Carrie Vaughn - Dreams of the Golden Age

No, be honest: That was what Celia had hoped would happen. She had hoped very hard for something simple and nondisruptive. Something she could laugh about in a week, while teasing Arthur for being overprotective.

But then the clinic had called. “We have your results. We’d like you to come in to discuss them,” they’d said, which meant bad news. Not just bad, but the worst. They wanted to see you only when it was bad. She hadn’t been able to focus, so Arthur had had to call the town car and guide her down the elevator and to the garage.

Arthur didn’t say a word the whole time. Just kept hold of her and grimly took charge of the situation until they were sitting in the clinic waiting room. Waiting. Anyone else would have muttered vague, untrue reassurances the whole time, but not him. He knew exactly what she was thinking and that there was nothing he could say to comfort her. He was there, and that was enough.

If he was angry, upset, or scared, he couldn’t show it. He controlled his emotions because they’d impact the people around him, and she’d long since gotten used to him reacting like a stone to the most chaotic situations. But just this once, she wanted to know what he was feeling. The tension in his face had become constant.

A receptionist called them in and locked them away in the quiet of a doctor’s office. Not an exam room but an unassuming office with a plain desk and uncomfortable padded chairs. Diplomas on the wall, family pictures on the bookshelves.

When the door opened, Celia flinched, and Arthur squeezed her hand.

Dr. Valdez approached, full of pleasantries, shaking their hands before setting down a manila folder, then sitting behind her desk like it was a shield. Celia didn’t hear a word of it, and when Valdez stopped moving and she finally got a good look at her, the doctor’s smile seemed stricken.

“As you might have gathered from my call, the results of the blood work weren’t normal. In fact, it’s rather more serious than was initially expected, which is why you were asked to come in.”

That switch to business passive voice grated on Celia’s nerves. The woman really didn’t want to talk about this, and Celia was trying to figure out how to interrupt the awkward introduction to get to the actual diagnosis when Arthur did it for her.

“Leukemia,” he said. “It’s leukemia.”

Having a word made it somehow less nerve-racking. Celia could breathe again. She couldn’t think, but she could breathe.

The doctor appeared to deflate, unable even to fake a smile. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

Celia kept repeating the word to herself. It was bad, okay. But how bad? And how had it happened in the first place? It wasn’t like catching a cold, was it?

“Do you know what could have caused it?” Arthur said, voicing her question before she could formulate it herself.

“We’re not really sure. A variety of causes have been shown to have an impact in some cases. Particularly if you’ve ever been exposed to powerful radiation—”

A wave of vertigo shook her and she clung to the arm of the chair. A flashback, a visceral smell of a secret laboratory in the process of burning, and her father coming to save her … The Psychostasis Device exploded, and he’d hunched over her, shielding her from a massive burst of radiation. “You’re safe,” he’d whispered, his dying words.

The feeling was so strong she wanted to run. Instead, she put her hand over her mouth to stifle laughter. Oh, God.

The radiation from the psychostasis ray that her father had died to protect her from. He’d died thinking he’d saved her, that she was safe, but she wasn’t, the radiation had just taken twenty years to kill her.

She swallowed back the scream that came next. Calmed herself.

“Celia,” Arthur whispered. His expression was taut, scared. His fear pressed out, against her mind. She squeezed his hand back. She was okay. She was going to be okay. She decided, right there, that she had to be.

—The girls, how am I going to tell the girls about this?—

—Wait.— Arthur urged calm without speaking.

She took a breath and settled. Looked straight across the desk to the doctor. “What do I do?”

The treatment plans were extensive and arduous. Her case would go through a panel review in the next few days, and the panel would likely recommend chemotherapy, which ought to be started as soon as possible. The doctor encouraged her to do as much research as she could in the meantime.

Oh, would she. She would kill that research. She’d started her career in forensic accounting; nothing would escape her hunt for information.

“How am I going to tell my mother?” she said abruptly as the car pulled onto the ramp that sloped down to West Plaza’s parking garage. “I don’t know how to tell my mother.” She didn’t want to tell anyone. She wanted to pretend this wasn’t happening, but she wasn’t that good an actress. “I don’t want to tell the girls. Not yet, not till I know what I’m doing next.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Is that the telepath or the psychiatrist talking?”

“It’s the man you’ve been living with for twenty years and the father of your children talking,” he said. “We’re already keeping so many secrets.” He actually sounded sad. Tired, maybe.

She leaned against him, snuggled under the crook of his arm, and let the warmth of his mind as well as his body envelop her. He could whisper hush directly into her panicking hindbrain. She’d never tried to keep secrets from him.

“We’ll wait until this city development deal is finalized. It should just be a couple of weeks, then I’ll tell. I’ve got sharks circling for me, and I don’t want them finding out about this. I can install equipment for treatment in West Plaza. No one will ever see me at the hospital, and I’ll tell people when I want them to know. I can do this.”

“ We, Celia. We can do this. It’s going to involve all of us sooner or later.”

One day at a time. She had her plans, they were all in order, it would all work out. She just had to keep telling herself that.

Arthur held her hand in a gesture that seemed desperate.

Her mother was gone from the penthouse when they returned, so that was one decision Celia could put off until later. Suzanne had left a note about shopping at the Asian market on the north side for dinner ideas, and reminded her that she’d invited Robbie over for dinner and she hoped they could all be there because it had been quite awhile since they’d all gotten together, what with the girls being so busy with school, and so on.

It was like she was still in high school herself. Only back then, the notes Suzanne left were just as likely to be about some mysterious unnamed “errand,” which always meant that the Olympiad was off thwarting plots, and if she got hungry there was lasagna that she could put in the oven.

Celia stared at the note a long time until her eyes brimmed with tears, which she scrubbed away a moment later. She didn’t have time for that.

Sitting at her desk in her office seemed remarkably futile. She had the work she’d abandoned, the day’s task list, and the mental acuity needed to perform a simple task like open her e-mail folder seemed monstrously difficult. Arthur took one of the chairs and sat, legs stretched out.

“Are you going to be all right?”

She wondered sometimes why he bothered asking.

She didn’t have to say anything, but the silence was harsh, so she did. “I thought work would distract me. I don’t want to tell them, Arthur. I just don’t. I can already see the looks on their faces, and with Robbie coming over tonight…” The weight of all their stares, all their pity. Their fear for her. She just couldn’t.