Betrayed (Rosato & DiNunzio, #2)(48)
Aunt Barb looked at Judy with concern. “Feel free to go, when you need to, if you have to prepare. I’ll see you at the end of the workday. That would be great.”
“No, I’ll come back after the deposition, no worries. It should be by mid-afternoon, at the latest.”
“One last thing.” Aunt Barb’s expression fell into grave lines, deepening the folds that draped her mouth. “There’s something important I want to talk to you about, what you said last night, to Frank. When you said I could die.”
Judy shuddered, especially in this grim context. “Aunt Barb, I’m so sorry. Really, I feel horrible.”
“It’s okay, sweetie.” Aunt Barb kept her gaze on Judy’s face, her eyes steady and even serene. “It was true, and it’s something we should say to each other. I hadn’t known how to bring it up, but you did, so it’s time we talked about it.”
“We don’t have anything to talk about,” her mother said, averting her eyes.
“Delia, you don’t have to take part in the conversation. You can just listen or don’t, as you wish. I’ll talk to Judy.”
“Hmph.” Judy’s mother folded her arms, and Judy squeezed her Aunt Barb’s hand.
“What is it, Aunt Barb?”
“We say in group that the one with the cancer is never the one who has the hardest time talking about death, and that’s true.” A smile returned to Aunt Barb’s face, but it looked forced. “But that doesn’t mean it’s easy for me to talk about, which is why I hid it from you both. I realize now that I made a mistake. I regret that decision. I’m sorry about that. I apologized last night to your mother, and now I’m apologizing to you.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Judy said, from the heart.
“I do, because I think it made all of this”—Aunt Barb gestured to the examining room—“more shocking to you and your mother, more sudden. You’re both thrown for a loop, I can see, and it’s because I didn’t tell you about it before.”
“That’s okay, we’re up to speed now. We’re quick studies, and we love you.”
“You’re such a sweetheart, and I love you, too.” Aunt Barb’s eyes filmed, but she blinked them clear. “What’s important is the truth, and what you said last night was the truth. That’s why I’m grateful to you. The fact is that I don’t know if, after all of this, I’ll beat my cancer, or if it will beat me. I don’t know if I’m going to die, but I have to admit the possibility.”
Judy swallowed hard, trying not to cry.
Her mother tsk-tsked. “I don’t know what the point of this is. This talk is negative and morose. Morbid. Melodramatic.”
“Delia, it may be dramatic, but it’s not melodramatic. I’m talking about life and death. There’s drama in that, and I don’t apologize for it.”
Judy shot her mother a pleading look. “Let her talk, Mom. Like she said, if you don’t want to talk, then don’t talk, but don’t silence her. This is about her, not you or me.”
“It’s such negative thinking!” her mother shot back. “She’s about to go into an operation. She has to believe she’s going to get better or she won’t get better.”
“Mom, that’s not true,” Judy said, though she could see fear, not criticism, flashing through her mother’s eyes.
Aunt Barb turned to Judy’s mother with a deep frown. “No, it’s not true. That’s what I hate the most, that burden. We talk about that in our support group, too. How we put that burden on ourselves, or our family does. I put it on myself for so long.”
“What burden do you mean?” Judy asked gently.
“The burden that if I don’t get better, it’s my fault.” Aunt Barb emitted a quiet huff of frustration. “That if I just tried harder, or thought more positively, the chemo would have worked. That I practically caused my own cancer, which I didn’t. My cancer wasn’t caused by my bad attitude, my poor decisions, my eating too many processed foods, or my past sins.”
“We know,” Judy said, trying to soothe her, but her aunt seemed not to hear, glaring at Judy’s mother.
“Delia, it’s okay for me to tell the truth, and the truth didn’t cause my cancer. My cancer was caused by bad luck, and no, I don’t carry some horrible mutation in my cells, like the BRCA mutations. You know, Delia, we don’t even have a family history of cancer.” Aunt Barb kept her gaze glued to Judy’s mother. “I’m trying my damnedest to save my own life. I don’t know if I’ll succeed. But if I don’t, it won’t be because I don’t want to. Trust me, I want to, and I’m trying to.”
“Mrs. Moyer, excuse me,” said a man’s voice from behind them, and Judy turned around to see a youngish African-American doctor with gold-rimmed glasses and a kind smile. “Good morning, I’m your surgeon, Jim Winston.”
“Oh, hello,” Aunt Barb said, recovering enough to manage a polite smile, and Judy stood up to let the doctor through. Aunt Barb introduced Judy and her mother, and the surgeon explained the procedure, answered everybody’s questions, and had Aunt Barb sign several informed-consent forms, which was when a nurse came in to start a sedative, Versed, administered through the IV bag. In time, her aunt began to doze, but Judy couldn’t bring herself to say good-bye.