Danielle Steel - Lightning

“Oh Mrs. Parker …Mrs. Parker …what happened? … are you hurt? Should I call the doctor? …Mrs. Parker?” Alex couldn't stop crying. All she could do was shake her head, as she cried and clutched her knees close to her single bosom.

“Go away … go away …” she cried, sounding like Annabelle, and Carmen got down on her knees next to her, crying for her as she would for an injured child.

“Don't cry …don't cry … we all love you …” she said, as she put her arms around her.

But Alex could only shake her head and cry louder. “He hates me …I'm so ugly … he hates me….”

“I will call him,” she said reassuringly, and Alex let out a scream, and dropped her head down on her knees, begging Carmen not to call him.

“Just leave me.” Carmen tried to hold her but Alex wouldn't let her, and eventually Carmen didn't know what else to do, and went back to the kitchen. She sat there listening to her cry, dabbing at her own eyes, until finally Alex stopped. “Will you please pick Annabelle up?” Alex said to Carmen in an exhausted voice that was completely devoid of emotion.

“Why don't you do it, Mrs. Parker? She will love to see you.”

“I can't,” she said in a voice that sounded more dead than alive. They had killed her.

“Yes, you can. If you want, I will go with you. Come … we go together …” She led Alex back to her little dressing room, and took out a loosely knit dress and held it out to her. “Annabelle likes this.”

“I can't, Carmen. I can't do it.” She started to sob again, but this time Carmen clung to her shoulders and held her.

“Yes, you can.” They were both crying by then. “I will help you.”

“Why?” Alex wanted to give up and die, but Carmen was holding her and wouldn't let her.

“Because we love you. We are going to help you until you are strong again. You will be fine very soon,” she said confidently, trying to give Alex courage. But Alex only shook her head as she stepped into the knit dress Carmen held for her.

“I won't be fine. They're going to give me chemotherapy.”

“Ah no …” She looked horrified, and then, “All right … we will get through it.” Carmen was determined to help Alex. She was a good woman, and a good employer, and she didn't deserve this. She had a husband who loved her, and a little girl. She had to live for them, and Carmen was going to help her do it. “We go to pick up Annabelle, and then we have lunch. And then you take a nap, and I will take Annabelle to the park.” She was speaking to her like a child, and Alex responded to it from the depths of her anguish. She had never seen anything as ugly as what the surgeon had left her.

But she went with Carmen to Annabelle's school, and then they walked home quietly. Alex was silent, but Annabelle didn't seem to notice. And once they were home, Carmen gave them homemade tomato soup, and a turkey sandwich for each of them. And then she tucked Alex into bed, and told Annabelle that her mother needed a nap, which Annabelle thought was a game. She helped Carmen tuck her Mommy into bed, and then they went to the park and played.

She told her Daddy about it late that afternoon, and he wondered if Alex had been playing invalid again, as he put it.

“What's up?” he asked casually, after Annabelle went to bed. “You sleeping all afternoon?” In his voice was a barely concealed tone of disapproval. He didn't want her languishing in front of Annabelle, he had lived with that as a boy, and the memory of it still drove him crazy. Even as an adult now, he had an almost phobic hatred of illness.

“I just took a nap. I was very tired. I went to see Dr. Herman.” Her voice was lifeless as she looked at him, and her eyes gave away nothing.

“Are the results of the pathology reports in?”

“Yes. Four of my nodes are involved. I need chemo,” she said in a dead voice. And then, “He took off my dressing.”

“Great. That's a step forward at least. That should have cheered you up.” He spoke enthusiastically, as though to spur her on, ignoring the fact that she needed chemo, and she looked at him as though he came from another planet.

“Not exactly.”

“Why not? Was there a problem?”

“Not really.” Only a small one …my breast seems to have fallen off with the dressing …

“So what's the big deal? Why are you so tired?”

“What do you want from me?” she snapped at him. “Polaroids? Can't you figure it out for yourself for chrissake? I lost a breast. It's a big deal, to me, if not to you, and I don't buy the idea that it's no big deal to you either. You've been acting like I have leprosy ever since I got home, standing halfway across the room from me. I get the message. You don't think this is so cute either.”

“I never said it was. But it doesn't have to be the tragedy you make it.”

“Maybe not, pal. But let me tell you one thing, it sure ain't pretty.” She looked venomously at him, filled with all the horror of what she had seen in the mirror.

“Don't make it such a big deal. He told you, you can have it rebuilt eventually.”

“Sure, if I want to go through another very painful operation and a bunch of skin grafts and tattoos, and silicone implants, which are dangerous. This is not exactly the tea party you make it out to be.”

“Fine. But don't be such a crybaby for God's sake. Losing a breast is not the worst thing that could happen.”

“What is?”

“Dying,” he said bluntly.

“Give me time, I might do that too. But in the meantime, I seem to have misplaced a few things I was rather fond of. One of them is my left breast, and the other one is my husband. You seem to have gone right out the window with my tit, or hadn't you noticed? Because I have. I'm sick and tired of your disappearing act, of your acting like I don't exist, because you can't cope with what happened.”

“That's not true,” he said angrily, all the more so because it was and he knew it.

“The hell it isn't. You haven't been here for me once since I got the news, and ever since the surgery, you've been treating me like your maiden aunt and not your wife. How long is that going to go on, Sam? How long do I have to do penance for the sin of losing a boob? Until I get it reconstructed so I don't scare you to death when I take my clothes off, or are we shot for good? It might be helpful to know so I don't hang around annoying you, or make you sick sometime when I take a shower.”

“You make me sick with your analysis and accusations. You couldn't make me half as sick if they took both your breasts off.”

“Really? Wanna make a bet? You have no idea how ugly this is. It's a lot worse than you think.”

“It's as bad as you make it. You're the one turning this into an agony. You're the one who can't accept what happened.”

“Are you sure?” She was suddenly unable to control herself a moment longer, and as she stood in front of him she unbuttoned her nightgown. He felt his heart pound as he watched her, but it was too late to stop her, and he knew he had goaded her into it. She slipped it brusquely off one shoulder and then the other, and then she let it drop to the floor without a sound, except a gasp from him. She hadn't bothered to replace the dressing, and he saw everything she had seen that morning. The angry scar, the missing breast, the bright pink flesh. Just as she knew, it was shocking, and his face showed how he felt about it. There was no way on earth he would have touched her. “Pretty, isn't it, Sam?” She was crying now, and gulping air as she sobbed, but he didn't come near her.

“I'm sorry, Alex.” He walked across the room to her then, and held her nightgown out to her. “I'm sorry,” he said softly, and pulled her into his arms, as they both cried. It was just too awful.