by Shey Stahl
Monday morning came and we were out of there in less than an hour. When Dr. Keegan’s office called back that same afternoon and asked us to come in to go over Sway’s biopsy results, I knew something wasn’t right. Sway knew it too. I could see it in her eyes. It was like she expected this call would come someday.
Hell, in some ways, I was sure she’d prepared herself for it to come.
Sitting in the doctor’s office, hearing him go over the results and explain what they meant, it was as if my whole world tilted. I fucking knew how true the statement that your life could change on you in an instant was. You could be running the high line flying past everyone and catch the brim, and you were done. Tire shredded, car all smashed to shit and out of the race. There went your perfect season.
That was exactly my thought hearing the word cancer.
Fucking cancer. I repeated it in my head a few times, trying to process it.
It was like a bad slow-motion wreck. You could see what was going to happen, saw the wall coming full speed, but you couldn’t do anything to stop it. You just had to wait and hope there would be something left after the impact.
Dr. Keegan’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts. “I know this is scary, but we have a lot of options right now,” he went on to say. “You’re Stage two, which means while the cancer is slightly more advanced than Stage one it has stayed contained within the breast.”
I looked at Sway, who sat stick straight like a statue without the slightest twitch. “What do we do now?” she asked, reaching for my hand.
It seemed like a simple question, but we both knew the answer was going to be anything but simple.
The doctor drew in a deep breath and walked around to the front of his desk placing himself directly in front of Sway. “Well, right now we wait.”
Wait? He can’t be serious.
She stared up at him, and that was when I freaked out. Naturally. Waiting wasn’t something I was okay with. I mean, fuck, she had cancer. Get it out. Do something. Don’t wait for it to kill her.
“Wait? What the fuck do you mean wait?” I leaned forward, my hands shaking as I let go of Sway’s hand. “You just told us that my wife has cancer and now you’re telling us to wait.” With my heart pounding, my chest aching as the adrenaline coursed through me, I was losing control.
“Well, like I said, with Sway being stage two we have more options because the cancer hasn’t spread to other parts of her body. I’m going to give you recommendations for Oncologists. Doctors I would trust with my own family and once you choose who you want to meet with, they can give a more in depth explanation of your choices.”
That’s it. Just wait and see what happens?
I wanted to rush her to the hospital and make them take it out like it was an abscessed tooth or something. I was sure if we acted straightaway, like that very second, it would be over.
The truth was, I knew what this meant. Despite everything from plane crashes to parents dying, we hadn’t been tested like this. Not yet at least. We were about to find out just how far we could be tested before we broke.
Right then, staring at my wife as a tear slipped down her cheek, her eyes already taking on a sense of regret, I knew then I’d do anything, fight harder than she ever thought possible to save her.
I had to.
Jumping out of my chair, I paced the small room, running my hands through my hair in total frustration.
“No.” I shook my head violently back and forth. “That’s not good enough. We need to do something now. Right now. Call someone.” The unevenness in my voice echoed through the room, settled in my head, a reminder of the fragile edge I was hanging onto.
I faced the doctor, my fists clenching, rage boiling below the surface. “I mean what fucking good are you if you can’t help us? What kind of goddamn doctor are you to sit here and tell us to wait? She has cancer, not some goddamn hangnail!” Sway looked at me in horror, her hand covering her mouth, but I was too far gone. There was no turning back for me.
With what resembled an entire body shake, my rage was almost overwhelming. Turning toward the chair I had been sitting in just moments ago, I kicked it across the room before I turned and punched the wall holding all of his useless fucking diplomas. Pieces of paper that didn’t mean shit when it came down to it because all he could tell us to do was wait.
“FUCK!” I screamed as I rushed out of the office and down the hallway toward the exit. I didn’t even know where I was going, just that I couldn’t breathe, and I had to get out.
“Jameson!” The desperation in Sway’s voice stopped me in my tracks. When I glanced at her, because I couldn’t ignore the tone of her voice, I gasped. Shit. How much of a selfish bastard can I be? I was losing my mind, yelling and kicking chairs, when it was her that should be falling apart.
I took a minute to catch my breath, and when I turned around seeing the look of devastation in her eyes, it hit me right in the chest like a hammer. Tears steadily streamed down her cheeks. It was all I could do to get to her fast enough to wrap her in my arms and hold her tight. “I’m so sorry, honey.” I couldn’t hold her tight enough as I kissed her forehead.
“It’s okay. I get it. It’s a lot to take in.” She drew back, examining my face. Raising my hand, I went to brush my palm over her cheek. Only it was bleeding so I dropped to my side. “I actually would have been worried if you didn’t punch something.” A sad smile took over, wiping away the tears from her cheeks. “Let’s just go home and we can talk about things then.”
ONCE WE WERE back in the truck, the ride home was long. Neither of us said a word. I was looking ahead holding onto the steering wheel so hard I could have sworn it started to bend, and Sway sat with her hands in her lap staring out the window. I would turn to look at her every few minutes, and it was obvious she wasn’t actually looking at anything. She was lost in her own thoughts.
