Chapter 4
Chapter Four
“Marge!” Alice grabbed the armrest as Bertha lurched into the left lane. “Signal before you change lanes! There are rules of the road!”
“I signaled.”
“Well, then signal us! Our first stop on this trip will be the emergency room when you’ve given us all whiplash.”
“Sorry. Bertha’s got smooth handling. It’s not my fault she maneuvers like the Millennium Falcon.”
“I don’t even know what that means, but what I do know is you need to slow down!”
I clung tightly to my seat belt in the passenger seat, nodding along with Alice. “It’s been five hours and you still haven’t gotten the hang of this thing, Marge. You said you could drive it.”
Marge scoffed, gesturing a hand to the open highway before us. “I am driving it. Look at us go! We’re making killer time.”
“Killer is the operative word here, Marge.” Alice squeezed her temples.
“I’m going to be sick,” Doris whispered from behind us.
The RV jerked as Marge spun to look back.
“Eyes on the road!” Alice and I shouted in unison.
“Sorry,” Marge grumbled. “Just don’t let her puke on the furniture. I don’t want to lose my security deposit if I bring this thing back smelling like a college dorm room.”
“Well, driving like a madman is a sure way to make us all puke, Marge.”
She eased up on the gas, Bertha’s engine quieting as we slowed down. “Fine, ya bunch of ninnies.”
“You okay, Doris?” I turned toward our friend, who had her head pressed back against her seat, eyes closed tight.
“I’m queasy,” she answered.
“Do not puke in here, Doris. I mean it.” Alice wagged a finger at her even though Doris couldn’t see it. “If you puke, I puke.”
“Oh God. If you puke, then I puke too.” I cringed. “We need to make her feel better. Fast.”
“Don’t worry. I planned for this.” Marge jerked her chin toward the back. “There’s a bag in the grocery box. Ginger chews, Dramamine, Pepto. Take your pick.”
“Or,” Alice said as I stood up and walked toward the back, “you could simply stop driving like you’re fleeing a crime scene, and Doris’s stomach might sort itself out naturally.”
“I slowed down! Cripes!” Marge said as I poked around, then found the grocery box.
Marge had packed it with an alarming quantity of road trip snacks—chips, jerky, approximately fourteen varieties of candy, pork rinds, and an assortment of other things that would never pass for healthy food.
There, tucked in the side pocket, the travel meds.
I fished out the Dramamine and passed it back with a water bottle.
“Thank you, Sylvie,” Doris said weakly. Then she opened one eye and looked at Alice.
“I really shouldn’t even be complaining.
It feels so silly to be sick to my stomach when you’re dealing with—” She stopped, opened both eyes, then whispered, “Cancer. How are you? How are you feeling? Are you okay? Are you—”
“I’m fine,” Alice snapped.
“But really fine or just saying fine?”
“Doris,” Alice warned through gritted teeth.
“Because it’s okay if you’re not fine. You can tell us. We want to know how you’re—”
“Doris.” Alice’s sharp response caused Doris’s eyes to flash wide. She turned in her swivel seat to face her fully. “This is the one hundredth time in only five hours since we left Wilder Lane that you’ve asked me how I’m feeling.”
“I just want to make sure—”
“I understand that you want to make sure. And I’m telling you, I’m fine.” Alice held up one finger. “New rule. Effective immediately. No staring at me with big sad eyes, asking how I’m feeling.”
“Actually, I’ve been doing research,” I said, pulling out my phone.
“And Alice has stage 0 DCIS, Doris. DCIS means it’s completely contained in the duct and hasn’t spread.
Unless…” I paused and turned to Alice. “Have they done an ultrasound of the lymph nodes yet? Maybe a biopsy? We need to be sure they are certain this is DCIS and isn’t invasive.
I was reading some studies that over twenty-five percent of DCIS is actually invasive and just missed on scans.
” I didn’t slow down, rattling off all the information I’d been drinking in like a woman dying in the desert of thirst and facts were the only way to survive.
“So, I looked up your oncologist in New York. Really good reviews. Did you pick a breast surgeon yet? Because I have several good recommendations here. And with Bruce, we needed second opinions. Even though your doctor is excellent, we still should get one.”
Finally, Alice lifted a hand. “Sylvie. I appreciate that you’ve put apparently a lifetime of research into my cancer in only twenty-four hours, but I can assure you, I am in good hands. My doctor is the best. There’s a reason I flew to New York for this.”
