Acts of Desperation(57)
Sarah followed behind him seconds later.
“Well, it’s done,” she said stepping into my office. “Now we just need to set the final court date and I’ll officially be divorced.”
“Umm, congratulations I guess?” I smiled.
She laughed. “Yep. Thanks.”
“By the way, Anders looks terrible,” I said.
“I know. When I met him over the weekend he said that he’d been having trouble with his stomach again, but my guess is too many late nights might do that to a man his age. Both of his parents were alcoholics so it runs in the family. He needs to grow up and start taking care of himself. He’s not in his twenties anymore.”
“But he’s almost glowing Sarah. Is that normal?” I asked.
“Funny, I noticed it too so I Googled it over the weekend. Too much alcohol can make your liver fatty and cause jaundice.”
“No kidding,” I said.
“Yep. I’d like to think deep down, even though on the surface he’s always so confident about his legal abilities, behind closed doors he’s secretly stressed about it and has to drink to compensate. It makes me feel better knowing he might be suffering a little too and not just constantly laughing at me behind my back.”
I was about to add my next comment when we heard a commotion down the hall followed moments later by Jax dashing past my door. Sarah and I stuck our heads out of my office to see what was going on.
“Someone call 911!” Jax yelled. He was on the ground next to someone.
We both ran to the scene. Evan was already at Dee’s desk talking to an emergency operator. We looked down at the heap on the floor only to see an unconscious Anders.
Sarah squatted down next to him and felt his head. “What happened?” Sarah asked.
Dee was standing close by with a cup in her hand in shock. “He-he said he wasn’t feeling well so I went to get him a glass of water. When I got back he was on the floor.”
I walked over to Dee, took the cup out of her hand, and put my arm around her shoulders while I watched Jax and Sarah assess Anders.
“His breathing is really shallow, but he has a pulse,” Jax said to Evan who was relaying the information to the 911 operator. Jax looked over to Sarah. “Was he complaining about anything before you got here?”
“Yeah…he-he said his stomach has been bothering him, but he’s had trouble with it for years, but he’s never collapsed because of it. Do you think it was a heart attack?”
“I don’t know.” Jax looked at Evan. “Tell them to hurry.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Anders was brought into the hospital semiconscious and dehydrated. Sarah worked closely with the doctors and disclosed his full history of stomach issues and his recent alcoholic binges. Over the next week, they ran a barrage of bloods tests and ended up performing a CT scan that discovered multiple tumors in Anders’s abdomen. After doing a biopsy, they diagnosed Anders with pancreatic cancer. He had the most aggressive and common form, and it had already spread to his liver and lymph nodes.
The doctors said his symptoms could have easily been mistaken for Irritable Bowel and learned that Anders had actually seen his regular physician two weeks prior because of his symptoms. Unfortunately with pancreatic cancer, by the time the patient senses something is truly wrong, it’s usually misdiagnosed. His death was inevitable, but the real question was when.
I met Sarah in the waiting room at the hospital a few days following Anders’s diagnosis. After talking to my parents, I found out that she’d been spending most of her time with him. She looked completely drained.
“Here, I brought some good stuff,” I said, sitting down next to her and handing her a cup of coffee. “The coffee in hospitals is always terrible.”
“Oh you don’t know how much I need this, thanks,” she said. The cup squeaked as she popped the lid off, allowing billows of steam to escape, and she cautiously took her first sip.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m exhausted.”
“The kids?”
She sighed. “They’re fine, but I don’t know what to do. If I thought telling them we were getting divorced was hard, I can only imagine how awful it’s going to be telling them their dad’s dying. So far I’ve only said that he’s sick.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, reaching out and grabbing her hand. “I can only imagine how hard it’s going to be. Are you and Anders going to tell them together?” I asked.
“He doesn’t think we should tell them.”
“He doesn’t?”
“No, but not telling them feels like lying, and I can’t do that.” She took a deep breath and took another sip of coffee. “I’ll do it eventually when we know more. For now, I’m taking it one day at a time.”
I was certainly no authority on dying having only experienced the deaths of our grandparents and our family cats growing up; this situation was far more complicated. “Well, I’m sure you’ll know the right time when it comes. Maybe he’s right about not telling them yet. Since you don’t have all the answers, it could lead to more questions. They deserve the chance to say good-bye though. I assume they’re at Mom and Dad’s now?”
She nodded. “And they’ve been taking them to school and everything else. The kids think it’s an extended slumber party—you know dad’s just a big kid—so they’re having a good time.” She put her coffee down then laughed uneasily. “I can’t believe everything that we’ve gone through over the last two years, and now he’s going to die. It’s too much.”