The Cast

by Amy Blumenfeld

  I whipped out my cell phone and pressed it to Adam’s ear.

  “Babe?” he said barely audibly. “You there?”

  “She can hear you,” I reassured him. “Just talk.”

  “Babe, I love you. And Ezra. I love you both so much. . . .” His lips turned downward into a severe frown; it seemed he either had tasted something awful or was stifling a cry.

  I kept the phone against his ear in case he had more to say, but when blood suddenly spurted from his mouth and the shaking turned to convulsions, I pulled away and looked out the ambulance window as the medics came to his aid. I couldn’t bear to watch. Hearing the sounds—the urgency in their voices, the banging of Adam’s body against metal, the beeping of machines—was more than enough.

  The bodegas, florists, and pharmacies that dotted the streets of the upper Nineties blended like a multicolor brushstroke of paint as we whizzed up Madison Avenue. Had it been possible to safely break out the ambulance doors, the way I leaped off the windowsill in Becca’s hospital room when we were kids, I would have. But I was stuck—confined, once again, to a small space brimming with the noises, smells, and fluids of a loved one’s medical trauma. I looked down at the phone, suddenly hefty in my hand, and I, too, began to tremble.

  Chapter 21: Becca

  When I arrived at the hospital, Jordana was sitting at a cafeteria table, staring blankly into the distance, her foot gently rocking Ezra’s stroller back and forth.

  “Where’s Holly?” I asked, unwrapping my scarf and draping it over the back of a plastic chair. I sat down and peeked into the carriage, where Ezra was snoozing away.

  “Upstairs with the doctors,” Jordana replied flatly. She looked ashen; her coat was still zipped to her chin.

  “How’s Adam?”

  She shrugged.

  I wasn’t sure Jordana had blinked since I’d arrived.

  “I think we should sit with her, don’t you? I’ll call Lex and Seth and see if they can pick up the baby.”

  She snapped back to life. “Oh, no, no. First of all, I already texted them about the accident. And second, you know full well that you’re the last person who should be hanging around a hospital in the dead of winter. It’s flu season, and God knows what other germs are flying around. With your crap immune system and this six-month-old, the two of you should hightail it out of here.”

  Jordana was right, of course. I tended to pick up viruses as often as she picked up organic produce, yet my blood percolated the way it always did whenever she treated me like I was still a sick child. “I can make my own decisions,” I said firmly. I could feel my face flush as I cleared my throat. “And I think I’ve got a pretty decent track record choosing what’s right for my body.”

  “Oh, Bec! I’m so sorry! I wasn’t trying to allude to . . . I didn’t mean to bring up . . .” She covered her face with her hands like a little girl playing hide-and-seek and began to sob.

  I sighed and slid my chair over to the other side of the table. “Shh, it’s okay,” I said softly, wrapping my arm around her back. I was too harsh, I thought. I knew the ferocity with which she protected me was rooted in love. And I also understood her well enough to know that this meltdown had to do with Adam’s accident, not my health or decision-making ability. “Long morning, huh?”

  She nodded. “And it’s only nine fifteen.” Jordana reached for a napkin from the small dispenser on the table and blew her nose. “It was awful,” she whispered, dabbing her nostrils.

  “I’m sure.” I rubbed her back and waited for her to elaborate.

  “Bec?” She looked at me, her eyes wide, wet, and filled with fright.

  “Yes?”

  “I fucked up,” she said, barely audibly.

  My brows furrowed in surprise. Jordana rarely cursed. “You? I sincerely doubt it.”

  “No, I’m serious.”

  “I’m sure whatever it is, it’s not nearly as bad as you think. What happened?”

  “If I tell you, you have to promise—I mean really promise—not to tell Holly,” she implored.

  Jordana was a master of concocting a good defense and never intentionally excluded anyone from anything, ever. The absence of the former and a plea for the latter concerned me. My imagination cartwheeled: She kissed Adam in the ambulance. She professed her love to Adam. Adam professed his love to her.

  “I promise,” I said, though pledging to withhold information from Holly pained me.

