I Never Thought I'd See You Again: A Novelists Inc. Anthology (11 page)

“I’m sorry.”

“But we got her on tape. The whole thing. That was smartext/css" rel="stylesheet"/>

From the day Dianne’s first poetic masterpiece hit the family fridge until her first nonfiction article hit
Woman’s Day
magazine, there was no doubt she wanted to write. But what? Romantic fiction! She had an instant love affair with it the first time she read a Harlequin Romance. But the glitz of magazine journalism lured her away from her love for a while, and she became a regular writer for such publications as
L
a
dies’ Home Journal
,
Better Homes & Gardens
,
Family Circle
,
Parenting and Seventeen
. Then, in 2001, after writing seven successful nonfiction books, including an
Antiques Roadshow
companion book, Dianne’s first novel,
The Doctor Dilemma
, was published by Harlequin. True love had lured her back where she belonged. Now, forty books later, she’s thrilled to be writing medical romance for Harlequin Mills & Boon, Entangled Publishing, and Constable & Robinson. When she’s not writing, though, she’s either gardening, or tending to her three dogs and three cats.

Her diagnosis was unexpected, but most people don’t expect the bad news. Not really. Oh, they might have a thought of it in the back of their mind, an inkling that it’s coming, a hint that it’s a real possibility. But to actually hear it spoken out loud, to have the doctor force out that very well-practiced look of sympathy, squeeze you on the arm and say, “I’m sorry, but you’ve got cancer,” no one really expects to hear that. So it was no wonder the first few minutes after her diagnosis, she was numb.
You’ve got cancer . . . cancer . . . cancer . . .

“Can you tell me exactly what that means?” she asked the older of the two doctors, the one in the yellow and pink party dress and five inch spike heels who hadn’t expected to spend her afternoon in the ER, and was making it clear she didn’t want to be there. the twenty-first centuryle and he

“It means tests to begin with. Then surgery. After that . . . ” She shrugged indifferently. “Chemo, radiation. It’s too soon to tell, exactly, what we’ll be doing.”

It wasn’t really a medical timeline she’d wanted right then, though. No. Maggie Holmes needed the reassurances all people with cancer needed. She needed to hear it would be fine, that the cancer wasn’t drastic, wasn’t spreading, wasn’t going to be significant. Bottom line - she needed some hope to go along with the diagnosis. All she got, though, was a doctor who didn’t want to be bothered, a nurse who didn’t have enough time to be bothered, and a lot of hours staring at the gray walls in an empty emergency exam room, wondering how this had happened.

“But I wasn’t sick,” she told the doctor, who was in the process of donning her party hat. “No symptoms, not feeling bad. Not tired. Maybe it’s not cancer. I mean, there haven’t really been any tests yet, and . . .

“It’s cancer,” the doctor cut her off. “Advanced. You had to have symptoms because nobody gets to this place without a warning sign. You probably just ignored the obvious. People do that.”

But she hadn’t. She knew that, no matter what the doctor said. “So, what’s the prognosis?” Maggie asked. It was a simple request, really, but the doctor merely shrugged.

“Too soon to tell.” Said in front of the mirror where she was starting to apply a fresh coat of glossy pink lipstick.

Life as normal for her, Maggie thought. But for me? “Then what comes next?”

She blotted her lipstick on a paper towel, then tossed it in the trash. “I’ll be referring you to an oncologist who’ll be able to tell you more.”

Oncologist. Such a formidable word, and she wondered why someone would be drawn to a specialty where the odds were stacked against any one patient right from the beginning. Maybe it’s because the victories were better. You have a broken leg, it will heal. Nice victory, not great. You have cancer, you’ll survive. Great victory. Of course, some people thrive on challenge and cancer, if nothing else, always posed a challenge. Whatever the reason, Maggie was suddenly mighty glad people chose that line of work.

“In the meantime, we’re going to admit you for observation,” the doctor tossed casually over her shoulder on her way out the door. “Your oncologist is on vacation, won’t be back until the first of the week, so I’ll write the order to keep you until then.”

For most people, that might have sounded good. Reassuring. But Maggie wasn’t reassured at all by the promise of four days under observation. And all for a cancer that, most likely, had been growing in her for some time. What were they going to observe? The slow realization that she did, indeed, have cancer? The onset of the real emotions? The fear? The anger?

“I’ll be going home,” Maggie said.

That actually stopped the doctor at the door. “Why?”

“Why not?” she countered. “What can anybody do for me here that I can’t do for myself at home?”

You have cancer,” the twenty-first centuryle and he the doctor said. “Perhaps you don’t understand what that means.”

To the contrary, Maggie understood exactly what that meant. And over the course of the next few days, she had no doubt that understanding would mature. Because right now, her cancer was only in its infancy. Maybe not in terms of how long it had been in her body. But in terms of how long it had been in her mind. And like a cancer itself, that understanding would grow, and consume.

An hour later, Maggie signed the dismissal papers, with promises to subject herself to even more tests before she went home to live out day one. Truly, this was the first day of the rest of her life. Sure, it was a trite saying, one that didn’t mean much under usual circumstances. Today, though, circumstances were not usual. She had cancer.

