Then She Roars

by Vanessa Evetts

  “Tell me. Is bubs okay?” he asked, laying his hand over his daughter.

  I placed my palm on his. “She’s perfect, Harry. Dr Patrick said she’s perfect.”

  Harry bent down and placed a kiss on my belly, then sat back against the headboard. “Come here, Ave.”

  I climbed into his open arms and gave him what he needed most.

  “I’m sick, Harry. We’ve got an appointment with Suzanna tomorrow. And I’m scared. I’m really scared.”

  Harry’s body tensed underneath me, his breathing slowing, despite his racing heart. He stayed still, quietly absorbing my revelation and controlling his response. I could feel it, every time he opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated … instead, brushing his lips over my hair, or drawing circles on my back or belly where our daughter slept, oblivious to the probable storm that was going to tear her world apart.

  “What do you know?” he asked.

  “I know I’m in pain – all the time. I can’t shake the nausea; I’m weak – sometimes I can’t even get out of bed. I tried to ignore it, to tell myself it was normal, but it’s not, babe. It’s not. I can feel it. Something’s wrong.”

  “Have they done any tests?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know anything. Suzanna wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I knew how important this trip was, Harry. Handing the clinic over was a huge deal, and I couldn’t tear you away from that. I had Sally. I was okay until Suzanna wouldn’t tell me the truth … until today.”

  “I wish you’d told me, Ave. I would’ve come home,” Harry said.

  “But then you wouldn’t have been there, and they needed you … one last time.”

  “You needed me, Ave.”

  “I know.” I curled myself around my husband and breathed him in. It was done, and he was home. No more long trips to Samoa; no more gruelling travel schedule. Life had simplified, and I couldn’t have been more thankful.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so glad you’re home.”

  Harry slid us down the bed and pressed his lips to mine hungrily. “Let’s silence the beast.”

  58

  “Take a seat,” Suzanna said as we walked in the door.

  I saw the truth in the way her eyes refused to meet mine, in the lack of joviality we’d become accustomed to, and I could feel it in the air.

  “Tell me,” I demanded.

  Suzanna had waylaid my fears every other time I’d come to her flapping in a panic, fearing the worst. Whenever I got the flu or had pain in my bones or well, pretty much anything, I’d wonder if the cancer had returned. That devil liked to infiltrate my peace and wave his evil around. ‘Don’t forget me,’ he’d say, and then he’d cackle as if he was just waiting till I least expected him. I could hear him now in this room, cackling.

  “How’ve you been feeling?” Suzanna asked, deflecting my question.

  “Can we not do that, please? You know exactly how I’ve been feeling. There’s only one reason you couldn’t give me my results on the phone, and we both know it.”

  “Avery,” Harry said, drawing attention to my rude outburst.

  Suzanna’s face tightened. This was not a version of me she was used to, and she wasn’t a fan.

  I took a deep breath of the putrid death air all around me and launched into a tirade of how terrible I’d been feeling. “I’m always tired; some days I can barely move without screaming out. I feel as though I’m being stabbed from the inside, over and over again. I can’t sleep. My bones ache everywhere, and I still feel sick all the time – like she’s sucking the life out of me, and then I feel guilty because I love her. I really love her.” I wiped tears from my face with the back of my hand. “This is everything I’ve always dreamed of, and I can’t wait for it to be over.”

  Harry stared at me wide-eyed, as if I’d become someone he didn’t recognise. I had, because I could feel it, and he couldn’t – and I’d done the very thing he’d begged me not to do … I’d hidden it all from him.

  “I know I should have told you how bad it was, but I was scared that …” I exhaled as my shoulders slumped back against the chair. “I was afraid that if I admitted what was happening – if I gave it a voice, it would be true.” I raised my eyes to Suzanna. “And I knew it was, the second I walked into this room. None of this has anything to do with this pregnancy or our baby, does it?”

  “We don’t know that yet, Ave,” Harry interjected.

