Excision

Count All This — Chapter 10: girding for battle

Just when Jo Kasten’s adult son encounters schizophrenia, she discovers she has breast cancer. Meanwhile, her marriage faces a test. Count All This is a story about love and loyalty, addiction and madness. This is the tenth chapter. Find the first chapter here.

Back in the dressing room, I couldn’t pull my clothes on fast enough. Out in the lobby, I pulled Larry out of his chair.

“How did it go?”

I shook my head. “Horrible. I don’t want to talk about it. It’s visiting hours in the psych ward. Let’s go see Ed.”

Monday

Now that we knew the procedure, gaining admittance felt easier, and once inside, we boldly ventured down the “forbidden” hall to Eddy’s room. We found him lounging comfortably on the window sill.

“Hi Mom, Dad,” he said, unsurprised to see us suddenly standing in his doorway. “Come over here. I want to show you something.” We walked to his side. “See that bike down there?” Four stories down, by the fire escape, leaning against the back of the building, was a bicycle.

“Yes.”

“They left it for me. They keep doing things like that — leaving openings for me to escape. They are hoping that I’ll take the hint.”

“Who do you mean by ‘they?’”

“You know. The people who work here. The ones who are connected to the larger organization.”

“What organization is that?”

“Come on, Mom. You know I can’t tell you.”

He sat on a wide ledge that framed a non-opening window. He wore a hospital gown — white with small blue flecks — and green socks with white tread painted on the bottom. That was Monday.

Tuesday

On Tuesday he was in a surly mood. They had transferred him to a teen ward. When they called him out of his bedroom to take care of some medical business, I hurried to paw through his personal papers, finding a questionnaire he’d filled out about his family.

My mother is Xena. She’s practically a lesbian, but 20 years of relationship has forged a commitment of sorts with a man known as Mr. Thibedeaux. My father doesn’t like you, or that’s what he’d want me to tell you if you asked. My sister is a scientist, which makes her incredibly happy and knowledgeable and a ball of bliss. My brother is a punk ass, but an adorable one. But sometimes his brain gets paralyzed which makes it difficult to hold a conversation with him.

I was insulted when I read my description. I didn’t mind the lesbian reference — Xena the Warrior Princess (as played by Lucy Lawless) is my hero! — but I didn’t like the way he interpreted my relationship with his dad, as if the only reason we’ve stayed together this long was because we’ve already put in so much time. But Larry only laughed and said it sounded pretty accurate. “At least he’s cooperating.”

When Eddy returned to the room, I accidentally provoked him.

“Why don’t you participate in group therapy so you can get more privileges?”

He cleared his throat and spit on the wall. A big wad of green phlegm stuck there, not moving.

“I think we better go now,” Larry put his hand on my elbow and steered me toward the door.

“No, no,” Eddy protested. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. I won’t do it again. Stay awhile longer.”

The glob of green phlegm stuck motionless, a silent witness.

“Are you going to clean that up?” I asked.

“No. I mean yes.”

“When are you going to do it?”

“Later. After you leave.”

When Eddy called home that afternoon, I pictured the phlegm on the greenish wallpaper. I worried that the housekeeping staff wouldn’t notice it. “Did you clean up the wad of spit, yet?”

“Not yet, Mom.”

Wednesday

On Wednesday, Eddy was back in the adult unit because all the other teens had gone home. The girl who mostly cried in her room but sometimes stared blankly at the Teletubbies on TV in the common area; the boy in a baseball cap who wouldn’t stop talking; the blonde with bandages on both forearms — they had all been released.

“I guess those other people were saner than I am,” Eddy told me and two of my four sisters, who had come along to keep me company and say hi to Ed.

Although he was frustrated at still being held in the hospital, he sounded better to me. So I was feeling hopeful as I drove home past Burlingame High School, with its marble-columned porch and sweeping circular driveway circumscribing lush grass and stately redwood trees.

