months later, after chemo had ravaged my hairless body, after I'd been reduced to frantically checking my fingernails each morning to see if they'd curled up and off during the night, after searing pain in my head and bones had caused me to cry out in a voice I did not recognize, I learned that, oh yes, bad things really did happen to me. But in the beginning, when scary words like “cancer” and “chemotherapy” had not yet attached themselves to my body in any tangible way, had not yet implanted their fish hooks in my flesh, I simply continued to float, uninterrupted, through the Hall of Scary Words like the Pollyanna I'd always been, those mean words bouncing off me like darts from a Nerf gun.

But Brad, unlike me, understood the gravity of the situation right from the start. During the biopsy procedure a few days before that stunning phone call from the surgeon, poor Brad sat anxiously in the waiting room for hours, all by himself, wringing his hands with worry and dread, as I drifted carelessly through the ether under general anesthesia.

According to Brad, when the surgeon finally emerged from the operating room, still dressed in green scrubs, the expression on his face made Brad's stomach drop.

“What is it?” Brad asked when the surgeon approached.

But the surgeon was noncommittal. “I don't know what that was. I've sent it to the lab for analysis.”

Brad dusted off every trick in his long-abandoned lawyer bag, trying to pry a definitive answer from the surgeon. “Have you ever seen anything like it before? Was there anything about it that caused you concern? If you had to assign a percentage chance . . . ”

But the doctor refused to elaborate.

And now, here we were, just a few days after that biopsy, driving to the surgeon's office in a haze of numbness, our worst fears realized, steeling ourselves to talk about my treatment options for . . .
cancer?
Brad drove the car, his white knuckles gripping the steering wheel as if we might veer uncontrollably off the road at any moment, while I blathered on and on in a state of shock, clinging desperately to my Teflon-coated reality.

“I'm going to be like Sheryl Crow,” I proclaimed. “I'll have radiation, which will suck, but then I'll be cancer-free.” And then, out of nowhere, I declared in a defiant tone, “You know I'm quitting the law, right?” I was daring him to contradict me. “I'm quitting the law,” I said again for emphasis.

How could he possibly argue with me this time?

“Yes, baby,” Brad said. “You just be a mommy now. You do whatever you want to do.”

Even through my fog, I registered massive relief at his concession, the first of its kind after years of exhausting arguments on the topic. “I wanna quit law,” I'd groaned (or whined, or yelled) through the years, to which Brad had always retorted, “Suck it up,” or “We can't afford for you to quit,” or “Stop being a wuss.”

And now—how about that!—all it took was a little cancer diagnosis, and victory was all mine!
You do whatever you want to do,
he'd said!

I could finally kiss my law career goodbye!

Wow,
I thought, snickering to myself,
Brad is gonna be annoyed with himself for backing down when we get to the surgeon's office and he confirms I have cancer lite.

I returned to my blathering: “Radiation will suck,” I continued, “but I'm going to be just fine. Just a bump in the road.”

By the time Brad and I reached the surgeon's office, we had pulled ourselves together pretty well. We could handle this. I would be just like Sheryl Crow.

The surgeon informed us that it appeared we had caught the cancer early on.

The lump was very small, he said. So small, in fact, it was a medical marvel that I had been able to feel it at all. In a second surgery, he said, he'd remove more breast tissue and determine if the cancer had spread outside the breast and into the lymph nodes. If not, good! If yes . . . bad.

I just knew, without a doubt, there was no chance of a yes. It was simply out of the question.

“Do I need chemotherapy?” I wanted to know. This was his cue to pooh-pooh my question and tell me I was overreacting, to say I needn't worry, because, lucky for me, I had cancer lite.

But he didn't. “It's my guess you won't need chemotherapy,
Laura. But you'll need to talk to an oncologist about the specifics of your treatment plan.”

All I heard him say was, “You won't need chemotherapy.” Whatever else he said, if anything, sounded like popcorn in a microwave.
Pop, pop, pop.

When I got home from visiting the surgeon, I called my office to talk to my law partner, Pete. For the past year, I'd been working in a small firm with Pete and another lawyer, old friends of mine from law school. Both guys, fathers themselves, genuinely supported my part-time schedule, knowing it afforded me irreplaceable time with my little girls. If ever I was going to enjoy being a lawyer, then working with these two sweethearts would have been the time. But even among such wonderful law partners, I still felt like a square peg in a round hole.

Over the past year in particular, my chosen career had turned me inside out with anxiety and insomnia. My biggest client, a loud-mouthed real estate developer named Frank, had been sued for millions of dollars by multiple investors in a new office complex, who claimed that Frank and his partners had bilked them out of profits on the deal. The lawsuits were threatening to run Frank out of business and into personal bankruptcy, too. On top of that, a few weeks earlier, as I'd defended Frank in this high-stakes contract dispute, he had been criminally indicted for allegedly defrauding investors in the same deal (which he vehemently insisted was a railroad job, and I actually believed him), his high-maintenance wife of fifteen years had filed for divorce, and, just to cap off the death-spiral trifecta, audited by the IRS.

I wasn't qualified or interested in defending Frank in criminal, divorce, and tax proceedings; I was a civil litigator. So he hired an army of legal specialists to fight his battles in each of his many lawsuits, the perfect storm of which would have sent a lesser man leaping off the nearest bridge. And now Frank's army of attorneys, coordinated by me, was fighting tooth and nail to preserve any shred of his life. Frank, understandably, called me multiple times per day in a state of utter panic, wanting to know his legal team's latest efforts. Every time I looked down at my phone, there was another voicemail from Frank, usually calling to inform me of yet another catastrophic turn in his life. I didn't know how this guy had avoided a heart attack up to this point; I felt like I was going to have one on his behalf, and it wasn't even my own life that was imploding so spectacularly.

