Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [87]
Sixty seconds later, we heard a loud crack somewhere outside followed by a loud splash. A single lamp returned up the hill and through the door. Its wearer was whistling and he was carrying something in his arms. I raised the shotgun, scattering my aim from the front door to the back. My arms were shaking but I wrapped my first digit around the trigger. The man with the lamp returned to the middle of the room, turned out his light and set the dog on the ground next to him. The dog sniffed across the floor to us. It licked my foot then wound behind me to Abbie. The man looked down at me but I was having a difficult time focusing. Finally, he dug a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, hung one from his lips and lit it with a shiny silver Zippo lighter. He drew deeply then slammed the lighter closed on his thigh. “Looks like you two have had some trouble.”
I clicked on the safety and fumbled for the Pelican case. I grabbed two syringes, swabbed Abbie’s thigh, cracked the cap on the dopamine and injected it, followed quickly by the dexamethasone. Then I leaned against the wall and my eyelids grew too heavy to hold open. The last thing I remember seeing before my eyelashes touched, was the red glow of his cigarette. A little while later, I remember feeling my stomach jump into my mouth, my shoulders press against a hard seat and feeling Abbie wrap her arms tight about me. I tried to wake but the fog was too thick. Abbie cradled me, locked her legs around mine and pulled me into her. She was trembling. Somewhere close I heard an engine roar, felt it rumble and somebody turned on a fan.
29
Chemo is a daily rug—three weeks on, one week off, four days a week, eight bags a day, six hours a day. It’s like having a cold for a very long time. It also did a few other things. She bled around her gums and from her nose, had nonstop diarrhea, lost her appetite and hair, lived with nausea and tingling in her fingers and toes and vomited constantly for three weeks out of every month.
The first round of chemo did what the doctors were hoping. It shrank the tumors, but it did not change their recommendation. We checked into the hospital at 6 a.m. on a Friday morning for a 10 a.m. surgery. Minutes before they rolled her down the hall, she looked up at me out of the haze and fog of whatever sleepy medicine was dripping into her veins and she asked, “You be here when I wake up?”
“Yep.”
“You promise?”
I nodded. “Tomorrow, too.”
She closed her eyes, they wheeled her down the hall and I walked to the surgical waiting room where her stepmom and dad sat. After more than a decade of being married to their daughter, we’d reached an amicable truce. They didn’t speak to me and I only spoke to them when spoken to.
I used to think I could win them over, but I’d made little progress. In truth, none. Katherine sat there reading Architectural Digest while Abbie’s father talked on the phone with offices in both Charleston and D.C.
During the five-hour surgery, a nurse gave us periodic updates. “We’ve finished with the right side, margins are clear, lymph nodes are good…now we’re starting on the left.” I noticed she didn’t say anything about reconstruction.
At 4 p.m., the surgeon, Dr. Dismakh, appeared. He pulled off his mask and motioned for us to follow him into the private consultation room. He said, “We’re finished. Abbie’s sleeping and I’ll take you to her shortly.” He paused, telling me I didn’t want to hear what he was about to say. “Her lymph nodes suggest the cancer has spread. We did not perform a reconstruction.”
“Okay.” I wasn’t quite sure what to say. Seems a bit insensitive to ask why when cancer is still swimming around inside her.
“The cancer is…extensive. We’ve gotten what we could with surgery. In the months ahead, we’ll need to attack it by alternating chemo with radiation.” The words months, chemo and