For Better, for Worse, Forever (10 page)

“I’m going to make arrangements now,”
her father said. “We’ll pack what we need. And what we don’t take we can get at home. We have a house full of stuff on Long Island.”

“Will we come back?” April’s voice sounded dull and thick.

“Probably not.”

She winced as if he’d struck her.

Her mother smoothed her hair. “Do you want to call Brandon? Would you like me to call and talk to him?”

“No. I’ll call him from New York.”

“Are you sure?”

April pictured his face. He would pity her. Or worse, he’d withdraw the way her old boyfriend Chris had when she’d told him about her tumor. Better to go away and call Brandon and tell him over the phone. The miles between them would act as a cushion to soften his reaction. “I’m sure,” she said finally. “When he calls later”—as she knew he would—“just tell him I’m resting and that I’ll talk to him when I’m able.”

“If that’s what you want,” her mother said in a tone that told April she didn’t agree with her plan.

“That’s what I want.”

The island of St. Croix slipped away under a blanket of clouds below the airplane’s window. The water turned into a rippled piece of blue taffeta, and April could scarcely bear to look down at it. Like spoils from an old corsage, a few hand-picked hibiscuses lay on her lap, the red and pink petals’ edges wilting, the yellow pollen clinging to her fingers. She felt terrible. The pills the doctor had prescribed made her feel groggy and out of sync, but at least there was no headache. She imagined Brandon coming to the house, knocking on the door, seeing the note. Hastily she’d scribbled: W
E HAD TO LEAVE
. F
AMILY PROBLEMS BACK HOME
. I
’LL CALL YOU IN A FEW DAYS
. Of course, it was all lies. She hoped she’d have the courage to talk to him soon. Tears wet her face as the plane climbed higher and the sea slipped away under more clouds. She closed her eyes and allowed the medication to lull her into a drugged sleep.

Brandon stared at the note, incredulous. April was gone. Just like that. Not even a word of goodbye. She could have called. She could have told him personally or even over
the phone. He turned the piece of paper over, hoping for more of an explanation on the back. It was blank.

She could have said, “
See you soon.”
Or
“I’ll miss you.”
But she hadn’t. She and her family had sneaked away, leaving him with a hundred unanswered questions. The hibiscus bush next to the porch had been picked clean, all the flowers gone, the leaves shining green in the sun. He knew she’d taken them with her. But he also realized that she’d taken much more than the rich red and pink flowers. She’d also taken his heart.

J
uly in New York was just as hot, humid, and sticky as April remembered. In the past, during the sweltering days, her family had taken vacations into the mountains or to Europe. Except for last year, when she’d been with Mark and hadn’t wanted to go anywhere he didn’t go. The city felt oppressive to her now, teeming with people in a hurry—a shock to her system after the easygoing atmosphere of St. Croix. Even her childhood home seemed uninviting. Her parents had called ahead to have it opened and aired, but musty odors from having been shut up for months still lingered. Her room had been cleaned and fresh linen put on her bed, but she missed looking out at the sea, missed the
aroma of tropical flowers and salt-tinged air, and as much as she hated to admit it, she missed Brandon too. In short, she didn’t want to be back home.

On Wednesday morning the three of them headed into the city for the hospital and the rounds of testing she didn’t want to face. Two days later, as they sat in Dr. Sorenson’s office, April felt drained and, like a child in a cruel mazelike game, right back at square one—the place she’d started from more than eighteen months before.

Dr. Sorenson was as pleasant as ever, exactly as she remembered him, but he looked preoccupied, more reserved than in past visits. He placed the MRI films on the light board and drew a circle around the now-familiar dense glob pressing against her cerebellum. “It’s growing again,” he said matter-of-factly, his voice tinged with sadness.

Deep down, it was nothing she hadn’t known, but seeing it on the film, hearing him state the obvious, made her suck in her breath. His actual words gave finality to her situation. It closed doors.

“So where do we go from here?” her father asked sharply, after a moment of silence.

Of course, they’d been all through her options before she’d ever left for St. Croix: She had none. The tumor was too aggressive for treatments, too large for gamma knife surgery.

“I wish I had better news for you,” Dr. Sorenson said now, picking his words carefully.

“Then this is it, isn’t it?” April asked boldly, suddenly wanting to get everything settled once and for all. “There’s really nothing else you can do for me, is there?” Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to let them out.

“You’ve had two rounds of radiation—the maximum—and chemotherapy won’t touch this type of tumor. I’m sorry, April.”

