Cracks in the Sidewalk(20)

Finally, when JT reached a point of desperation, he visited Liz. He had come up with a plan to refinance their home. With a new mortgage, he could get enough money to tide him over.

“The house is in both names,” Harold Bollinger, the loan officer at United Trust, told him. “You’ll need your wife’s signature for refinancing.”

“Can’t I just sign for her?” JT asked.

“No, absolutely not,” Harold replied. “It’s against the law unless you’ve got power of attorney. Do you have power of attorney?”

“Uh, sort of.” The minute the words left his mouth, JT knew he had blown it. He’d stumbled over the words and sounded like a man lying.

Harold Bollinger narrowed his eyes and looked down his nose. “There’s no ‘sort of’ with loan applications. Either you produce a notarized document stating that you have power of attorney, or you get your wife’s signature.”

“Uh, my wife’s more than willing to sign these papers,” JT replied nervously, “but unfortunately she’s in the hospital and can’t get here.”

“No problem. We’ll prepare the paperwork, and you can take it to the hospital for her to sign.”

Harold Bollinger, a banker for some thirty years, noticed the nervous twitch in Jeffrey’s left eye and added, “Of course, her signature will have to match the signature we have on file.”

JT had planned to copy Elizabeth’s signature onto the bottom of the loan application, but Harold Bollinger’s warning made him nervous. For days he practiced signing her name, but each time it appeared shaky, loopy where it shouldn’t be and squiggly at the tail end of certain letters. He searched the house until he came across a document bearing her signature, then he taped it to the glass window and tried tracing her name through a ray of sunlight. He did this with four different pens and a fat black marker, but nothing worked. The signatures looked so different that even a half-blind monkey would know it was a forgery.

After days of trying, JT finally decided to go to Saint Barnabas and ask Elizabeth to sign the loan application. He hated the idea of going there; just the thought made the hair on the back of his neck bristle. The possibility of running into Charlie McDermott—or Claire—made it worse. As far as JT was concerned, Liz’s illness was destroying his life as well as hers. The McDermotts were forcing him to beg for something that was rightfully his.

His hatred of Charlie simmered and came to a slow boil. Day after day, hour after hour, JT reminded himself that if Charlie had given him the loan he needed, he wouldn’t have a summons hanging over his head. He wouldn’t need to refinance the house. And he wouldn’t be facing this confrontation with Liz.

~

By the time JT worked up enough courage to go to Saint Barnabas, Elizabeth had been transferred from the Intensive Care Unit back to her old room with the yellow chrysanthemums on the windowsill. Just as he’d feared, both Claire and Charlie were there. They stood alongside Liz’s bed with somber looks.

Doctor Sorenson was also there. She gave Jeffrey Caruthers an icy nod. “I assume you got my message. I’m glad you could make it.”

Jeffrey had not gotten the message, because ten days earlier he’d stopped retrieving messages from an answering machine that offered nothing but bad news and foreclosure threats. Nonetheless he returned her nod.

Elizabeth smiled at her husband and stretched out her right hand. The left lay limp in her lap. “Hi,” she said, glad to see him.

JT gave her a nod but remained where he was, standing out of reach with his hands locked behind his back.

“I’m glad everyone is here today,” Doctor Sorenson began, “because I have some unpleasant news, and I believe Elizabeth will need the support of her entire family.” She shot an accusatory look at JT, then continued.

“I’ve decided to terminate Elizabeth’s radiation treatments. It’s been seven weeks, and unfortunately there’s no indication that the tumor is responding.” She slid two X-ray films onto the light panel. “This is Elizabeth’s first CT scan, where we can see the size of her tumor before radiation treatments.” She pointed to the dark mass.

“And this scan”—she directed their attention to the next X-ray—“was taken two days ago. As you can see, the size of the tumor has actually increased.”

Elizabeth eyes grew teary.

JT stepped back, edging himself a bit closer to the door.

Charlie asked, “What now? Chemotherapy?”

Doctor Sorenson shook her head. “Afraid not. Chemotherapy is a shotgun approach. We can’t target just the cancerous cells, so the toxic drugs kill the good cells as well as the cancerous ones. Elizabeth is too weak to tolerate that.”

The word “cancer” caused Claire’s knees to buckle, forcing her to grasp Charlie’s arm. “What then?” she asked, fighting back her tears. “What do we do now?”

“There’s not much we can do,” Doctor Sorenson answered. “The tumor is inoperable because of where it’s located, and the radiation treatments have been unsuccessful. Of course we’ll continue to treat Elizabeth’s symptoms so that she’s comfortable and relatively pain-free. But with a tumor this aggressive, only a miracle drug…” She shrugged.

For the second time in two months, Elizabeth looked at Doctor Sorenson and asked, “Am I going to die?”