Lightning

by Danielle Steel

  “No, thanks. I think I've got everything pretty much taken care of at the office,” she said as she glanced at the paper the nurse handed her to look at and sign. Alex had spent the whole week before, preparing to be away for the next two weeks, just in case, and there was nothing left to do now. The paper the nurse had handed her was the consent form she had already discussed with Dr. Herman. She only read a few lines, which explained that anything up to and including a radical mastectomy might be performed, though he had already told her that he rarely did anything more than modified radicals anymore, which meant that he took, along with the breast, the tissue high up in the arm, the minor pectoral muscles, and not the majors. The major ones made reconstructive surgery impossible. With only the minor pectorals gone, you could still do reconstructive work, and add implants, and there was no greater danger to the patient in leaving the major pectorals intact. She couldn't bear reading any farther. She signed and looked up at Sam with tears in her eyes, trying not to think of what was going to happen to her, as she handed the nurse back her clipboard.

  “Then don't forget to call Annabelle at lunchtime, in case I'm still asleep,” … or still in surgery, please God, no … she said, wiping her tears from her cheeks with trembling fingers, as he took one of her hands in his own.

  “I'll call her. I'm having lunch at La Grenouille with Simon's Arabs and his assistant from London. He's got some woman with an Oxford econ degree coming in. He says our Harvard B School guys don't hold a candle to the kids from Oxford.” He smiled at the snobbism, trying to distract her, just as two orderlies appeared in the doorway, like black angels with a gurney between them. They wore green pajamas and blue gowns, with shower caps on their heads, and what looked like shower caps on their shoes, and it was obvious that they had come for Alex.

  “Alexandra Parker?”

  She wanted to say no, but she knew that wouldn't help as she nodded. She was too choked to speak, and she started to cry again once she lay on the gurney and looked up at Sam. Why had this ever happened?

  “Hang in there, kiddo. I'll be right here. And tonight we'll do something to celebrate. Take it easy.” He leaned down to kiss her and she spoke in a strangled whisper through her tears.

  “I just want to go home with you and Annabelle, and watch TV.”

  “That's a deal. Now go get this thing over with, so we can forget all about it.” He tweaked her boob then, and she laughed. She wanted desperately for this to be over. And maybe he was right not to get excited about it, but for her, it was impossible not to. And she tried not to remember that he had never told her he would love her, even with her breast off.

  They rolled her inexorably down the hall, and into a large elevator where people stepped aside and stared at her, wondering what was wrong with her, and why she was there, and pretended not to look at her. Her bright red hair lay across the pillow, and two men glanced at her, thinking that she was very pretty.

  They reached the surgical floor then, and there was an overwhelming smell of antiseptics, and electric doors snapped open and closed, until suddenly she found herself in a small room that was filled with chrome and machinery and bright lights, and she recognized Peter Herman.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Parker.” He didn't ask her how she was, he knew, as he touched her hand and tried to reassure her.

  “We'll have you asleep very shortly, Mrs. Parker,” he said gently, which surprised her. He seemed right in his element here, and he seemed kinder to her than he had before. Or was it only that he had won, and he was doing what he wanted? Was Sam right? Was she wrong? Were they all crazy? Were they lying to her? Would she die? Where was Sam? …and Annabelle …her head was reeling as they stuck another needle in her other arm, and she thought she tasted garlic and then peanuts, and someone told her to count backwards from one hundred. She only reached ninety-nine, and then everything went black around her.

  Chapter 6

  Sam paced around the small claustrophobic blue room for almost an hour, until nine-thirty. He called his secretary, returned some calls, confirmed his lunch date with Simon. They had meetings with their attorneys that afternoon too. Simon was joining their partnership, bringing with him all his important connections, and very little money. His would be a limited partnership, and he would have a smaller percentage in the firm than Sam, Tom, or Larry. But he seemed satisfied with that for now. He said he could always buy in for more later, once he'd proven himself, and the business had grown as a result of his connections.

