9. Not the Answer They Were Looking For
CHAPTER NINE
Not the Answer They Were Looking For
W hen Paige opened her eyes, everything was different. She wasn’t in her bed like she’d thought she would be. She was in a bed, but it was small, with railings. Her body throbbed like she’d been pummeled by a bull.
No, a horse. She remembered now, the evening before coming back to her in a quick succession of snapshots.
Riding up the ridge, scared.
The top, the view, oh the view.
Making love to Owen. His hands on her, inside her. The rain as they held each other.
Rushing to leave. The ride down with Justice.
Lightning, thunder that shook the earth. Shook her from her horse. Owen’s face, upset.
Her brother there, how was he there? Carrying her, to where? Where was she?
Trying to sit up, Paige cringed, drew in a sharp breath. It was almost impossible to move without feeling like she was breaking in two from the middle. She lifted her arm and found it covered in wires, tubes.
She was in a hospital. Clarity rushed through her in a flood of emotion, adrenaline, pain.
Then gratefulness. She was safe.
Owen kept her safe even though she’d fallen, injuring herself badly, apparently. Even her fingertips hurt as she tried to move them, call for a nurse. It was so much worse than she thought on the ridge, but then she understood enough about pain and injuries to know that this was often the case, adrenaline the likely culprit.
Outside the window to her room the sun broke over the peaks along the horizon. A new day.
They must be in Helena judging by how far away the mountains of her home loomed in the distance. Why hadn’t they brought her to Bozeman, which was closer by a long shot?
The sky had mostly cleared, leaving only a pink and orange-tinted hint of the wreckage the storm had induced the night before.
On the other side of the room, the one that beeped and buzzed and dripped, Owen dozed in a compact chair, most of his body spilling over the arms and seat.
She wasn’t used to being on this side of the medical experience, found it disorienting and frightening. Seeing him, though, calmed her. She smiled, found that her cheeks hurt too. Ugh.
Her phone rang on the table, buzzing violently against the enameled wood. It sounded like a roar in the otherwise silence. It was also swathed in mud, but seemed okay otherwise. She was able to reach for it, but a spasm wracked her side. Her fingers trembled under such a small weight but she swiped left on the home screen and choked out a hello.
It was almost impossible to hold the phone to her head, but she managed to put it on speaker, hoping the noise didn’t wake Owen, who still dozed peacefully in his chair.
She heard only sobbing on the other end. What the—
As her brain defogged, she looked down and saw it was Aurelie on the other line.
Shit. Her friend didn’t have to say a word. Paige had hoped this moment would take longer to come.
“Aurelie,” Paige whispered, in part because she didn’t want to rouse Owen, and also because her voice wouldn’t get any louder if she wanted it to.
“She’s gone,” came the reply, choked out between sobs.
“I’m so sorry, Aury. When?”
“Yesterday morning. In her sleep, at least.”
“You can be thankful for that, I guess. How’re you holding up?” She wouldn’t tell Aurelie where she was—her friend had enough on her plate.
“I’m barely here, Paige. I mean, I knew it was coming, she’s been sick for so long, but to have her gone for real? Forever? I can’t quite get my head to wrap around it.”
Paige closed her eyes. She couldn’t imagine losing her mother at this stage in her life, and to cancer at that. She’d watched Aurelie’s mom wither away, had helped care for her until she was just the skin and bones of the woman who’d raised Aurelie. It was a horrible way to go.
“I am here, whatever you need,” Paige said. But when her side throbbed with each breath, she knew there was no way she would be able to go back for the funeral. She might have to tell Aurelie what had happened sooner rather than later. “When is the service?” she asked, gauging when that conversation might have to happen.
“Not for a couple weeks. I don’t want you to come back. I don’t want you to see her like this, and frankly, if you come back, I may never leave. I need to use this as the reason to get off the island, or I never will.” Paige nodded, even though no one could see her. “I need to go right now, I’m at the funeral home and they need me to pick an urn. How the fuck is that even important right now?”
Aurelie broke down on the other end again. Paige ached, this time for her friend who she was helpless to in that moment, her moment of greatest need.
“It’s not. Not at all. Pick whatever your heart pulls you to, then head to the beach. You’ll feel better there.”
“Okay. Yes. I will. I miss you, Paige.”
“I miss you, too, Aury. This will be okay, you know that, right? You won’t ever be the same, but someday you will be okay. I love you and will call soon.”
Paige could only hear fragile wails on the other end, and then the line went dead. She set the phone down gently on the counter and sighed deeply. An almost matching sigh from the chair startled her.