Hearing the news

A train was traveling in parallel to us on our right, behind a stand of eucalyptus. Claire sat in the back seat. Jean was in the passenger seat up front. I wasn’t expecting a call. They had told me at the Women’s Center on Monday that the results of my biopsy wouldn’t be back for three days, at least. When my cell phone rang, I reached for my handbag with one hand, nestled it on my lap, and began digging around in it while keeping my other hand on the steering wheel and my eyes on the road. When I finally pulled it out of the bag, it was one ring short of going to voice mail.

“Hello?” I said triumphantly, proud that I had caught the call.

“May I speak to Josephine Kasten?”

“This is she.” My legs tensed.

“This is Dr. Brand from the Women’s Center. I’m calling to tell you that your biopsy report has come back, and you do have what I suspected, ductile carcinoma in situ.”

Everyone in the car could hear Dr. Brand’s sentence. Jean started to loudly cry. Claire reached around from the back seat to hush and comfort her. I felt irritated by the distraction and switched the phone to my right ear to block the sound, carefully keeping my left hand on the steering wheel, my right foot on the accelerator — carefully advancing the car past the lush grass and trees.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s a form of breast cancer. But the good news is, if you have to have breast cancer, ductile carcinoma in situ is the best kind to have. The ‘in situ’ part of the name means it hasn’t traveled anywhere. What we found in the biopsy was not invasive cancer. Nonetheless, it will have to be excised. The next thing you need to do is make an appointment with your primary care physician and ask her to refer you to a surgeon.”

Excised. That’s a word you don’t hear often.

“You’re going to want to call your primary up right away.”

“Okay.”

The Heritability of Hair

I ended the call and felt surprised that my first thought was of Larry — I’d been so mad at him lately, at his moody withdrawal, but now I remembered his tender presence through another excision, the abortion of my first-conceived child.

Have I mentioned that Larry is a handsome man? A French and Arab mix, he’s long and thin, with bushy, masculine eyebrows and thick, black hair gone silver at the temples. It used to be thick, anyway — thick and curly and radiating off his head like a white boy’s afro. But lately, I can see through his hair to patches of scalp.

Larry wasn’t supposed to lose his hair. Male baldness is a sex-linked gene that is passed down through the mother — if the mother’s father keeps his hair, her sons will, too. And though I never met Larry’s maternal grandfather in person, I saw pictures of him with thick, steely-gray hair in advanced age.

I wasn’t supposed to lose my hair, either. Female baldness is rare — except in cancer patients. But those are other women. The bald and cancerous ones. I have always been lucky. Didn’t the doctor confirm that? The good news is that if I had to have breast cancer, ductile carcinoma in situ is the best kind to have.

It’s not the traveling kind. It’s stationary. It doesn’t like to intrude. So they won’t have to render me bald while chasing rogue cells through my bloodstream with toxic chemicals. They’ll just perform an excision — just cast the devil out — just render the cancer ex situ: off site.

I had hoped, when I married Larry 20 years ago, that one of our children would inherit his magnificent hair, so voluptuous and appealing that just putting your fingers in it communicated a sense of abundance, of largesse. But none did. Rose has medium-thick hair to which she periodically applies a henna paste to in order to color it red. It isn’t curly, but when she came home after a year at UC Berkeley last summer, it had metamorphosed into chin-length dreadlocks that emanated off of her head like a white girl’s afro. In one or two places, she had fastened a shell. Eddy’s hair is dusty brown and lank. Michael is a blonde Arab. Not one of our children inherited Larry’s voluminous hair.

But, that other child — the one I aborted a month after beginning a sexual relationship with Larry — she might have had his hair. During the two weeks that I considered becoming her mother, I envisioned her looking Arabic, like her father, with big, liquid brown eyes and luxuriant black hair. I saw a thin frame, like Larry’s, and lean, artistic fingers. I saw her standing before me in a white dress.

Paradoxically, the abortion was what convinced me it would be safe to love Larry. He already had many of the elements I desired in a partner. He was smart. He was funny, and I liked his dark, boyish looks. But there were drawbacks, too. He was extraordinarily shy, for one. He drove me home from the newsroom of San Francisco State University’s Golden Gater for two months before he kissed me, and even then, I had to engineer the event.

