Slow Burn

Chapter 25

“Had, I’m here. Now are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Rylee pulls her sunglasses from her eyes and angles herself so that she can face me. “Something’s up with all the cryptic answers you gave me on where we’re going, why you need me here.”

I look at my oldest friend and know I need the support and levelheadedness she’ll bring me. “I need you not to be upset with me because I’m already being eaten by guilt for hiding this from you … but just know I had the best intentions for why I didn’t tell you.” I watch the emotions flicker over her face and am reminded of Becks last night, her reaction similar to his in so many ways that I swallow down the double dose of guilt the sight brings me.

I can see her mind working, can tell she’s withholding the questions fleeting through her eyes, and appreciate her biting her tongue and keeping her need-to-plan-everything-the-hell-out ass quiet. She nods her head at me and says, “Okay.” Her eyebrows narrow as she reaches out and squeezes my hand. “You know I’ll hold your hand through anything, even negative blood test results,” she says, infusing her positivity into a situation she misunderstands.

“Thank you …” My voice trails off, and it’s all I can say because if I lead her on any further, then I’m just being more of an asshole than I already have been. I have enough on my conscience, and I don’t need to weigh it down any more. “But this is more than a negative blood test result.”

Her body visibly jars from the suggestion in my comment, fingers squeezing my hand, a gasp of air inhaled. “Had …?”

“I found a lump, Ry.” My voice is so soft, it’s barely audible, but I know she hears me because she nods her head for me to continue. “I had it biopsied a few days before you got back—”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I can tell she’s hurt I didn’t confide in her but also love that she doesn’t address it because she knows this is much bigger than that.

I lower my head and fight the tears that threaten from disappointing her before I answer. “I know you’re mad at me, but I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t bring myself to make you sad when you deserve all the happiness in the world. I mean, you’d just come back from your honeymoon. I wasn’t going to hit you with this.”

Her eyes well with tears as she accepts the apology I haven’t managed to put into words. “So you had the biopsy …,” she says, turning the focus back on me. “Now, why are we here? Do you know something already or—”

“No. Nothing. Results.” I’m reduced to one-word answers as the reality of what’s about to happen hits me. It’s almost as if telling Rylee has made this all real.

Because she’s my person.

We stare out the windows of the car for a moment in silence, watching the world around us move on while we think in slow motion. She squeezes my hand one more time and then opens the car door, leading the way, my nerves humming louder with each step we take.

The waiting room is empty, and yet we still speak in hushed voices about nothing important. Eventually we fall silent, busying ourselves by repeatedly checking social media on our phones. And even though I don’t want him to, the only reason I keep checking is to see if Becks has messaged me. And how screwed-up is it that after the things I said last night, I’m just not sure whether I’m happy or sad about his lack of contact.

We’re called back after about fifteen minutes and ushered into an office space, where we take a seat across the desk from Dr. Blakely. I make introductions between her and Rylee, and all the while a voice is screaming in my head, You hold my fate in your hands.

After the niceties are over, Dr. Blakely folds her hands on her desk and looks at me, a soft yet strained smile gracing her lips but not easing the gravity in her expression. I know Rylee notices it too because she reaches over and links her fingers with mine.

“As you know, when we biopsied the lump, there was a possibility of it coming back cancerous.”

I grip Ry’s hand tightly because what’s coming next may make or break me. My ears buzz with noise, and my every nerve is on edge, waiting for the doctor to continue.

“The results came back, Haddie, and I’m sorry to have to tell you that we did find the tumor to be malignant.”

I freeze—my heart, my hope, my breath—as my world comes crashing down around me. Fragments of my life, my possibilities, my future shatter as they hit the bottom of my empty emotional well, lost to the darkness I can’t see through. The buzzing grows so loud that I see her lips moving but can’t hear her over it. My chest constricts, the pain of drawing in a breath so goddamn difficult, I convince myself it has to be from the parasitic cancer eating at my breasts, invading my lungs, and holding them hostage too. My thoughts spiral out of control. Everything I thought I knew now seems foreign, unknown, scary as hell.

