Danielle Steel - Lightning

He looked grim when he got to the hospital, and went up to the small, ugly blue room, and much to his chagrin, she was wide awake when he saw her. She was lying in bed, with an IV pole next to her, and an elderly nurse reading a magazine in the light of the single lamp that was lit in the room. Alex was crying softly and staring at the ceiling. But he wasn't sure if she was in pain or if she knew about her breast, and he could hardly ask her.

The nurse looked up as he came in, and Alex explained that he was her husband, and then the nurse nodded and left the room as discreetly as she could, and took her magazine with her. She said she'd be just outside in the hallway.

Sam walked slowly to her bedside, and stood looking down at her. She looked as beautiful as ever, but very tired and pale, a little the way she had looked right after Annabelle was born, but this time she looked anything but happy. He took her right hand in his own, and he could see that her left side and her whole upper body were heavily bandaged.

“Hi, kiddo, how are you?” He looked uncomfortable, and she did nothing to hide her tears. There was reproach in her eyes when they met his.

“Why weren't you here when I got back to the room?” She couldn't have been there long. They had said around seven.

“They told me you wouldn't come back here until tonight. And I wanted to be with Annabelle, I thought that's what you'd want.” It was partially true, and partially he just hadn't wanted to come back here. And she knew that.

“I came back to the room at four. Where were you?” She was relentless in her anguish.

“I was at the office, and then I went home to see Annabelle. I just put her to bed, and then I came back here.” He made it sound innocent and easy, and as though he couldn't have come back a moment sooner.

“Why didn't you call me?”

“I thought you were sleeping,” he said, looking nervous.

And then she looked at him and the floodgates opened. She cried as though she would never stop. Peter Herman had seen her when she came back from the recovery room, and he had told her everything, about the tumor, the mastectomy, the risks, the dangers, the nodes he had taken too, the fact that he thought, and hoped, that the tumor had clean margins and hadn't spread beyond them, which he thought looked very hopeful, and the fact that most likely in four weeks they would be starting chemo. From where Alex was looking at it, she thought her life was over. She had lost a breast, and she could still lose her life. She was disfigured now, and for the next six months she was going to be desperately ill on chemo. She would very probably lose her hair, and just as possibly be permanently sterile after the treatment. Right now, it seemed like there was nothing left, not even her marriage. Sam hadn't even been there for her when she woke up. He hadn't been there when the doctor had told her the devastating news. Herman hadn't wanted to wait to tell her any of it, he didn't want her worrying or guessing, or discovering that the breast was gone, or hearing it from the nurses. He was a firm believer in telling his patients everything, and he had. Alex felt as though he'd killed her. And Sam had done nothing to stop it, or help her.

“I lost my breast,” she kept saying over and over as she cried. “I have cancer …” Sam listened without saying a word, he just held her, and cried along with her. It was much more than he could cope with.

“I'm so sorry …it's going to be all right. He said he thinks they got it.”

“But he doesn't know” Alex sobbed uncontrollably, “and I probably have to have chemo. I don't want it. I want to die.”

“No, you don't,” he said sharply. “Don't even say that.”

“Why not? How are you going to feel when you look at my body?”

“Sad,” he said honestly, which only made her cry more. “I'm very sad for you.” He said it as though it was her problem, and not his. He was very sorry for her, but he didn't want this to become his problem. He didn't want it to kill him, as it had his father, once his mother had cancer. In his mind the two deaths were linked and he was fighting now for his own survival.

“You'll never want to make love to me again,” she sobbed, concerned with lesser problems than he was.

“Don't be stupid. What about blue day?” He tried to make her smile, but he only made her feel worse as she looked up at him in anguish.

“There won't be any more blue days. I have a fifty percent chance of being sterile after the chemo. I'm not supposed to get pregnant for five years, or it could cause a recurrence. And five years from now, I'll be too old to have a baby.”

“Stop thinking the worst about everything. Why don't you just relax and try to look at the bright side?” he said, trying to show an optimism he didn't feel. But Alex wasn't buying.

“What bright side? Are you crazy?”

“He says that losing the breast could mean saving your life. That's goddamn important,” Sam said firmly.

“How would you like to lose one of your testicles? How would that be?”

“It would be miserable, just like this is. I didn't want this to happen, neither did you. But we have to make the best of it.” He was trying, but she didn't want to hear it.

“There is no ‘best of it,' there's me too sick to move for the next six or seven months, disfigured for the rest of my life, and unable to have more children. And then maybe too there's a recurrence.”

“Is there anything else you can think of to depress yourself? How about hemorrhoids and prostate? For chrissake, Alex, I know this is terrible, but don't make it worse than it is.”

“It couldn't be much worse. And don't tell me how to look at it. You're going to walk out of here and go home tonight. You're going to be with Annabelle, and I'm not. You're going to feel fine all year, and when you look in the mirror tomorrow morning nothing will be different. Everything in my life has changed. So don't tell me how to look at anything. You don't understand it.” She was shouting at him, and he had never seen her as miserable or as angry.

“I know. But you still have me, and Annabelle, and you're still beautiful. And you still have your career, and everything that matters. Okay, so you lost a breast. You could have had an accident too. You could be crippled. You can't let this destroy you. You can't do that.”

“I can do anything I damn well want. Don't make me speeches.”

“Then what do you want from me?” he asked, exasperated finally. He didn't know what to say to her. This was not his forte, or the place he wanted to be, or the situation he wanted to be in.

“I want some reality, some sympathy. You wouldn't even listen to me for the last two weeks when I told you this could happen. You didn't want to know how I feel, you don't want to know how scared I am of everything that's going to happen to me. You just want to mouth a lot of platitudes and feed me a lot of bullshit. You weren't even here for chrissake when they told me what had happened to me. You were at your office, making deals, and at home, watching fucking TV with our daughter, so don't tell me how to feel. You don't know shit about what I'm feeling.”

“I guess not,” he said quietly, stunned by her venom. She was furious, at anyone, and everything, and him, because nothing would change this. “I don't know what to say to you, Al. I wish I could change it, but I can't. And I'm sorry I wasn't here.”

“Me too,” she said, and started to cry again. She felt so alone, and so scared, so vulnerable, and so helpless. “What am I going to do?” She looked at him pathetically. “How am I going to work, or be a wife to you, or take care of Annabelle?”

“You just have to do what you can, and let the rest slide for a while. Do you want me to call your office?”