Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [145]
I left Florida and went home. Home to see my doctor, Wells. Home to get a mammogram and ultrasound. Home to wait for John. Although I didn’t want to burden John with the news that it was likely that I had cancer—I had kept the secret for over a week already—telling him was the medicine I needed. From the moment I told him, I knew what he would do: he would start taking care of me, he always had. And in a very real sense I was, at that moment, unburdened. It all moved to him, all on his shoulders. Though I regret that it must have been such a terrible weight for him, I felt so safe with my care in his hands. I had read his depositions of doctors; he had always learned what he needed to know and often he knew more than the doctors he was questioning. He knew the questions to ask. He seemed intuitively to know when he wasn’t being told the whole story. Dr. Hudis later told him he had the mind of a medical researcher, a considerably better compliment than “Mom” telling me I was a born waitress, I think. I knew he understood the medicine better, knew better the questions to ask, and I was right. After news of my cancer became public, people said to me how strong I must have been to keep this secret and continue campaigning, when I hadn’t kept the secret at all—Hargrave and then John knew, and they, not I, carried the weight. Hargrave would ask me in the days ahead what I was going to do, and I would tell her, Whatever John thinks is best. I wasn’t being deferential, I was being smart: he would look after me far better than I would look after myself.
But first we had to vote—an old friend from college, Gerry Cohen, handed us our absentee ballots—and speak at the Bon Jovi concert at the fairgrounds. I spoke to Cate at home, telling her I had another bump, like the one I had had before, and after the campaign I would get it checked out.
Hargrave talked to me about stopping campaigning. We were sitting on the stoop at my house with Peter Scher, who also knew what was going on. She said, “Can you continue campaigning through Tuesday, knowing what you know?” I looked out at my yard, at the driveway where nearly two years before John had talked to the press after announcing he was a candidate. It had been such a long road. I can do it. Hargrave said, “You have every reason in the world not to.” No, I can do it. For a hundred reasons, for Beverly and Mary and George and Hope. For us, too, for all the reasons that led John to that spot on the driveway. And I knew, too, what the response would be if I canceled my remaining schedule—speculation that I’d delayed announcing my cancer until the last minute in an effort to garner sympathy votes. I could deal with what I had on my plate, but I didn’t know if I could deal with that ugliness. And John was taking care of it. If we couldn’t wait, he’d know. We went to vote and we went to the concert.
But that first night, we didn’t want to be apart. Our schedules were sending us both west, so we said goodbye to Cate, and I joined John’s caravan. I would spend the night with him in West Virginia and drive to our events in Ohio in the morning. Cate and Adam, with whom she had been traveling, set off for another round of college campuses and we took off in John’s reconfigured 737. It wasn’t the same gleeful we usually were when we were all together. Karen was usually happy, because she had a beau who traveled with John. The Secret Service was happy because there was actual leg room on this plane. Ryan was happy because the food was better and because Reggie Hubbard from John’s staff, not he, took care of the luggage. But tonight John and I were tired, beaten down. We rested against each other in the dim cabin.
And then the plane caught fire. No, it’s not a joke. If this were a movie, they would have to leave out the cancer