Season of Blessing (13 page)
Harry, sit down,”
Sylvia said two days later as Harry ran around the room arranging the flowers that had been sent. “You haven't gotten a moment's rest since my surgery. Please sit down. You're wearing me out just watching you.”
“Well, what else am I going to do?” Harry asked. “That's what I'm here for.”
“You're not here to wait on me hand and foot. You're here to hold my hand. That's all I want from you, Harry.”
He came to the bed and leaned over her, took her hand. “You look beautiful, you know.”
Sylvia rolled her eyes. “You don't have to appease me with compliments, Harry. Nobody looks beautiful two days after surgery.”
“I know. You're an enigma. I'm thinking about writing you up for a medical journal. It's probably a first or something.”
A knock sounded on the door and they both turned to it. It cracked open and their daughter, Sarah, stepped inside. “Mom?”
“Sarah!” Sylvia sat up in bed. “Oh, honey.” She reached her good arm out for her, and Sarah came to her and gave her a careful hug. “How are you, Mom?”
“I'm great, now that you're here. Where's that baby?”
“They wouldn't let her come up.”
Sylvia gasped. “So you left her alone?”
Sarah laughed. “Right. She's fourteen months old, and I left her toddling around in the lobby. What kind of mother do you think I am?”
“Well, where is she then?”
“She's with her daddy, downstairs.”
Another knock turned her attention to the door, and her son ducked in.
“Jeff! I didn't think you were coming until tomorrow! Come in! Oh, sweetheart, you didn't have to take off work on a Friday. You could have just come for the weekend.”
“Like I'd just go on with things and forget that my mother is laid up in the hospital?” He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. She recognized the way he avoided looking at her chest. “How you feeling, Mom?”
“Better than I expected.” She reached up to hug him, and winced as the incision on her left side pulled.
They both went to their father and hugged him tight and hard. Neither of them had seen him in over a year, not since the baby had been born. Sylvia saw the emotion on his face.
“Okay, that's it. I'm going to get my grandchild,” he said. “I need to see her, and your mother needs to see her.”
“Oh, can you, Harry?”
“Of course I can. I know people. I can pull strings.”
He rushed out, looking for his son-in-law and grandchild.
Sarah watched her father go, then turned her serious face back to her mother. “Are you sure you're all right, Mom? You look a little pale.”
Sylvia tried to look shocked. “And your father told me I looked beautiful.”
“Pale in a good way,” Jeff said. “Like one of those porcelain-looking women in those antique paintings.”
“Antique?” Sylvia swung at him. “Give me a break.” Again, the incision pulled, but she wouldn't let herself wince.
“So have you heard anything yet?” Sarah asked.
“No, not yet.” She took her daughter's hand. “We don't expect any news until tomorrow. But since tomorrow's Saturday, it might have to wait until Monday. Until then, we just assume that the cancer hasn't spread, that they got every bit of it in the surgery, and that I've already been through the worst part of this.”
“Okay, Mom,” Sarah said, but Sylvia didn't miss the look that passed between her children.
Sylvia hated
eating in front of an audience, but the next morning as she ate her breakfast, Harry, Sarah, and Jeff watched. Dr. Jefferson came in before she'd even finished her yogurt.
She set her spoon down and stared up at him. His face was somber, and she didn't like it. Harry introduced him to their children, then asked him point-blank, “You have the results?”
“That's right,” he said. “Maybe we should talk alone⦔
Jeff started to get up, but Sarah was more stubborn. She stood her ground, wanting to hear.
“That's okay.” Sylvia held out a hand to stop Jeff from leaving. “I want them to stay. You can talk to me in front of them.”
With all her heart, she hoped she was doing the right thing. They couldn't be sheltered from this. They were adults, after all. And they needed to know the truth. Keeping it from them would serve no purpose.
“Very well.” He pulled up a chair and sat down next to the bed. Harry stood up, jingling the change in his pocket. He didn't even know he was doing it.
Sarah and Jeff didn't move a muscle. They didn't even seem to breathe.
Sylvia was glad she'd taken the time to put on makeup and fix her hair this morning. She didn't want to look sick when the verdict came down.
“Let's go ahead,” she said. “Be blunt. I want the truth.”
