Danielle Steel - Lightning

“I'm so sorry, Alex. If there's anything I can do right now, don't hesitate to call me. Tell me which surgeon you settle on, and I'll take it from there.”

“I'll start with Peter Herman.”

He handed her the films from the mammogram, so she could show them to whichever surgeon she chose. Just the word “surgeon” seemed ominous, and as she walked out into the October air, she felt as though she'd just been hit with a two-by-four to her stomach. She couldn't believe what she'd heard, or what had happened.

She picked up her arm and hailed a cab, trying not to remember everything she'd ever heard about mastectomies and lumpectomies, and women who could no longer raise their arms, and other women who had died of cancer. Everything he had said to her was suddenly jumbled in her head, and as she rode back to the office, she didn't even cry. She just sat and stared straight ahead, unable to believe what he had told her.

And when she got back to her office, the whole team was sitting there, Liz and Brock, the law clerk, and the two paralegals. They were waiting for her, and Liz had ordered her turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread, but she just couldn't eat it. She stood and stared at them, and Brock noticed that her face was deadly white, but no one said anything. They went straight to work, and went right through to six o'clock. It was only after that, when they were summing up, after everyone had left, that Brock even dared to ask her.

“Are you all right?” he asked cautiously. She had looked terrible to him all day, and her face had been deathly pale ever since she came back from the doctor's. And more than once, he had noticed that her hands were shaking when she passed him papers.

“I'm fine. Why?” She tried to look nonchalant, but she failed dismally. He was smarter than that, but he didn't want to press her.

“You look tired. Maybe you're burning the candle at too many ends, Mrs. Parker. What did the doctor say?”

“Oh, nothing. It was a waste of time. He just needed to give me the results of some tests, and they never do it over the phone. It was ridiculous really. He could have mailed it to me, and saved us all time.” He didn't believe a word she said, but it seemed to be important to her to say it. He just hoped it was nothing serious. If it was, going to trial in two days certainly wasn't going to help her. He would do all he could for her, but she was still the attorney of record and had to take all the heat and the pressure, and do all the arguing and much of the preparation. He didn't dare ask her if she was up to doing the case, he knew that she would have taken the question as an insult.

“Are you going home?” He hoped for her sake that she was. He still had work to do for her, for the trial, but he could see a pile of files on her desk too and that didn't bode well for an early evening.

“I've still got a few things to do, for other clients.” She had managed to return all her phone calls late that afternoon, but she hadn't had time to call Peter Herman, or so she told herself when she thought of it. She was planning to call him the following morning.

“Can I do anything to help? You ought to go home and get some rest,” he urged, but she was determined to stay and finish.

He went back to his own office after that, and she called Annabelle at home, who was upset that Alex hadn't called her at lunchtime.

“You said you would,” she said, making Alex feel instantly guilty. She had completely forgotten after her unexpected trip to the doctor.

“I know, sweetheart. I meant to, but I got stuck in a meeting with a lot of people and I couldn't call.”

“That's okay, Mommy.” She went on to tell her then everything she'd done that afternoon with Carmen. And listening to her excited little tales made Alex feel almost jealous. She hated even more having to tell her she was going to work late. Suddenly, not being with her seemed all the more poignant.

“Can I wait up for you?” Annabelle said hopefully, as Alex sighed, praying that the shadows in her breast would not turn out to be cancer.

“I'll be too late. But I'll kiss you. I promise. And I'll wake you up tomorrow morning. This is just for this week and next, and then we'll be back to having lunch and dinner together.”

“Are you taking me to ballet this week?” Annabelle was really putting it to her, and Alex was wondering where Sam was.

“I can't. Remember? We talked about it. I'm going to be talking to the judge this week and next. I can't come to ballet.”

“Can't you ask the judge to let you come?”

“No, sweetheart. I wish I could. Where's Daddy? Is he home yet?”

“He's asleep.”

“At this hour?” It was seven o'clock. How could he be asleep?

“He was watching TV and he fell asleep. Carmen says she'll wait for you.”

“Let me talk to her. And Annabelle …” Her eyes suddenly filled with tears as she thought of her, that incredible little pixie face with the big green eyes and the freckles and the red hair. What if Alex died? What if Annabelle lost her mother? The thought of it choked her so badly she couldn't speak for a moment and then she whispered the words. “I love you, Annabelle …”

“I love you too, Mommy. See you later.”

“Sweet dreams.” And then Carmen came on the phone, and Alex told her that she could leave as soon as Annabelle was in bed. All she had to do was wake Sam and tell him she was going.

“I feel bad waking him, Mrs. Parker. I stay till you come home.”

“I won't be home for hours, Carmen. Honestly, just tell him when you want to go. He'll wake up.”

“Okay, okay. When you comin' home?”

“Probably not till around ten o'clock. I have a lot to do in the office.” But when she hung up, she just sat staring at the phone, thinking of all of them, feeling as though she had already lost them. It was as though a shadow had come between her and them today. They were alive, and she might be dying. It wasn't impossible. It was incredible. She still believed there had to be a mistake. She wasn't sick, she didn't have a lump. All she had was a gray shadow on an X ray. But a gray shadow that John Anderson had admitted could kill her, if it was malignant. It was unbelievable. Yesterday she had been trying to get pregnant, and today her own life was in danger. And the hormones she had taken the week before made it all the more difficult now to maintain her composure. They made everything seem more upsetting, and more alarming, and she tried to tell herself that the terror she was feeling wasn't real, it was just the hormones.

Brock checked back with her at nine o'clock, and he noticed that she still hadn't eaten the sandwich that had been on her desk since lunchtime. She had been drinking coffee all day, and now she was drinking a big glass of water.

“You're going to get sick if you don't eat,” he scolded her with a look of concern. She looked even worse than she had before. She was almost gray now.

“I wasn't hungry …actually, I just forgot to eat. I was too busy.”

“That's a lousy excuse. You're not going to do Jack Schultz any good if you get sick before his trial date, or in the middle of it.”

“Yeah, that's a thought,” she said vaguely, and then she looked up at him with worried eyes, “I guess you could take over for me, Brock, if you had to.”

“I wouldn't think of it. You're the attorney they want. You're what he's paid for.” It was exactly what she had said to her doctor that afternoon, when she said she couldn't do the biopsy until after the trial. People were depending on her …and then she thought of Annabelle and Sam and had to fight back tears again. Her engine was running low, and she was suddenly overwhelmed by everything that had happened. The mammogram films were in an envelope on her desk, but what she had seen there was emblazoned in her mind forever.