  Suzanna opened her lips to speak, then quickly closed them when his words rung out. I watched her expression change as he spoke. If I’d had any doubt before, I didn’t now.

  “These are normal pregnancy symptoms. Yours are more severe than most, but they’re not abnormal,” Harry added, desperate for his words to be true. They weren’t.

  “She knows.” I motioned towards Suzanna.

  The whites of Harry’s eyes flashed. “Suzanna, tell her …”

  I watched as Harry acknowledged the slight shake of her head; my own heart was galloping for its life, desperate to be wrong.

  “Oh God! It’s back.” Harry’s exclamation echoed my own thoughts. His voice broke as he started to lay blame at his own feet. “All of her symptoms … I didn’t see it. How did I not see it?”

  Suzanna laid her pen on the table and clasped her hands in front of her. “This is not how I saw this playing out, but yes, the beast is back.”

  Heart-wrenching wailing flooded my ears. Harry’s? Mine? I couldn’t be sure.

  Harry kneeled at my feet, wrapped his arms around me and pulled me in close. His mouth remained firmly closed, but I could feel his moist cheeks on mine while grief and shock vibrated through us.

  This moment – this revelation – was the most pain I’d ever felt, and even with everything I’d endured so far, with percentages and survival rates flying around my head as a fatalistic reminder of my chances, I knew I just might not come out of this one alive.

  “Is this because of the pregnancy?” Harry asked, his face pale and devoid of its usual life. I collapsed back in my chair, weighed down by the death in the air.

  “No,” Suzanna answered. “There are theories, but there’s no conclusive evidence to suggest pregnancy increases the rate of recurrence. It does complicate issues though.”

  “How so?” Harry asked.

  I had no words, no tears, nothing. My mind was stripped bare, as if every crevice had been cleaned out of all hope, all joy, all faith. I was back to dry bones, lying in the savannah, beaten and bloody. Through the haze, I heard the conversation happening around me as if it was on some kind of echo loop in another room … as if they were talking about someone else.

  “There are options for treatment that we need to discuss.”

  “Are they safe during pregnancy?” I heard Harry ask.

  “Radiation is not encouraged, but there are chemotherapy treatments that are safe during the second and third trimesters.”

  Bullcrap! Of course they’re not safe for pregnancy, I countered. You can’t even get an X-ray at the dentist when you’re pregnant, let alone all the toxic chemicals they pump into to you during chemo. No way in hell, I said in silence with all the vehemence I could muster.

  “Avery.” Harry reacted as if I’d said it out loud. Maybe I had. He squeezed my hand. “Let’s get all the information, then we can discuss it later.”

  I did say it out loud. Well, good on me.

  I nodded. Then I faded out and lay on the scorched earth, staring at the blinding sun. He could get all the details he wanted. I didn’t need them. I wasn’t going to let them kill my baby.

  59

  The car ride was painfully silent. Harry held my hand while he drove but refused to look at me. When we got home, he called Sally and asked her to come over and keep me company, then told me he loved me and walked out the door, his face pale and drawn.

  I called out to him; I asked him to stay, to talk to me, but he wouldn’t. He told me he needed some time to process, then he disappeared d
own onto the sand.

  “What happened? Harry sounded terrible,” Sally said, bursting through the front door. She took one look at my face and knew.

  “Oh God.” She ran forwards and wrapped me in her arms.

  “It’s back.” My whispered admission dispelled the haze and all I was left with was the heart-wrenching truth. Sally crumbled to the floor under my weight as my legs gave way.

  We were still on the floor an hour later when Harry returned. Sally was caressing my hair like I was a small child, all words of encouragement silenced long ago by my inability to hear her – to even acknowledge the sound of her voice. Harry gathered me in his arms and carried me to bed.

  “I’m sorry Harry; I’m so sorry,” I cried.

  “It’s okay. The good and the bad, Ave. I’m here; I’ve got you.”

  I wrapped my arms around our daughter protectively.

