Chapter 15
Fifteen
B ecky gasped but didn’t say anything.
The doctor continued. “I know it’s probably not much consolation, but from the look of the tumor, we will send it to pathology, but just from my experience with cancer, she was not going to survive that.
Whether she was pregnant or not. It’s very, very aggressive and well-integrated into her abdominal cavity.
She is very blessed she was able to have the babies delivered when she could.
I would say another week, maybe two, and she wouldn’t have been with us anyway. ”
Becky couldn’t speak. She tried to swallow and process. Not only was her sister gone, dying on the operating table, but the doctor said even if she had survived the operation, she wouldn’t have survived long.
“What if she had been treated back when she was four or five months along in the pregnancy? In other words, if she had her pregnancy terminated?”
“Well, obviously, I don’t have all the information.
Normally I would have scans to look at and to compare and to say, ‘well, it grew this much, and when we first found it, here’s what it looked like.
’ But we don’t have those comparisons. So I can’t say for sure.
” The doctor waited for them to nod, making sure they understood.
“But in my opinion, my professional opinion, seeing these things every day, I would say yes. She might have had a good chance of surviving the cancer if she had chosen to terminate pregnancy and been treated immediately. I can’t say for sure.
Again, I don’t know how this cancer would respond to chemo, until we test and see what kind of cancer it is.
But with the combination of chemo and radiation to shrink it and surgery to possibly remove the tumor. Yeah. She might have survived.”
She took a breath, and then she tilted her head over.
“I probably ought to say that it’s just as possible that she wouldn’t have.
With a tumor this big, this aggressive, this integrated into her abdominal cavity, it’s quite possible that there are other places I didn’t see, because I didn’t go looking around for more.
It’s possible that she wouldn’t have made it anyway.
So, she made a decision. Obviously it didn’t turn out well for her, but we do have two live babies, and had she terminated the pregnancy, we could have ended up with three dead humans. ”
The doctor’s lips flattened, and she didn’t look happy about either outcome, but she waited, standing in front of them, almost as though she were preparing herself for an onslaught.
Becky supposed there were people who attacked the messenger. Who accused her of incompetence, of not doing her job, and were angry that she couldn’t save everyone. Becky wasn’t going to do that.
“Thank you for your effort. I know that she was a complicated case, and I appreciate you taking her on, even though the outcome wasn’t what anyone wanted.
” Obviously. No one wanted a dead body especially if the dead body belonged to one’s sister.
Her beautiful, laughing, happy sister. The sister that had asked her for one last thing.
That was to get along with Rodney so that they could raise her babies in a stable, loving home. The stable, loving home she and her sister hadn’t had.
How could she say no?
Still, even though she’d forgiven Rodney, she didn’t want to live with him.
She didn’t want to spend any more time with him than what she had to, because she could tell she was still susceptible to him.
He could have her under his spell again in no time at all, and he obviously didn’t really care about her.
When he’d gotten out in the world and seen what other women were out there, he realized how Becky really didn’t measure up.
It was something she suspected all along.
That she didn’t measure up to other people, other women who were raised in normal homes with good families, who didn’t sneak into boys’ rooms looking for food in the middle of the night when they were ten years old, and who hadn’t run away from their foster home so that they could see their sister.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said, pulling her lips between her teeth. “I wish the outcome could have been different.”
“I do too. But I appreciate your competence and your willingness, and I’m sorry that you had to tell us such bad news.
” Becky didn’t know what else to say. She wanted to go somewhere and cry, but she was holding the baby, and sitting in the middle of the room, and…
Maybe it just hadn’t sunk in yet. Her sister wasn’t coming back.
Maybe she needed to see a body in order to understand.
“There will be people getting in touch with you so that you can discuss things with them and make arrangements. Someone will come find you. So don’t worry about looking for anyone. You stay here and love on your babies.”
The doctor turned around and walked out of the room, her walk brisk and businesslike, and Becky wondered what else her day held.
Were there more surgeries? Did this shake her confidence?
Did this make her question her decision to become a doctor and a surgeon in the first place?
Did she wonder why she fought a disease that always seemed to win?
Or did it not bother her at all? Was this just a job, just one more person who didn’t make it.
And then she was going to move on to the next person with the goal of curing them but detached emotionally from the end result?
Becky didn’t think she could have a job like that without somehow emotionally detaching herself. She couldn’t stand to deliver the sad news to hopeful family members, couldn’t stand to see the blood on the operating table and know that her skills were too little and too late.
“That job would suck.” Rodney somehow managed to encapsulate what she was feeling and thinking into four words.
“Really?”
“You think she has more surgeries today?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I was just thinking that I would have to become emotionally detached in order to do that job.”
“Yeah. How do you lose a patient and then move on to the next one. Without…doubting yourself. Or wondering if you were in the right profession.”
“Yeah. Or wanting to quit your job and go be a burger flipper at McDonald’s. No stress, if you burn the burger, just pitch it, and stick another one on the grill.”
“Right? It’s not a matter of you just upended someone’s life, now you’re going to see what you can do in some other family.”
“Yeah. I guess… Guess I wouldn’t want a job with that kind of stress and strife, but I’m glad that there are people who do that, because…
Well, first of all, because we have Kevin and Marley.
But also because, until the very end, we had hope.
If there hadn’t been someone to do the surgery, we wouldn’t have hope at all.
She gave us hope, and she gave Rita hope. ”
“Do you think? I got the distinct feeling that Rita knew she wasn’t going to make it.”
Again, Rodney said exactly what she had been thinking.
“Yeah. I got the feeling too.” She didn’t know what to make of it though. “I guess I just don’t understand how she could have known. Maybe she had a premonition, or maybe it was negative thinking, and it came true.”
