Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [188]
“Nothing is the matter, honey, I just didn’t think you needed to worry, that’s all.”
“I’m your husband, for God’s sake, you don’t just say, Oh by the way, I think I might have cancer.”
The minute he said it he was sorry. But Norma got up and came over, pushed his hair back off his forehead, and patted his shoulder. “Oh, honey, I don’t have cancer.”
“But you could have.”
“The chances are rare, but even if I do, it’s not the end of the world. He said we caught it early.”
“Does he think it is?”
“No, he meant if, on the off chance that there is something, we caught it in time.”
After they went to bed he could not sleep and got up at about three in the morning and walked out in the backyard and tears ran down his cheeks. Not so much because he was scared to death but because it was her bravery that had always touched him more than he could tell her.
The next few days were pure hell. He realized that if he lost her he would never forgive himself. He wanted more years with her, so he could wake up every day and look at her and appreciate who she was, what she was. She was his wife, his lover, the mother of his child, but most of all she was his best friend. Without her he would be more lost than he already was.
He sat in the waiting room of the hospital and while they were doing the biopsy on Norma he thought about time, the one thing that could not be stopped. As a child, time had seemed like a windup toy. It had seemed so long on those days he sat in school waiting for the bell to ring and so short when he was having fun. So long from Christmas Eve night to Christmas morning. Now, in just a few seconds, the doctor would tell them the results. In those few seconds his life would never again be the same—or they would have another chance.
Did the white-coated people in the lab know what they were looking at? Would they go to lunch and not know that whatever they found under the microscope would change lives forever? He wanted to yell at the entire hospital, That’s my wife, that’s my entire life, our entire future you’re looking at. Here was a man who could not stand to have anyone else drive, hated to fly because he was not comfortable unless he was at the controls, and now he was helpless. Totally dependent on the hospital staff, who looked to him to be no more than teenagers. What had happened to the older, gray-haired nurses and doctors he had remembered the last time she was in the hospital, having their daughter, thirty-one years ago, and what the hell are they so happy about? Didn’t they know how serious life and death was, for God’s sake? That poor sweetheart could wake up with her breast gone and be told that it had spread everywhere and that she was dying. Why in the hell hadn’t they found a cure for this thing yet?
What are we doing sending money all over the world, spending billions on the military budget and on making stupid movies and television shows? People are dying every day and we’re just throwing money away. Why aren’t they giving it to the scientists to find a cure? Something is wrong—cancer has been around too long; somebody must have a cure, they’re just not letting anybody know. He had worked himself into a murderous rage when the doctor came down the hall.
“Mr. Warren, we just got the report from the lab and it’s absolutely benign, so we’re gonna close her on up. She should be out of recovery in a few hours.” He spoke over his shoulder to another doctor that had just passed him in the hall. “Hey, Duke, can you get me two more tickets for the game tomorrow?”
Macky didn’t hear Duke’s response. He stood up and took a walk outside the hospital. Everything inside had been cold and sterile and now he was back out in the warm sunshine and he felt as if he could breathe again. He found himself smiling at the people he passed and at that moment he made a deal with himself. Anything that woman wants from now on, she gets.
Afterward, he had to remind himself of that deal he made that day outside the hospital. When he asked her the next year where she wanted to go for a vacation, she said, “Well,