  “I lied,” she winced, her face creasing all over as if it physically hurt to say the words.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “In the ambulance. I lied. Adam asked to speak with Holly when we were in the ambulance. I punched her number into my keypad and put the phone against his ear and I told him she was listening, but I didn’t actually make the call. I think he thought he was dying and wanted to say goodbye or something. I mean, he was definitely beaten up and in pain, but just a few minutes earlier he was joking about the essential oils I’d sent to help Ezra sleep, so I figured, how bad could he be if he was kibitzing, you know?”

  “You lied to him when he was in that condition? Why?”

  “She was driving with the baby! If she heard how awful he sounded and knew how bad the accident was and that he was calling from the back of an ambulance, she would have flipped out. I didn’t want her to be distracted on the road. But then . . .” Jor-dana welled up and reached for the napkin dispenser again. “Then he started projectile-vomiting blood and things got crazy. Had I known those might have been his last words . . .”

  “I’m sure those weren’t his last words. I mean, it sounds like it was a terrible accident, but he’s strong. He’ll pull through.”

  “Bec, promise you won’t say anything.”

  “I won’t, but how can you keep this from her? You’re the most honest person I know!”

  “It’ll break her. I’d rather live with it and feel like crap than cause her any pain. Plus, she’ll hate me all over again. I don’t want to lose her a second time.”

  Before I had a chance to respond, Jordana’s phone vibrated on the table and she grabbed it urgently with both hands. “Hello? Yes, of course. Vanilla yogurt and a bottle of water. Got it. I’ll be right up. Becca’s here. She’ll take Ezra. Okay. See you in a sec.”

  Jordana stood and slipped the phone into her pocket. “Adam’s in surgery,” she said matter-of-factly. “Holly’s in the waiting room. She hasn’t eaten anything today, so I’m gonna grab her a bite and bring it upstairs. She wants the baby out of the hospital. You need to take him.”

  Clearly, the decision to leave the hospital had been made for me. I’d wanted to stay with Holly, but if this was the best way to lighten her load, so be it; I was there to help. I wheeled him out of the hospital, hailed a cab, and rolled him through the doorway of our apartment twenty minutes later.

  “Hey! Easy E! What’s up, my man?” Nolan beamed and bent over to tickle Ezra’s belly. “It’s about time we got some more testosterone around this place. Sheesh!” Ezra kicked his legs gleefully as Nolan extricated him from the carriage. “So, how bad was the fender-bender? You think they’ll discharge him soon?”

  “Actually, Adam’s in surgery; turns out the accident was a bigger deal than Jordana let on in her text. I haven’t even spoken with Holly. I can’t believe I didn’t pick up her call this morning. I feel terrible.”

  At 7:50 a.m., I’d heard the phone ring and seen Holly’s number pop up on the caller ID but had been too tired to answer. Too tired! All those times I’d leaned on her for support, and there she was, reaching out in the midst of a crisis, and I’d let it go to voice mail. Fucking voice mail! I’d assumed she was calling about some trivial matter related to the brunch, like whether I thought anyone would be offended if she set the table with plastic plates, or if I could pick up some flowers en route to her house. She can leave a message, I told myself. But she left none. I learned of the accident an hour later via an all-caps text from Jordana telling me to meet her in Mount Sinai�
��s cafeteria.

  “Don’t beat yourself up. It’s New Year’s Day; most people sleep in,” Nolan said, nuzzling Ezra against the threadbare Columbia Law School T-shirt he’d slept in. They were looking out the living room window, watching the buses and taxis go by on the street below.

  Though barely six months old, Ezra had already made his mark. Not only had he turned my dear friends into parents, but he’d mended Holly and Adam’s relationship with Jordana, formed an inexplicable bond with my husband, and provided me with unexpected clarity in a time of need. If ever the perfect moniker had been bestowed upon a child, Ezra and help were an ideal match.

  For me, that transformative moment came at Ezra’s bris as I watched Holly’s dad and noticed how out of place he seemed in his seersucker suit and large satin yarmulke sitting awkwardly high atop his bald spot. I wondered if, when he beheld the sea of black hats flooding the pews, he thought back to the day he decided to send his daughter on a teen tour of Israel, and how that single parenting choice shifted the entire course of her life, as well as the future of his family. I marveled at the interminable power of one decision.