It’s the lone sob that escapes from Rylee that snaps me back to the present. My tunnel vision zooms onto the sound even though I can’t tear my eyes from Dr. Blakely. Her lips have stopped moving, the concern for me evident in the tears that glisten in her eyes as she allows me to digest what she’s just told me.

I’m not sure who is holding on tighter, Rylee or myself, but I hear the scrape of her chair and then feel her fighting out of my death grip. I release her hand reluctantly, only to feel her arm go immediately around my shoulders and pull me against the shuddering of her chest.

I clench my jaw, tell myself to let go, to embrace the numbing cold that feels like it’s beginning to seep into my bones. I rein it in—everything that I can—and lock it away so that I can deal with it at another time.

The time being never, but lying to myself is just par for the course right now, and frankly I might not be around to suffer the repercussions of my lies, so who the fuck cares?

As I look back at Dr. Blakely, my voice is loaded with emotion I can’t seem to feel. “Can you please go back and start over because I kind of stopped processing after the word malignant?”

She nods her head, glancing over to Rylee in a silent thank-you for her support, before bringing her eyes back to mine. “The pathology reports came back showing cancerous cells, and those reports in conjunction with the scans we did lead us to diagnose you with stage two.”

“We?” Rylee interjects with the question that’s on my tongue, but I can’t seem to get over the disbelief.

“Yes, my colleagues and I,” she says. I catch Dr. Blakely glance at Rylee and give her an appreciative smile before meeting my eyes again. “I actually was having a meeting with them about another case and asked them to review yours, as well.”

I stare at her, mouth agape, eyes vacant. I feel like a deer in the headlights, but the difference is, I’m not sure if I want to move out of the way or get taken down in one fell swoop. I blink my eyelids, and it feels like they are scraping over sand as I try to process this all and come up empty.

And I find that strange, considering my mind knew this; family medical history predicted this. But it’s one thing to feel it and think it, and a whole different thing to hear it stated as fact, have doctors meeting about you—or your file, rather, because your contaminated body isn’t there.

“So, what was the consensus?” Rylee again, her voice strong as she plays the role of patient counselor, which she does every day of her life in her job, except this time it’s for her best friend instead of one of the abused little boys she’s responsible for.

“We believe we need to act fast. Looking at your family history, the cancer your sister and mother experienced was aggressive in all facets, so we want to make sure to hit this head-on and knock it dead without giving it a fighting chance.” I want to believe the conviction in her voice, the competency behind her diagnosis that we can knock it dead but have a hard time mustering up the enthusiasm to match it.

I zone out as she goes on about further lumpectomies followed by chemo and then radiation courses to force a response and then hopefully remission. I listen to time frames of treatment, and my head spins, thinking it’s not possible because I have a few more days before I can secure the Scandalous deal. Then my mind wanders to the health insurance plan I was luckily able to secure a few months ago to cover myself and any new hires I add on.

I keep half an ear on the conversation, knowing they are talking about my body, my life, and yet I can’t connect, can’t believe that I’m about to go through what I helped Lexi through. The brutality of it, the complete obliteration, the devastation of it.

And then I think of my parents. Oh, God, my parents. Having to tell them, scare them, watch them suffer through this for a fourth time in their lives, my mom blaming herself all over again as she did with Lex. How she carries her death on her shoulders as if it were her fault. I fist my hands so tight that my nails break the skin, the sting welcome because I’m actually feeling something again instead of this droning buzz holding my body hostage.

I selfishly think of my body. My body, which will soon look like Frankenstein’s monster’s body, jagged pieces sewn together to make a whole. I know it’s vain, but the horrid images of Lex’s scars on my body that flash through my mind knock me back a step farther than I already have been.

And yet Rylee and Dr. Blakely keep talking about the logistics, the scheduling of it all, and then I think of Maddie, and it nearly breaks me. When the sob catches in my throat, both of them turn suddenly to look at me, and my decision has been made.

Screw the lumpectomies.

