“See …I'm fine … I told you so.”
“Then how come you're so tired?”
“Pleurisy. He sent me for a chest X ray just to be sure I don't have some weird disease, and other than that I'm great.”
“And too tired to go to Europe with me.” He still wasn't convinced. “What's this guy's name anyway?”
“Why?” She looked at him suspiciously. What was he going to do now? What else did he expect her to do?
“I want my father to check him out.”
“Oh, for chrissake …” The baby was crying to be nursed and she went to his room to pick him up while Bernie wrote the check for the babysitter. Alexander was fat and blond and green-eyed and beautiful and he squealed with delight the minute she approached and burrowed happily at her breast, patting her with one hand as she held him close to her. And later when she set him down to sleep again, she tiptoed out of his room, and found her husband standing there waiting for her. She smiled at him and touched his cheek, looking up at him. “Don't worry so much, sweetheart,” she whispered to him. “Everything is fine.”
He pulled her into his arms and held her tight. “That's how I want it to be.” Jane was playing in her room, the baby was asleep, and he looked down at his wife, but she looked too pale to him, and there were circles under her eyes that never went away anymore, and she was much, much too thin. He wanted to believe that everything was fine, but a gnawing fear inside him kept saying that it was not, and he held her for a long time, and then she went to cook dinner, and he played with Jane. And that night, as Liz slept he looked down at her fearfully. And when the baby woke at four o'clock, Bernie didn't wake her up, but made up one of the bottles with the supplement he took, and held the baby close to him.
Alexander was satisfied with the bottle and cooed happily in Bernie's arms as he smiled at the child, changed his diapers eventually, and then set him down again. He was becoming an expert at that sort of thing, and that morning it was Bernie who answered the phone when Dr. Johanssen called. Liz was still sleeping.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Fine, please.” The voice was not rude, but curt, and Bernie went to wake her up.
“It's for you.”
“Who is it?” She looked at him sleepily. It was nine o'clock, on Saturday morning.
“I don't know. He didn't say.” But he suspected it was the doctor, and it frightened him as Liz read the fear in his eyes.
“A man? For me?”
The caller identified himself as quickly to her and asked her to come in at ten o'clock. It was Dr. Johanssen.
“Is something wrong?” she asked him, glancing at her husband.
But the doctor took too long to answer. It couldn't be. She was tired, but not that tired. She glanced at Bernie involuntarily, and could have kicked herself.
“Can it wait?” But Bernie was shaking his head no.
“I don't think it should, Mrs. Fine. Why don't you and your husband come in to see me in a little while?” He sounded much too calm and it frightened her. She hung up the phone and tried to make light of it for Bernie's sake.
“Christ, he acts like I have syphilis.”
“What did he say it is?”
“He didn't say. He just said to come in an hour from now.”
“Okay, we will.” He looked terrified while trying to pretend that he was not, and he called Tracy for her while she got dressed. Tracy said she'd be over in half an hour. She'd been doing some gardening and she was a mess but she'd be happy to sit with the kids for an hour or two. She sounded as concerned as he felt, but she didn't ask any questions when she arrived. She was cheerful and business-like and sped them on their way.
They barely spoke at all on the way to the hospital where they were meeting the doctor, and they found his office there easily. He had two X rays clipped to a light box when they walked into the room, and he smiled at them, but the smile wasn't cheerful enough somehow, and suddenly, feeling a hand of terror at her throat, Liz wanted to run away and not hear what he had to say to them.
Bernie introduced himself and Dr. Johanssen asked them to sit down. He hesitated for only an instant, and then did not mince words with them. It was serious. Liz was terrified.
“Yesterday when I saw you, Mrs. Fine, I thought that you had pleurisy. A mild case perhaps. Today, I want to discuss it with you.” He swiveled in his chair and pointed the tip of his pen at two spots on her lungs. “I don't like the looks of these.” He was honest with her.
“What do they mean?” She could hardly catch her breath.
“I'm not sure. But I'd like to reconsider another symptom you mentioned yesterday. The pain in your hips.”
“What does that have to do with my lungs?”
“I think a bone scan may tell us more of what we want to know.” He explained the procedure to them, and he had already made arrangements for her at the hospital. It was a simple test, involving an injection of radioactive isotopes to show lesions in the skeleton.
“What do you think it is?” She was feeling panicked and confused, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know. But she had to.
“I'm not sure. The spots on your lungs may indicate a problem elsewhere in your system.”
She could barely think all the way to the hospital, absent-mindedly clutching Bernie's hand. All he wanted was to get away from her to call his father and there was no way he could leave her. He was with her when they administered the injection. She looked gray and terrified and it was only moderately painful. But it was terrifying as they sat and waited for the doctor to talk to them about his findings.
And his findings were profoundly depressing. They believed that Liz had osteosarcoma, cancer of the bone, and it had already metastasized to her lungs. It explained the pain she had had in her back and hips for the past year, and the frequent breathlessness. But all of it had been attributed to her pregnancy. And instead, she had cancer. A biopsy would have to confirm it, the doctors explained, as Liz and Bernie held hands tightly, and tears rolled down their cheeks. She was still wearing the green hospital gown, as Bernie reached out and took her into his arms, and held her with a feeling of desperation.
Chapter 17
“I don't give a damn! I won't!” She was almost hysterical.
“Listen to me!” He was shaking her, and they were both crying as they walked along. “I want you to come to New York with me …” He tried to fight for calm, for air …they had to be sensible …cancer didn't always have to mean the end …what the hell did this guy know anyway? …He himself had recommended them to four other specialists. A bone man, a lung man, a surgeon, and an oncologist. He recommended a biopsy, perhaps followed by surgery, and then radiation or chemotherapy, depending on the advice of the other doctors. He admitted that he himself knew too little about it.
“I won't have chemotherapy. It's horrible. Your hair falls out, I'm going to die …I'm going to die …” She was sobbing in his arms and he felt as though his guts were going to fall out. They both had to calm down. They had to.
“You're not going to die. We're going to fight this thing. Now calm down, dammit, and listen to me! We'll take the kids to New York when I go, and you can see the best men there.”
“What'll they do to me? I don't want chemotherapy.”
“Just listen to them. No one said you had to do that. This guy isn't sure what you need. For all you know, you have arthritis and he thinks it's cancer.” It would have been nice to believe that anyway.
But that wasn't what the lung man said, or the bone man. Or the surgeon. They wanted to do a biopsy. And when Bernie had his father call them, he said to go ahead. The doctors in New York would want that information anyway. And the biopsy told them that Johanssen was right. It was osteosarcoma. But the news was even worse than that. Given the nature of the cells they'd found, and the extent of it, metastasized in both lungs they discovered now, it made no sense to operate. They suggested brief and intense radiation, followed by chemotherapy as soon as possible. And Liz felt as though she had fallen into a nightmare and could not wake up. They had said nothing to Jane, except that Mommy wasn't feeling so great after the baby and they wanted to do some tests. They had no idea how to tell her what had been discovered.