Danielle Steel - Lightning

“I can't live with this, Sam,” she cried, wanting her breast back, wanting her life to be what it had been only a few weeks before. It was impossible to understand why any of this had happened.

“It'll be okay …you'll get used to it. We both will,” he said softly, praying it was true.

“Will we?” she asked sadly. “Do you want me to get it fixed?”

“It's too soon anyway, why don't you see how you feel about it later.”

“I hate it, and I hate myself,” she admitted as she slipped on her nightgown, and he helped her when she got it tangled. He wanted to help her cover it up as soon as possible, so neither of them had to see it. “I'm sorry I'm angry at you all the time. I just don't know how to handle it.”

“Neither do I,” he admitted. “I guess we just have to give it time.”

“Yeah,” she said sadly, looking at him, unable to believe he would ever resume their sex life. “Maybe.”

“You'll feel better when you go back to work next week,” he said encouragingly as he turned the TV on, anything so they didn't have to talk to each other.

“Maybe I will,” she said, unconvinced, but she would much rather have had her husband than her job back. And all he could think of as they watched TV was what he'd just seen. He wasn't sure that he could ever touch her again. It made the agony of wanting Daphne even more painful. And he felt guiltier than ever remembering how exquisite her breasts had been when he'd touched them, and he remembered exactly how they'd looked when he took off her shirt and freed them. She was so young and inviting and alive, and her body was so perfect.

“I don't feel like a woman anymore,” Alex said sadly as he turned off the light at midnight.

“Don't be silly, Alex. A breast doesn't make you who you are. Losing it doesn't change anything. You're as much a woman as you ever were.” But nothing he did confirmed it. And as he lay in bed all that night, keeping well away from her, the only thing he could think of was Daphne.

Chapter 11

The only thing that brought Alex and Sam together at all was trick-or-treating with Annabelle the following weekend. She went as the princess, as planned, and she looked adorable in her pink velvet costume with sparkles and rhinestones. She wore a little silver crown, and carried a wand, and she had a great time trick-or-treating in their building. Alex usually dressed up too, but she hadn't put together a costume this year, and at the last minute she dressed as Cruella De Vil in a black and white wig and an old fur coat, and Annabelle loved it. And Sam brought out the Dracula costume he wore every year, and Alex did his makeup.

“You look good with black and white hair,” he mused as he looked at her. She was wearing a slinky red knit dress. She was wearing a prosthesis now in her bra, which was heavy but looked surprisingly realistic. And Sam couldn't help but admire her figure. Even without the missing breast, she still had sensational legs, and the body of a model. He seemed to be noticing things like that more and more these days, especially on Daphne.

He and Daphne had been behaving themselves admirably, though not without enormous effort. Only once, he had given in to the urge to kiss her when they were alone in his office. But otherwise, they had done nothing they shouldn't have, in spite of a number of meetings and business lunches together with clients. She was very helpful on some of their new deals, and remarkably knowledgeable about international finance. Interestingly, he had never mentioned her to Alex. Instinctively, he knew he couldn't. Alex would have sensed instinctively that there was something to this. His partners had wondered about it too, but no one had dared to ask, only Simon continued to make a crack now and then about how appealing English girls were, particularly his cousin. Sam always agreed with him but no one except Daphne knew how infatuated he was with her, or how desperately horny she made him.

“You look pretty good,” Alex said as she put the last of his Dracula makeup on him. Standing in front of him in the bathroom under the lights was the longest they had been close to each other since her operation. It would have been the perfect opportunity for him to say something to her, or put his arms around her, or even kiss her, but he just couldn't bring himself to do it. He was too scared of what would happen after that, what she might expect from him, and he might not be able to deliver. Nothing about her turned him on right now. She was intrinsically too ill, her body had changed too much, there was too much fear and too many bad memories for him even to want to try it.

She handed him his Dracula teeth, and Annabelle gave a squeal of happy terror when she saw him. “Oh Daddy, I love you!” she said, and then she giggled. He laughed, and Alex grinned. It was the happiest they'd been in a month, and the rest of the evening was just as pleasant. They stopped and visited friends, shared a glass of wine with them, ate candy with the kids, and by the time they got home, Annabelle was half asleep, and her parents were both in very good humor.

“That was fun,” Alex said happily. It always was. Halloween had been magical ever since they'd had Annabelle. Before that, it had meant nothing. Thinking about it made Alex sad again, knowing that she would probably never have more children. It was just too unlikely now, with the statistics of sterility after chemo and the importance of not getting pregnant for the next five years. And by then, she'd be forty-seven. The prospect of another baby was over.

She also knew that, at forty-two, she would probably go through menopause, as a consequence of having chemo. It was still difficult to understand the words, to absorb them, to make them hers, mastectomy, malignancy, chemotherapy, nodular involvement, metastasis. It was incredible. Her entire vocabulary had changed in a month, and with it her life and her marriage. There was no hiding from what it had done to them, and to her relationship with Sam. He was completely removed from her now, in all the ways that mattered. But he wouldn't admit to it, of course. He was completely committed to pretending nothing had happened, which made it even harder. How could you fix something no one would admit was broken?

“Are you going to bed?” She looked surprised when he got undressed and got into bed after they'd gone trick-or-treating. It was only ten o'clock and neither of them seemed tired when they got home at nine-thirty.

“There's nothing else to do,” he said as she looked at him. “I thought I'd turn in early.” In the old days, that would have meant a little romance, but now she knew he'd be asleep, or pretending to be, before she got out of the bathroom, as indeed he was twenty minutes later. He just couldn't face her, or bear to deal with his “obligations.” And that was the last thing she wanted anyway. If he didn't want her, she'd rather do without, forever if she had to.

She read late into the night, she was feeling better by then. And she was going back to work on the Monday following the Halloween weekend. She had a lot of work to catch up on and a lot of organizing to do. She had two weeks until she began chemotherapy, two weeks in which to feel pretty good and do all the work she could, two weeks to get her office in order before her life turned upside down again. It was a lot to deal with.

And on Monday when she left for work, and dropped Annabelle off at school, she almost felt like her old self again, except that Sam barely spoke to her at breakfast. He never even took his nose out of the Wall Street Journal to kiss her good-bye, but she was getting used to it. And at least now she'd have her work to keep her busy, and her colleagues to talk to. The last two weeks had been the loneliest in her life, and she couldn't imagine anything worse than what had happened.