In Five Years(41)

“Dannie,” Aaron says, like he’s choosing his words very carefully. “It’s important that you know that I’m not going anywhere.”

“Why?” I ask him.

A jogger passes by and, sensing the tension of the moment, crosses the street. A car horn honks. A siren whirls somewhere down Hudson.

“Because I love her,” he says.

I ignore the confession. I’ve heard it before. “You don’t even know her.”

I start walking again. A kid zooms past us with a basketball, his mother sprinting after him. The city. Full and buzzy and unaware that somewhere, fifteen blocks south, tiny cells are multiplying in a plot to destroy the whole world.

“Dannie. Stop.”

I don’t. And then I feel Aaron’s hand on my arm. He yanks and turns me around.

“Ow!” I say. “What the hell.” I rub my upper arm. I am, all at once, overcome with the urge to slap him, to punch him in the eye and leave him, crumpled and bleeding, on the corner of Perry Street.

“Sorry,” he says. His eyebrows are knit together. He has a dimple in the space above his nose. “But you need to listen to me. I love her. That’s the long and short of it. I don’t think I could live with myself if I bailed now, but that’s not even relevant because, like I said, I love her. This isn’t like anything I’ve ever had before. This is real. I’m here.”

His chest rises and falls like it’s taking physical effort to be upright. That I understand.

“It’s going to be more painful if you leave later,” I say. I feel my lip quiver again. I demand it to stop.

Aaron reaches out to me. He takes both my elbows in his palms. His chest is so close I can smell him.

“I promise,” he says.

We must walk back. I must call a car. We must say goodnight. I must come home and tell David. I must, at some point, fall asleep. But later I don’t remember. All I remember is his promise. I take it. I hold it in my heart like proof.





Chapter Twenty-Two


On Tuesday, October 4, I arrive at Mount Sinai on East One Hundredth Street an hour before the scheduled surgery. I still haven’t spoken to Bella, but I come to her pre-op room to find both her father and mother there. I don’t think they’ve been in the same room in over a decade.

The room is loud, even boisterous. Jill, her hair blown out and impeccably dressed in a Saint Laurent suit, chats with the nurses as if she’s preparing to host a luncheon, not for her daughter’s reproductive organs to be removed.

Frederick chats with Dr. Shaw. They both stand at the foot of Bella’s bed, arms crossed, gesturing amicably.

This isn’t happening.

“Hi,” I say. I knock on the side door that is obviously already open.

“Hey,” Bella says. “Look who made it.” She gestures to her father, who turns around and gives me a sideways wave.

“I see that,” I say. I put my bag down on a chair and go to Bella’s bedside. “How are you?”

“Fine,” she says, and I see it right there—the indignant stubbornness that has been avoiding me for the past week. Her hair is already in a cap, and she’s wearing a hospital gown. How long has she been here?

“What did Dr. Shaw say?”

Bella shrugs. “Ask him yourself.”

I take a few steps down. “Dr. Shaw,” I say. “Dannie.”

“Of course,” he says. “Notepad woman.”

“Right. So how is everything looking?”

Dr. Shaw gives me a small smile. “Okay,” he says. “I was just explaining to Bella and her folks here that surgery will take about eight hours.”

“I thought it was six,” I say. I’ve done extensive research. I’ve barely left Google. Filing statistics. Researching these procedures, recovery times, added benefits of taking out both ovaries instead of one.

“It could be,” he says. “It depends on what we find when we get in there. A full hysterectomy is usually six, but because we’re also removing the fallopian tubes we may need more time.”

“Are you performing an omentectomy today?” I ask.

Dr. Shaw looks at me with a mixture of respect and surprise. “We’re going to do a biopsy of the omentum for staging. But we will not be removing it today.”

“I read that a complete removal increases survival odds.”

To his credit, Dr. Shaw does not look away. He does not clear his throat and look to Jill or Bella. Instead, he says, “It’s really a case by case.”

My stomach turns. I look to Jill, who is up by Bella’s head, smoothing her cap-covered hair.

A memory. Bella. Age eleven. Crawling up into my bed from the trundle because she’d had a nightmare. It was snowing and I couldn’t find you.

“Where were you?”

“Alaska, maybe.”

“Why Alaska?”

“I don’t know.”

But I did. Her mother had been there for a month. Some kind of two-and-a-half-week cruise followed by a specialized spa.

“Well, I’m right here,” I said. “You’ll always be able to find me, even in snow.”

How dare Jill show up. How dare she claim ownership and offer comfort now. It’s too late. It has been too late for over twenty years. I know I’d hate Bella’s parents even more if they didn’t show today, but I still want them gone. They don’t get the place by her side, especially not now.