“Just that.” She pointed a short distance up the trail. “There’s a bench.”
“Tired already?”
“Not exactly.” She took a seat on the end of the bench and waited for Chuck to sit beside her.
“Bobbi, is something going on?”
She turned slightly so she could face him and took his hands. After a long, slow breath, she raised her head and looked him in the eyes. “Chuck, I’m not going to treat my cancer.”
Not treat . . . “What are you talking about?”
“I cancelled my doctor’s appointment. I’m not having surgery. I’m not taking chemotherapy or radiation. I’m just not.”
Chuck sat for a long moment, as the smothering heaviness of her words settled on him. His brain dragged itself from “not treating” to the inevitable. . . . Misfire. He tried again. If she doesn’t treat . . . And she’s said she’s not going to. She’s “just not.” So she’s . . . She brought him out here to tell him . . .
“I thought when you wanted to come out here—” He jerked his hands away from hers and began to pace. “You can’t . . . You have to treat your cancer.”
“It progresses very slowly.”
He stopped and stared at her. It progresses . . . And she said it like . . . like “I made chicken for dinner.” Like dying— Like it didn’t matter. I’m not treating, but hey, it progresses slowly. “Is that supposed to make it easier?” He shook his head. “This . . . this is insane, Bobbi. I need to get you some help.”
“I’m not crazy.” She blinked slowly and arched her eyebrow. Her eyes, those beautiful, deep brown eyes, fixed on him with cold indifference.
“Yes, you are!” he shot back. “Rational, thinking people fight back. You haven’t been thinking straight since Brad died.”
“I can’t stand it anymore,” she said quietly. Her voice tightened, and she pounded her knees with her fists in slow strokes. “I hurt every minute of every day, and it never, ever lets up.”
And she couldn’t tell him this? She couldn’t vent this pain and frustration, even at him? She had to choose not to treat . . . He sat down with her, his knee touching hers, and he gripped her hands. “Bobbi . . . sweetheart . . . We can find somebody to help you get through that, but you have to treat—”
“Chuck.” She let a long, deep breath go, and pulled her hands back, like she didn’t want that intimacy. “Everything happens for a reason. The timing of this cancer isn’t a coincidence. God is giving me a way out.”
Again she used the most calm, rational voice, as if she was trying to explain to a six-year-old why he should wear a hat outside. And he exploded.
“Bobbi, that is the STUPIDEST thing I’ve ever heard! God doesn’t arrange . . .” Say it. Call it what it is. “He doesn’t arrange suicides!”
“I have a right to refuse treatment.”
“You’re not in any condition to make that decision.”
“All right, take me to court. Have me declared incompetent.”
Incompetent . . . ? That would make him as irrational as she was. “I’m not going to take you to court.”
“Then respect my decision.” As if that settled it.
“NO! I cannot be a part of this!”
“You don’t have to be. You don’t have to go along with it or agree with me. I didn’t expect you to.”
“What exactly did you expect? You’ve obviously thought about this for a while. Surely you had some idea.”
“I can’t make you understand.”
“You haven’t tried. You haven’t talked to me in weeks. You won’t let me hold you, or cry with you. Do you know how that hurts me? What a failure I feel like?” He slumped back on the bench.
“Let’s go home.”
“See, you’re doing it again. You’re shutting down, cutting me off.” He leaned back and sighed. “You’ve cut yourself off from everyone you love.” Then he straightened up. “Or is that the problem? You don’t love us anymore?”
She sat in silence, tearing him apart with the long, slow blink of her eyes. She was slamming the door again. He had to keep her talking even if that meant making her mad. “Or do you think we don’t love you? What do you need me to do to show you that I love you and that I need you?”
“Nothing.”
Her kids. Chuck’s last hope to reach her. “Do you know what this is going to do to Jack? He . . . he just got his bearings back. He’ll drop out of school. Don’t you remember what it was like to hold that little boy in the hospital when his mother died?”
“He’s not six anymore.”
“He will never get over this!” He jumped up from the bench again. “You will destroy him. You’re going to keep him from fulfilling what God’s given him to do.”
“Now you sound crazy,” she muttered. Maybe she was listening.
“And Shannon. What’s going to happen when she gets home? ‘Sorry, Shannon. Your mother’s dead. You weren’t worth waiting for.’”
Bobbi stood up and pushed past Chuck, walking briskly back up the path. “I’m going home.”
He found the button. “You hadn’t thought about that, had you?” He took a few quick steps to catch up with her. “Or is this all some warped plan to get her home?”
She spun around to face him and growled, “Shannon is not coming home! You need to face that.”
Anger, thank God. Some life. Some emotion. He goaded her on. “Like you have? Is this how you face things? Throw up your hands and say, ‘I quit’?”
“Quit? You think I’ve quit?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“Quitting I could fix.” The emotion evaporated, leaving lifeless indifference. “I haven’t quit. I failed. Shannon left the first chance she had over NOTHING!” She jabbed her index finger at her own chest. “I didn’t teach her anything. I . . . am . . . a failure.” She turned away from him and started back up the trail. “If you want a ride home, I’m leaving now.”