“I understand that, but you only get one chance to beat cancer the first time, and some of these studies of what mammograms, ultrasounds, and even MRIs and PET scans can miss are alarming, Alice!”
I ran a hand through my hair, that fear climbing up from my stomach to my heart to my throat.
“There is this woman called Aging Annie I just found on Instagram,” I kept on.
“She’s really funny, talks about all the stuff that comes with aging, like chin hairs, saggy boobs, and other funny stuff, but…
she got breast cancer same as yours! Stage 0 DCIS.
But she did the double mastectomy to be safe, and it turned out she had twelve positive lymph nodes and over half her breast had cancer they missed on every one of those scans.
That is just… shocking. She’s stage three and did chemo and everything and will be just fine, but only because they caught it instead of doing the lumpectomy and sending her home with half a boob of cancer.
” I took a deep breath, realizing I’d been talking so fast I had barely stopped to breathe.
“Your cancer is very treatable, but only if they are treating it correctly. So, I’m starting a spreadsheet of questions for your doctors to make sure we ask all the right questions.
Aging Annie has all sorts of great info we can check into as well and make sure we don’t miss anything.
She’s on Instagram and Facebook. You should all follow her so we are getting the same stuff. ”
Alice closed her eyes, and then she looked at me with enough intensity to push me back in my seat.
“That’s it! No one is to discuss my cancer on this trip unless I bring up my cancer. Is that understood?”
Doris’s lip pushed out. “But—”
“No buts. This is my last hurrah before my whole life turns upside down. I want normal. I want fun. I want an escape. Can you please all just be normal?” She paused. “Well, as normal as any of you can actually pull off.”
Doris frowned. “I am normal! And I’m just… worried about you.”
A lump started in my throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to overstep. I’m just worried, and I’ve been through cancer with Bruce, and my best friend died from it years ago because they missed it until it was too late. I just… we’re worried, Alice. We don’t want to lose you.”
Alice sighed, and the sharpness of her voice softened.
“I know you’re worried. But every time you ask me if I’m okay or stare at me with those big blue eyes filled with sadness and worry, I feel like a patient.
I feel… sick. I don’t feel like… me anymore.
Like this is all I am now. Cancer. Like it defines me.
And soon, it probably will, so right now, I refuse to feel like a patient.
Like a victim. I just want to be me for a little longer.
” Alice folded her hands in her lap, her expression flashing with a hint of emotion before she forced it back into place.
“So, new rule. No asking how I’m feeling or talking about the cancer unless I bring it up. Say it back to me, Doris.”
Doris pressed her lips together. “No asking how you’re feeling.”
“Or?”
“Talking about the”—she lowered her voice—“cancer.”
“Unless?” She looked at me this time, and I shrank.
“Unless you bring it up,” I answered.
“Good.” Alice turned back to face the windshield. “Thank you.”
Doris looked at me with enormous, tragic eyes.
I gave her a small sympathetic smile and mouthed, She’s right. Doris slumped slightly, then swallowed her Dramamine and stared out the window.
Facts and data and being prepared were how I handled any crisis, and in this crisis, it was knowledge that would make me feel centered and secure.
It helped ground me to understand her cancer from the inside out, and I hoped maybe having me as an advocate, bulldozing my way through every obstacle, would help make sure she survived this fight and got the treatment she needed.
But she was also right. This was our one week to have fun. To let loose before the cancer consumed our lives for the next months or year. I would have to set aside my fears, my need for control, and just be present with her right now… how she wanted.
I turned back to the front and looked out at the flat, gray landscape scrolling past. The sky was the color of old dishwater, and the fields on either side were still patchy with snow.
So far, this big adventure we’d catapulted ourselves on had been entirely…
boring. The opposite of a Wilder Widows escape.
Then I realized I was the captain. I was supposed to be providing the adventure on this leg, and currently, I was failing. Instead of looking up fun things to do, I’d been searching for doctors and statistics and treatment cure rates.
“Where are we, Marge?” I asked.
“Northern Indiana,” she answered.
“Things to do in northern Indiana,” I muttered, typing it in the search bar on my phone.
“I can tell you what there is to do in northern Indiana,” Alice said. “Nothing.”
“There has to be something.”
“Corn. There’s corn. It’s just buried under the snow right now, but trust me, it’s down there.”
I scrolled. Scrolled some more. A children’s museum. An outlet mall. A few wineries that looked closed for the season. And then—I stopped scrolling.
“Oh,” I said.
“Oh what?” Alice asked.