“Her mother and I won’t accept that.” Her father struck his fist on the edge of the doctor’s desk. “I have money. There are other doctors. Other hospitals.”

“Your daughter’s prognosis won’t change. You can spend thousands, hundreds of thousands; it won’t make a difference.”

“Experimental drugs,” her father shouted.
“Something.”

April recoiled. She didn’t want to be somebody’s lab experiment.

“If there was anything on the medical horizon to help your daughter, I would have suggested it. Certainly there are quacks in the world, Mr. Lancaster. There are many people who promise cures but can’t deliver them. Many charlatans who’ll take your money, make April suffer, but not cure her.”

“So you’re saying we just have to abandon hope? We won’t, sir. We can’t.”

“Oh, Hugh …,” April’s mother cried. “Do something. Please.”

April stood. The last time the doctor had tried to close the door on her hope she’d shouted at him too, and then had run from his office, refusing to listen to any more grim news. And she’d gone on to have a few wonderful months with Mark, followed by spring and most of the summer in St. Croix. This time, she was resigned. “Please stop shouting.” Her knees trembled, but she stood her ground and stared at her distraught parents. Unbelievably, a calm settled on her. “It won’t help, Daddy. It won’t change things. The doctor’s out of miracles.”

She sat on her mother’s lap like a child and nestled her head against her shoulder,
reached for her father’s hand, and pulled him closer into the circle.

“Oh, baby,” her mother wept.

“Tell us, Dr. Sorenson. Tell us what to expect.” April was dry-eyed now.

The doctor cleared his throat. “I’ll be increasing your steroid medication to keep down the swelling of your brain as the tumor advances.”

She winced. Even though the pills had helped the headaches in the past, she’d hated the side effects: weight gain, a puffy moon-shaped face, and swollen hands and feet. The treatment had deepened her voice and made hair grow in usually hairless places on her body. “And then? Please tell me everything.”

“You’ll have memory lapses, equilibrium problems, trouble with speech and probably sight and hearing. Eventually you’ll be bedridden. You’ll slip into a coma. Your lungs will fill with fluid, and you’ll stop breathing.”

The progression sounded logical to her. Her body would slowly shut down as the tumor choked out her life. “Will I have to be in the hospital?”

“No, not if you don’t want to be. Hospice
is a wonderful group that helps families keep their loved ones at home … until the end. You can have a nurse, a hospice member, anyone you want with you.”

“I’d like that. I’d like to die at home.”

“Except for headaches, which will pass in time, you won’t be in pain. That’s a unique feature of the brain. It has no nerve endings. That’s why we can perform complicated surgeries on it with nothing more than a local anesthetic. Patients can be wide awake through several types of brain surgery, even talk to the surgeon and give reports on what they are feeling.”

Cold comfort
, April thought. She said, “So, I’ll just go to sleep and not wake up?”

“Yes, that’s pretty much how it will be.”

It was impossible for her to imagine nonexistence, to think of herself not of this world. She hugged her mother tightly and squeezed her father’s hand. “I want you with me the whole time.”

“We’ll be with you, baby,” her mother whispered. “You know we will.”

April closed her eyes, shutting out all but the sound of her own breathing.

Later, April told them she didn’t want to talk about it. She wanted to concentrate on what was happening in the here and now, not in the future. But when she was alone, she steeped her senses in touching, tasting, seeing. She walked in the yard, fingered flower petals, sniffed the roses, all the while mourning the loss of them. Once, she held her breath for as long as she could, but gave up and gasped for air just as she started to feel light-headed. Would she do the same thing when she was in a coma? She wished she’d spent more time talking to Mark about dying, about giving up and letting go.

And she thought about Brandon too. She wondered if he hated her for running off without a word. She thought about calling him but wondered what she would say to him. It was as if she were two people: the girl in New York who was dying, and the girl in St. Croix who was carefree and happy and having a wonderful time. How could she merge the two? How could she expect Brandon to understand? She’d been unfair.

She wondered too how his mother could have tossed away her life. The pain her suicide had caused Brandon was immeasurable.

Hadn’t she considered what it might do to him? April knew that if she could do anything to hold on to her life, she would. It made no sense to her that someone would throw away what she so desperately wanted.

The hospice people came out to the house to visit, to talk. They were kind people, understanding, with their own losses behind them. But April realized they were more for her parents’ benefit than hers. Her parents would be the ones left behind while she would go … where? She’d always believed in heaven, had been taught about it in Sunday school. She tried to remember what she’d been told but could only recall that heaven was a place of great beauty where there would be no more sadness or sorrow.