Chapter 30 #2
One building and a very long corridor away is my oncologist visit and next exam, and all goes well.
She’s happy to hear I’m full of energy and seems especially pleased to hear I’ve been away for the summer at a quiet cottage on a lake.
“More people should do something like that after going through treatment,” she says with a smile.
I neglect to say I was forced and hated it at first, and just agree, “Yeah, they probably should.”
But if they do, they should guard their hearts because you never know when people and places are suddenly going to start mattering to you when you least expect it.
Still, the doctors’ visits leave me once again grateful to be alive and healthy.
I’ve spent too much time feeling sorry for myself and not enough remembering that not all cancer patients get the privilege of rebuilding their lives and regrowing their hair.
As I exit the parking garage back out into the hot late-August sun, I resolve not to lose sight of that again.
And yet, I also leave feeling ... weirdly impatient, all the more eager to know where I stand, to grab on to my future and move into it, right now.
Now, I’m not so thickheaded that I don’t understand what I’m doing: I’m still distracting myself from Matt and the town of Lost and Found by trying to throw myself back into my Cincinnati life.
But it continues to seem like a wise move.
Get back to what’s comfortable, what feels safe and normal.
And really, Matt’s the only thing I’ll miss in Lost and Found anyway.
There’s no more Jo. No more Grace. Next week August turns to September. The summer is truly gone.
So even though the next part of my plan was to head home for a few hours, I don’t.
I’m having dinner with Kevin and Patrick later, but on a lark, I decide to stop by the station anyway before crossing the bridge back to Riverside Drive.
I thought I’d be more excited about seeing my kitchen—but this feels more pressing, like I can’t wait another hour, another minute, before I get my job situation squared away and back under my control.
As I put the car in park outside WRTB, I glance toward the fedora in my passenger seat. Despite myself, I find myself reaching over, putting it on.
Armor? Maybe. Or could be I’m still just embarrassed about the reasons I was sent away from WRTB in the first place.
But when I enter through the employee entrance, the hallway is empty—there’s no one to be embarrassed in front of. As I approach Kevin’s office, I hear him on the phone—half his job seems to be talking on the phone—so I wait outside to let him finish.
“Mm-hmm, I understand,” he’s saying, “but I think it’s a terrible mistake.” It’s a pretty typical work conversation for him, and a moment later, he hangs up.
I give him a few seconds to regroup, then lean my head around through the doorway and raise my eyebrows. “Good afternoon, Mr. Callahan,” I greet him cheerfully.
He flinches, caught off guard. “Jess! What are you doing here?”
I widen my eyes. “Hello to you, too.”
He takes a breath, lets out a laugh. “Sorry. Hi—come in.” Then he gives me a once-over. “You look great!” he says, motioning to my dress. “All ... flowy.” He uses his hands to make flowy motions.
I shrug, smile. “Yeah, I’ve been getting into more ... fluid clothing lately. Letting myself be a little feminine.”
“It becomes you,” he reassures me as I settle into the chair across from his desk. He knows feeling feminine has been a challenge for me since treatment. “Are we still on for dinner?”
“Absolutely,” I tell him, “and I can’t wait to catch up.”
He plants his elbows on the desk, steeples his fingers. “Then ... what’s up? Is this a social call or ...?”
I purse my lips, realizing I’ve come in without a plan.
But it doesn’t matter—I’ll just be honest. “I’m ready to come back,” I say.
“Again. But this time I’m well rested and recovered and I even have some hair.
” I stop and tip my hat to him like I’m in an old-time movie.
“I don’t look like a cancer patient anymore, so that should please the guys upstairs, right? ”
I’m smiling, trying to joke even though it’s a dark topic—but Kevin isn’t. He pushes out a long, tired breath and says bluntly, “Jess, I just hung up with them, and I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’ll just say it. They’ve decided to keep Tiffany as evening anchor.”
Somehow this shocks me as much as it did the last time I was sitting in this chair.
Only for different reasons now. I explode, “Even though she can’t say ‘ goetta ’ or ‘Vevay’?
Even though I’ve become a social media darling this summer?
Even though Rob has to repeatedly correct her and clearly doesn’t like her?