“Frank,” I told him during his fifth call of that particular day, “you've gotta stop calling me so much. Every time you call, it costs you money. Just think
cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching
every time you dial my number. I'm your lawyer, not your best friend.”

Even under these horrendous circumstances, Frank still managed to laugh. He loved it when I straight-talked him. “But you're my best friend, Laura,” he responded, his voice earnest. “I don't mind having to pay to talk to you.”

Oh, geez.
I'd become this guy's security blanket amid the biggest shitstorm of his life. I understood his desperation, but I didn't like being a paid hand-holder. “Frank, that's gross,” I said matter-of-factly. “I can't be your woobie. You're a grown-ass man.”

“But, Laura, you're all I have left.”

My stomach seized. Indeed, my stomach had been in a permanent state of seizure for quite some time. I didn't want to see this guy go down. I actually liked him, quirky as he was. I thought my teeth were going to fall out of my head from the stress. In fact, I'd started having stress dreams involving teeth—crumbling teeth, shattered teeth, falling-out teeth. And, even worse, my lifelong problem with night terrors—nightmares on steroids, during which the sleeper screams or even runs around with his or her eyes open—was at a fever pitch. Many nights, I shrieked in terror as I witnessed imaginary home invaders, rats crawling all over the floor, or phantom figures jumping out of paintings in my sleep. I was losing my mind . . . and nearly causing Brad nightly cardiac arrest, too.

And now, on this particular day, when my own life had been hijacked to hell, there was no question that my days of fighting anyone's battles but my own were over.

I didn't mince words. “I have cancer,” I told my law partner, Pete. “I'm not coming back to work.”

Pete was compassionate, as was usual for him. “Laura, take as much time as you need. Your job is here for you when you're ready.”

“Thanks, Pete. But no,” I responded without hesitation. “I'm never coming back.” I'd be damned if I was going to give up my cancer hall pass, my one-way ticket to freedom.

The next week was a whirlwind of MRIs, blood tests, and doctor's appointments in preparation for surgery. At each appointment, Brad was by my side, holding my hand or telling the technician to use a butterfly needle to draw blood because my veins are small. Brad never left my side. Literally. Every few minutes, he reached out to
touch me—my face, my hair, my arm. At night, in bed together, we clutched each other in desperation and we cried. In fact, Brad cried more in that one week than he'd cried in the twenty-three years I'd known him.

“This wasn't in the script,” he whispered over and over, tears streaming down his face. “This isn't how our story goes.”

It killed me to watch Brad suffer like this—though, in truth, his passionate tears made me feel loved and appreciated like never before. And, yes, with each passing day, fear was tightening its stranglehold on me, too, as reality began sinking in and those Scary Words began embedding their insidious fish hooks deep in my flesh. But mostly, though I didn't dare say it out loud to anyone, I felt one overwhelming emotion above all others: relief. I'd finally found my golden ticket to freedom. And, by God, I wasn't going to waste it.

A month after I'd first met Brad on that fateful night under the stars, my fifteenth birthday was fast approaching, in October 1985, and I was becoming increasingly anxious about having lied to him about my age during the past glorious weeks of our googly-eyed infatuation.

Maybe it won't come up,
I thought.
Maybe he's forgotten what I said.

But about a week before my fifteenth birthday, Brad asked, “Aren't you excited to get your driver's license?”

The jig was up—unless I could somehow fake getting my driver's license. I mulled that over for a moment. That would involve an elaborate web of lies, not to mention some illegal driving on my part. No, I couldn't pull that off.

There was no way out. I had to come clean.

“I'm actually turning
fifteen,
not sixteen,” I confessed, wincing. “I lied.”

I waited for Brad to tell me that my real age, or perhaps my initial deception, was a deal breaker. But, instead, he laughed and called himself a cradle robber. “What difference does it make?” he finally said. “Laura, you're such a knucklehead.”

And that was that. The boy loved me.

When prom time arrived for Brad, who was a year ahead of me in school, I shrieked at the sound of his car in the driveway. With one last mirror check—yes, my silver dress was red-carpet ready and my hair and makeup were sheer perfection—I ran to the front door to greet him with a kiss.

“You look beautiful, Buddy,” Brad said, as he slipped a corsage on my wrist.

He was right. I did.

At the raging party we attended before our dinner reservation, I took great care to dab the corners of my mouth with a cloth napkin after I'd gulped down a large cup of sweet-tasting, yellow-colored punch.

“Slow down, Buddy,” Brad warned. “That punch has, like, four different liquors in it.”

I smiled at him. I was fine.

An hour later, as Brad and I sat with three other couples at an elegant restaurant, I struggled to keep my head upright.

Does my head weigh thirty pounds?
I wondered. It kept dipping down, as if I were a drowsy truck driver, and then I'd quickly whip it back up. I couldn't follow the conversations around me; all my energy was focused on keeping my head perpendicular to the table.

Suddenly, there was a burst of laughter from the group. I swung
my head up and looked around, trying to see what was so funny. But I didn't notice anything.

“What?” I asked innocently.

Brad reached over to me and picked something out of my (perfectly coiffed) hair.

“You've got lettuce in your hair.”

Apparently, that last head dip had collided most indelicately with my Caesar salad.

 

 

When college came a-calling for Brad, I still had my senior year to go, and I was worried.

“What if you meet someone else in college?” I asked anxiously as we sat, hand in hand, on a low beach wall, watching the setting sun merge with the shimmering ocean.