  Harry lay down by my side and tucked his arms around mine.

  I woke with a start, gasping for air to find myself alone in the dark room. Harry burst through the door when he heard me cry out.

  “I’m here, Avery.” He climbed in beside me and pulled me against him. “Close your eyes – I’m right here.”

  “I can’t,” I whispered.

  Don’t hide from me.

  The dream came back in flashes. “I watched myself die, Harry. Our daughter was born, then everything was disappearing … our memories, our daughter – all of it was being wrenched away from me. I couldn’t even hold her; I couldn’t …”

  Harry smoothed the hair around my face, then laid his palm on my belly. “She’s right here with us.”

  “I’m so scared.” I tucked myself into him and inhaled his scent – this man of such courage, who always made me feel so safe.

  “So am I, Ave,” he whispered.

  For the rest of the night, we slept in bursts, woke and had short conversations and long silences, wrapped in each other’s arms.

  “Can you call Tracey for me?” I asked sometime around two.

  “I called her earlier – she’ll come by tomorrow afternoon,” he answered.

  “Thank you.”

  “Can you do something for me?” he asked.

  I traced my fingers over his perfect skin but didn’t answer.

  “Will you go back and see Suzanna?”

  “No. I can’t do it.”

  “I just need you to listen to what she has to say. Please.”

  “I won’t risk her life. I remember that look in your eye when you told me you needed to be a father and when you found out we were pregnant.” I raised my hand to cup his cheek. “I can’t take that away from you.”

  Harry’s eyes filled as his jaw clenched in protest. “I can’t lose you, Ave. I can’t.”

  “You won’t,” I said, a fire rising up inside of me. “We’re going to fight this, Harry. I need you on my side.”

  “It’s not about sides, Ave. I want you both. I need you both to live.”

  “I know. I need that too.” I pressed my head to his and raised my hands to brush fresh tears from his cheeks. “I need you to know I’m not giving up.”

  “Ave, you need the treatment now. You can’t wait three months – it’s too much of a risk.”

  “I hear you, Harry. I do. I promise you … the second she’s safe, I’ll do the treatment. I’ll do whatever it takes to stay with you. I love you, Harry … so much.” I brought his hands up my lips, then lowered them to my swollen belly and covered them with mine. “I can’t put her life in danger. I can’t. I need to see your face when our perfect child is born; I need to watch you hold our daughter in your arms. I need to hold her, our miracle. I need that memory.”

  “I need you to live,” Harry whispered in a gentle protest. “I need it all.”

  He’s not going to get you. I breathed in Harry’s plea and Annie’s words as they rested in my heart. Their voices, drowning out his.

  “I’ll go back. I’ll listen.”

  “Thank you.” He raised his palm to my face and pressed his lips to mine.

  “There’s one condition,” I said, pulling back. “I need you to promise you’ll support me if I don’t change my mind. We can’t waste this time we have fighting one another.”

  Harry lips claimed mine, his desperation rising from deep caverns of grief. “I promise.”

  We made love, slowly, deliberately, committing every look, every word, every touch to memory.

  60

  “Chemotherapy is a viable option, Avery.”

  I trusted Suzanna, but I couldn’t help the sudden and violent urge to punch her in the face. I’d honoured my promise to Harry to come back, but the minute those words came out of her mouth, I regretted ever making it. “I disagree. Chemo is not an option – not at this point.”

  “I understand your concern, Avery. I know how precious this pregnancy is to you, but if we start chemotherapy now, you’ll have a much better chance of surviving. Any delays are risking your life.”

  “I’m sorry. I know I said I’d listen. I respect you and your professional insight, but you seem to be missing the point. You talk about risking my life as if that’s the most important thing to me. It isn’t.”

  “Knowing you and how much you want this baby is precisely why I want you to start treatment, so that you’ll have a fighting chance to have time with your daughter, Avery.”

  “I won’t put my life before hers. I know you don’t agree, and to be frank, I don’t care. She’s not your child.”