“You can kiss me now, if you want to,” I told him one night outside my flat on 19th Street and Guerrero in San Francisco, sitting on my side of the bench seat in the phlegm-green Valiant he had inherited from thick-haired Grandpa Dabu. He moved across the seat with alacrity and took my head in his hands. His smooth, purple lips tasted of almonds. His moustache tickled my nose. It was a good kiss.

But there were other problems, too: Larry suffered from a perennial lack of enthusiasm; he wasn’t joyful like me, or enamored of life. Besides, at 23, I wasn’t in the market for a husband. I preferred grieving with large quantities of gin over my two prematurely dead parents — Mom died of breast cancer when she was just 55; Dad of heart disease at 60. But when I accidentally got pregnant despite the enormous, thick plastic diaphragm that I filled with spermicide and maneuvered up my vagina every time I had sex, Larry’s reaction couldn’t be ignored.

Delivering the other news

“I’ve got a problem I need to talk to you about,” I told him one evening after school. We were sitting at the round table in my small kitchen, drinking cranberry juice. The room was cramped and cluttered, but cheerful. Light poured in from a skylight overhead and a small window overlooking the back stairs. Photographs and magnets covered the refrigerator. A few random dishes waited rinsing in the sink. My three roommates could be heard in other parts of the flat. Both a television and a radio were blaring. It seemed likely that we’d be interrupted any time.

“Oh yeah? What’s that?” He looked at me guardedly, wondering what I might be planning to spring on him. My behavior was still almost completely unpredictable to him. We’d only been sleeping together for a month.

“I guess I’m pregnant.” I watched his face closely, to see how this news would affect him. Unbelievably, he registered relief.

“Really?” He looked happy. It was inexplicable.

“Yes.” I nodded, looking down at my glass, barely able to suppress a smile in spite of my heavy mood. “What are you looking so happy about?” I couldn’t help teasing him. “This is a serious situation.”

Larry nodded, adopting a sober posture right away. He reached across the table and put his hand over mine. “What do you want to do about it?”

Here it comes, I thought, the rationale for an abortion. He was probably just happy for one fleeting moment when he realized I wasn’t dumping him. Or maybe he’s just glad to have his potency validated — a macho pride in his healthy sperm.

“I don’t know,” I said aloud. “I really don’t see how I can keep it.” In spite of my intentions, I started to cry.

“I haven’t got a job. I haven’t got a college degree. I haven’t got a good place to live.” I spread my hands to indicate the inadequate party flat, noisy and dirty and full of people. The smell of marijuana wafted from a back bedroom. The refrigerator had nothing in it but bacon and beer. “But I don’t want to have an abortion, either.” My voice sounded soggy. “I always told myself that I believed in a woman’s right to have an abortion, but that I would never have one myself… It’s not fair! I used a diaphragm every time! I don’t see how this could have happened.”

Larry scooted his chair closer so he could put his arm around me. He tried to enmesh our bodies smoothly, but was all elbows and bones. His knees and mine collided. Both our backs arched awkwardly. Our huddled bulk was blocking both the doorway into the kitchen and the refrigerator. He leaned his head over, put his cheek next to mine, making a sort of private space with his halo of hair. “You can keep it if you want to,” he murmured. “I’ll help you. Do you want to get married?”

“Married?!” I pulled back to look him in the eyes once again. No one had ever offered to marry me before, and I couldn’t help feeling a flush of exhilaration. Wasn’t this supposed to be what every girl wanted? But I quickly sobered. “How could we get married now? We hardly know each other.”

He seemed surprised by this obvious drawback. “We still could. If you wanted to…”

“Look Larry,” I decided I needed to be the grown up, the one with both feet on the ground. There was something strangely threatening in his proposal of marriage. What if he was a radical Christian who would insist that I carry the baby to term? He’d never mentioned Jesus before, and it didn’t seem likely, but then neither did the marriage proposal. “There’s something else I need to tell you.”

“What’s that?” His eyes were beautiful behind his wire-rimmed glasses. Deep brown pools. Tender. Welcoming. I felt an overwhelming desire to take him back to my bedroom and make love.

