30. Thirty
Thirty
Dread sits heavy in my gut as I park the minivan. I had hoped when Veda asked me to drive her to the doctor, it was of the local family variety for a routine checkup, but the fact we are in Asheville staring at the hospital tells me everything I already know. Something is wrong.
“I’m going in with you,” I say, opening my door.
She shoots me a glare, which I match. “I won’t go in the room with you, but I’m going in,” I say, firm, closing my door before she can argue.
Out of the car, I meet her scowl with my own. Our silent battle of wills, finally ending when she blows out a frustrated breath and starts walking toward the hospital.
We cross the parking lot in silence. Summer is getting swallowed up by fall in the beautiful way it does this time of year. If I didn’t believe the sky was about to start raining shrapnel on me with whatever’s coming next, I might have commented about how nice it is.
Air blows a gust at us as the automatic doors slide open, and we step into the sterile scent of the hospital. A noxious combination of disinfectant and latex gloves, reminding me of the last weeks of my mom being alive. I trudged into that scent every day, telling myself I wouldn’t cry when we made it to her room, ultimately breaking down anyway.
“What floor?” I ask once we’re in the elevator.
“Eight,” she says, gaze on the floor.
Next to the buttons, oncology is written on a directory next to eighth floor.
I push button eight at the same time I realize Veda has cancer.
Everything following the elevator happens in silence and with Veda’s diagnosis attached like a shadow in the late afternoon sun: stretched and looming.
We sit in the waiting room, thumbing through home renovation magazines, waiting. Every single page is filled with DIY tips I don’t care about.
Veda has cancer.
Bo’s text of, I’m wondering what other kinds of books Mabel has… sends a gush of guilt, anxiety, and sadness sloshing through me. Instead of responding, I ignore him.
Veda has cancer .
“Veda Monroe,” a nurse calls from an open door. The first time for scans, the second time to see the doctor. Both times I look at her, an abysmal pit forming in my stomach at the sound of her name. Both times, she glares at me.
Veda has cancer.
Finally outside, the fresh air replacing the sterile scents of the hospital, there’s only the slightest relief. Even the leaves outside, showing the stain of early September yellows, which normally make my heart skip a beat, offer no reprieve. No place to hide from the truth that’s stuck to everything.
Veda has cancer .
It’s thirty minutes into our hour drive home when she finally breaks the silence. “Last year, I went to talk to my doctor about a cough I couldn’t shake,” she starts, staring out her window, her hair pinned back in its usual tight bun. “I thought, no big deal, I’ll go in there, they’ll give me some medication and that will be that.” She laughs softly, the jangle of her earrings slicing through the thick quiet. “Of course, it wasn’t that easy. They did all their scans and tests and told me a bunch of fancy words that equated to lung cancer. Some kind of slow-growing mumbo jumbo.” She waves her hand through the air with a resigned sigh.
I wring my hands around the steering wheel, trying to absorb what she’s saying, but say nothing.
“So, they did a little surgery. Cut out all the bad stuff. Told me not to smoke—I’ve never smoked a day in my life!” She laughs ironically .
My eyes stay glued to the road ahead of us, but I feel her intensely staring at the side of my face before she continues. “The day before you knocked on my door, I had a checkup. The cancer came back. Aggressively.”
Then she’s quiet, hands in her lap. I swing my eyes briefly from the road to look at her. She’s wearing denim overalls over a long-sleeved yellow shirt. She looks just like her, except now—Veda has cancer.
“Treatment?” I already know the answer, but I ask anyway.
I know she shakes her head because of the familiar sound of her earrings. “I told them—and Bo—last time I wouldn’t do it if it came back. He fought me, of course, it’s what we do for the people we love. The doctor told me even if I put myself through the hell of chemo and everything else that I would probably only be adding a couple months. The medication you found is for managing the symptoms. The pain.”
I blink rapidly. “How much time?”
“Six months…” I fortify myself in her pause. “At best.”
“Is this why you hired me? Because of my history?” I ask, thinking back to the first time I met her and how her tone shifted when she noticed my tattoos.
“Partly.”
My eyes flick from the road to her; hands in her lap, she’s as eerily calm as her voice sounds, but her usually timeless face is weathered by lines.
Then we’re quiet .
Sometime between when we leave the hospital and when I park in front of her house, the once bright, beautiful sky goes grey—as if it knows her diagnosis—and rain starts to fall in our silence. When I turn the van off, we sit, staring at the droplets that slam onto the windshield.
I’ve watched clients age for years, but there’s always been a kind of bridge between me and the end. There’s usually a decline until my services aren’t needed because they’re bringing hospice in or going to a facility for the final weeks or months. Even though Veda is still sitting in front of me, looking exactly like she did the first day we met less a few pounds, it’s different. Like that bridge I’ve gotten so comfortable with just had a bomb dropped on it and it’s been blown to smithereens.
“Do you remember your last days with your mom?” Her voice takes on a harder edge and the question sticks into my chest like a poisoned arrow.
I nod. “Of course.”
“Tell me about it,” she says firmly, as if she isn’t peeling my heart like an orange with her request.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath; my head drops back to the headrest as I let my mind take me to the same place the smell of the hospital had. A memory as vivid as it is devastating. I take one breath before I can talk.
“She spent the last weeks in the hospital. The chemo had made her sick—but the end—the end was worse. She looked like a bag of bones in her hospital gown. Sunken.” Rain plops onto the windshield as I sift through my memories. “She slept a lot, not saying much when we visited. My dad stayed most nights in the last days, playing George Strait on a Walkman for her. I was staying with an uncle the night she passed. My dad was lying in her hospital bed with his arms wrapped around her when she went.”
I can still picture her, pale, frail, and hoarsely saying, “Hey there, Little Bird,” when she could summon the energy to talk during my visits. All the while, my dad stood stoically by, holding my hand while he watched the love of his life slip away, breath by shallow breath.
“I won’t do that to Bo, Birdie. Do you hear me?” Her tone is sharp, like she’s yelling at me about how to wedge clay more than her own pending death. “Bo will try to save me, and he can’t—you know it just as well as I do. He’ll ask me to get treatment, and I won’t be able to say no, but it’s not what I want. This is the end, and he won’t accept it. Won’t see it for what it is. There are no good goodbyes when you know it’s forever.”
I nod, numb. Tears for my mom, for Veda, and for what she’s asking me to do to Bo well up behind my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. I swallow them down along with the bile that’s rising in my throat.
She reaches her hand over across the open space between our seats and squeezes my leg. “I’m sorry, Birdie.”
I look at her, almost laughing. “You’re dying and I’m the one being comforted?”
She chuckles. “Well, you fell in love with my grandson, and I’m asking you to lie to him about something he might hate you for. Me comforting you seems about right.” Then she smiles in that knowing way she always does.
I don’t even argue. I can’t. She’s right about all of it.
Because— Veda has cancer .