Chapter 34
Is there a protocol for this?
I’ve never thought about receiving a cancer diagnosis.
The key to the city? Sure.
Getting hit by a bus? Absolutely.
But not cancer.
If someone had asked me what I thought my chances were of cancer in my thirties, I would have said close to zero for plenty of naive reasons.
I’m too young.
I don’t smoke.
I’m not diabetic.
None of my grandparents or parents have had cancer.
I exercise.
I eat a healthy diet.
Yet here I am with somewhere between three months to a year to live and a wife who’s fading before my eyes. Is it normal for people with cancer to spend their time consoling those around them? Sometimes, I feel like I’m not her husband. I’m not the one with the cancer diagnosis. I’m just a friend—a shoulder to cry on.
“It’s been four days. They said two to three,” Amelia says over a mouthful of suds, brushing the hell out of her teeth.
I finish towel drying my hair from my shower and pick at the thin strips of paper tape over my biopsy site. “I’ll call them in the morning.”
“We’re getting a second opinion.”
She’s mentioned this at least fifty times. I miss my even-keeled wife, who balanced my hyper-work drive with grace and patience. The woman who rocked our fussy daughter all night long for months, refusing to let me take a shift because she knew I had to work, and who swore Astrid was exactly where she needed to be—in her mother’s arms.
Who was I to argue? Inside Amelia’s embrace is the most incredible place on earth.
Now, she’s either prematurely grieving my death or mad as hell at the whole world.
“A second opinion,” I repeat with a submissive nod.
After she spits and places her toothbrush in its holder, she turns, leaning against the double vanity, hands on the edge of the counter, hair brushed into silky straight strands down her chest over her black nightie. “How are you feeling?” She asks me that almost as often as she brings up the second opinion.
I step into our spacious closet, which has black suits and white shirts on one side, colorful dresses, rows upon rows of shoes and handbags on the other, and an island of drawers in the center.
“I’m tired. But it’s eleven at night.” I pull on a pair of black briefs.
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Sweetheart, I honestly don’t know what you mean.”
“Are you in pain?”
I make my way to her, sliding my arms around her waist. “It pains me that you have to deal with any of this. It pains me that we have to put on a show around Astrid until we know with certainty. Then it will pain me to tell her. Life cannot be lived without pain.”
Her blue eyes remain unblinking while she swallows hard. “It’s a misdiagnosis. I know it. And we’re going to be so glad we got a second opinion. You hear about it all the time. Someone gets diagnosed with cancer. They spend all of their money ticking things off their bucket list, only to find out they never had cancer.”
I smile, pressing my lips to her forehead, and hum just the right way so she thinks I agree with her.
I don’t.
It’s a rare case that someone’s misdiagnosed with stage four metastatic pancreatic cancer. Early-stage breast cancer? Maybe. Early-stage lung cancer? Perhaps.
Hope soothes her.
That hope will eventually run out. But for now, I let her have it.
“Let’s go to bed.” She wraps an arm around me as we head into the bedroom.
As soon as she’s asleep, which has been taking a lot longer since my diagnosis, I slide out of bed and spend most of the night in my study researching cancer online.
There’s no “cure” for what I have unless I buy into the stories of miraculous natural cures. Cancer is an insidious plague that we’ve come to accept as almost a “normal” part of life.
Tragic. But all too common.
Truth? I am looking for a miracle in the truest sense of the word. So, I go back to the basics.
What is cancer?
Why does it grow?
What do these “miraculous” cures have in common?
This is a rabbit hole deeper than the journey to the center of the earth. But time only matters to those who don’t have much time left. So, I have to take this journey because I love my life.
My wife.
My daughter.
And I don’t want to live a life where I know my time. If that bus hits me tomorrow, so be it. But I don’t want to know today that tomorrow is my time.
By noon the next day,the biopsy results confirm the initial diagnosis. An hour later, Amelia has me scheduled for a second opinion.
I bite my tongue. Smile. And nod.
As much as I want to tell her we must be prepared to hear the same scenario, I don’t. If I spend my nights researching miracles, it’s okay for her to cling to any little scrap of hope she can find.
“If we don’t get a better prognosis,” she rolls toward me in bed while I read a book that arrived in the mail today, “then I say we start chemo as soon as possible.”
I turn my head, eyeing her twisted lips and narrowed gaze. “I certainly hope ‘we’ are not starting chemo.”
“You know what I mean.” Her face relaxes while her hand slides along my chest. “And we have to discuss how we’re going to tell Astrid. If you’re sick or losing your hair, she’ll know something’s wrong.”