“Well…” I didn’t want to tell him what I had to say next. I didn’t want him to withdraw his proposal. I didn’t want him to fall out of love with me. I didn’t want him to stop driving me home from school, to stop following me around the journalism room with his big, hungry eyes. I didn’t want him to decide that I was a slut, to discard me like a used condom. I felt suddenly tired of the passionate fervor with which I’d been punishing myself and grieving my dead parents with promiscuity and alcohol. I felt suddenly ready to turn over a new leaf. But first I had to get through the confession before me.

“I’m not entirely sure it’s yours,” I blurted, with the same urgent bravado I used when jumping into a river from a bridge.

His face was blank, unreadable.

“You’re not?” What was going on behind those John Lennon glasses? Had he already crossed me off his list of potential life partners? I waited fretfully. When he said nothing more, I stumbled ahead.

“I’m pretty sure it is. I mean, we’ve made love like a hundred times this month, right? But two times I made love to other people.”

“Two?” He was still unreadable.

“Yes. Right at the beginning. When we were first getting together. When we weren’t really a couple yet.”

“Who were they?”

I began to feel agitated. Was he going to get angry now? Was he going to expect an apology? In my heart of hearts, I didn’t figure I owed him one. We weren’t engaged. We weren’t married. We were two kids in college who barely knew each other. Still, I didn’t want to prolong the discomfort. Straight through with the truth was bound to be best. If he decided to dump me, so be it. He was too skinny, anyway. Too inexperienced. Nothing of significance had ever happened to him, while I’d already lost two parents and become both a slut and a lush! I wrote poetry! He had pimples — a whole array of pimples in a pink bloom across his back.

“One was Mike Rivers,” I said, naming a professor at school. “I practically forced myself on him. He wasn’t really interested. I don’t know what I was thinking, why I seduced him. I’m pretty sure he already has a girlfriend. Besides, he’s about a hundred years old. There’s no way I’m going to tell him about this. He wouldn’t be the slightest bit interested.”

Larry nodded and waited.

“The other was Jeff Cage,” I named an old friend from Stockton. “We’ve been flirting with each other for years, and before I started going out with you, we tried being boyfriend and girlfriend for about a week. But it didn’t work out. He got angry one night and threw me out of his apartment even though I was pretty sick with strep throat. I don’t think he’s someone I could depend on. Besides, he’s an alcoholic. He wouldn’t make a good father. I don’t want to tell him about this either.”

I stopped talking and awaited his condemnation. I had no idea what he was going to say next. We had drawn apart by this time, sat separate in our independent chairs.

“Look Jo,” he began. “If you don’t want to get married, but you still want to keep the baby, and you don’t want to bring it up with either of those other guys, I’d be glad to be the father.”

My mouth dropped open. Where was the recrimination? The jealousy? The hurt pride? Were we just going to skip over all that? This man may be inexperienced, and four years younger than I was, but he was certainly strong-minded. It began to dawn on me that maybe Larry was at least as interesting and unpredictable as I was.

“You’re kidding.”

He shook his head. “I think it would be fun.”

“Well, it’s tempting,” I stumbled. “Because my father died this year, you know, and this baby could be his reincarnation.” I put my hand on my belly. It seemed unbelievable that my regret and alcohol-suffused body was capable of creating new life. Still, I thought I felt something inside me. Some lightening. Some forgiveness.

Larry sat quietly, waiting, apparently undisturbed by this new revelation of my potential belief in reincarnation. I began to feel safer, less pursued by the Furies, more capable of deciding my fate. But there was one more land mine I needed to negotiate.

“But what if I decide I want to have an abortion? How would you feel about that?”

My chief roommate — the one who held the lease — appeared outside the door to the kitchen and barked playfully at us to move out of the way. We scooted back in our chairs, staring at each other, as he pulled a beer out of the refrigerator. “What’s going on in here?” he wondered, leaning back casually against the counter as he twisted off the top. “What are you two up to tonight?”

“We don’t know yet,” I answered, giving him a brief glance before returning my gaze to Larry. “Right now we’re just having a kind of…private conversation.”

