Walking on Broken Glass - Christa Allan [120]
My best friend has cancer.
Sky-high joy followed by plummeting pain.
Molly explained she’d gone for a routine mammography because of her family history. “The Breast Center called after the first mammogram and asked me to come back. That's happened before, so I didn’t think it was anything to be concerned about. But after that appointment, they said I needed a needle biopsy.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Call me?”
Molly smiled at the question. “Your dance card was full, sister. Besides, the biopsy could’ve come back clean.”
“But it didn’t. And you still didn’t call. Now I’m sad, and I’m puzzled.”
“Devin and I needed to sort things out. We wanted to know what we’d be up against before we started telling everyone. We figured it’d be easier that way.”
She told me the oncologist reported it was stage 1, which meant it hadn’t gone to the lymph nodes. “If there aren’t any cancerous cells around it, and Dr. Warriner said she doesn’t suspect there will be, the survival rate's usually one hundred percent.”
“When are you getting it removed? Isn’t there something you can do now?”
“The lumpectomy is scheduled for next week, and the game plan is five to seven weeks of radiation therapy, five days a week. Pray. You can pray now.”
Instead of driving home right away, Molly and I went to the bakery shop we saw when we’d pulled into the parking lot.
We ordered croissants with chicken salad and a large slab of carrot cake. I could’ve skipped the chicken salad, but Molly said eating for three required some protein.
I squeezed a lemon in my water. “Molly, I’m so sorry. For weeks now, you’ve focused on me. Heck, for weeks, I’ve focused on me. And now, here you’re facing this awful news, and I feel like a slug.”
“How could you know? Don’t be upset with yourself. Before we got the report, Devin and I thought about important stuff we had to do. Like turning the sprinklers on, changing the air conditioner filters, and dropping clothes off at the cleaners.”
“You’re kidding.” It wasn’t a question.
“Well, sort of. We decided to not think about it until we knew for sure. We just went on with the day to day stuff. And we prayed. I mostly prayed not to look like Carl if I had to lose my hair.”
I almost choked on my sandwich. “Now that would be a fright. He could loan you one of those toupees he never wears. They’re in boxes in our attic. I made sure to label them because opening one of those boxes can be scary. His mother bought those things, she said, for his self-esteem. I think she didn’t like his baldness because she thought it made her seem older.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass on the hair rugs. Devin said I’d make a lovely bald woman,” she laughed. Molly's voice slid into serious when she said, “I couldn’t do this without him. He's my first best friend.”
Whatever twinge of silly jealousy vibrated in my heart, I hushed it just looking at Molly when she talked about her husband. Something inside her illuminated her face, her eyes, her body.
She scraped the cream cheese icing off her carrot cake and spread it on my slice. This dessert thing always seemed to work out in my favor.
“I’m not glad this happened. But it's made me realize what Devin means to me in ways I never expected. He sees in me what I can’t see in myself. Like he can reach into my soul, put it in my hand, and tell me, ‘Here's your gift. It's you.’ I don’t know how he manages to make me feel so special.” She wiped away tears and, when I saw the unabashed love in her eyes, I had to turn away for a moment. The brightness burned.
I stopped eating. I wanted to say something, something meaningful and important, but I couldn’t. I was in unfamiliar territory.
She ate the last bite of cake from the plate, and said, “You know what I love most about Devin? We can be alone in a closet and make one another laugh.”
That night, as I chopped mushrooms, onions, and green peppers for my omelet, I pictured Molly's intensity this