  Sam walked down the hall after that, and bought a cup of vile coffee from a machine, which he only took two sips of. It made him ill just being here, with the smells, and the people hobbling down the halls, in wheelchairs, or on gurneys. He still had a dread of hospitals even if the last time he had been there was when Annabelle was born, but Alex needed him then. This time he felt both useless and helpless. She was somewhere else, asleep, unaware of who was there with her, and who wasn't. He could have been anywhere. And by ten-thirty, he wished he had been. She should have been back to the room by then, or someone should have called to say when she'd come down. He didn't want to leave without seeing her, or at least talking to her doctor. But he wanted to be at his office by eleven. And he was serving no purpose at all sitting there, and he knew it. He felt like the forgotten man in the tiny blue room.

  He called his office again, and then strode purposefully out of the room to the nurses' station.

  “I'd like to check on Mrs. Alexandra Parker,” he said curtly. “She was scheduled for a breast biopsy at nine. They said she'd be finished before ten. It's almost eleven now. Could you call and check if there's been a delay. I can't wait around here forever.” She raised an eyebrow at him, but didn't say anything. He looked important and well dressed, and he was very good-looking. And he had an aura of command about him, which even she responded to, though she had no idea who he was, or why he shouldn't have to wait like everyone else in the world. But she called upstairs anyway, and they told her that everything was running late. After all, this was Monday. They had all the leftover surgeries from the weekend, arms and legs and hips that had waited to be set since the night before, and appendectomies that hadn't been too hot to wait through the weekend.

  He was reminded again of checking on flights, and waiting interminably at the airport. That had happened to them once when she had promised to meet him in Washington for a party, while they were dating. There had been a storm in New York, and he had waited six hours for her at the airport. This was beginning to feel like that. And he was truly exasperated by eleven-thirty.

  “This is ridiculous. She's been up there long enough for open-heart surgery. They took her up three hours ago. They could at least let us know how late they're running.”

  “I'm sorry, sir. There could have been an emergency that had to be put ahead of your wife's case. We can't help that.”

  “Can you at least find out where she is and what's happening?”

  “She's probably in the recovery room by now, unless everything went haywire and they bumped her. I'll call. Why don't you have a cup of coffee and wait in her room, and I'll come in as soon as I hear something.”

  “Thanks very much.” He smiled at her, and she decided he was difficult but worth it. She called the surgical floor for him again then, and got very little information, except that Alexandra Parker was still in the O.R. They started late, and the nurse on the phone had no idea when they'd be finished.

  The nurse walked back to Alex's room and found Sam and relayed the message, and he called his office again, apologizing for the eleven o'clock partners' meeting he was missing. He told them he'd catch up with them when he could, maybe even as late as one o'clock at La Grenouille. He just didn't feel right leaving without knowing what had happened.

  It was finally twelve-thirty when they told him Alex was in the recovery room, four hours after she'd gone upstairs. The delays were ridiculous, he complained. And the nurse told him that Dr. Herman would be down to speak to him in a few minute
s.

  It was ten to one when he arrived, and Sam looked like a caged lion pacing the room, as he waited. He had been there for long enough with their dismal decor, and their antiseptic smells, and their endless waits designed for people who had nothing else to do with their lives. He had a business to run, and he couldn't sit around all day cooling his heels waiting to talk to some damn doctor.

  “Mr. Parker?” Dr. Herman entered the room in his operating gown, with his mask still around his neck, and what looked like socks over his shoes. He extended a hand and shook Sam's, and very little showed in his eyes as Sam watched him.

  “How's my wife?” He didn't waste any time, he assumed she was fine, and he was almost late for lunch with Simon, his assistant, and their new clients, after waiting for an entire morning.

  “She's doing as well as we can expect right now. She lost very little blood, and we didn't have to give her any transfusions.” That was important to everyone these days, and he assumed it would be to Sam, but he looked unimpressed and a little confused when he heard it.

