20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(31)

I switched on the ignition and noticed Claire had kicked off her shoes and folded up her legs, and was hugging her knees to her chest.

“I need to talk,” she said.

I turned off the engine and faced her.

“Here I am, Butterfly.”

“You never heard me say this before, but I’m scared. Really, truly freaked out of my mind.”

“Who wouldn’t be? You’ve got surgery in the morning. Talk to me.”

Claire threw a long sigh and leaned back against the headrest. “I spent some time online looking up imminent death.”

“Number one,” I said. “Don’t think that way.”

“You know, I see more dead people in a day than most people see in their entire lives. Not even close. You’d think I’d be fairly blasé by now. I’m thinking I know too much.”

“You’re not looking at imminent death, Claire. Come on. You’re going to a great surgeon. World class. He’s going to take that tumor out with a piece of lung about this big—”

“Two tumors this big.”

“Two? You said … you said one.”

Claire said, “What happened is, over the years the pictures showed a spot. A little spot. Left lung, right here. Couple weeks ago, had the biopsy. Then yesterday they asked me to come in for a PET scan. And whaddaya know? They saw another little spot. If it’s spread … if it’s spread, I could be looking at a year, more or less.”

I felt hollow and cold. Claire was telling me this for the first time, and she was mad and scared. As for me, I wasn’t ready to accept it. I said, “I don’t believe that—”

“No, no, let me talk. I’m a doctor and you’re not.”

“I don’t have to take your word for it.”

“So when people hear that they have a death sentence, they either tell themselves, ‘I have only this much time, so I’m going to make the most of it.’ They take a trip around the world or learn to ski black-diamond runs.”

“Or they accept that sell-by date and just give up,” Lindsay continued. “Like, ‘Why am I doing anything? It’s over.’”

Claire, who’d been staring out the windshield at nothing, not looking at my stricken face, turned to me.

“See, neither of those two options apply to me, Lindsay. I can’t quit my job and run off to see the world. I have a husband who is twelve years older than me, and this is killing him. He’s literally getting angina. I have a little girl at home. She needs her mother.”

I pressed my lips together. I wanted to yell, You’re talking crazy. You’re looking at a worst case that may not exist. But I had to let her talk.

“So this is why I’m freaking out. They’re going to cut me open, and I know where and how. They’re going to take out something I should have worried about instead of kissing off, and something else, to be determined. Lindsay, you know I’m conscientious. Right?”

“Absolutely. Totally.”

“But doctors are notorious for feeling invincible. I mean me. Death is a colleague.”

I was shaking my head, No, no, no, and wondering why I hadn’t been more vigilant. Why hadn’t I kicked her ass? Because I didn’t know shit about non-small-cell lung cancer.

Claire was saying, “And then Dr. Terk is going to stamp my forehead with my expiration date, and I’m going to see it in the mirror every morning. And I swear, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Tears were running from her eyes, spilling onto her shirt.

“Claire. Claire, listen to me. You’re afraid. I get that. But you don’t know what the doctors are going to find until they analyze what they take out.”

She nodded. But I wasn’t getting anywhere.

“And after the surgery,” I said, “you recuperate. You do what your doctor tells you, and if he says radiation or chemo, you do that. And if he says it’s okay to work, you decide if you’re going to do that. You take care of your family and let them take care of you, and you take some time for yourself. But along with all of that, you fight like hell, Claire. You use all of your contacts and build a team. Check into the latest treatments and alternative treatments. You’ve got to put on your brass knuckles and load your gun and fight like hell. And that’s how you win.”

My best friend reached out to touch me, but I had to pull away and cry into my shirtsleeve. I grabbed tissues out of the glove box, and when I could speak again, I said, “Hear me?”

“I haven’t had a cigarette in twenty years. How could my body betray me like this? How could I ignore the symptoms? I’m not ready for this, Lindsay. I’m not ready to die.”

“Did you hear me?”

She nodded. Tears were running down both our faces.

Claire coughed long and hard and painfully.

Then she said, “Yeah. I hear you. Fight like hell.”

“I’m glad we got that straight.”

I hugged her over the console and the gear shift. We rocked within the confines of that front seat, and I told her that I loved her, and she said, “I love you, too.”

I started up the Explorer and heard Claire say, “Lindsay? Look at me.”

Posing like a boxer, she showed me her fists. “I hear you.”