Owen.
He stirred, opened his eyes, meeting hers for a brief moment. Then, like her, his memory seemed to catch up. She recognized it in his eyes, the same panic she’d endured the night before.
He was at her bedside in a leap. A five-o’clock shadow swathed his face, a good look for him under different circumstances. He wrapped her hand in his and squeezed. She grimaced involuntarily, and he loosened his grip but didn’t release her hand. Instead, he stroked it gently.
“I’m so sorry, Paige,” he said. Tears filled the corners of his eyes.
“You saved me. I don’t remember much about how we got down, only that I would still be up there if it weren’t for you, and I’d be a lot worse off.”
“No, you wouldn’t have been in that position at all if I hadn’t been selfish, taken you above your comfort level.”
“I liked everything about being out of my comfort zone with you yesterday,” Paige said, smiling as much as her cheeks could manage.
His cheeks flushed bloodred. She attempted a wink that was more of an exaggerated blink than anything else. Good gracious, she had almost no control of her faculties. That was the pain meds. She hated to think what she’d feel like without them, though.
“Still, I should have kept an eye on the weather. Normally would have,” he mused, running his hands through his hair. He didn’t have his hat on like he normally did. She liked his hair long, free. Another look that would be better outside of the sterile hospital.
She probably didn’t look too hot. If only she had the energy to care.
“Paige, forgive me. I never should have put you in that position.”
“Owen, forget it, please,” she said, emphasizing the please so that he would stop making her feel bad about one of the best afternoons of her recent memory.
Sure, getting thrown from Justice put a wrench in what was otherwise an amazing adventure, but it didn’t change her emotions.
“Don’t you get it? The end of the day was unfortunate, I still don’t know how unfortunate, but I’m breathing, so there’s that. And I had the best time with you. Please don’t take that from me.”
Owen wouldn’t look her in the eyes. Her heart sped up, pounded on her chest.
“Owen, look at me,” she demanded, her voice perking up along with her energy.
He looked up, a few tears falling from his eyes.
“What is going on? Please talk to me. This isn’t about the accident anymore, is it?” she asked.
He looked down again, shook his head.
She started trembling. Couldn’t stop. Something was wrong, she just knew it. She’d spent too long in emergency rooms with families not to recognize the look .
“I’ll get Brad and the doctor.” Owen released her hand and walked out of the room, leaving her alone in the near darkness.
She couldn’t say how long she sat there, only that every second ticked away like an eternity.
The door to her room opened and Brad walked through, followed by an ER physician and her parents.
She’d fallen, that much she was certain of. Based on the pain, she’d probably cracked a rib or two, but she would heal. Why was there an entourage in her room and why did they look like someone’d died? Owen stood in the doorway, and Brad moved to shut him out.
“No,” Paige said, firmly. “He stays.” Brad frowned, but listened. Owen stood still as a statue against the wall, the opposite of the commanding man she’d seen on the mountain the day before. Paige’s dad walked over to him, shook his hand.
“Thanks for taking care of our girl,” he whispered. “I know you couldn’t’ve kept her off that mountain if you’d tried. But you brought her home, so thank you.”
“Of course,” Owen whispered in reply.
“Listen, I know now isn’t the time, but Brad filled me in on your bear problem. Hopefully the rains last night revived their supplies up north a bit, but if not, I have some ideas I’d love to talk you through. It’s not the first time those wily buggers’ve weaseled their way past our defenses.”
He chuckled, eliciting a smile from Owen, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“I’d like that, sir.”
“Call me Alan.”
Owen nodded, but then the doctor cleared his throat, trying for their attention. Everyone, including Paige, looked at him expectantly.
“I’m Dr. Metcalf. I understand you’re just visiting Banberry, is that correct?”
“Yes. I was practicing in Turks and Caicos the past year, and before that as a traveling physician with DWB.”
“All right. Have you been keeping up with your physicals while you traveled?”
“It was required with DWB, but no, I’ve only kept up with my GYN appointments. Why would that matter with regards to the accident yesterday?” she asked.
This wasn’t a normal line of patient questioning. Paige’s blood pressure spiked.
“Hmm,” was all he said.
Pain shot up her arm as she tried to sit up, but she didn’t care. She wanted to talk eye-to-eye as much as she could with this doctor.
She might be injured, but she had a medical degree, same as him. Had graduated top of her med school class, was chief resident as well. What was his pedigree? Besides being a man with an M.D.?
“Hmm what?” she asked. “I’m a doctor, Metcalf. Talk to me like one, not like I’m some patient who needs to be coddled.” Her chest heaved, her pulse raced, but she’d been dealing with men like him her entire career.