  “Transfusions for a biopsy?” There was a long moment's silence. “Isn't that a little unusual?”

  “Mr. Parker, as I suspected, your wife had a large mass deep in her breast, involving mainly the ducts, but it has infiltrated the surrounding tissue, although the margins of the tumor were clear. We'll have to wait another two or three days to tell us about possible lymph node involvement. But there was no question that it was a malignancy, and I believe it was a stage two cancer.” Sam's head suddenly reeled as he listened. It was not unlike what Alex had felt when she'd first heard that she had a shadow on her mammogram. All the information after that was just a jumble of sounds and noises.

  “We're hoping that we got all of it,” Herman went on, “but I had already discussed with your wife the danger of a recurrence. Recurrences of breast cancer are more often than not fatal. And the important thing in successful treatment of cancers such as these is removing all of it, while it is still encapsulated, before it has spread to any other part of the system. To that end, we try to espouse extremely aggressive measures. With luck, if her lymph nodes are not excessively involved, I think we got it.”

  “Just exactly what does that mean?” Sam asked, feeling sick, just asking him the question. “You took the mass out of her breast?”

  “Obviously. We took the breast too, of course. It's the only way you can be absolutely sure there won't be a local recurrence. You can't have a recurrence in a breast that isn't there. It could recur in the chest wall, or travel elsewhere, of course, or metastasize, but that will depend on how advanced the tumor is, and how many lymph nodes are involved. But eliminating the breast solves a lot of problems.” Alex had understood that.

  “Why didn't you just kill her? Wouldn't that solve the problem too? What kind of barbarian bullshit is that to just chop off her breast so it wouldn't spread? What kind of medicine do you people practice?” Sam was livid, and shouting.

  “Cautious medicine, Mr. Parker. We endorse aggressive attacks against cancer. We don't want to lose our patients. And just so you understand, we did some axillary dissection too, which means we removed her underarm nodes, but I'm hoping she doesn't have a lot of nodular involvement. That will be confirmed by pathology in the next few days, and we'll have the results of her hormone receptor tests in about two weeks, and then we'll have a better idea how to treat her.”

  “How to treat her? What else are you going to do?” He was still shouting at him. With one stupid move, they had butchered poor Alex.

  “Depending on the lymph node involvement, we're probably going to have to do some fairly aggressive chemotherapy, just to make sure that there won't be a recurrence. There could be an issue of hormone therapy too, but we don't know that yet. And at her age, it's doubtful. Since we took the breast, there's no need for radiation. We won't be starting chemo for a few weeks. She'll need time to get on her feet, and we need time to assess her situation. Our tumor board will be meeting to discuss her case, of course, once we have all the pathology reports. I can assure you that your wife's treatment will be given very serious consideration.”

  “Just like you gave her breast?” How could they do that to her? He still couldn't believe it.

  “I promise you, Mr. Parker, there was no choice,” Peter Herman said quietly, he had dealt with outraged husbands before, and frightened ones, and those who just couldn't cope with the reality, like this one. The husbands were no different than the patients. But he had a feeling that Alex Parker had understood all the dangers better than he had. “We did a modified radical mastectomy on her, which means that we took the entire breast, and breast tissue, extending toward the breastbone, collarbone, and ribs, and her minor pectoral muscle. This means that she'll be able to have reconstructive surgery in a few months, if that's her wish, and if she's up to it during the chemo. If not, she can wait, and wear a prosthesis.” He made it all sound so simple, and even Sam knew it wasn't. Dr. Peter Herman had changed everything with a single stroke of his scalpel. And just listening to him now made her sound like a mutant.

  “I can't understand how you could do this.” Sam stared at him in uncomprehending horror, and Peter Herman realized that it was just too soon for him to absorb it.

  “Your wife has cancer, Mr. Parker. We want to cure her.” That said it all, and there were tears in Sam's eyes as he nodded.

