The Empty Jar(41)

Smiling, I stop there, giving my words time to sink in. I know my sweet friend will be completely astonished by this entire conversation, but after a day or so, she’ll be the supportive person I’ve always known her to be.

“You-you’re pregnant?” Nissa’s jaw goes slack, her mouth hanging open in the shape of a hollow oval.

I nod.

“But Nate… What about the other woman? I know it was probably nothing, but don’t you think you should—”

“He was meeting with my oncologist, Nissa. That’s all it was. He told me.”

“Oh.” After a few seconds of digesting that information, she continues baldly. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to try to carry this baby.”

My happiness falters as noticeably as my smile. I can feel it, the tremble of trying forcibly to keep it in place. “I am.”

“Lena, what the hell are you thinking? You need treatment! This isn’t the Middle Ages. Cancer isn’t 100% incurable. There are hundreds if not thousands of medications and immune enhancers and all sorts of shit they could give you. You’re the nurse here. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”

“No, you’re not. But Nissa, I’ve seen this before. I lived it with my sister and my father. There’s a point when it’s better to just live your life. Go for the quality rather than the quantity. Unfortunately, that’s where I am.”

“Well, if it wasn’t, it will be now. You certainly can’t take any treatment if you’re pregnant.”

Nissa gets up from the table and takes her coffee mug to the sink, angrily dumping the contents down the drain and rinsing the cup to stick in the dishwasher. When it is stowed away alongside the other dirty dishes, she sets her hands on either side of the sink and bends one knee, her hips shifting to one side in that way she has when she’s getting frustrated with her kids. Like she’s at her wits’ end.

Only this time, she’s frustrated with me.

I wonder briefly, sort of comically if Nissa is going to turn around and shake her finger at me.

Without facing me, Nissa asks, “What does Nate say about this?”

“He’s supportive. He wants what I want.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m betting he’d much rather have you around for the next forty years than risk your life for a child you may or may not even be able to carry.” Bitterness drenches her voice. I know she can’t say the same thing about her own husband, which breaks my heart.

Still, I’m more than a little taken aback by Nissa’s irritation. It hurts, more than I would’ve expected, to hear the disapproval in my closest confidant’s voice, to feel the harsh slap of her condemnation when I’d expected nothing less than weepy support.

Fighting back tears, I stand and walk to the sink, turning to lean one hip against it so I can face my friend’s pinched profile. I know her words, her actions come from a place of anguish, but that doesn’t lessen the hurt to my battered heart.

“The odds were not in my favor, Nissa. No matter what I did. And I wasn’t planning on getting pregnant. Right in the middle of dying is not exactly the best time to be trying to nurture a healthy baby. But,” I add with extra emphasis, “this child has already given me so much happiness and it’s only been a few weeks. I feel like it has brought me back to a place I never thought I’d be. I have hope. Hope, Nissa. This cancer…it stole everything from me—my present, my future. Out in the distance, there was nothing for me but pain and sickness and death. But now, despite the pain and the sickness and the death, I could have a baby. In a child, I will be able to give my husband a tiny piece of me that he can keep for the rest of his life. And for as many days as I can make it after delivery, we will be able to be a whole family. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. For us to have our own little family. Can’t you please just be happy for me?”

Nissa whirls to face me, her face red with fury. “Be happy for you? Be happy that you came to tell me you’re dying and that you’re fine with doing nothing about it? What kind of a monster do you think I am?”

“I don’t think you’re a monster at all. That’s why I need a favor. That’s why I was going to ask you to help Nate. I was going to ask my best friend in the world to be present in my husband’s life because I won’t be. I can’t be. I was going to ask her to help him with the baby, answer his questions, let him vent his frustrations because he won’t have anyone else around. He’ll be grieving, and he’ll be overwhelmed, and the only thing I can do to help him is to give him the best friend I’ve ever had. I was going to lean on her if I ever had a baby. I was going to call her in the middle of the night for teething recipes and come to her door crying because I hadn’t slept in days. I was going to proudly show her how I’d learned to change a diaper in thirty seconds or less, and I was going to take her to a spa day when the men had the kids. But now…since it won’t be me, I had hoped my husband could do the same. That’s what I was going to ask, but…”

I let my words trail off, my heart nearly exploding with sadness. Of all the reactions I might’ve anticipated from my long-time neighbor, my long-time friend, this was nowhere on the list.