“Oh, I see how it is,” he looked first at me, then at Larry. “God forbid you should have your private conversation in the privacy of your room,” he said with a laugh. “But hey, that’s okay. I know when I’m not wanted. Fine then. Be that way.” He tossed an imaginary hank of hair over his shoulder as he left the room.

Larry still didn’t answer.

“What would you think?” I pressed him.

“If that’s what you want to do, then I’ll support you,” he said. “But I don’t want you to think it’s your only option.”

So that pretty much covered the gamut. He would marry me. He would be the father of my child if I didn’t want to get married. He would drive me to the abortion clinic, if I chose that. Once all the power was placed in my hands, it took two more weeks for me to decide on the abortion. It was partly because I had begun to fall in love with Larry that I finally made that choice. It seemed possible that we might make it, might make a successful marriage — under different circumstances. Perhaps if we were graduated, employed, monogamous, and had known each other for more than three months… And then there was the ill-conceived phone call to his parents, whom I’d never met. He was still so young and naive that even as he reported it to me, he wasn’t aware that he had done something wrong. It went something like this:

“Guess what Mom and Dad. I have a girlfriend!”

“That’s nice son.”

“And guess what else. She’s pregnant!”

“What?!?! (this would be his father speaking). You’ve only just met her. How do you know it’s yours?”

“She’s 90% sure it’s mine!”

When he related that phone call to me, my first thought was that his parents were going to reject me. My second was that the child, if I carried her to term, would have no loving grandparents. My parents were dead, and his parents would never be sure that this grandbaby was their own — not to mention the animosity they might feel for the woman who had apparently trapped their innocent son into marriage with the oldest trick in the book.

So I made the decision to abort and my child — the first one, the lost nomad with luxuriant black hair — was excised.

I don’t remember undergoing the procedure, only the crowded waiting room on Van Ness Avenue, where Larry sat beside me and held my hand.

Afterwards, he took me back to his flat on Larkin Street and spread a sleeping bag on the floor in front of the television. I had told him I wanted to watch soap operas all afternoon and eat special food. As I lay on the floor swathed in blankets and pillows, he brought me duck liver pate and a small silver knife; round, white, water crackers on an enameled tray; a jar of caviar; cream cheese; slender slices of sourdough bread; cut green apples; Vermont cheddar cheese; round Lindt chocolates with caramel filling wrapped in fancy blue paper; Planter’s mixed nuts; and a bottle of Silver Oak, the most prized red wine at I Sorrelli, the restaurant where he’d been working for the past year and would continue to work for the next 20, eventually becoming a partner.

Erica on All My Children was tied to a chair in a leaky basement, struggling to escape her psycho kidnapper, who loved her so much he felt compelled to kill her when she threatened to marry another man (his twin brother — both albinos).

That was the afternoon that I decided that I had grieved over my dead parents long enough. I decided the time had come for me to stop being an alcoholic slut loser. I released myself from my prison of penance for past sins. That was the afternoon I noticed the deep brown color of Larry’s eyes when he took off his glasses. I decided to call him Lawrence. I fell in love.

Although I don’t remember my own abortion, I have a pretty good idea of what must have happened that day from the time a friend asked me to support her through hers. She lay on a narrow bed in a dark room under a blue plastic and white paper blanket. The doctor had a white paper mask over his face, like a roadside robber who wanted to keep his identity secret. He told me to stand behind him, back by the machine; he wouldn’t let me stand next to her and hold her hand. The machine was cylindrical, with a long, crenellated hose, like a vacuum cleaner. A receptacle on top was made of clear plastic. When he flipped a switch, a voracious noise filled the room and bits of bloody tissue began splattering against the sides of the machine.

You’d think I would be able to remember that apocalyptic noise, anyway, or whether my own doctor was a man or a woman. But I don’t. I’m good at forgetting — forgetting my abortion, forgetting the night in the hospital when my mother died, forgetting my father’s funeral (did he have an open casket?). Forgetting to get an annual mammogram for the past five years.