  Ezra’s circumcision took place just days before my surgery, and I still hadn’t reached a verdict on whether to cancel the reconstruction portion of the operation. After the Berkshires reunion, I read every study I could get my hands on. I spoke with any former patient willing to share her mastectomy experience. Nolan and I even met with a psychologist at the hospital who specialized in the long-term issues unique to pediatric-cancer survivors and their families. But standing in that crowded Brooklyn synagogue and witnessing the monumental impact one parental choice could have on the rest of a child’s life, it all crystallized. I knew exactly what I needed to do.

  My first memory postsurgery was in the recovery room. My parents and Nolan were there, and Mom held a cell phone to my ear so that Emma could hear directly from the source that her mother was okay. My father stood by the side of the stretcher, singing “You Are So Beautiful,” and I knew even then, in my partially anesthetized state, that he was doing it more as a reminder to Nolan than as a message for me.

  When the nurse came by the next day to see how I was healing, I told Nolan I’d understand if he wanted to take that time to grab a bite from the coffee shop in the lobby. The decision to opt out of reconstruction was not an easy one. And it was not a joint decision; it was mine alone. I had plenty of sounding boards, but no one wanted to sway me either way, because there was no correct answer. In the end, my mind, my gut and my heart all conveyed the same message: Be you. Emma is watching. If you’re proud and secure, she’ll be proud and secure, and it will serve as a lesson for the rest of her life.

  Those were the words I repeated to myself when the plastic surgeon stopped by my curtained-off pre-op room minutes before the surgery. I was lying on a gurney in a hospital gown and cap, I had signed all the documents, my IV line had been inserted, and I was simply waiting to be wheeled down the hall. “It’s not too late for me to scrub in,” he said, and then asked if I felt confident with my decision. “I’m all set, thank you,” I heard myself say between discordant heartbeats pounding in my ears. “Well, okay, then,” he said with a shrug. “Good luck to you.”

  Less than twenty-four hours later, the nurse’s slow and deliberate removal of every strip of gauze on my chest felt like a drum roll that went on for too long before a circus act. “I’m not leaving,” Nolan said, and clenched my hand as I sat upright in the hospital bed.

  When the last piece was lifted, I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t watch Nolan’s reaction. I didn’t want to see him instinctively cringe and then try to cover up the fact that he thought his wife was hideous, or that he should have fought harder to change my mind. I steeled myself. I would survive, with or without his desire for me.

  “Bec, it looks awesome!” he said. He sounded genuine, but I was reluctant to peek. “Really, they did a great job! Take a look.”

  Slowly, I lifted my lids. The very first thing I saw was my husband’s face. He looked utterly relieved. The nurse passed him a hand mirror to hold in front of me. There were two pencil-thin horizontal lines running from under each armpit, across my chest and stopping within an inch of each other at my breastbone. The whole thing looked clean and neat, not scary. As he held the mirror so I could examine my new appearance, he leaned down and kissed my head. “My beautiful wife,” he said softly.

  Through our health insurance plan, I was entitled to regular post-op home visits by a health aide. But, as it turned out, there was barely a need. Nolan insisted on being the one to clean my incision, change my gauze, and help me shower and dress. He even made an Excel spreadsheet to record everything from my temperature to what I ate to who sent which gifts. He was so on top of my care, the nurse half-jokingly asked if he’d consider working for her company.

  I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but sometime between our heated Scrabble games and eating ice cream straight from the container in bed while binge-watching Netflix, I felt closer to Nolan than I ever had in our eleven years of marriage. We had certainly cleared other hurdles together, but there, with the tubes and his magic-marker charts measuring my fluid output and the stack of celebrity gossip magazines on the nightstand and the consecutive days of wearing only pajamas and not bothering to check his work messages even once, I felt he had truly become a part of me. He finally got it.