He shifted in his seat and opened her chart, as if seeing the results for the first time. Sylvia knew better. “It turns out that six of your lymph nodes are positive for tumor cells.” He said it matter-of-factly, as if it held no particular significance. It was the way surgeons had of cushioning the blow.
She would have expected to start screaming out “no!” She would have pictured herself demanding that he run the tests again. Tears, at least.
Instead, she sat there numbly, staring at his face, wondering if that scar over his lip had happened in childhood, or if it had been recent. Had stitches been involved, or plastic surgery, or just a Band-aid?
Harry cleared his throat, shaking her out of her rambling thoughts. He was beside her now, taking her hand. It felt like ice, though she wasn't sure if it was his or hers that needed warmth.
“Six positive lymph nodes,” she repeated. “What does that mean?”
“It just means that the cancer cells have spread. That we have to be a little more aggressive with treatment.”
Sarah moaned and covered her face, and Jeff took her hand.
“Let me see the report,” Harry said, and the doctor handed it to him.
“The cancer cells are also hormone receptor positive,” the doctor went on.
Sylvia's mind groped awkwardly for the information she'd gathered. She had read about the hormone part of this, but for the life of her, she couldn't remember it now. “What does that mean?”
Harry rubbed his eyes and handed the report back to Sam. “They look for a particle of protein on the surface of the cancer cell to see if it's sensitive to estrogen,” he said. “If it is, the cell is triggered into growing and dividing when it's stimulated by estrogen. Most women over fifty have that. Isn't that right, Sam?”
“That's right. That means that we'll have to treat it with hormones after the chemotherapy.”
“For how long?” Sylvia asked.
“For at least five years, but possibly the rest of your life.”
She swallowed, wondering how long that would be.
The doctor explained, “The hormone therapy will keep the hormones from triggering the cells into growing.”
“What about the breast tissue?” Harry asked. “Can I see that report?”
The doctor flipped through the file and found the pathologist's report on that. “He determined that her breast tissue is poorly differentiated. No surprise there. The tumor is three centimeters, as we thought.”
Harry took the report and studied it. His face was pale, and she felt his hand tightening over hers. He didn't realize how strong he was. Often, when they prayed together, he would hold her hand so tight that it would go numb. He did that now.
“As we told you going in, Sylvia, your cancer cells are very aggressive,” Sam said. “That means that our chemo treatment is going to have to be aggressive, too. It's not going to be a picnic.”
Sylvia thought of her hair falling out, her eyebrows bareâ¦
Tears stung the backs of her eyes, but she told herself she would not cry in front of her children. She wasn't finished teaching them lessons, even in early adulthood. They were learning from watching her. Everything she did, every expression, every word, would be forever etched in their memory.
So she rose to the occasion. “I'm up for it, Sam. Bring it on.”
He smiled weakly.
“What do we do next?” Harry asked. The paper in his hand trembled as he handed it back to Sam.
“I'm going to send Sylvia for scans of her head, chest, abdomen, and bones to determine if there's cancer anywhere else in her body. That should give us a good indication of what we're dealing with.”
“More tests,” Sylvia said. “How long does all this take?”
“We hope to get all the scans done today.”
She nodded and looked at her children. Sarah had tears running down her face. Jeff's face was red and as serious as she'd ever seen it.
“When will I be able to start killing this cancer?”
“We can't start chemo until a month from now. We've got to give your body time to heal from the mastectomy.”
She didn't like that answer much. “I know the oncologist warned me of that, but it seems like we need to do it sooner. Those cells are dividing and growing.”
“It's okay,” he said. “Even with aggressive cancer you have time to heal.”
She looked at her children again, saw the terror on Sarah's face and the rock hardness on Jeff's.
“All right,” she said, “I'm ready for those scans anytime you are.”
“We'll schedule them for this afternoon.” He closed her file and got up. “My secretary is making you an appointment about two weeks from now with your oncologist, so that you've had a little time to heal and we've gotten all the results back.”
He patted Sylvia's hand. “Don't worry. We're going to be walking alongside you in this. We wouldn't mess up for anything, knowing Harry the way we do.” He chuckled, and Harry forced a smile.
He started to leave, but Sarah came to her feet. She looked like a child lost at the mall. “Doctor?”
He turned at the door.
“Is my mother going to be all right?”
“We'll know more after the scans,” he said. Without offering any more in the way of commitment, he headed down the hall.