The new baby waiting room

Three years after my abortion, when I had married Larry good and truly and Rose became our firstborn child, she didn’t look Arab, but Irish, like me. I remember a few weeks after she was born, I was sitting on the beach at Santa Cruz with one of my sister Jean’s friends, looking at my plump, pink child sleeping peacefully under an umbrella in her plastic baby seat, so healthy and sweet-smelling she was practically edible.

“A few years ago, I had an abortion,” I confessed to the woman sitting beside me, someone I barely knew. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

The air was crisp and wet with salt water; the ocean made loud, sibilant noises that pressed against the back of my neck. Beneath my towel, the warm, brown grains of sand cupped my butt and thighs. Off to the right, beyond a bluff, we could see the tips of the tallest rides at the Boardwalk — the Ferris wheel, the Hammer, the Giant Dipper — and every two minutes we could hear the screams of riders on one of the country’s oldest roller coasters as they came down that first enormous hill.

“Why not?” Jean’s friend — what was her name? — asked quietly.

“I don’t understand,” I continued. “Why does this baby get to live, when the other one didn’t?”

Jean’s friend turned her broad face toward me and tucked her chin-length silver hair behind one ear. “What makes you think it’s not the same one?”

The idea startled me.

Scientifically, of course, Rose couldn’t have the same body as my little Arab girl. That particular fertilized egg was excised by the abortion machine. But spiritually, Rose could easily be the same soul inhabiting a different body. After the abortion, she might have gone back to an ethereal waiting room until I was ready to be her mother. And then, when I was graduated and employed and married and sober and living in my own little house with Lawrence, just to punish me, she could have made me wait and work a whole year at getting pregnant before consenting to re-inhabit my womb.

So that’s how I looked at it from then on. That’s how I assuaged the guilt of my abortion. Twenty years and three live births later, there was no baby in my womb, but something else was growing inside me, something the doctors wanted to excise.

Girding for battle

After Dr. Brand called to tell me I had cancer, I continued driving. Jean continued crying, but I felt no pity for her. Claire continued comforting, but I felt no gratitude. When we pulled up in front of my house, I went briskly into the living room and sat down by the phone. “I want to call Larry,” I told my sisters when they stumbled in behind me, preempting any attempts they might have in mind of trying to speak.

“Okay,” Jean said. “I’ll go into the back room.” Claire followed.

Larry had ridden a bicycle to his new bookkeeping job that morning. I wasn’t sure he had his cell phone with him, so I felt relieved when he answered it.

“Hello,” he said. He sounded relaxed and confident, comfortable. He was so glad to have found a job at last. I wasn’t happy to be delivering my news.

“Hi Larry. It’s Jo,” I started stupidly, as if he wouldn’t recognize my voice. “Well, they got the results of my biopsy back.”

“Uh huh.”

“And I’ve got breast cancer.”

A moment passed before he answered, suddenly serious, “You’re kidding.”

“No. That’s what the doctor told me just now.” I heard my voice become pathetic.

“Jesus.”

“He said I have to make an appointment with a surgeon.” It sounded like I was pleading for something.

Larry didn’t answer.

“I just wanted to tell you. Claire and Jean were in the car with me when he called. But I don’t want to talk to them. I just want to talk to you.”

“Okay. I’ll come home right now.”

“Right now?”

“Yes. I’m coming.”

“Okay,” I felt the tears rising behind my cheekbones. “I’ll be waiting.” After I hung up the phone, Claire and Jean came out of the back bedroom. “I guess I’ll head on home now,” Jean said with mock cheer.

“I think that’s a good idea. I called Larry. He’s coming home right away, so I won’t be alone here.”

“Okay, good. I feel better now. I looked up your diagnosis on the Internet. It’s called zero stage cancer. Some sites even called it pre-cancer! I don’t feel so worried about you now, Jo. I’m sure you’re going to be okay.” She gave me a big, beaming smile, as if the crisis was over.

“Good.” I moved closer and hugged her. “ I don’t want you to worry about me. But I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“Okay. I’m leaving. I’ll see you in a day or two.”

