Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [103]
I shook my head. My hands were wrapped around Abbie’s stomach, which told me a second wave was coming. When it did, she let go of the pole and slid off the saddle. I caught her and held her while she heaved over the edge.
Eyes closed, she spat. Her forehead sparkled with sweat. She wiped her mouth and said, “Ferrrrgottttt how dizzzzzzzy these…make mmmme.”
I turned back toward Gomez. “If you’ll show me where I can get a hose or a mop, I’ll clean up.”
He waved me off. “No, no. Me do. I do every night. No problem.” Abbie straightened, some color returned to her face and Gomez pointed to the Ferris wheel. “Please. You ride? Much slower. No dizzy.”
“Sir, I’m not sure she’s—”
Abbie spoke up, “I’m okay.”
He opened the small iron gate and we sat in the seat of the Ferris wheel. He whispered to me, “Very slowly.”
Abbie leaned against me as the wheel lifted us higher. It was a tall wheel. Much larger than it looked from a distance. When we got to three o’clock we cleared the treetops. When we reached the top, he stopped the wheel. I looked down and he gave me the thumbs-up along with a shrug.
I returned his thumbs-up. Abbie opened her eyes and wrapped her arms across me. “Sorrrrry aaaabout that.”
The night was clear. Above us, ten trillion stars lit the universe. The moon, half full, shone like a spotlight. The oblong shadow of the Ferris wheel laid out across the ground like a giant clock face with us sitting at the stroke of midnight. In the distance, the river snaked out of the trees—dross from the silversmith’s ladle.
Abbie laid her palm across my chest. “Howwww far?”
“As a crow flies, almost thirty to Cedar Point. As the river flows, forty-five plus.”
She held up her hand and starting counting to herself. “We’ve checked off…six.”
After a few minutes, she pointed behind us at a growing mass of clouds that spread from one end of the horizon to the other. Then she turned and pointed at the lights of St. Marys shining in the distance, and the river that flowed into her. “I wish we could finnnnish.”
I nodded. It was all I could do. Everything else hurt. The words came hard. “I wish I could take your place.”
39
Early in this entire process, Abbie tested positive for an ugly little gene called VBRCA-1. The presence of the gene meant she had a really good chance of also developing ovarian cancer. The problem, or one of the problems, with ovarian cancer is that there is no good or effective screening for it so it’s difficult to know that you have it until it’s too late. By the time you present symptoms, the cancer is usually stage four, which is metastatic. The best defense against it is the prophylactic removal of the ovaries. This came as a bit of a blow. Our remaining option was in vitro, so the doctors stimulated ovulation, forcing Abbie’s body to produce several eggs which they harvested and quickly froze. Then, with the casual demure of sipping a Starbucks and nibbling on a bear claw, they cut out her ovaries and pitched them.
Because they planned to dump enough poison into her system to kill the abnormal cells, they also ran the risk of compromising her bone marrow. The marrow produces white blood cells that fight infection that occurs when your body is weak—like after chemotherapy. If you’re starting to think that fighting cancer is a lot like a dog chasing its tail, you’d be right. To increase her chances, doctors harvested