” Kevin told me on the phone once that the longer they work together, the clearer it becomes that Rob isn’t a fan.
“Even though,” Kevin confirms gently. “I fought and I argued. I told them Rob is asking about your return—he’s come to me twice about it in the last week.” He shakes his head. “But they won’t budge.”
I take a deep breath, trying to wrap my head around this.
I feel like I’ve spent the last year of my life constantly wrapping my head around things.
Angry thoughts and emotions barrel through me in the form of threats.
What if I sue them? Or at least start a social media campaign announcing that they ousted me when I got cancer?
And plain, old-fashioned hurt. They don’t want me anymore.
They think I’m old and uninteresting. They never valued me for anything but my looks.
And judgment. How incredibly awful to fire someone who’s trying to get their life back after cancer.
Finally, though, I just ask, “Are they offering to buy out my contract or what?”
“Actually,” he begins, hesitating, “they want you in the morning spot.”
I take another deep breath, push it back out. Somehow this adds insult to injury. They want me to take Tiffany’s old job, a downward move. “You mean the spot that starts at four thirty a.m.?” I inquire dryly.
But good old Kev tries to put a positive spin on it.
“It’s early, I agree. But you know this business—it ebbs and flows and you gotta roll with the punches.
And it’s a fun group in the morning—people love the Cockadoodle Crew.
” He goes on, singing the praises of the wacky Cockadoodle guys and all their shenanigans as if that’s going to win me over, as if I’m a shenanigan-loving gal.
The longer he talks, the more I can tell he’s assuming I’ll take this job, since it’s the one being offered me, and since I do indeed need to pay the bills.
I sit there feeling like the arrow on one of those spinning-wheel carnival games.
First I’m spun one way, then another. I keep trying to get back some control of my life, but it continues feeling further from my grasp.
And as strongly as I felt the need to push my way into Kevin’s office, truly believing he’d be able to call up the muckety-mucks upstairs and confirm my imminent return, now I feel an equally strong need to escape.
So I finally tell him, “I’ll be back for a checkup with my radiologist in two weeks, so I’ll give you my decision then. ”
I don’t even know what I’m thinking, mind you.
I thought I’d be home in two weeks. And as everyone knows, I can come home anytime now.
Anytime at all. I’ve spent all day telling myself I need to get back to my life—but so much of that is tied to my work, in who I am at work, in how I’m seen .
I have no idea what I want right now. Again, I am an arrow on a spinning wheel.
Back to being that willow whipped about by the winds of my existence.
“Really?” he asks, sounding defeated, and a little like a whipped-around willow himself.
“Really,” I say firmly.
He sighs, beginning to accept the fact that I’m actually going to think about this and not just let myself be shoved into the nearest available slot. “All right, Jess. I get it. I really do.”
I stand up. “And I think I’ll take a rain check on dinner tonight.”
He pushes to his feet now, too. “Jess—no. Come on. You can’t do that.” You can’t mush together the friendship and the work relationship, he means. It’s a rule we’ve long tried our best to adhere to.
But I shake my head. “It’s not you—you know that. I just think I’d be lousy company now. I need to go lick my wounds. Surely you can understand.”
His eyes tell me he does, even if he’s not happy about it. “Call me if you change your mind.”
“I won’t,” I say, then walk out the door.
I make the drive to Riverside Drive despondently. This is so not what I expected. And like so many other times in the last few months, I feel stupid to have thought I understood a situation—only to feel blindsided all over again, for, like, the fiftieth time this summer.
I arrive at my house around five and find myself sneaking furtively inside, scampering like a mouse, because I just don’t feel like talking to Nancy or Bob right now. I let myself in the back door and meet my new kitchen—and it’s ... beautiful.
So beautiful. Modern and light, and the granite and light fixtures I picked look fantastic.
I wish I were as excited about it as I should be. Especially given that it cost a small fortune.
It’s not long before I realize there’s no food in the place—because I was supposed to have dinner with Kevin and Patrick, and breakfast with Sydney tomorrow, so I told Syd not to bother when she kindly offered.
I plop down on my swanky couch—it is swanky; Matt was right—and try to decide what to do with myself now that I don’t have dinner plans.
Or a job. As in, nothing to look forward to, tonight or ever.