  A week after the surgery, I received the all-clear from my doctor—clean margins, no sign of cancer, no need for chemo. I was done. I immediately called my parents and then sent a group text to the cast. Within a half-hour, I received four tear-filled telephone calls. Jordana’s, naturally, was the first.

  When I picked up Emma that afternoon from her bus stop, I debated whether to share the good news. I didn’t want to harp on my health, but she had recently witnessed her mother undergo a drastic physical transformation. Hearing the positive outcome, I supposed, could provide some closure.

  “Remember what I told you the night before my operation, honey, about the reason I needed to have it?” I asked, as we headed down the sidewalk to our building.

  She nodded. “You said you did it so you could stay a healthy and strong mommy.”

  “That’s exactly right. And guess what? Today the doctor told me I’m as strong as ever.”

  She smiled and slipped her delicate hand in mine. “Well, I could have told you that.”

  Nolan returned to work and said it felt as if he were starting from scratch. Colleagues were cordial but not warm, the new case assignments were unfamiliar, and Ilene Weston’s watchful eyes made it seem even his trips to the bathroom were under scrutiny. Everyone from support staff to senior partners appeared to know about Nolan’s gaffe and that the only reason he was still employed was because Gordon had a soft spot for him. Fortunately, Tennessee Morse’s article got held up in the fact-checking stage, so it never ran, but the firm lost Thibault as a client. There were still rumblings about a lawsuit, but nothing had been filed and Nolan guessed it would ultimately fizzle out because Thibault wouldn’t want the negative press that accompanied a suit. Despite the second chance, Nolan felt like a caged hamster and soured on firm life. The passion was gone. After a three-hour brainstorming lunch with an old law school professor, he was offered an adjunct position at Columbia—a bucket-list item he always thought he’d save for retirement but realized he was ready to tackle at forty instead. He resigned from Gordon, Michaelson & Stewart the next day.

  In November, during the hiatus between his jobs, we went shopping for boobs. I had trouble saying the word prosthetic; it was too scientific, too cold, and, given that “artificial” was its official definition, I had no interest in using it to describe any part of my being. Jordana wanted to go and emailed a list of dates and times she was free, but I thought it might be more meaningful to share the experience with my husband.

  “Hell yeah, I’m game,” he said, rubbing his hands together when I proposed the idea. “Is there gonna be a runway?
Will you get angel wings and stilettos?”

  My, how far we’ve come, I thought, and called for an appointment.

  When we arrived at the store a few days later, I knew even before entering that it had been a mistake to invite Nolan. The shop was microscopic (its address was 94 1/2, as if the space weren’t quite deserving of a whole number) and behind the cloudy front window was a headless mannequin in an oversize, oxidized beige bra. On the floor beside the mannequin’s amputated feet sat a floppy beach hat—the type I’d seen in photos of my grandmother on Coney Island circa 1962—and in the corner of the display, atop a lace-covered barstool, was a rusted watering can holding an arrangement of polyester flowers. This place screamed vintage thrift shop (but hardly in a hipster-cool way) and couldn’t have been further from our baseless expectation of a candy-scented lingerie boutique.

  I should have done a dry run before I schlepped him here, I thought, as I reached for the doorknob. A long string of bells dangling from the handle jingled as we entered.

  “I’m sorry, dear, we’re closed to the public right now; it’s appointment-only,” said a salt-and-pepper-haired woman behind a cluttered desk. The chain on her reading glasses swung beneath her chin.

  “Actually, we’re here for the one o’clock appointment,” I said.

  “Oh?” she asked dubiously, and slowly scanned her finger down a spiral ledger, where I saw my name neatly written in cursive. “Are you meeting Rebecca Scardino? Is she your mother?”

  Nolan dug his hands into his pockets. I could feel the optimism hiss out of him like a punctured tire.

  “I’m Rebecca,” I smiled. “The appointment is for me.”

  The woman paused, as if her mind needed time to catch up to her ears, and quickly scanned my chest. “Oh, I’m sorry, dear; I was expecting . . .” She rose from her chair and came around the desk to extend her hand. “Oh, I don’t know what I was expecting. Please pardon me. I’m Mary Catherine, but you can call me MC. It’s lovely to meet you.”