He caught up with her in two long strides and took her by the arm. “Bobbi, this isn’t over. You can’t end this here.”
She pulled her arm away. “We can talk about it from now on. You can line up Joel or Rita or whoever else you can think of to try and change my mind, but it’s a waste of time. A waste.” She pulled her car keys from the pocket of her jeans. “My decision’s been made.”
“You brought your keys?”
“I figured you’d be like this and I’d have to drive home.”
He got in the passenger side and slammed his door shut. He saw her glance his way, the corner of her mouth dipping in the slightest show of disapproval. Disapproval. For slamming the car door. She figured. She knew. She played him, coldly calculating his every response. No compassion, just a betrayal of his confidence and his love for her.
How could she . . . ?
He squeezed his eyes closed and gripped the door handle until his fingers went numb, but he was not going to shed even one tear in front of her. Oh no. She didn’t deserve that victory. How could she plot and plan this? How could she sit at the table and drink coffee with him with this running through her mind?
He opened his eyes and saw the first gas station on the outskirts of town. “Pull in there,” he said.
“Why?”
“So I don’t have to jump out of a moving car.”
She eased the Impala into a spot away from the building. “Should I wait?”
“Should you?” He slammed the door again and stalked inside, into the men’s room, and locked the door. The tiny restroom was too small to pace, so he held on to the wall sink, wishing he could pull it away from its fixtures and sling it to the parking lot.
Instead, he turned on the cold water and splashed his face, then ran his cold fingers across the back of his neck, hoping to shock the throb in his head and make it stop. If only he could make it all stop. What was she thinking? How could she twist reality to the point that not treating her cancer seemed like the logical answer? How could she deceive him?
When he reach
ed to turn off the water, his eyes landed on his wedding ring. She had given it to him twice. Once at their wedding and again after they reconciled. After his affair. After he betrayed her. He slumped against the cinderblock wall. He knew exactly how betrayal happened. He knew how self-absorbed and callous a heart could become when it was consumed with filling its voids at any cost.
The road back had taken such intense focus, such commitment, and meant such pain for both of them as they learned to trust each other, love each other again, anew. But he had poured all his energy into winning her back.
She wasn’t interested in winning anything right now. She needed far more help than he could give her. Before he trudged back out to face her again he dug his cell phone from the front pocket of his jeans and dialed Joel.
Abby quickly answered. “Hi, Dad!”
“Is Joel home? I need to talk to him.”
“Has something else happened? You sound absolutely wrung out.”
So he wasn’t doing such a good job of hiding it. “No, I just need to discuss some things with him.”
“He’s at the hospital. You can call his cell, but he may not pick up. I can have him call you when he gets home.”
“I’ll catch him tomorrow.”
“It’s Mom, isn’t it?” Abby asked gently.
“Are all women mind readers?”
“I just know how much you love her, how hard things are on you right now. Joel would be the same way.”
“That’s why I wanted to talk to him. It’ll keep though.”
“You sure?”
“Tomorrow’s fine.” He clicked off the phone and stuffed it back in his pocket, then he shuffled outside to the car.
“Are you all right?” Bobbi asked.
“You don’t care.”
“Is this how it’s going to be now?” She backed out of the spot and wheeled the car through the lot and back out on the road.
“What do you want, Bobbi? You don’t want to confide in me. You seem irritated that I love you. I’m at a loss here.”
“I want you to accept—”
“Your death wish?”
“Accept the way things are. Stop trying to change . . . stop feeding me empty hope.”
But he wasn’t. He rarely mentioned Shannon in front of Bobbi, even when he prayed. This was a smokescreen, and he only knew one way to get her out from behind it. “You know, driving the car into one of these light poles would kill you a lot quicker than cancer would.”
She never moved her eyes from the road.
“But then people would know, wouldn’t they? There’s no shame in dying from breast cancer—”
“I cannot believe you’re mocking me.”
“I’m trying to understand how you arrived at your decision.”
“No, you’re moving down your list of negotiation techniques. Anger. Grief. The condescending lecture. The kids. Now it’s the old standby, sarcasm. It’s not going to work either.”
“I’m not playing some game, trying to win an argument. This is your life, our life together.”
She jerked the car into their driveway and jammed it into park. “And what you refuse to see is that I have no life anymore.”
He reached for her hand, but she slipped out of the car. He caught her as she stopped to unlock the front door. “Do you know how it kills me to hear you talk like this?”
“That feeling . . . that powerlessness . . . how unbearable it is for these few minutes? Imagine living there.” She spoke with a quiet urgency. “I go by Shannon’s room every single day. I sit in the same kitchen where she and Brad ate breakfast. Her car sits out in the driveway. Their pictures are all over the house.” She waved a hand in a wide arc. “I can’t escape it.” After a lingering glance, she dropped her eyes and left him standing on the porch.
“You’re not supposed to escape it! You’re supposed to go through it!” he called, but it was no use. The conversation was over. He dropped to the porch step and buried his face in his hands, reeling from so many levels of hurt. She hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him that this was building inside her. How could she even consider a slow death over living out her years with him? It was as if her pain was the only pain that counted. Did she think he didn’t hurt? That no one else grieved over Shannon and Brad? Just because he went on to work every day didn’t mean that Shannon wasn’t on his mind. It was his fault she left, after all.
