Chapter 11
Jamie hated being at the doctor’s by herself.
Especially when she had to go through exams and needles and all sorts of awkward questions from a man she still barely knew.
I miss having a female doctor. When she started dating Etta, however, she highly recommended the private clinic she already used.
Not a single female doctor is on the roster.
That would teach Jamie to just go with whatever suggestion Etta made on a whim.
She wished Etta was there in the room. Even if she had to sit in a leather chair in the corner, bored out of her mind while she checked work emails, Jamie could at least have her comforting presence.
They took her blood and told her it would be about an hour before the doctor could make a final confirmation of where to go next. During that time, Etta joined her girlfriend in the doctor’s office, sitting with her in the private waiting area and trying not to stare at her phone.
“Miss Joy?” The nurse peered into the room. “The doctor will be here in about a minute.”
Jamie’s throat dried. This is it. Her fate would be sealed.
She looked to Etta, who put her phone away.
They both stared at the doctor’s rustic, cluttered office.
Jamie was used to messy offices, but this made Etta’s one at home look perfectly well-to-do.
Beatrice would have a conniption if she saw this place.
This was the woman who once spent half an afternoon doing acrobatics trying to get to a ceiling fan so she could dust it.
Etta reached over to Jamie’s chair and took her shaking hand. Her touch calmed Jamie, but not enough. “No matter what happens, we’ll get through it.”
That, however, was not comforting at all. “You make it sound like it’s a trial we have to survive. A gauntlet. Ninja Fucking Warrior.”
“Well, it is a big deal. It’s going to get emotional. For everyone involved.”
“Even you?” Jamie looked at her stoic girlfriend. The thought of Etta getting emotional over anything, even cancer, was like imagining her waking up one day and going, “Hey, let’s go bungee jumping.”
“Jamie,” she said more than once. “Breathe.”
“You’re not the one who might have cancer.”
“Even so, you need to breathe.” She squeezed Jamie’s hand, harder. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”
“I feel like I’m about to pass out!”
The doctor emerged from a back door at that moment, carrying a manila folder full of Jamie’s test results.
Oh my God, here we go. The old, white-haired man greeted them both again and sat behind his messy desk, suddenly swallowed by one more manila folder.
Jamie stared at it, wondering just how much of her biological history was in there.
I barely know my blood type. What else could I learn? Surely that and more.
“Ms. Joy… Ms. Coleman…” The doctor cleared his throat. “I have your test results.”
She let out a breath. “Okay…”
“Your levels are good and I don’t see any reason to refer you to an oncologist or any other specialist. There’s nothing from my exam or these tests that suggest you’re anything but a healthy young woman.”
Etta almost slid out of her seat in relief. Jamie, on the other hand, gaped at the doctor in utter disbelief. “How?”
The doctor was taken aback. That’s right.
Explain my paranoia to me! He looked to Etta, who shrugged, forcing the man to tackle Jamie head-on.
“…How? You mean how do you not have cancer? I mean, you can get a second opinion, of course, but it’s my professional experience that there’s nothing to worry about. ”
Jamie snatched her hand out of Etta’s and slapped both on the doctor’s desk. He jerked back. “Then why did our home care doctor freak me out like that? Cancer is in all parts of my family!” She waved one reddening hand at him. “We’re rich. Run it again!”
“Ah… that would require another blood draw, and…”
She shoved her arm at him. “Go on! I’ve got more! Plenty, even!”
“Ms. Joy,” he politely pushed her arm to the side of his desk, “I understand that you may have been under a lot of stress lately. And stress can…”
“I’m not stressed!”
Her shout echoed in the office, silencing everyone. Everyone but Etta, anyway. “We just had a bad stomach flu,” she explained softly. “Could that have something to do with it?”
“I suppose. Everyone is different in that regard.
Your other symptoms were probably leftovers of a bad stomach bug.
You said you had vomiting, diarrhea, and still have bouts of nausea and stomach pain.
While those can be signs of the cancers you brought up, such as cervical and ovarian cancer, they are also unfortunately symptoms of many, many other maladies.
The flu, coronaviruses, rhinovirus, and of course even GERD…
Jamie was shamed into silence.
“Your estrogen and blood pressure levels were higher than normal, but not enough to concern me. I’m sorry. If you’re still concerned in another month, you can come back here and we can run the tests again.”
“But… how…”
“Ms. Joy, I want to reiterate that there’s nothing wrong with you as far as I can tell.
Perhaps some of your symptoms were psychological.
Sometimes… and forgive me if I am very off-base here…
if a woman is around other women who are currently going through health predicaments of their own, it can create a psychological effect.
Some women report having sympathy symptoms for female friends and family members who are pregnant. ”
Is he saying I’m crazy? That hanging around Monique all of two or three times made me think something was happening to me too? Jamie was not deigning any of that with an answer. She looked away from both people in the room, refusing to acknowledge either’s presence.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Etta said, shaking the man’s hand.
“We appreciate you taking the time at the last minute to see us.” She nudged Jamie, who continued to stew in her chair.
She wasn’t even sure why. Because a man knew her body better than she did?