I want to live.

“I want a double mastectomy.”

I watch the approval flicker through Dr. Blakely’s eyes as Ry’s hand squeezes my forearm. “While this was going to be my next suggestion and the best course of action, I must advise you and make you aware—”

“I’m aware that my breasts are going to kill me if I keep them. I want them gone.” I make the assertion with more confidence than I actually feel, but my courage makes up for the difference because I’m scared so fucking shitless that my voice should be wavering with nerves instead of the tiny break it had. “Nothing helped my sister, but I want the fighting chance … so I want them gone as soon as possible. I need drastic. Lexi was gone in six months. Six months. I have a life I want to live. Things I need to do, and I can’t do them in six months because I haven’t even planned them yet, so …” My voice trails off as all of the things I’ve ever wanted to do flicker like a slide show through my head. The tears come now, a wave of hope trying to ride the rampant storm of emotions waging inside of me. “I haven’t even planned them yet,” I tell them both again through the broken sobs.

I’m focused on the sky above us. The clouds float there so nicely, form a set of shapes, and then float some more to change to a different one. Wouldn’t it be so easy to be like that—change, shift, adjust—without so much as a thought of the next storm about to roll in threatening to decimate you.

Rylee allows me the silence to think, and I use it to listen to birds chirping and the leaves of the trees all around us rustling in the breeze. This section of the park is vacant at this time of day, and I’m so thankful that she knew I couldn’t face reality just yet.

She sighs, and I hear the sniffle she tries to disguise as she turns her head away from me where we lie flat on our backs on the grassy hill, looking up at the sky.

“I have to tell my parents,” I whisper, barely breaking the silence.

“We’ll go there next. I’ll go with you, okay?”

I murmur in agreement. I’m thankful she offered because I know she’ll be able to be the voice of reason when hell breaks loose.

“We have three weeks before the surgery and then two weeks after that before chemo starts.” I appreciate her matter-of-fact tone, her businesslike efficient approach to my treatment schedule makes it seem like it’s not happening to me. “We’ll figure out a schedule in the next week or two so that between your parents and me and Becks and whoever else wants in, you have all the help you need after—”

“No.” I can feel her body startle in awareness next to me at my outburst.

“No, what?” The caution in her voice tells me that she fears what I’m going to say next.

“I don’t want anyone to know besides my parents … and you …” My words trail off as my thoughts wander.

“Okay.” She draws the word out, confusion lacing her tone. “I’m not following you here, Had, but you’ve been through a lot today, so I’m just going to go with the flow until it settles in and you realize what an idiot you sound like.”

I don’t take the bait she’s using to draw a reaction from me. She knows I have a volatile temper, knows I usually react without thinking, and since I’m not reacting at all, it’s scaring her. This is the best and worst part about having a friend who’s so close to you. You know what to expect from them, and they know what to do to get a reaction out of you.

But right now I’m still so numb, I don’t react.

“Okay,” she repeats again in the same exact way that’s starting to annoy the hell out of me. “So then it’ll just be your parents, me, and Becks that—”

“Becks isn’t to know.” The words come out with conviction—the first real thing I’ve said since walking into Dr. Blakely’s office—even though my head and heart are at odds with the decision that I thought about numerous times during my sleepless night. I close my eyes and chase away my visual of the drifting clouds in order to let the guilt in, but it just falls by the wayside in favor of the fear. My fears are all valid now.

“What do you mean, Becks doesn’t need to know?”

Because he said he loves me. My head screams the words, but my lips remain sealed, etching the path of lies so deep, that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to climb out of the groove.

I hear her body shift to a seated position and can feel the heat of her glare daring me to open my eyes, but I just keep her waiting. Instead I silently reiterate all my reasons, which I went over last night. The same ones that I had initially stood by, but I’d let falter when I allowed new emotions to get in the way. To cloud my judgment.

I can’t bring Becks into this. I can’t ask him to step into my ticking time bomb of a life and hope the timer doesn’t detonate prematurely, bringing both him and me down in different but equally devastating ways.

