This Is Not How It Ends(67)

“Miss Myers, you need to know—”

“I already know. It’s the head. That’s why he’s jaundiced.”

His arms crossed around the file, and he reluctantly nodded.

The disturbing news strangled my voice. “Surgery?”

“Too close to the portal vein.”

I could barely breathe. My throat hurt from holding back my rage. I had never felt more powerless in my life, my entire body clenched with fear. This can’t be happening looped around my brain until I felt woozy.

You can’t catch cancer. You can’t catch cancer.

My eyes canvassed the linoleum floor when I asked, “When are you going to tell him?”

He took in a sharp breath. “Philip knows.”

The queasiness slithered through me, and I gasped. From this revelation, from Josie’s fingers sewing me back together. “I’m not sure I understand. It was a concussion! How did it turn into this?”

“There’s no concussion,” he said. “A bad cut we already stitched up, some bruising.”

I homed in on his narrow face and felt my voice thunder from the far reaches of my throat. “All this research they’re doing, all the checks Philip writes in my mother’s name . . . it’s all bullshit. You’re not even close to a cure . . .”

He was watching me, afraid to interrupt.

“I had no idea when my mom was diagnosed that it was a death sentence. None. But I remember the pity. The statistics are bullshit. No one survives this cancer. No one. You’re lucky to survive a few months.”

Tears sprang from my eyes, but I refused to give in to them. Dr. Leeman said it was understandable for me to be angry. “It’s unfortunate about your mother. I’m very sorry.”

My eyes were darts, and they sent spears in his direction. “You’re not sorry. If you really cared, if you were truly sorry, you’d fix this. Fix Philip.”

Dr. Leeman didn’t quite know how to respond to me.

“Look at the strides they’ve made with breast cancer . . . colon cancer . . . early prevention . . . detection . . . Why can’t they fix this?”

I’d already decided I would never articulate the words pancreatic cancer again. To give the cruel disease my voice would be giving it something else of mine I’ll never get back. The monster had already taken enough.

Josie was silent. She didn’t know what to say either. I didn’t care that she watched me, judged me, because I was not being very nice. By now, I was yelling at Dr. Leeman, and a vein in his temple was pulsing up and down. I wanted to break him, but he wouldn’t budge. Josie slathered a bandage across my new stitches, and I didn’t even thank her or look at the papers she had dropped in my lap to sign.

She scurried away, and Dr. Leeman recommended I talk to someone.

“Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me there’s been a breakthrough. Tell me there’s a way to screen for it before it’s too late.” I stopped and wiped my nose. The pain behind my eyes was about to burst. “Please, Dr. Leeman, tell me Philip’s not going to die. I beg you. Not him. Not yet. Not us. He hasn’t had forever yet. How can you take away his forever?”

By now, he could barely look at me. He was smoothing out his pants and likely regretting the fancy medical school with the specialty in oncology.

“I’m sorry, Miss Myers.”

Our eyes met, and if my stare were a weapon, he’d be dead.

“Fuck you,” I said.





CHAPTER 31

September 2018

Thirty-two is a supple number, an age that means you’ve lived, while young enough to enjoy the lessons that come with more time. At this sturdy age, my highlight reel consisted of watching two people I loved be afflicted with the deadliest of cancers. Like that, my history was mired in grief and my future spotted with the hollowness of life cut too short.

Like most patients on the precipice of death, denial was one of the first emotions to reveal itself. I listened to Philip, who was cloaked in a veil of obvious confusion, wondering if he fully understood.

“They told me it was treatable . . . the odds were in my favor . . . I was supposed to be one of the lucky ones.” He spoke in garbled sentences, and I assumed it was the drugs. Meghan glanced in my direction. She looked tired, like she’d been crying for days.

“He’s not making any sense.”

“I’m bloody fine,” he yelled. “They’re wrong. Stupid doctors.”

“They’re not wrong,” I said. “I wish they were.”

Philip trained his eyes on mine, and his lucidity returned. He grabbed my hand, keenly aware of what this diagnosis meant to me.

“I never wanted you to go through this again,” he said through a whisper, tears sliding down his bruised cheek.

Meghan started to cry, and when it was too much for her, she quietly left us alone.

The realization slammed into me, flattening my will and sending the room for a spin. Hours ago, I was ready to let Philip go. The breakup was necessary and painful. But now, life without him was unimaginable. None of this made sense, and I scooted him over in the bed to be closer. I rested my head on him and thought of all the nights we’d lain together. The nights those breaths cradled me in sleep. You never thought the sounds would change, that they’d die down, eventually disappear.