In Five Years(37)

“Can we do that today?” I ask. I’ve been taking notes, writing down everything that comes out of his mouth in my book, the one that’s supposed to be functioning as a wedding planner.

“Yes,” he says. “I’m going to have the nurse come back in to get you started.”

“What’s your opinion?” I ask him.

He takes off his glasses. He looks at Bella. “I think we need to run some additional tests,” he tells her.

He doesn’t have to say anything more. I’m a lawyer. I know what words mean, what silences mean, what repetition means. And I know, there in black and white, what he thinks. What he suspects. Maybe, even, what he already knows. They were right.





Chapter Twenty


Here is the thing no one tells you about cancer: they ease you into it. After the initial shock, after the diagnosis and the terror, they put you on the slow conveyor belt. They start you off nice and easy. You want some lemon water with that chemo? You got it. Radiation? No problem, everyone does it, it’s practically weed. We’ll serve you those chemicals with a smile. You’ll love them, you’ll see.

Bella does indeed have ovarian cancer. They suspect stage three, which means it has spread to nearby lymph nodes but not to surrounding organs. It’s treatable, we’re told. There is recourse. So many times, with ovarian cancer, there isn’t. You find it too late. It’s not too late.

I ask for the statistics, but Bella doesn’t want them. “Information like that gets in your head,” she says. “It’ll have a higher probability of affecting the outcome. I don’t want to know.”

“It’s numbers,” I say. “It’ll affect the outcome anyway. Hard data doesn’t move. We should know what we’re dealing with.”

“We get to determine what we’re dealing with.”

She puts an embargo on Google, but I search anyway: 46.5 percent. That is the survival rate of ovarian cancer patients over five years. Less than fifty-fifty.

David finds me on the tile floor of the shower.

“Fifty is good odds,” he tells me. He crouches down. He holds my hand through the glass door. “That’s half.” But he’s a terrible liar. I know he would never make a bet on those odds, not even drunk at a table in Vegas.



Five days later, I’m back at an appointment with Bella. We’ve been referred to a gynecological oncologist who will sort and determine the course of surgery and treatment. This time, it’s just the two of us. Bella asked Aaron to stay behind. I wasn’t there for that conversation. I do not know what it looked like. Whether he fought. Whether he was relieved.

We’re introduced to Dr. Shaw in his office on Park Avenue, between Sixty-Second and Sixty-Third. It’s so civilized when we pull up, I think we’ve been given the wrong address—are we headed to a luncheon?

His office is subtler, more subdued—inside there are patients who are suffering. You can tell. Dr. Finky’s office is the first stop—the new and freshly washed train, full of steam. Dr. Shaw is where you go for the remaining miles.

Once the nurse takes us back, Dr. Shaw comes in to greet us quickly. Immediately I like his friendly face—it’s open, even a little earnest. He smiles often. I can tell Bella likes him, too.

“Where are you from?” she asks him.

“Florida, actually,” he says. “Sunshine state.”

“It’s always been strange to me that Florida is the sunshine state,” Bella says. “It should be California.”

“You know,” Dr. Shaw says. “I agree.”

He’s tall, and when he folds himself onto his small rolling stool his knees nearly come up to his elbows.

“Alright,” he says. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

Dr. Shaw presents the plan. Surgery to “debulk” the tumor, followed by four rounds of chemo over two months. He warns us that it will be brutal. I find myself, more than once in Dr. Shaw’s office, wishing I could trade places with Bella. It should be me. I’m strong. I can handle it. I’m not sure Bella can.

The surgery is scheduled for Tuesday, back at Sinai hospital. It’s a full hysterectomy, and they’re also removing both her ovaries and her fallopian tubes. Something called a bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. I find myself Googling medical terms in the car, on the subway, in the bathroom at work. She’ll no longer produce eggs. Or have a place where they could, one day, develop.

At this revelation, Bella starts to cry.

“Can I freeze my eggs first?” she asks.

“There are fertility options,” Dr. Shaw tells her, gently. “But I wouldn’t recommend them, or waiting. The hormones can sometimes exacerbate the cancer. I think it’s critical we get you into surgery as soon as possible.”

“How is this happening?” Bella asks. She drops her face into her hands. I feel nauseous. Bile rises to my throat and threatens to spill out onto the floor of this Park Avenue office.

Dr. Shaw rolls forward. He puts a hand on her knee. “I know it’s hard,” he says. “But you’re in the best hands. And we’re going to do everything we can for you.”

“It’s not fair,” she says.

Dr. Shaw looks to me, but for the first time I feel at a loss for words. Cancer. No children. I have to focus on inhaling.