Because Etta looked so relieved? Fuck ‘em both! Jamie shot up from her chair, snatched her bag, and barely had time to compose herself before Etta put a gentle hand on the small of her back and urged her out of the office. The receptionist bade them farewell. Etta’s limo waited for them at the curb.
“Why are we taking the limo to the doctor?” Jamie had asked earlier. Now she knew. No matter the results, she would be too emotional for Etta to drive and take care of herself at the same time. Forget Jamie driving!
The driver closed the door behind her. She didn’t bother to buckle her seatbelt, and neither did Etta. The two of them remained flopped against their seats.
“Where to, Ms. Coleman?” The driver cleared his throat and tried not to stare at them.
“I need to head to my office. Jamie will be heading home, I suppose.” She looked down at Jamie’s set face. “Do you want to go to the penthouse or the house?”
Jamie was too numb to respond. If I go to the penthouse, I will be lonely. If I go home-home, I will be far away from Etta. One was cozier than the other. One also had her cat. “I’ll go to the house,” she said, gruffly. “Take a nap until dinner. You’ll be there, right?”
Etta pushed the button shooting the privacy partition up between them and the driver. The car lurched into motion as it merged into traffic. At this time of day, it would take about twenty minutes to get to Etta’s office.
“I will be there.”
They rode in silence. I don’t have cancer.
I’m healthy. Jamie touched her abdomen for the hundredth time in the past week.
My body lied to me? My brain lied to me?
She didn’t know how she felt about that.
On one hand, it was a relief. On the other?
She had been so psychologically prepared for the fallout that she suddenly didn’t know what to do with her paranoid energy.
She looked at Etta. On the other hand…
Etta caught her gaze. “What is it? Do you need something?”
Yeah… That familiar feeling she couldn’t control threatened to burst from her eyes. I need you.
Whatever her hormones were doing to make her life hell, they continued to do so now, sending Jamie into her girlfriend’s arms so she could sob uncontrollably against her business suit.
Tears stained Etta’s silk shirt. Fingers wrinkled her jacket.
Snot got all over her lapel. Shudder after shudder wracked her fragile body, and all Etta could do was offer her comforting heat and a few strokes to her head.
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.
“I’m so sorry!” Jamie sobbed. “I’m so stupid! I put you through all that… I should have known better, I should have known I wasn’t really sick! Fuck, I am so stupid!”
Her pats on Jamie’s head turned into rubbing her back. Does it feel good? Does it make me feel better? Jamie couldn’t tell. Her brain was so muddled with the news that she felt like she swam through soup.
“You are not stupid,” Etta said softly. Yet her voice was deep in that authoritative “I know what I am saying and you can trust me,” way.
Jamie sniffed up her tears, still crying, but no longer losing her shit.
Good. Because tears were getting in her hair and mussing it up.
“Your instincts were wrong. It happens. We can move on from this. I love you. That’s what ultimately matters. That we love each other.”
Jamie clung to Etta’s shirt, desperate to believe her. But could love really make her feel better right now? What’s wrong with me? Why was she so upset? Wasn’t it a good thing that she didn’t have cancer, of all things?
“What’s really going on, Jamie?”
She pulled her chin out of Etta’s grip and stared at the buttons on the panel by the window.
Window down. Window up. Fan. Speaker. Lock.
Words that meant nothing right now. “I don’t know,” she admitted.
“I was scared, but… what scared me was that, despite the money, despite the prognosis… if I had something going on down there, I might not be able to have kids. I never thought about it until now. I just took it for granted, you know?” She sniffed.
“I don’t even know how you feel about any of that.
We’ve never really talked about it! I mean, it’s not the end of the world if I can’t ever give birth to my own kids… or if I never have kids at all… but…”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”
She lay her head in Etta’s lap, one of those hands still rubbing her back while the other stroked her hair. “I just want a family… to be a family.”
Jamie didn’t know what she meant by that.
That she wanted to have children? That she wanted to get married?
That she wanted to move their parents into their home and be surrounded by their constant nagging?
Right now, she felt close to Etta, but she knew they could feel even closer.
She could change things. Together, they could change for the better, becoming a stronger couple.
It didn’t matter how they did it. Now that it was in Jamie’s heart, all she could think about was taking her relationship with Etta to the next level.
Suddenly, she was no longer complacent with what they had.
She wanted more.
“I want the world to know that you and I are forever,” she whispered.
Etta’s arms wrapped around her, bringing her closer so she could kiss her tear-stained cheek. “Maybe one day, my love.”
“Maybe one day what?”
“Maybe one day we’ll have all that.”
She sniffed. “You’re happy that I’m not sick, of course.”
“I’m relieved, that’s all. I’m not happy that you’re upset. I don’t ever want to see you upset. I want you happy every day of your life.”
Jamie lifted her head, forcing a smile. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
They embraced until they reached Etta’s office five minutes later. Jamie saw her off with the biggest smile she could muster, but inside she felt… empty. When she rode home, alone, she cried one more time. For what her own stupid head had put her through.
And the Pandora’s Box it had opened.