And then I think how arrogant that is of me. To assume I’d be the one in his life. That we’re soul mates.

But for some reason, I just know. It’s that goddamn click.

Besides, I won’t have the time or emotion to invest in a romantic relationship when my thoughts are going to be selfishly on myself and trying to survive. That’s not a fair situation to put someone in even if he tells me to let him make the decision for himself.

I can’t let him fall in love with me as I have with him. Hearts may heal with time, but accepting someone’s love when you’ve experienced the brutality of this illness firsthand yourself is the ultimate act of selfishness.

And I may be self-centered at times, only think about me, but this is one time in my life when I am thinking one hundred percent about others. About Becks and that smile that reaches his eyes and the gentleness of his touch and that solid-gold heart of his that some woman—some healthy woman—deserves to have. One who will love him without the sky falling down around them.

I realize that I’ve opened my eyes and they’re scouring the grass for some reason, focused there instead of looking at Rylee, and then it hits me. I’m looking for a dandelion, a sign from my sister that things are going to be okay. But I can’t find a single one.

And as silly as it seems, that reinforces my decision.

But how do I tell Rylee all of this? I know what she’ll say. She’ll tell me I’m crazy. That I need to stay positive, that my mom beat this beast. That I’m only hurting both of us by shutting Becks out when I need more people in my corner than ever before. She’ll add insult to injury and try to use peer pressure to make me open the doors and let the world in when all I want to do is shut everyone out and hide in the dark for a while.

So I lie to my best friend. Buy some time. Derail her tirade of stubbornness.

“For now. Please?” I open my eyes again and meet her confused look. “I just need some time to accept all of this, deal with this before I can bring someone else—lots of someone elses—into this situation. I don’t want the assessing looks of pity, the constant phone calls where people talk in circles because they’re too chickenshit just to come out and ask my prognosis, or the unexpected knocks on the doors with another foil-covered Pyrex dish as if a frickin’ casserole will cure me.”

Rylee nods, and yet I know she still doesn’t get it. But it’s not her decision to understand. And frankly I’m sick of having to explain myself. My schizophrenic emotions return with a vengeance. Grief giving way to anger, anger turning into disbelief, disbelief somersaulting into a feeling of welcome isolation.

I can’t keep track of them anymore, and I really don’t care to.

I shove up off the ground, needing to move, to embrace the rage I have but still can’t feel. I try to calm myself and focus on what I can feel: the tightness in my chest because I need to cry but can’t seem to urge the tears to come.

I want to tell her that my body’s already broken but just know she’ll arch her eyebrows and give me that “you’ve gotta give me something better than that, Montgomery” look she has mastered to perfection over the near decade we’ve been friends.

“Remember that goulash crap the neighbor across the street brought after Lex’s …” Her words trail off before she says funeral but the memory of that awful food has the corners of my mouth tilting up in a smile.

“The stuff that looked like dog food?” I turn to look at her.

“It smelled like it too.” Her nose crinkles up, and I don’t know what it is, but the laughter bubbles up. The first sounds of it fall from my mouth and hit my ears, sounding so strange against the tumult in my head.

But I can’t stop it.

I can hear the hysteria, can hear the anxiety weaving there, and yet I still laugh loud and deep, the breeze carrying it away and into the distance.

When I look up, Rylee is laughing too, but hers is physically contradicted with tears sliding down her cheeks as her eyes hold steadfast on mine.

Thoughts flicker as I laugh. Fear festers up, and I shove it away momentarily because I need this moment—the sky, the breeze, my best friend. Something to hold on to, to pull back up when I need it on the dark days that I know will be coming. The ones that will try to steal my soul and blind my light.

But this moment gives me the clarity that I’m gonna fight like hell.

I’m gonna fight like a girl: lipstick on, hair done, and attitude in place.

Because shit, I’ve got hearts to break still and heels to wear.

Hearts and heels.

Hearts and heels.

Damn. I’m scared. Petrified.

Trying so hard to keep my grip on reality.

So fearful of the unknown.