While I’m glad that she’s keeping an open mind to the nearly one-hundred-percent chance that the second opinion won’t be any better than the first, I’m not sure why she thinks it’s a foregone conclusion that I’m having chemo.
“I agree. We need to decide how we’re going to approach this with Astrid. But I’m not having chemo.”
Her face sours. “What are you talking about?”
“Why would I go through chemo?”
“Uh … to live longer and maybe lessen your symptoms.”
“But palliative chemo has side effects. Why would I totally give up on my body and accept a slow drip of chemicals in my veins for six months to a year? And not good months. Name one person you know who had an ‘easy’ time with chemo.”
She lifts onto her elbow. “But what if it’s more than a year? That’s just a guess. Everyone is different. There is a one percent five-year survival rate. And I know … honey, I know that feels like zero. But we have to believe in miracles.”
I turn my book so she can see the cover. “You’re right. This guy survived stage four colon cancer without chemo.”
Amelia frowns. “You have pancreatic cancer that’s in your liver too.”
“I don’t think it matters. His story isn’t about the type of cancer. It’s about his approach to cancer.”
“Approach? What does that mean? How does one approach cancer?”
I slip the sticky note onto my page and close the book. “I think stress has caused my cancer, or at least has played a role in its growth.”
“Then take some time off work.”
I slide my book onto the nightstand and sit on the edge of the bed with my feet dangling off the side. “Amelia, I’m not taking time off. I’ve been given three months to a year to live. I’m simply not going back to work.”
“It’s just a guess.”
I laugh, shaking my head. “Listen to yourself, baby. Either I’m going to die before our daughter learns how to drive and gets her first kiss, or something really fucking life-changing has to happen for me to have a prayer of beating the odds.”
The mattress dips behind me, and I glance back at her sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, tears painting her cheeks.
“You h-have to f-fight.”
I stand slowly, grabbing my aching back for a second before running my fingers through my hair. “What if I live instead of fight? What if I let go of everything? Sleep when I want to sleep. Only put things into my body that are good for it. Meditate. Spend time walking barefoot in the grass? Get rid of my phone, my computer, and the television. What if I took away everything that cancer loves? Starve it.”
“Then the chemo would have a better chance.” She wipes her tears and nods.
I deflate. “No. Not chemo.”
“Price—” She shakes her head, pointing to the book. “That’s bullshit. Maybe he didn”t even have cancer. Or if he did, maybe it wasn’t really stage four. If sleep and walking in the grass cured cancer, don’t you think it would be all over the news?”
“No.” I laugh, resting a hand on my hip. “I don’t. But it doesn’t matter, Amelia. This is what I want. I want this headache to go away. I want my back not to feel like a goddamn truck is sitting on it. I don’t want to add more pain. And I don’t want to die.”
“Dr. Faber said it could help with the symptoms.”
I blow out a long breath. I’m eternally tired. “If I do the chemo, I will die. If I don’t do the chemo and keep doing my routine, I will die. My body is screaming for me to listen to it. Maybe nothing is the greatest something I can do right now. And it’s what I want. Don’t I get a say in what happens to my body?”
“How can you let Astrid watch you die without a fight?” She wipes more tears.
“What if I don’t have to die?”
“Price, it’s a year. A year might not seem like much, but I want every single second. A year is a lifetime to my heart, and it will be to Astrid’s, too. If you don’t do this for me, at least do it for her.”
“Amelia, I am doing this for her and you! What if I don’t have to die?”
Before she can speak through her soft sobs, our bedroom door cracks open.
“Mom?” Astrid shuffles her bare feet into our bedroom, rubbing her eyes behind the blonde hair hanging in her face. She’s a miniature version of her mom.
Amelia quickly turns away to hide her emotions.
“Hey, sunshine. Sorry. Did I wake you?” I scoop her up, ignoring the searing pain in my back.
“Are you fighting?”
“No. We’re not fighting. I’ll tuck you back into bed.”
“Can we read more of Moon Over Manifest?”
“We can read whatever you want.” I kiss her head and carry her to her white canopy bed with a pink polka dot quilt and so many stuffed animals that I don’t know where she finds room to sleep.
As soon as I toss her into the pile of animals, she giggles and hops out of bed, retrieving the book from her white and turquoise flowered bookshelf.
We manage to wedge ourselves into the tiny space, her tucked under my arm, one of my legs hanging off the side. By the time I get four pages past her marked spot in chapter seven, she’s asleep.