Her eyes shot daggers at him. He bit his cheek, shifted from foot to foot. He was nervous.
Well, good. He should be.
“Okay, fair enough. You’ve suffered from two cracked ribs. That was the accident. Some minor internal bleeding,” he said, rattling off items from her chart.
Paige’s mom, Marge, inhaled sharply, put her hand up to her mouth. Her eyes filled with tears.
“I’m fine, Mom. That’s small stuff. It’ll all heal, and the good news is you can bring me your homemade lasagna for the next couple weeks while it does.”
“You’re not leaving?” her mom asked.
Paige admired her for trying to hide her delight, but really, it was the best news her mother could have asked for. Which explained why she didn’t hide it worth a damn.
“It’s not advisable,” Metcalf told them both. “Now, I’m going to need you all to clear out so I can talk to the patient.” He saw Paige’s frown and added, “Er, Dr. Connors.”
“Not a chance,” Paige said at the same time her father said the same thing under his breath, but less kindly. “This is my family, and they stay. Anything you need to tell me is going to go straight to them anyway. Might as well save me my breath.”
“Fine. Paige,” he said, ignoring her frown this time. “When you came in, we ran a full panel of tests. An MRI for your head since you were in and out of consciousness, a blood screen, X-ray and ultrasound for your ribs.” Paige nodded along. It was all standard procedure. “We found some irregularities in your blood and with the ultrasound.”
Paige closed her eyes. He meant beyond the ribs and internal bleeding. He found something else.
“Okay,” she said, biting the inside of her cheek to keep the heat that formed behind her eyelids from spilling over onto her cheeks in front of her family, in front of Owen. This was the moment she was familiar with, but never from the seated, vulnerable position she found herself in now.
The doctor would pass on the diagnosis and the patient— her —would have moments to cope with the irrevocable changes to her life. The family, though, they wouldn’t know it was coming. They still clung to hope. Paige felt this in her soul. The bubble would burst sooner rather than later.
Marge held her hand, squeezing tightly. Paige didn’t have the heart to tell her how much it hurt. Her heart hurt more, knowing that what came next would most likely crush her mother.
“Continue,” she told Dr. Metcalf.
He cleared his throat, adjusted the chart in his hands.
“There is an ovarian stromal tumor on your left ovary. Malignant.” He’d answered the next question before she could ask it.
Shit. Cancer. She fell off a horse and got diagnosed with cancer. Her luck was going to hell pretty quick.
The energy in the room came to a standstill, stopping time with it.
Paige took in every person’s face, etched it in her memories. She never wanted to forget the way she hurt them beyond repair in that single moment.
Marge stood frozen in place. She was a mannequin, stoic and opaque, unable to read. Only her hair blew in the light breeze from the vent directly above her. She was alive, but looked eerily otherwise, like the diagnosis had taken her life, not her daughter’s as was more likely to happen.
Her father, Alan, paced back and forth in the two square feet of free space in the small room that felt more confining by the minute. His lips pursed, anger causing his cheeks to tremble.
Brad and Owen stood resolute, looking like brothers in their identical statuesque poses, arms crossed over their chests, feet wide, jaws set, eyes forward.
She wished she could hide her emotions so well.
“You’re actually pretty lucky,” Dr. Metcalf started. With that, time sped up and crashed into Paige.
Brad and Owen both snorted, huffed out four lungs worth of air in a single blow. She could hear their gears turning, her brother wanting to pummel the doctor for his callousness. He wasn’t the best at bedside manner, that was for sure, but he was right.
Owen was less transparent. He went from resolute to hurt, physically and emotionally. His face looked pale, but his eyebrows pulled together so the lines on his forehead made deep, cavernous creases. His bottom lip trembled.
“Shhh,” she told her family when her dad start mumbling “what does he know” under his breath and her brother started walking towards the doctor. “Let him speak,” she commanded.
Dr. Metcalf coughed. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else than in that room full of people who wanted him gone until he could come back with good news.
Paige understood. She’d never been more helpless than when she delivered the news that a parent’s joy and light was going to go dim with a terminal diagnosis. It was the worst thing a doctor could go through, but it was nothing compared to what the families had to endure.
“The trauma landed you on that side, aggravating the tumor. It’s what’s causing the internal bleeding, and part of how we found it in the first place. We followed the blood to the source and there it was, small and otherwise invisible. That’s the good news,” he said, looking pointedly at Alan and Brad, an ill-timed smile on his face. “The tumor is small, stage one. If it weren’t for the fall, we wouldn’t have found it until much later, and that would have been worse.”
