Sixty Days (31 page)

“Is that so…” I tease.

Further thoughts were eliminated from my mind once he had me undressed and in bed. I had officially declared myself a happy woman that night.

The next few days went amazingly well.
Maddie loved spending time with everyone, but I could tell her favorite moments were those she spent with Mama. To see my daughter and my grandmother spending that much time together, like we used to do when I was her age, was earth shattering. My dad had bought her a jungle gym playground that practically took over the whole backyard. I was afraid our little girl might turn out spoiled if we keep this up.

Things cou
ldn’t be better. Everyone seems to be in a renewed happiness ever since our little angel arrived. Even Junior had backed off of his drinking and spent some time playing with her on the jungle gym. That bought a few laughs out of all of us. Our baby girl was a happy child.

Mama se
emed to enjoy her more than anyone. She reached out to me one day and thanked me for giving her the chance of meeting one of her great grandbabies. I didn’t pay that much attention to her words, but I should have done so. I should of have known. It was all over her face, she looked happy but deep inside those angelic eyes of her I saw the pain that she was going through. The fact that Maddie was here with us had distracted me away from it.

But
, come Friday evening I couldn’t ignore it anymore. They say all good things come to an end, but I never really believed in that until that day. I just never thought that this day would come so soon.

I
wasn’t ready for it. I was totally blind sided.

Chapter Twenty

T

he thing about secrets, especially the really big ones, is that they always come back to bite you in the ass. Hard. No matter how much you try to keep them.

I was with Maddie playing on her new swing set
when I heard someone calling my name. Hearing the panic in the voice, I looked to the sound.

“Laylah, oh
, Dios, you have to come quick,” Carla says once she gets to where I am.

“What is it?” I ask
, beginning to worry. She begins to speak but she hesitates and eyes Maddie who is standing by my side.

Feeling that whatever Carla might say would upset her, I kneel by her side and tell her
, “Baby girl, why don’t you go inside and play with your daddy and Buddy while I talk with aunty Carla for a second, okay?” she nods in response and runs to the house, but not before giving me a hug and telling me to hurry.

I look to Carla and raise my brow in question
.

“Ay Dios! Laylah es Mama,
” she says.

“What’s wrong with her?” I ask
. Already feeling the panic deep in my bones, I start walking toward the main house.

“She fainted, your dad and Angel are alrea
dy trying to get her to respond but she won’t. We’re pretty sure she needs her insulin shot but none of us know how and Lola is out. Then, I remembered hearing that you knew how. So I came looking for you,” she kept talking, but I tuned her out.

I knew it couldn’t be that, she never missed her insulin shot
. She was very strict about it. I knew, I just knew it was something else, something more serious. So, I stopped listening to Carla, hell, I even left her talking alone, and I just started running to the house. I could feel the bile about to come out of my throat but, I ignored it, pushing it to go back down. I need to think and act fast. I needed to believe it wasn’t time, at least not yet.

“Mama!” I screech out of panic once I
entered the house and saw her passed out on the floor.

My mom was in a corner crying as she looked over my dad and my uncle who both were trying to get her to react with what seemed
to be a cotton ball wet in alcohol. I quickly went to the floor where they were and started to feel for her pulse. I could hear her breathing, so I knew she still hadn’t left us yet. But, her pulse was weak. I could barely feel it.

“Call an ambulance!” I ordered
, to no one in specific.

I felt my dad move and reach
for his phone. I could hear him tell the operator what had happened and give them all the information about my grandmother. I could also feel my walls shattering.

Secrets. They can break you apart. This one, this was one secret I
never wanted to be part of. But, she left me no other choice and look at where it got us. Her, lying on the floor unconscious, leaving me all to tell the one secret that could break this whole family apart.

When the ambulance came I convinced them that I should ride with her since I
knew her medical history. Not wanting to waste more time, they quickly agreed. Before leaving, I asked Carla to go get Mickey and tell him what had happened. Meanwhile, the ride to the hospital was the most eternal thing in this world.