I couldn’t imagine what must have been going through her mind. I knew being diagnosed with the same disease that robbed her of her mother at such a young age was one of her greatest fears.
Pulling into our driveway, I noticed everyone seemed to be enjoying our house when we weren’t even fucking around. Parked in the driveway were Tommy’s Firebird and Willie’s truck, which was the last fucking thing I needed.
Throwing the truck into park, I was ready to storm into the house and tell them to get the fuck out. Only Sway grabbed my hand and my attention.
“Leave them. It’ll be nice to have a distraction,” she told me looking out the window toward the house.
She was right. With them in there, more than likely it would be entertaining.
Taking a deep breath, I eased back into my seat and shut the door. “Are we gonna tell them?”
Immediately, as if she didn’t have to think about it, she shook her head. “No. Not yet.” Turning back to watch my face, her tears slid down her cheeks. “Growing up I never understood why my parents made the choices they made when it came to telling me when they were sick. I couldn’t understand how they could let me go on thinking life was good when they were struggling to live.” Pausing, she drew in a shaking breath and reached for my hand. “But I get it now. I get how they wanted to protect me for as long as they could.” Her eyes were distant, thinking of the kids I supposed. “I don’t want them to know yet. I don’t want to be the one to turn their world upside down today. Once we know what we are truly facing, once we know what our options are and what our choices will be, then we’ll tell them. But not now.” She squeezed my hand. “Let’s just let them believe that everything is fine until it’s not.”
This woman. This was why I married her, for what she was inside. No matter what she was facing, she would always put her family first.
“Okay, honey. Whatever you want.” Giving her hand one more squeeze, I leaned in and kissed her cheek softly and opened the door to my truck.
Taking a deep breath, I reminded myself I had to keep it together for Sway. I tried to clear my mind as I rounded the truck to
reach her hand, but it was a struggle I wasn’t sure I could keep up with.
Sway glanced down at our clasped hands and then back up at me with a soft smile. “We got this, Jameson. You and me. We got this.”
I hoped to hell she was right.
Billet – Raw material form of forged metal that can be machined.
Cancer.
Such an ugly, life-altering word.
I knew eventually this day would come. How could it not? Both my parents died at a young age from cancer. My mother from breast cancer when she was twenty-five. Her mother when she was fifty-three. I had just sorta told myself it would or could happen. Had I jinxed myself into it? Some kind of crazy brain effect?
The possibility of breast cancer weighed heavily on me the older I got. For this reason, I’d had mammograms every year since I was twenty-five.
As I stared at the pamphlet and the oncologist’s name on it, I knew it had become our reality.
Jameson stared straight ahead, his eyes on the road as we drove from Charlotte back to Mooresville. Watching him carefully, I wanted to know what he was thinking. He said nothing in the doctor’s office. Hell, at the time, I wasn’t even sure he had been breathing. He was so still, blinking slowly, but I saw his knuckles turn white as he gripped his chair and the way his breathing faltered.
“Say something,” I finally breathed out, desperately needing to know his thoughts.
For a moment, he remained quiet until his right hand slipped off the steering wheel and to my thigh. “I love you.”
Smiling, I placed my hand over his and squeezed. “I mean about what the doctor said.”
Again, he was quiet until he glanced over at me a few minutes later. “I….” His voice shook around the word. He was near tears. “I’m not sure I have words right now.” And though the tears in his eyes didn’t fall, I knew it wasn’t without effort.
“YOU’RE A REAL cockbag,” Tommy said to Willie when we came inside the house after being gone most of the day.
Rosa, Tommy, Willie, and Casten were sitting in our family room off the kitchen watching TV.
Jameson glared offensively at their mess on the coffee table of beer and a pizza box. “Don’t you guys have homes to go to?”
I understood his annoyance considering what was going on, but I was also glad to see everyone. I didn’t want to think about cancer. I just wanted to enjoy the moment.
“I don’t question what my penis likes,” Willie told Tommy, who was staring at the television like he was half asleep. “It just does what it wants. And she had asthma. It’s a huge ego boost in bed.”
It was then Casten noticed us. He had Gray on his lap, sound asleep and Hayden was on the floor, sleeping as well.
“Hey.” Casten put his arm around me when I sat next to him, careful not to wake Gray. “You okay?”
If anyone could sense when something was wrong with me, it was Casten. We had always been close and aside from Jameson, no one could read me better than him, but I certainly wasn’t ready to tell anyone so I carefully replied with, “Yeah, just tired.”
“Where were you all day?” Rosa asked.
Jameson’s eyes darted to mine, and then Rosa, his expression impassive. “None of your business.”
“Don’t be so mean.” Smiling at him, Jameson dropped his stare to Rosa’s shirt, squinting as he read the logo across the chest.
“Is that my fucking shirt?”
Rosa glanced down at his shirt, the one she stole from him. “No, I have one like it.” And then she casually took a drink of her beer.
“Why exactly are you guys here?” Jameson took a seat next to me on the L-shaped couch surrounding our flat screen television on the wall.
“I was here first,” Rosa noted. “I was vacuuming, and then all these assholes showed up.”