Paige nodded, agreeing completely. Owen had inadvertently saved her life twice in one day.
“We want to go in, remove it, do a round of radiation to be sure, but we don’t anticipate needing chemo, nor do we think a bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy will be necessary.”
“A what?” Alan asked, his face scrunched up in confusion. Marge shook her head while silent tears streamed down her cheeks. Her foot tapped against Paige’s bed, the reverberations sending shocks of pain up Paige’s back. “Could you please talk to us in a way that we can fucking understand?” Alan hollered.
Paige gaped. She’d never heard her dad so much as say “damn” unless he was completely out of sorts. She’d never heard him use “fucking” in her life, nor had he ever raised his voice, even when she or Brad were in trouble. That was almost more jarring than the diagnosis she’d just received.
The room shut down, eyes either on Metcalf or the floor, the only sounds the persistent beeping of the heart rate monitor in the corner, the motor of the vent.
Metcalf cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, I was addressing Paige as a physician. She has cancer. Ovarian, but limited to one ovary. We need to go in surgically and remove it, today if possible since it’s the source of her bleeding as well. She won’t need anything else but a short round of targeted radiation at the point of injury just to be sure all cancerous cells are destroyed. It’s relatively simple, considering. It could have been a lot worse, Mr. Connors. A lot worse. If Paige hadn’t had the accident, it’s likely in her good health she wouldn’t have noticed the symptoms until it was too late to do anything about them.”
Alan’s shoulders shook as he succumbed to his own wave of emotions. Surprisingly, Paige didn’t feel like crying. She was still wrapping her head around the words.
Tumor.
Her ovary. Just one, thankfully.
Cancer.
Surgery.
Radiation.
“How long will I need to heal?” she asked.
Her real, more pressing question, was “can I ever leave here again? Escape this town where only bad things happen?” She didn’t dare phrase it that way, especially as she looked over at Owen, his eyes misty and his cheeks pale. He looked like the sick one. Her chest constricted with empathy for this stranger who’d made love to her not knowing he’d be stuck listening to this nonsense. She hoped he didn’t feel trapped, like he couldn’t leave her now that she had the “C” word.
“You’ll need to stay local for a few months while we get this under control, Paige.”
She closed her eyes again, willing away the image of a cell door closing on her, locking her in. She kept her eyes closed as she asked the next question, one that hadn’t occurred to her to need to ask until then.
“Can I still have children?”
It took not knowing if it would be possible to throw into harsh perspective whether or not she wanted them. She decided she most definitely did, an unfortunate decision to make as she stood at the edge of a precipice that might send her careening over an edge she couldn’t see yet.
“It’s possible, yes. Just less probable. We’ll have to remove the left ovary, but hopefully that will be it. The right looks healthy. For now. Our job will be making sure it stays that way.”
Paige nodded, unable to stop making that ludicrous and unhelpful gesture. What she really wanted to do was scream into her pillow, from the top of the mountain that had decided her fate the night before, at anyone who would listen. But watching her mother and father sob, her brother looking shocked and like he’d been gut-punched, she had to wait, to be strong. That was her job just then. She was patient, not physician, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t do both.
“I want to see the scans,” she said.
The smell of antiseptic infiltrated her nostrils and she gagged. She couldn’t lose her composure. Not now.
Dr. Metcalf complied. He handed her the whole chart, which she took her time going through as her family watched on. Page by page of medical jargon that could have been summed up in half a paragraph. Patient hurt in accident. Found cancer in scans. Remove cancer or patient will become deceased.
“Is there anything we can do to help?” Marge spoke up, her voice fragile and shaking. It broke Paige’s heart.
“You can keep her plied with healthy food while she recovers and make sure she doesn’t move around too much up to two weeks after the surgery. She’ll need a place to stay that she can have range of motion but constant care.”
“We can do all of that,” Alan chimed in.
He seemed better now that he had a sense of purpose. He sniffled, stood taller, which was tough enough for him on a good day. He was two inches shorter than his wife, and a full foot shorter than his son. Paige was the only one who made him look tall.
Thank god she had a tight-knit family that she could count on if shit hit the fan, which it most certainly had. But it didn’t mean she wasn’t nervous. She was a loner on purpose, and while she loved her mom, dad, and brother, she hadn’t spent more than a week with any of them since high school.
She was going to go nuts. Especially if she couldn’t run, hike, or do any of the things she loved about being home.
She thought of Aurelie’s mother just then. Emaciated, weak, in constant pain. Unable to do any of the things she loved the last year of her life. Yep. It was a crappy way to go.