I’ve wiped a lot of Amelia’s tears since my diagnosis, but I haven’t shed one of my own until now.
One tear.
Two tears.
Three, four, five tears.
They slowly descend my face, and I let the book drop from my hand to the rug beneath her bed. Where did the time go?
“I’m pregnant!” Amelia squealed, leaping into my arms when I opened the door to our first apartment. It was a one-bedroom main-floor apartment with an old gray carpet and a few mice. “I know it’s not the best timing, but?—”
I kissed her to shut her up. The woman I loved more than any other human was pregnant with my baby. Fuck the timing.
“Are you sure?” I set her on her feet and kissed her again, unbuttoning her blouse.
She giggled.
“Because,” I kissed down her neck, walking her backward toward the bedroom, “we should make sure you stay good and pregnant.”
Her giggles multiplied as we lost all our clothes.
As we fell into bed.
As I filled her.
Then they stopped, replaced with soft moans. Her fingers curled into the muscles along my back. I ducked my head and sucked her breast, bringing her nipple into a hard pebble between my teeth.
She hissed. “Shit … my nipples are sensitive.”
“Sorry, baby.” I softly kissed it.
She pushed at my chest, nudging me to roll onto my back. Amelia enjoyed being on top. And I fucking loved the view. I couldn’t wait to see her riding me with a little baby belly.
I licked the pad of my thumb before pressing it between her legs right where she liked it. Her fingers tangled in her hair, eyelids heavy and intoxicated. I could come just looking at her.
“God, I love how deep you fill me.” She hugged herself.
Played with her breasts.
Sucked her fingers and smeared saliva over her nipples. Taunting me. Reminding me I could no longer touch them.
My wife had no inhibitions. She was sexy as fuck and knew it.
I gripped her hips, thumbs caressing her belly. We were having a baby.
I metAmelia Havana Armstrong a month before I graduated from college. She was turning right in her red Mini Cooper; I was zooming through the intersection on a bike.
Thunk!
I dented her Mini. She broke my arm and clavicle.
She always hated how I told the story, but it’s how I remember the moment. As I stared at the partly cloudy sky, she and her golden blonde hair appeared above me like an angel. I heard harps and birds singing a heavenly tune.
I was dead. And that was good because the bike was my roommate’s—a ten-thousand-dollar Cervélo.
She unfastened my helmet, throwing spinal injury caution to the wind.
Pinched my nose.
And covered my mouth with hers, blowing entirely too much air into my lungs while I tried to exhale.
I coughed. She coughed.
“Oh, thank god you’re alive! Someone call 9-1-1,” she yelled, not leaving my side. “I’m so sorry. Reeeally sorry. You came out of nowhere. And the sun was bright, and … oh god … what if you don’t make it? I’m so sorry.”
Jesus, I thought. How bad was it?
I could wiggle my toes and most of my fingers. My left digits were a little more of a challenge.
“My … arm …” I gritted past the pain.
“This one?” She lifted it off the ground.
“FUCK!” I cried.
“Oh, god! Sorry.” She wrinkled her nose, resting my arm on the ground as I began to pant and moan like the injured wildebeest taken down by an African wild dog I’d watched on a National Geographic documentary.
“If you live, please don’t sue me,” she whispered an inch from my face, her hair tickling my cheeks. “My dad said he’d cut me off if I got one more moving violation. And I don’t know where hitting a biker falls, but I was moving in my car, so …”
“Miss, can you give us some room?” the police officer said as more sirens sounded in the distance.
“Listen, I work at a big PR firm. I can get you the best tickets to the Eagles, the 76ers, or the Phillies. I’m talking VIP seating. How does that sound?”
She smelled like a flower. Not a rose, more like my favorite fabric softener scent. Maybe honeysuckle?
“Miss, please step aside.”
“I’ll meet you at the hospital. We’ll get this all figured out.” Her smile reached her blue eyes, one with a tiny brown mole just below her lashes on her cheek.
Amelia remained at the hospital for both nights of my stay despite discovering my father was an attorney. She brought me food, flowers, balloons, and tickets to all the best games. During my recovery, she dropped food off at my parents’ house and offered to help me across the stage if I needed assistance receiving my diploma.
My dad quickly determined we weren’t suing her because my mom was already planning our wedding. “Nicest young lady we have ever met,” they concluded. “And she’s one hell of a cook.”
A week into physical therapy, I asked her out on a date—I drove.
Three months later, I proposed.