Danielle Steel - Lightning

“Will you still take me to ballet?”

“Sometimes. If I can. If I'm too tired, Carmen will take you.”

“But I want you to take me,” Annabelle whined. She was good about Alex's being tired most of the time, but sometimes it really scared her.

“I want to take you to ballet too, but we have to see how I'll feel. I don't know yet.”

“Will you wear a wig if your hair falls out?” She was intrigued by that, and Alex smiled.

“Maybe. We'll see.”

“That would be really ugly. Will it grow back?”

“Yes.”

“But it wouldn't be long anymore. Would it?”

“Nope. It would be short like yours. We could be twins.”

And then suddenly Annabelle looked terrified. “Will my hair fall out too?”

Alex was quick to put her arms around her and reassure her. “Of course not.”

But after she'd gone to bed, Sam was furious and went after Alex with a vengeance. “That was the most disgusting thing I've ever heard. You scared her to death.” His eyes were blazing at Alex, and as always, she was hurt by his complete lack of compassion.

“I did not. She was fine when she went to bed. I even got her a book about it. It's called Mommy's Getting Better.”

“That's disgusting. Did you see the look on her face when you told her about your hair?”

“Look Goddammit, she has to be prepared. If I'm going to be too sick to do things for her while I'm on chemotherapy, she has to know it.”

“Why can't you suffer quietly? You're always making it her problem, and mine. Jesus, have a little dignity for chrissake.”

“You sonofabitch!” She grabbed at his shirt and it tore in her hand, which surprised both of them. She had never done anything like that, but he was driving her to distraction. She had lost her husband, her breast, her sex life, her sense of her own femininity, her own sense of well-being and immortality, her ability to have more kids. She had done nothing but lose things that were really important to her in the last six weeks, and he had done nothing but criticize her for it. “God damn you! All I do is struggle with what's happening to me, and try and manage it so it doesn't inconvenience you, doesn't hurt her, doesn't overburden my partners at the law firm, and all you ever do is bitch at me and treat me like a pariah. Well, fuck you, Sam Parker. Fuck you if you can't take it.” All her anguish of the last six weeks came spewing out of her like a volcano. But he had so much pain of his own that he still refused to hear it.

“Stop congratulating yourself for how noble and long-suffering you are. All you do is whine about your goddamn breast, which wasn't such hot stuff in the first place. I mean, who even notices that it's gone, and the only other thing you do is ‘prepare' us for chemotherapy. Get it over with for chrissake, do it, don't beat us to death with it. She's three and a half years old, why does she have to go through it with you?”

“Because I'm her mother and she cares about me, and my feeling sick is going to affect her.”

“You're making me sick, and that's affecting me. I can't live like this, with the daily cancer bulletins from Sloan-Kettering. Why don't you just take out billboards?”

“You shit! You didn't even ask about the pathology reports when I got them.” It was the day he had first seen her scarred breast and his horror had superseded his interest.

“What difference does it make? They cut your breast off anyway.”

“It might make a difference if I live or die, if that still matters to you, or maybe that's like the breast you care so little about. Maybe if I disappear too, you won't even notice. I don't see how you could. You don't even bother to talk to me anymore, let alone touch me.”

“What's to talk about, Alex? Chemotherapy? Lymph nodes? Pathology? I can't stand it anymore.”

“Then why don't you get out and leave me to it? You're certainly not helping.”

“I'm not leaving my daughter. I'm not going anywhere,” he spat at her, and then stormed out of the apartment. He stood on the street after that, aching to take a cab to Fifty-third Street, to Daphne, but he didn't do it. He wouldn't let himself. He called her from a pay phone instead and burst into tears. He said he was starting to hate his wife, and himself. He explained that she was starting chemotherapy the next day, and he just couldn't take it. And Daphne sympathized completely. She asked if he wanted to come over for a little while, but he said he really didn't think he should.

He knew he was too vulnerable now, he needed her too much. And he couldn't let her be the excuse for ending his marriage. He had to work this thing out, and see it through. He had to do something, but he didn't know what. He didn't understand it, but he hated Alex suddenly. The poor woman was sick, and he hated her for what she was doing to his life. She had brought sickness into it, and fear. She was going to abandon him. She was destroying everything. Without knowing it, she was keeping him from Daphne.

He walked all the way to the East River and back again. And all the while, Alex lay on their bed, staring at the ceiling. She was too angry to even cry, too hurt to ever forgive him. He had abandoned her. He had failed her completely. In six weeks he had negated everything they'd ever shared, denied anything they'd ever felt, and destroyed all the hope and respect they had built in seventeen years together. And the promise of “for better or worse, in sickness and in health” had been completely forgotten.

It was two hours later when he came in, and she was still lying there. But he never came to see her. He said not a word to her. She lay there, awake, all night, and Sam slept on the couch in the study.

Chapter 12

The oncologist Dr. Herman had referred her to was located on Fifty-seventh Street, and was a woman. Alex had been told to expect to spend an hour and a half with her the first time, and forty-five minutes to an hour and a half thereafter. There would be two visits a month, unless of course there were any problems, in which case she would see her more often.

Alex had scheduled the appointment at noon, and was expecting to be back in the office at one-thirty.

Both Brock and Liz knew that she was starting chemotherapy on that day, and of course Sam did too. He had left for the office, after their massive argument the night before, without even bothering to have breakfast. And he never called her in the morning to tell her he was sorry, or wish her luck with the chemo, let alone offer to go with her. She had already figured out one thing, she was going to have to get through this without him.

The building was a modern one, off Third Avenue, and the waiting room was well decorated and had an open, airy feeling. It was warmly lit, and decorated in soft yellow, and everything about it was deceptively cheerful. If they had led Alex into a dark tomb, it would have seemed much more appropriate. And for some reason, she was relieved to see that the woman she'd been referred to was her own age. She seemed quiet and capable, her name was Jean Webber. And Alex was pleased to see, from her diploma on the wall, that she had gone to Harvard Med School.

They talked in her office for a while at first, and the doctor discussed the pathology reports with her, and what they meant. It was a relief to be treated like an intelligent human being. She explained that the cytotoxic drugs they would use were not “poisonous,” contrary to common belief, but that their purpose was to destroy bad cells and spare good ones. She explained also that Alex's tumor had been Stage II, which was not great news, but that other than the four lymph nodes involved, there had been no further infiltration. It had gone no further. The prognosis, as far as Dr. Webber was concerned, was good. And like the other doctors involved, she felt absolutely sure that chemotherapy was necessary to obtain a complete cure. They couldn't take the risk of leaving even a fraction of a cell to divide and spread. Only a hundred-percent cure was acceptable, and would assure Alex that she would remain free of cancer. Because of the mastectomy, radiation was not necessary. And because of the nature of her cancer, hormone therapy would not be necessary either. The final results of the tests had indicated that it would not be useful. A chromosomal test had been done too, to examine the DNA of the cells involved, to see if there was a normal or abnormal number of chromosomes, and they had found that Alex's cells were diploid, which meant that they had the normal two copies of each chromosome. She had had the optimum outcome. It was a relief hearing about it, except that even with the good news came bad news. The bad news was that she had had cancer at all, and she had six months of chemotherapy ahead of her now, which profoundly depressed her.