Gentle Hearts
Copyright© 2024 by Bondi Beach
Chapter 2: It Hurts
IT WAS JUST after New Year’s Day of the year our daughter Erin would turn twenty-three. She’d married her college sweetheart, Mark, just after graduation. They were working on starting their family.
“Hey, this isn’t any fun.”
Sophie grimaced and I let her go.
“It hurts.”
“Where, sweetie?”
“Everywhere.”
I grabbed her again and held her, gently.
“When did this start?”
“A couple of weeks ago.”
I was pissed, and I guess it showed.
“Sweetie, why didn’t you say anything?”
Sophie started to cry, and I was terrified.
“Wait. Don’t move.”
I got an appointment for Sophie with Dr. Gonzalez the next morning. I figured the gods were on our side since he was usually booked a week ahead, unless you were dying. What a jackass I was.
She must have given them enough blood for two Red Cross blood donations. She peed wherever and whenever they asked her to, and after a gazillion tests they managed to narrow it down to everything it was not. That was a fucking lot of help.
The following week, Gonzalez called us to come back in. As soon as we saw him we knew it was bad news.
Charts, scans, rows of figures. Normal ranges, abnormal ranges. He had enough paper there to run a shredder for hours.
“Sophie, it’s a tumor. I talked to Jameson at Stanford Medical Center. He says he can operate and get pretty much all of it. The problem is, ‘pretty much’ isn’t going to be enough. Not only that, it’s in a tricky place and you stand a better-than-even chance of ending up in a wheelchair afterwards, no matter how much of the thing he manages to cut out.”
He paused. His lips twisted for a second, before he recovered his doctor face.
“I’m sorry. I wish I had better news for you.”
Sophie and I looked at each other. I knew in a second she wouldn’t do the surgery.
“Doctor, without the surgery, how long do I have?”
“Three months at the outside.”
Three months. Three fucking months. Married twenty-nine years, and it comes down to three months?
That night, late, we lay in each other’s arms on the big chaise lounge in our screened patio room, bundled up against the chill.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.