“I’m going to need for you to burn this,” I say, finally, gesturing exasperatedly to my dress. They plunk themselves down on my hospital bed and turn to me with looks of compassionate dismay. Jonathan races through the door and pulls me into a bear hug. Toban has raced home to tell Zach’s indomitable nanny about what is happening, and all my family is still in transit, and I can’t do anything but sit staring down at my dress, white with bright flowers and flouncy the way I like it. I am alone for the first time since my diagnosis a few hours before, and the day is unfolding with brutal swiftness. A blue hospital gown is folded crisply on the bed beside me and machines chirp everywhere like crickets. She will sleep in the hospital chair beside me, pretending it is comfortable, and using her no-nonsense voice with the nurse who won’t bring me ice chips.īut for now I am sitting in a hospital room, before surgery, somewhere in the maze of Duke University Hospital, staring down at my hands folded on my lap. When I wake up from surgery she will be there, and my foggy brain will not recall that I never asked her to come. My next call finds my friend Katherine in the bleachers of a Vanderbilt football game, and she will immediately get into the car, a state away, screaming into the windshield.
Our words feel garbled, burning hot with love.
I call my sisters, and they dutifully sit. He will not allow it the dignity of defining a damn thing about his daughter and her future. This is my father, the impervious giant, who will never cry about my diagnosis. He will take my hand in one hand and stroke my hair with the other. I will see my dad in the hospital when he strides in moments before my surgery. They are on a trip to Toronto to see my sister Amy, and now they will scatter in the winds and find me. Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” she says, and I can tell she is resolved to be my rock, but she is crying. She is desperate to salvage what is left of my life: my son. Her child is dying and suddenly, so is the whole world. I have been, coincidentally, drawing up a living will for my life insurance policy, a policy I will be denied because they will find out that I have cancer and reject the claim, a bet they no longer want to take. “You need to give Zach to us! You have to change your will!” my mom blurts out, her voice shaking. I tell my parents they need to find a place to be together and sit down, that I have been told that I have cancer and that it doesn’t look good for me. We are both gone, gone, gone somewhere else, flitting back and forth between now and where we used to be. Toban puts his hand on my back to steady me. I call my parents on the walk to the hospital, but I have to stop and lean against a high stone wall for a minute. But the truth is not going to help us anymore. “I will! I will!” he cries, and I know it is true. Now he rushes into my office and throws his arms around my neck, and all my words are pouring out. At the time, however, I mostly thought about how beautiful he was, how great he was at explaining the finer points of skateboarding, and how he would never lose his hair. He was like beachfront property when I probably could have settled for a suburban condo. But I was probably pretty dumb because I didn’t yet realize that Toban was one of those great investment pieces that increase in value but seem like overkill. I wasn’t dumb to marry Toban, exactly, because that ended up being one of the most sensible things I’ve ever done.
I got married at twenty-two, when I was especially dumb.