“There is something to that. What’s the quote? ‘If you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.’”
“Yeah. I guess thoughts do matter. I think they matter more than we think they do, but we just aren’t cognizant enough to realize that actions follow our thinking.”
“I’ve often wondered why the Bible tells us to focus on thinking the good things, like that verse in Philippians, where it tells us to focus on whatsoever things are pure and right and good and all that.”
“Yeah. I definitely think that God knows. After all, He made us. He knows exactly how we work and that what we think impacts what we do.”
“I wish He would emphasize that a little more, you know? Like, ‘hey, this is serious stuff, brain science, and you need to live by it.’”
“I still don’t think people would listen, even if God had said that. But isn’t that what the whole Bible is? Brain science? And we just kind of brush it off as old-fashioned and out of date. But when you practice the principles, they work.”
It was interesting, Becky had just experienced that that morning.
She had forgiven, and immediately she had felt lighter, better, like she had been scrubbed clean on the inside.
God’s principles work. It was just humans who thought they had a better way.
None of it sounded good, because it was hard, it was too much, they didn’t want to do it.
But if they would just knuckle down and get started, it happened.
Becky realized that all of their conversation was avoiding what the most important thing was. Her sister was gone.
She felt her throat tightening and her eyes clogging up with tears.
She hadn’t believed it was going to happen. She had wanted to think that she could, by sheer force of will, drag her sister through the cancer fight, fight it for her, and be victorious on the other side.
Obviously, God had other plans, and who was she to question those plans?
“Are you okay?” Rodney asked, leaning over like he could feel her emotions trying to get the best of her.
“I think I’m going to need to go somewhere and cry.” Becky didn’t want to admit that. She wasn’t sure that Rodney had ever seen her cry.
“You probably don’t need to go anywhere. I don’t think anyone in this room would hold it against you if you cried because your sister just passed away.”
“I can’t cry here.”
“Why not?”
“You’re not crying,” she said, her eyes narrowing and her words coming out with more force than she intended. Why was he trying to get her to break down in front of everyone? She didn’t do that.
“Maybe I’m waiting for you to start.”
She snorted. “I bet.”
“You’re too prideful, Becky. It’s okay to show what you think is weakness. Sometimes showing weakness is actually strength.”
“Are you done lecturing me?” She wanted to say that he was a jerk, and he didn’t have any wisdom that she wanted to hear, and then she realized he was right.
With her words, she just confirmed it. “I’m sorry.
You’re right. It’s pride. I don’t want people to see me as weak.
But I also just don’t want people to see me right now. Is it okay to want to be alone?”
“I suppose.” He sighed, and then he said, “I guess I don’t want you to leave. I…don’t like the idea of you crying by yourself, but I also don’t like the idea of being alone right now. I… I’m a little bit scared.”
There. She looked away. He’d been vulnerable too. He had accused her of pride, and then he’d gone and shown her that maybe what she saw on him was just a veneer as well. A prideful veneer, designed to not allow anyone to see that he was afraid and didn’t want to be alone.
Is that what he meant about her not crying by herself?
No. She wasn’t going to try to grasp at straws, trying to prove to herself that somehow he cared. She was not going to do that. He had been clear, and she could accept it and be okay with that.
“We’ve been holding the babies for more than an hour. Let’s set them down. We’ll tell the nurses that we’re leaving, and we’ll find somewhere quiet, okay?”
She didn’t want to go somewhere with him. She didn’t trust him. But she did want to go. As much as she loved holding the baby in her arms and feeling comforted by the feel of it, she needed to get up, needed to move, needed to process somehow, and she knew the movement would help her.
“All right.” She looked down at Marley’s little face. The baby would never know her real mother. Except, Becky would make sure she knew Rita, knew how beautiful she was. How strong and independent and sweet and kind and all of the good characteristics that made up her sister. Marley would know.
She wiggled to the edge of the rocking chair, feeling like she’d done this before, and each time, it got easier. She held the baby in her arm, pushing up and smiling when she made it to her feet without dropping or hurting her.
Moving to the bassinet, she set Marley down in the same spot where she picked her up.
Rodney had managed to get up too, and he moved over to the other side of the bassinet.
The nurse must have seen the moving, and she came over, smiling a bit. “You two are leaving?”
“Yes. We just found out their mother passed away. We…need to take a walk. But we want to come back.” Rodney looked at the nurse, and Becky prayed that she wasn’t going to tell them that no other time was open, and they couldn’t see the babies again until the next day.
“All right. They’ll be here when you get back. If you have trouble finding it, just ask for directions for the visitor entrance to the NICU. You need to scrub up every time you come in.”
The nurse smiled, and they nodded.
“We’re in the NICU,” Becky whispered as they walked out.
“I guess.”
“They didn’t seem like they had any problems.”
“Maybe that’s just where they take babies that they’re not sure about. I don’t know.”
“Or maybe they didn’t have room anywhere else, and they wanted them to have a good eye on them. But it seems like the nurses are busier with much sicker babies.”
“Yeah. I feel bad for those parents, and is it terrible to be grateful that it’s not us?”
“Or maybe, we just don’t realize that they’re looking for something?”
“I suppose it’s possible too.”
All sorts of terrible things came into Becky’s mind.
Maybe they had the babies in there for observation because they were afraid the cancer had spread.
Maybe they were going to take a look at the babies, except…
They would need to get Rodney’s and her permission, since Rita wasn’t around to give it to them.
They’d have to ask before they did anything, right?
She wasn’t sure how this new process worked, but it was obvious they were going to need to figure it out. Not for the first time, she was grateful that she had Rodney beside her.