“I gotta get out of here,” he muttered. He found Bobbi on the love seat in the study just as expected. “I’m going for a drive.” She nodded without turning around. “Will you be here when I get back?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Are you going to commit suicide in the next hour or so?”
“That’s uncalled for.”
“What is called for in this situation? This is new territory for me.”
She didn’t respond.
“I’ll be back later.” Chuck slammed the front door behind him. He knew leaving her alone was the wrong thing to do, but he couldn’t help her right now. He was beginning to wonder if anyone could.
He drove without engaging, staying in the center lane, rolling through each intersection just like the car in front of him. She had to know how much he needed her and depended on her. Of course she was disheartened. They all were. But not treating her cancer . . .
Suddenly, the screech of tires and the blast of a car horn jolted him back to the present. Instinctively, he wrenched the car to the right then hit his brakes, barely missing a small pickup truck. The other driver shouted and flipped an obscene gesture Chuck’s way before speeding through the intersection. Chuck eased to the side of the road until his hands quit shaking. He needed to find someplace to go. His office maybe. He was halfway there already. No, he needed advice. He needed to unload all this so he didn’t carry it back home to Bobbi.
Rita and Gavin would know what to do.
* * *
“Chuck? What’s wrong?” Rita asked, opening the door wide to let him in.
“I need to talk to you and Gavin.”
Rita closed the door behind him and guided him into their living room. She took a step back toward their kitchen and called Gavin, then she turned back to Chuck. “Can I get you something? Coffee or a Coke, maybe?”
Chuck shook his head and dropped on the sofa.
Rita took a seat in the armchair closest to him. “It’s Bobbi, isn’t it?”
“She, uh . . .” He dropped his eyes to the carpet and felt the fear and grief push aside the anger he’d vented all afternoon. The tears were going to come, wanted or not. “She told me she’s not going to treat her cancer.” He raised his head and looked Rita in the eyes. “I’m going to lose her.”
“Chuck, no.” Rita moved over to the sofa and slipped an arm around his shoulder.
She cried with him while he sobbed in fear and frustration. He knew she understood though. He could feel the burden shifting, his head clearing. He took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. “Thanks. I needed that.”
When he raised his head, he saw Gavin had slipped into the living room and sat in the armchair. “Shannon or Bobbi?”
“Bobbi’s decided not to treat her cancer.”
“Did she tell you why? How she came to that decision?”
“It makes perfect sense to her,” Chuck said. “She believes God’s giving her a way to escape her pain.”
“You challenged her, I’m sure.”
“But I handled it all wrong. I got angry.”
“That may not be a bad thing. Did she argue with you?”
“Some. She said she had a right to refuse treatment. Didn’t seem to care what it would do to Jack or Shannon or the rest of us. Then she said Shannon leaving was her fault because she never taught Shannon any coping skills and I needed to quit feeding her empty hope.”
“She wants to be left alone.”
“Completely.”
“And warned you not to try to change her mind?”
“She said I could line
up you guys or Joel or anybody else I could think of, but it wouldn’t do any good.”
Gavin nodded then crossed his legs. “She knows she’s in trouble. She wants you to get her some help.”
“Then why doesn’t she say that! Why drive me out to the lake and tell me she wants to die?”
“Because she knows that’s not right either. She doesn’t have the strength to figure it out, so if she shocks you into action, you’ll solve it and save the day.”
“If I knew what to do, Gavin, I would have done it a long time ago.” The throb in his head returned, and he tried rubbing his temple. “Let’s start small. What do I say to her when I get home? Am I supposed to go along with her or what?”
“I’d be very dispassionate about it,” Gavin said. “Have her start planning her funeral.”
“Absolutely not!” Rita said sharply. “You’ll push her to suicide.”
“No, it will make her face the very real implications of what she’s decided.”
“I don’t think I can do that,” Chuck said.
“All right,” Gavin said, “if that’s too extreme, what if you put her on a suicide watch? We can divide up the time and stay with her during the day while you’re at work.”
A suicide watch. He got a rise out of her when he asked if she’d be there when he got back. There was some appeal to keeping her fighting. Just then, Chuck’s cell phone rang. “It’s Joel,” he said as he answered it. “You’re not driving, are you?”
“Not again,” Joel said. “What?”
“Your mother’s decided not to treat her cancer.”
“Why? What treatment options are they giving her? Does she understand it’s not anything like when her mother had it? Let me talk to her.”
“It’s not that.” Chuck knew that “take charge, let me fix it” attitude all too well, but he also knew how close Joel and Bobbi were. “She, uh, she doesn’t want to treat . . . because she’d rather let it kill her.”
“That’s insane,” Joel whispered. “She said that? That she’d rather let it kill her?”
“She said God was giving her a way to escape the pain she lives with day after day.”
“Dad . . . I thought after Ryan’s birthday . . . I thought she was doing better. How was she when she told you?”
Precedent: Book Three: Covenant of Trust Series Page 16