  “How good do you think her chances are for survival?” It was a question Dr. Herman hated to answer. He wasn't God. He was a man. He didn't know. He wished he could give them all guarantees of long life, but he couldn't.

  “That's hard to know right now. The tumor was deep and large, but the whole purpose of radical surgeries, and aggressive treatment afterwards, is to wipe out the entire cancer. If we even leave point zero one percent, it could eventually do her grave harm. That's why we can't afford to leave the breast once it's diseased to the extent that hers was. And sometimes finding it early enough, and attacking it radically, can mean the difference between success and failure. We hope that we got all of hers, that it was contained, that it has not infiltrated, and that her nodes are not too excessively involved. We hope that, for her, radical surgery was the answer, and chemotherapy will be the additional guarantee she needs. But only time will tell us if we've been truly successful. You're both going to have to be very strong, and very patient.” She was going to die then, Sam decided as he listened. They were going to butcher her piece by piece, cut off one breast, then the other, scoop her insides out, and boil her guts with the poisons in the chemo, and then she'd die anyway. He was going to lose her. He couldn't stand it. And he was not going to hang around and watch her die, just as he had his mother.

  “I don't suppose I should bother asking what your success rate is with these kinds of cancers?”

  “Sometimes excellent. We just have to be as aggressive as your wife can tolerate. But she's in good health, which is in her favor, and she's a strong woman.” But not a lucky one. At forty-two, she was going to have to fight for her life. And there was a good chance that she wouldn't win it. He just couldn't believe it. It was like one of those bad movies where the heroine dies, and the husband is left alone with the children. Just like his father, and it had killed him. But Sam already knew he wasn't going to let this kill him. He couldn't let her do that to him. His eyes filled with tears as he forced himself not to think of her body the way it had been, and the way it would look now. The words were all so ugly …reconstructive surgery …prosthesis … he didn't even want to see it.

  “Your wife will be in the recovery room for the rest of the afternoon, I'd say. I think she should be back here by about six or seven. I think she might do well with private nurses for the first few days. Would you like me to arrange that?”

  “That would be fine.” Sam looked at him coldly. The man had destroyed his life in a single moment. It was impossible for Sam to accept the fact that the doctor hadn't given her the cancer, he had tried to cure it. “How long will she ha
ve to be here?”

  “I'd say until Friday. Possibly sooner, if she does well. A lot will depend on her attitude, and her recovery. It's actually a fairly simple operation, and there's less pain than one would expect, especially in a case like hers where the involvement was mainly ductal. That's more the ‘plumbing' of the breast, and there aren't a great many nerves there.” Sam felt sick hearing about it. He'd already heard a lot more than he wanted.

  “Get her round-the-clock nurses, please. When can I see her?”

  “Not until she comes back from the recovery room, early this evening.”

  “I'll be back then.” He stood looking at the doctor for a long moment, unable to thank him for what he'd done. He might as well have killed her. “Will you be seeing Alex again today?”

  “This evening, when she's a little more awake. If there's any problem before that, we'll call you. But I don't anticipate any complications. The operation went remarkably smoothly.” Sam's stomach turned over as he heard the words. To him, the only thing that was remarkable was that they had butchered Alex.

  The doctor left the room then, well aware of Sam's hostility, and Sam left his office number and the number at La Grenouille at the nursing desk, and then he hurried out of the hospital, feeling frantic. He needed air, he needed room, he needed to see people who hadn't lost anything, who weren't sick, or dying of cancer. He couldn't stand being there for one more moment. He felt like a drowning man as he gulped the cool October air, and by the time he found a cab, he felt slightly more human.

  He gave the driver the address of La Grenouille, and tried not to think of anything Peter Herman had said about Alex, about how little they knew, and how much they hoped, and nodes, and tumors, and tests and biopsies, and metastasis, and chemo. He didn't want to hear another word about it. Ever.