Life and Other Near-Death Experiences(50)

“He’s not so bad.”

I thought for a few minutes. Then I said, “I planned to be here for a month, and I want to stick to that. I still have to finalize the apartment sale. Then—and not a second sooner—I will see a doctor and reconsider my options. Okay?”

Paul managed a small smile. “And come spend time with Charlie, the boys, and me?”

“This is assuming I’m not in the hospital.”

“Perfect.” He hugged me. “Spoiler alert!”

“What is it?” I asked warily.

“Everything’s going to be fine, Libby,” he said, hugging me again. “I just know it.”

“Right,” I said. “Just fine.” I hated to lie to my brother yet again, but there he was, sliding down my old rainbow, and I didn’t have it in me to push him off.



Paul was not one for good enough. No, he preferred to change his banking passwords by the week, triple-check his zipper after leaving the bathroom, and grill a steak past the point at which a person could expect to bite into it without accidentally dislodging a dental crown—just in case. So I was not surprised when he continued to press me about my illness despite my telling him I would consider my options. “You have to tell Dad, you know,” he shouted. We were sitting at the bow of a gleaming white boat that Shiloh had chartered so the three of us could take a day trip to Culebra, one of the small islands we had seen flying in.

“I know,” I yelled. The wind was high and the ocean spray splattered against our faces, making it hard to hold a conversation. Not that this was of any consequence to Paul.

“Soon!” he yelled. “Preferably in person.”

“I know,” I said, not bothering to raise my voice this time.

The boat slapped against a large wave, and I hugged my life preserver tight to my torso, dubious about its ability to do its eponymous duty. The boat hit the surf again, and I put my hand on a metal safety rail to steady myself, then yanked it back when I realized how silly I was being. Cancer or shark bite, what did it matter? Death was death.

Of course, it wasn’t, I admitted to myself as I watched Shiloh chat animatedly with the boat’s captain. The whole idea behind this lark was to avoid a sudden and surprising end, to retain some semblance of control as the big hole in the sky closed in on me. But as diagnosis day slipped farther into the past, it seemed as if I were aiming less for a graceful exit and more for a lurching reentry.

Paul was having reentry thoughts of his own. His questioning resumed as soon as we’d docked in the shallow water off one of Culebra’s beaches. “Have you started thinking about what you’ll do after treatment?” he asked as we trudged through the glittering sand behind Shiloh, who was searching for a shady spot where we could sit and have lunch.

I squinted at him from behind my sunglasses. “What do you mean?”

“You have a chance to start over. I’m not saying you have to come to New York, though I think it would be smart. But either way, you could do something different. Even without a recommendation from Jackie, you’ve got a great résumé and you’re brilliant, if I do say so myself. You choose an industry, I’ll make a call to a contact, and you’ll have a job the next day. You would make a great producer or event planner. Hell, become a feline behavior consultant if you’re so inclined. You can do anything you want. Anything! How exciting is that?”

I supposed it was exciting in the abstract. As it pertained to my actual life, the idea of starting over made me want to go spear fishing for my own eyeballs. “Maybe,” I said.

“Libby, will you give me a hand?” Shiloh asked as he attempted to spread a thin cotton blanket under a tree.

I gave him a grateful look, then grabbed a corner of the blanket to pull it smooth. Paul took it from my hand. “Here, let me,” he said.

“I’m not an invalid, you know,” I said, placing one of my sandals on the blanket’s edge to help secure it.

He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t say you were. I just want you to take it easy.”

I sat down on the blanket and took out a bottle of sparkling water from the picnic basket Shiloh had packed. “I’m in the middle of the Caribbean with some of my favorite people, and there’s not a thing in the world that I have to do right now. If this isn’t taking it easy, then I don’t know what is.”

Paul pressed on. “Naturally, everything depends on where you go for treatment. I did a little research last night.”

“Of course you did.”

He was sweating even more than I was, and he pulled off his polo, then carefully folded it and placed it in the canvas tote he had brought. “And if our roles were reversed, would you just sit there and do nothing?”

“No.”

“Ding ding ding! We have a neural connection!”

I snatched a plastic knife from the picnic basket we’d packed. “Shall I use this on you?”

He ignored me. “The Mayo Clinic is doing a second-phase clinical trial that sounds really promising. And there’s a doctor at Columbia who has written several papers on T-cell lymphomas.”

“One thing at a time,” Shiloh said, putting an arm around me.

Paul frowned at him, and I could see his wheels turning, taking in how this practical stranger was being protective of his sister.