Finished with the chart, Paige set it on her lap, observing the world already going on without her. Her mother and brother were in deep conversation about setting up a new room for her, her father taking notes as he talked to the doctor. Owen stood in the corner looking like a stricken puppy.
They spoke around her now, no longer to her. It was as if she’d become a project instead of a person, and that aggravated her more than anything she’d found in her chart, which she could science her way through.
“Guys?” she asked.
No one heard her. They kept on about her health before and after the accident, about who would care for her when, what the shifts should look like, what she could and should eat, how much PT she should get. Only Owen stood quietly watching her. He was the only one who saw her.
“Guys!” she shouted.
The room shut down like a switch had been flipped.
“I want a minute.”
“But sweetie—” her mom started. Paige held up the same hand her mom used to stop them in their tracks, happy to see it worked in reverse as well.
“No. You’re all talking about me like I’m not even here. Not one of you has asked how I am, how I might be feeling about all of this. I need a minute to process this. Just a minute.”
“We need to prep you for surgery,” Metcalf chimed in. She gave him her best “get-out-NOW” look, eyes lowered and lips pursed. He seemed to understand what came next wouldn’t be as kind and would probably come with some choice phrases. Good.
“One. Minute.” She looked at Owen then, her face softening. “Owen, will you stay back a second?”
Everyone filed towards the door. All but Owen, who stayed planted, like he was made of stone. When they’d all left, she motioned for him to come closer. He looked like every step pained him. Paige crossed her arms over her chest and tried for the life of her to look distinguished, serious like the medical professional she was.
Until Owen looked at her, tears in his eyes.
“This isn’t how I wanted you to stick around, Paige,” he choked out.
His voice was quiet. With those words, there was no doubt she had to let him go. He was right, this wasn’t what he signed up for.
She cleared her throat, knowing that she had to spit this out before she lost her nerve.
“Owen, thank you for being here today. I’m sorry you had to endure all that. You made sure I was safe, and I want you to know how grateful I am. It seems you sorta saved my life a few different ways between last night and this morning.” She tried a laugh, but it came out shallow and wavering.
“Paige, I—” he started, moving closer to her bed. She cut him off, shaking her head.
“It looks like we’re going to be neighbors for a while, too, so I want to let you know I had fun with you yesterday, a lot of fun. But since it looks like that kind of fun is not in my future any time soon, let’s just call it a damn good one-night stand. Or one-day stand. Hmm, the English language adopted side boob , but we still don’t have anything to describe what happens when you hook up with someone in broad daylight. Probably because it’s so seedy no one wanted to put a name to it. Shit, I’m rambling.” She shook her head again, trying to regain some composure. “Anyway, I promise not to be awkward about any of it. We’re adults. We can handle this, right?”
“Well, actually—” Owen tried.
Paige was so close to tears, she didn’t want to hear any of his excuses, his attempts to make her feel better. She just needed him to fade away so eventually the memory of what they’d shared would too. Then it wouldn’t be so painful looking next door and wishing things could be different.
“You’ve been so great, Owen. Better than I had any right to ask for. Let’s just leave it at that. Okay?”
The look he gave her wasn’t one of relief like she’d been expecting. Instead he stared at her through wide, teary eyes. She’d hurt him, but didn’t know how. All she’d done is give him an out, an out she would have wanted if she’d had a one-night stand with someone who was sick.
“I hope you heal well, Paige. I also hope you find wherever it is you’re looking for.”
With that, Owen walked out of the hospital room, the door closing softly behind him.
Paige finally broke down, weighed down by everything she had lost in such a short time. Her broken ribs, her broken-hearted best friend, her too-good-to-forget neighbor, her ovaries—her mutinous, life-sucking ovaries.
As the tears fell, she watched the door, willing Owen to come back so she could apologize, explain, anything but sit there feeling helpless and wonder where exactly she’d gone wrong.
Maybe it was in thinking she could ever get out of this town, but then again, maybe it went all the way back to when she was a teenager and decided she had to leave. More and more, it looked like that had been a mistake, that this town, her family, Owen even, were what really mattered to her.
She fell asleep as the industrial-strength painkillers coursed through her system, giving her fitful dreams of Owen, her brother, her parents, Aurelie, all moving away, leaving her in Banberry by herself. There was snow on the ground, but flames threatened to engulf her. There was no one to call, and no matter how close she got to the flames, she couldn’t get warm.
Asleep, she shook like she was cold, and even when she woke post-surgery, the shivering lingered.