I doubt Rosa was vacuuming, but stranger things had happened.
“Hey.” Willie looked at Tommy. “Do you have any more of those ja-lap-ano chips?”
Tommy snorted, shaking his head as though he was thoroughly disappointed in him. “You mean the jalapeno ones?”
Casten snorted. “The J is a silent H, Willie. You’re saying it wrong.”
“Like Hal-a-peeno. That’s how you say it,” Tommy told him. “And no, I ate them. I love those delicious bastards.”
It wasn’t unusual to have so many people at our house. I actually enjoyed it. Having everyone nearby, sitting around casually, just existing with each other like it was the most natural thing, it was what I needed. My family.
I would never admit it to their faces, but our family wouldn’t be complete without Tommy, Willie and Rosa. It just wouldn’t. They have become as much a part of us as our own flesh and blood.
Jameson nodded to Tommy and Willie, still talking about what I assumed was Willie’s date the other night. “Why are you two here?” he asked shrewdly.
They both looked at one another and then said, “Ran out of beer.”
At least they were honest.
Rolling his eyes, Jameson leaned his weight into me, his warmth causing me to nearly sigh outwardly. And then I thought, I had breast cancer.
What if I don’t get this very much longer?
This. All of it from the house full of family to the feeling of his heat as he leans against me? Jameson must have noticed my shocking reality sinking in, or the war in my head when he asked, “Are you tired, honey?”
He knew I couldn’t sleep, but that was his way of asking if I wanted to go upstairs.
Did I? Would he want to talk? Could I handle that?
I gave him a nod as Tommy and Willie continued their debate across from us. “Sure. Are you?”
He leaned in closer, his breath blowing over my cheek as he spoke. “I’m gonna go upstairs.” And then he reached for my hand, his silent invitation for me to follow.
The nice thing about our house was we could have fifty people inside, but our bedroom was our own private sanctuary.
After kissing the top of Gray’s head, I took Jameson’s hand and glanced at Casten. “Don’t set anything on fire.”
He grinned, running his hands through his nearly one-year-old daughter’s hair, and it reminded me of him as a child, only it made my heart ache. Would I be around to see her grow or would I be cheated out of getting to witness her life like my parents were?
Why did cancer even exist?
I wanted to look at the bright and shiny positive side, but it was so hard because what if there wasn’t a bright shiny side?
As I looked at my husband, watching him undress and slipping into bed, I thought back to the first time I ever slept in a bed with him. Not just anytime, the first time his arms snaked around my waist and pulled me in.
It was our summer, and we were in Cottage Grove at a hotel where we slept in our clothes. What always stayed with me was the way he pulled me in, and I forgot about everything else. At the time, I wasn’t in love with him, but he always had that way about him. A simple look, a hug, a gentle pull of my body and I didn’t have to think anymore.
I guessed, in some ways, I was still looking for that.
Laughing at the memory of him waking up in the morning handcuffed to the bed, my laugh sparked his smile. “What?”
Removing my shirt, I slipped his T-shirt over my shoulders and crawled into our bed. “I was thinking back to that time in Cottage Grove when Spencer handcuffed us to the bed.”
His eyes dropped from mine to the bed as he pulled back the blankets to get in. “What made you think about that?”
“I was just… thinking about how anytime something was bothering me, it was never that bad as long as I had you there with me.” I turned my body to face him when he didn’t speak, not surprised by the pained expression he wore.
His lips pursed as he nodded once and hung his head. “I’m with you.” His voice shook around the words, pushed out in a heavy breath from deep within. “I won’t give up until the engine lets go and then, we rebuild. Whatever the cost, we fucking rebuild.”
>
I smiled as a tear slid down my cheek. He always knew exactly what to say to make me feel better and how to say it.
Brake Duct – A tube that takes air from the front or side of a car and directs it to the brakes in order to cool them.
Why her?
I asked myself that a lot lately. Hadn’t she been through enough? There were times I wondered if there was a god because how could he fucking do this to her?
How could he possibly take her from me?
And then I would think, fuck, why was I thinking of myself? This wasn’t just about me.
I went through thousands of thoughts over the next five months and focused on one.
The night she broke down, falling into my chest as she sobbed, “Why us?” was the night it hit me the hardest.
Not why me. I understood why she said it that way because it was never her, or me, it was us. Together.
A feeling had started in my gut rising daily until I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I didn’t want the uneasiness anymore.
Cancer could potentially take my wife from me.
We had no other options. Surgery used to be our last option but it had become our only option.
This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. How could someone possibly take her from me?
It was late when I arrived home from the shop. We were set to leave for Lawrenceburg the following morning, and I had been trying to get the cars ready with the boys. I took a nasty hit a few nights earlier in Charlotte, and it did a number on my car and body. I had bruises all over me from that wreck.
By the time I walked through the bedroom door, Sway was laying buck-ass naked on the bed, waiting for me. I’ll admit, it’d been a little while since we had sex and mostly because she was sick and I was afraid of hurting her.
Shutting the door and locking it, I gave her a wink. “Looks like pit lanes open,” I teased.