  “Avery, please hear me. There’s no evidence for an increased rate of second-trimester miscarriage or long-term adverse outcomes from the use of chemo—”

  “I don’t want your rehearsed medical answer from a damn journal, Suzanna. Tell me woman to woman. Can you guarantee it?”

  Suzanna took a deep breath and pursed her lips in frustration.

  I felt the angry shakes coming on as I made my closing argument. “Can you promise me no harm will ever come to my daughter because I made the decision to have chemotherapy when she was in utero, or that having the chemo now will mean I’ll get to bear witness to her life?”

  “You know I can’t,” she said, admitting defeat.

  “Well, there’s your answer. It doesn’t matter how you frame this. It’s … not … negotiable.”

  “What does Harry think?”

  “He wants to live happily ever after with his wife and daughter.”

  “Avery—”

  “Look, I adore my husband, and I know if I don’t beat this thing, it’s going to tear him to pieces, but we both knew this was a possible outcome from the beginning. We’ve already been blessed with time we never thought we’d have.” Truth hit me like a wrecking ball and shattered my control. I raised my chin despite the tears streaming from my eyes.

  “My lioness is on full alert, Suzanna, ready for a fight. She’s roaring in agony and heartbreak, and she’s roaring to tell cancer to back the hell out of her territory. Despite what you may think, I’m not giving up. I’m all in – I will fight this thing to the death.”

  “Let me help—”

  I held my palm up between us to stop her. “But first, I’m going to hold my precious daughter in my arms and tell her how much her mumma loves her, how wanted and treasured she is. I’m going to cherish the miracle I’ve been granted and give my husband – the man who loved me through it all – the amazing privilege of being a father to a healthy child … our perfect child.”

  I wiped the tears from my face, then reached over and took Suzanna’s hands in mine. “I respect you as my doctor and love you as my friend.”

  Suzanna bit the inside of her cheek as her face contorted with emotion. I squeezed her hands in solidarity.

  “I promise you, when my daughter is in her daddy’s arms, you can have me. You can pump me full of as many drugs as you like. You can chop out any parts of me you deem necessary. I do need you, Suzanna. I need you to help me fight this. I want to live. I desperately want to live, but I can’t … I can’
t risk her. I can’t bear the thought that Harry would lose us both.”

  Suzanna’s eyes glistened. She wasn’t immune to the conviction of my words or the pain that forced my decision to willingly sacrifice my future for my child’s.

  “This is me standing my ground for my family. I need you to believe in me. I need you to believe I’m strong enough to beat this. I need you on my side.”

  “I am, Avery,” she said, her lips quivering. “I will always be on your side. I just want to give you both the best chance.”

  We allowed the silent tussle of our immovable positions to fill the air between us until we both accepted the battle had concluded, and neither side had won.

  I collapsed back into my chair. “So, what the heck do I do now?”

  Suzanna stood and turned away from me, taking a few deep breaths before she collected some papers off her desk and handed them to me. “I need you to follow this plan to the letter. You’ve made your decision, and as much as it pains me, I respect it. To give yourself the best chance of surviving, I need you to do everything I say.”

  “I will.”

  “I need to see you every week for testing – no excuses.”

  “Okay.”

  “We need to keep ahead of this, and if it turns, we’re going to have a very different conversation, and you may not like it. If it looks like we’ll lose either of you, we’ll need to move fast.”

  “I understand.”

  “We may need to deliver earlier than is desirable to save you both. That comes with possible complications.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you need me to help you speak to Harry?”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s something I have to do on my own.”

  “How did it go?” Harry asked when I appeared in the hallway outside Suzanna’s office.

  “Fancy a walk, Prince?” I pressed a kiss to his cheek.

  We wandered, arm in arm, through the park to the edge of the lake where it all began.

  “I listened,” I said. “That’s all I promised to do.”

  “And yet you still won’t do the treatment?” His words were laced with disappointment and pain.