Now came the definitive tests, and doing this alone was tough. Yet she couldn’t help but think that doing it with someone tagging along would have been tougher, because she would have had to talk. Or react. Or try to be strong for the person who was grappling for the right words even though, at this early stage, Maggie wasn’t sure there were any words she wanted to hear other than
Oops, big mistake. You don’t have cancer
. To be honest, she just didn’t feel like being social for a little while. Not yet, when it was all so fresh and not really even sinking in.

So, for awhile, this was her secret to keep and, truthfully, parts of her wondered if she might be able to keep the secret for the duration. Of course the bald head somewhere down the line might be a dead giveaway that something was going on.
Me, on chemo? Heavens, no. Hair is just so done to death these days that bald is my new look
. Then there was the distinct possibility that with radiation she’d be too weak to Facebook for a while, and those who knew her knew she was a total addict, that her day wasn’t complete without a comment or a like or a share.

For now, though, doing the first round of tests alone was fine, probably because she wasn’t yet weak or bald, and more probably because she had to figure out how to tell people in such a way that didn’t make them feel bad. Or sad. Or horrified. Or end up in tears. Because these were emotions to which she was entitled. She, alone. Maggie Holmes. Not her circle of friends , not even her family. Not yet, anyway. And she hadn’t had time to experience them herself, so she sure as heck wasn’t going to give someone else the opportunity to beat her to them.

So, the people in blue scrubs, and green scrubs and even red scrubs rushed her into a barrage of tests, and for the first little while after diagnosis the pace was so hectic Maggie really wasn’t given sufficient time to digest the information of her condition, let alone think about anything other than which test came after the last one. Was that by design? She wondered, because it occurred to her that in the grand scheme of all dire medical things, an occupied mind was easier to deal with. As her grandmother always said, “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” Okay, so maybe that applied more to sinning than thinking cancer thoughts, but what about cancer was not of the devil? It was one of the most feared diagnoses in the world, the one that came straight from hell, and would drag you through hell, if you let it. So maybe it did make sense to keep the thoughts out for as always wondered if therTo fas long as possible. Or at least long enough for all the different colored scrubs to get you through the tests.

Scans, needles, test tubes, undress, dress, sit around and wait, hold her breath and don’t move. Numb upon numb. It was no wonder Maggie was exhausted on that, the first day of her cancer. Armed with a handful of explanatory papers and prescriptions for tests, she was sent off to follow the yellow line down the middle of the hospital corridor for even more tests, with explicit instructions to stop and see what was behind door number one first, proceed afterwards to door number two, and we’ve made you an appointment for door number three in exactly an hour.
Don’t be late . . . late . . . for a very important date
.

People were kind to Maggie on the initial launching of her new purpose in life. Never in her life had she had so many sympathetic looks and hand squeezes. But the sympathy literally oozed from everybody, and for every little drop of it she encountered, Maggie wondered if they knew something she didn’t. Where they hiding something from her, not telling her the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Were those looks of condolence for the consequences of cancer nobody ever wanted to think about? The part where someone doesn’t survive it, where they fight it like hell, turn their life over to it and tell the world they’re determined to beat the bastard. But they know you won’t? Was that what she was seeing and only coming to understand as she was being sucked into a claustrophobic tube to have every last inch of her body scanned?
Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.

Or not.

“So, what are you in for?” the ultrasound tech asked her, as she glopped some icy-cold slime all over Maggie’s front side.

“C-ca . . . can . . . ” Nope, not ready to say the word out loud yet. “Tests.” A nice, barren term for nothing. “My doctor’s trying to figure out what’s going on with me. No biggie,” Maggie said, figuring the tech had probably read the chart and seen the diagnosis, and this was her way of managing tough conversation. In other words, it was Maggie’s ball to pick up or drop.

“Yeh, they do like to do a lot of tests, don’t they? Come in for a hangnail and they treat you like you’ve got . . . well, something worse.”

So did that mean if you came in for some worse, like cancer, for instance, they’d treat you like you had a hangnail? Didn’t sound like such a bad trade-off, actually. “Guess it’s better to be safe than sorry,” Maggie said.

“It’s a CYA world,” the tech replied.

“Huh?”

“You know. Cover-your-ass.”

Yes, that it was. Especially if your ass had cancer, Maggie supposed.

She didn’t sleep much that first night. Too many thoughts creeping in and out. Too many uncertainties. How do I handle this? Who should I tell? When will it hit me?

Maybe that was the biggest question, because she was waiting for the real impact of it;
}
[class*="accessibility foundicon-"]edvo to replace the abject numbness and, for the first time in her life, Maggie understood what it meant to wait on pins and needles because her body felt like it was being pricked from all directions. Little pricks and jabs of memory from just hours earlier, the task of telling her husband, trying not to think about it every second of every minute of every hour. Then there were the thorny reminders from yesterday when she didn’t know she had cancer, when her greatest expectation had been a benign diagnosis and a prescription for a pill. And the day before that, when life had been good.

But it wasn’t good now, and in the short bursts of sleep she was allowed, she tossed and turned, and woke herself up with thoughts that slipped back and forth from the conscious to the unconscious as easily as anyone might walk from room to room. It was like both parts of her mind - the waking and sleeping - were intertwined, the worries of the day drifting into her dreams, turning them into nightmares. But the nightmares came as much in her wakefulness as they did in her sleep, volleying her back and forth between the two existences.