After Jean left, Claire said goodbye, too. “Call me whenever you’re ready,” she said in her warmest voice. “Let me know if you want me to go with you to meet with the surgeon. Sometimes it’s best to have a third party there to take notes because, I can pretty much guarantee you, you aren’t going to be able to remember a thing she said 10 minutes after you leave the office.”

“Okay. Thanks. I’ll ask Larry what he thinks.”

That sounded strange in my ears. I’ll ask Larry. Already, my personality was shifting. I was blithely turning over my power. I wouldn’t think for myself. I didn’t want to. After Claire left, I sat back down by the telephone. A moment later, I called Larry again.

“Yes,” he answered, breathing heavily. I could hear street noise in the background. He was on his bike.

“I just wanted to tell you that it was zero-stage cancer — so you wouldn’t worry. The doctor said if I had to have breast cancer, this was the best type to have.”

“I’m almost home. I’m just at Safeway.”

“Okay.” Safeway was four blocks away.

It wasn’t much longer before he walked in the back door. I went into the kitchen to meet him, and we hugged long and hard before moving together into the bedroom. Larry sat on the bed, and I stood before him, pulling his head into my belly, putting one arm around his back. Before anyone said anything, he started to sob.

Larry cried with his face in my stomach. I stood before him and felt strangely proud. I was glad he was crying. I was glad that he had emerged from his distant cave. I was glad that after long years of emotional starvation, I was getting this glut of confirmation that he loved me.

When I was tired of standing, I lay down beside him and continued cradling his head and back in my hands. It was sweet, sweeter than almost any moment in our marriage. But when his crying didn’t stop, I began to wonder. Was he afraid I was dying? Or was he crying over the fact that I might lose one my breast, might no longer be attractive?

“Don’t worry,” I murmured. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to stay right here with you.” His crying grew louder then, so I knew. I held him more tightly. I felt strong, almost invincible, and proud, as if my diagnosis made me special — as if God had chosen me to undergo this ordeal. The breast cancer linked me to my dead mother. Could my response absolve me for the way I’d run out of the hospital on the night she was dying? If I faced the cancer bravely, could I break curse before it extended to my daughter Rose?

“I’m sorry,” Larry finally mumbled as his sobs subsided. “I guess I can only handle one family crisis at a time.”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind it. But later, I’m going to need you to be strong for me. Later, when I get scared.”

That was the tenth chapter of my novel, Count All This. To continue, follow the free chapter links below or buy a digital copy of the whole book on Amazon, where leaving a rating or review will help others find my story.

>>>NEXT CHAPTER << TABLE OF CONTENTS

NEW CHAPTER ALERT! Here’s a head’s up to people who’ve clapped or commented on my fiction in the past that a new novel’s running and the next chapter’s been published. ❤ Alan Tabor, Alberto García 🚀🚀🚀, Brendabrown, Catherine Caruso, Catherine Durkin Robinson, Chidi Michaels, Christiana White, Deb Clark, Dennis Abrahamson, Esther Spurrill-Jones, Evelyn Jean Pine, Filiz Özer, Frank Delaurier, Gregory Bell, Hidayatullah, HJ Free4Life, Jackie Sacco, James Finn, Jen Maidenberg, Kenny D, L. A. Jackson, Lilit A. Sargsyan, Maddy Wylie, Matthew John, Mike Behlen, Nicole Higginbotham-Hogue, Nini Mappo, Paul Morriss, Rebecca Ruth Gould, Ripley J. Cloud, R.L. Raymundo, Rolli, Sandra Salamander, Shannon Mary Sims, Skippy von Alte Welt, The Old Grey Wolf, Wendy Allen, Yvonne Vávra

My writing is free to readers who follow my links from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, but if you’d like to browse more, click here to join Medium for $5 a month and they’ll give me some of that money. (Yes!) For an email when I publish a new story, click here. Find more of my fiction, including another novel, on this List. And for more of the good stuff, follow Fourth Wave, where we’re changing the world for the better, one story at a time. Got one of your own? Submit to the Wave!

Copyright © 2021 by Patsy Fergusson. All rights reserved.