Four hundred and fifty eight, that’s how many floor tiles you can find in the waiting room of a hospital.
Or, at least that’s how many I counted or maybe undercounted. I’ve been at war with myself. I had found myself at a point where I don’t know what the hell to do. Ever since I found out about what it is that’s taking my grandmother away, I’ve been in denial. This denial is what made it easy for me to just keep lying, pretending like nothing serious was going on. But, there is no way to deny it now. I can’t keep pretending she’s fine because she isn’t.

They says the truth will always set you free
. But, how can it? How can telling my family that my grandmother, my dear, old, sweet angel, has cancer set anyone free? How do I say that the cancer is eating her alive and feel better? I can’t. This truth is not freeing, it’s damning.

How can you even
pretend that something like this isn’t happening? Could it be because the person you’re losing lives their life in the most positive way, enjoying each day that passes? Is it because they go through life like they won’t die any day now? Does that makes them stronger? Does it even help them enjoy the time they have left without worrying about the what if’s in life? I truly have no idea. But it sure seemed to work for her, until today.

I just know that my grandmot
her is one of the strongest women I have ever known. She keeps this family on its feet. I have seen her grow weaker physically but so much stronger in heart, mind, and character. So it must help make her feel better, to suffer less.

It was during the middle of the year that we found out, she was just going to do some routine checkups
, nothing more and nothing less. It was supposed to be just that. The doctor did some testing and told her his suspicions, telling her to come back in a week for the results. And so we did. This time Mickey came with us upon my request since I didn’t think I could’ve handled it alone.

Long story short
, the doc told her she had bone cancer, told her about the many different treatments and about the surgery. He told her that the cancer had started to spread, that the more she waited the more aggressive the treatment had to be.

She just told him she didn’t want any treatment, that she didn’t need it. It broke m
y heart. I couldn’t understand the reasons for her to do this. When I told her I’ll be calling my mom and uncles to tell them about her sickness she made me swear not to do it, that she will eventually do it. She never did tell them, and now is up to me.

“
What are you doing? You can’t just give up like this. You can’t just, not fight it. You have to do something. Why aren’t you doing something?” I ask her feeling exasperated.

“Because, there is nothing to d
o, Laylah,” she practically hisses at me, something she has never done.

“What do you mean there is nothing to do? There is plenty of options out there;
you heard what the doctor said,” I tell her practically screaming now.

“No, Laylah, there isn’t. It’s all over me, going to treatment would only make me weaker. I won’t be able to enjoy
my family like I’m supposed to. I want to be there for them, for you, for all of you and going to treatment won’t allow me to do so.” she explains but I am not hearing any of it.

“The hell with them! Some
family we have. It’s been what? Over a year since they’ve come here? We barely talk, and what? How many secrets have we kept from each other? How many lies do we keep telling each other? Forgive me, but if you’re doing this because of them, don’t. Please, don’t. Please, just do it for yourself, go to treatment. Get better; get better so you can still be here with us. So you won’t leave me. I need you, vieja. I don’t think I could ever handle a life without you. You’re my rock, our rock. How could we ever survive a life without you?” I say calmer now, the tears running out of my eyes uncontrollably.

“Laylah!” she reprimands. “I know this family is far from perfect, no family ever is. But
, I love you all, regardless of it. I have thought you all good, I trust the decisions you all take in life because I taught you all to trust and believe on yourself over anyone else. I taught you to learn from our past mistakes. But, above all, I’ve taught you to forgive each other because that’s what families do, we forgive each other, we love blindly.

“So
, yeah…I’m doing this for you, for all of you, my beautiful, imperfect, loving family. And I trust all of you won’t ever disappoint me, whether I’m here or not. Mi niña, I rather be here for you as strong as I’ve always been than be here for you all bones and weak. I love taking care of my family, that’s what I was born to do. Going into treatment won’t allow me to do so. I love you, Laylah and I’ll always be here for you. Even when I die, you can always count on me. We just aren’t meant to live forever,” she says.

“Oh…Mama! This is
just too hard for me, how can you ever be so strong and positive about this?” I move to her pulling her in a strong hug

“I have faith, Laylah. Promise me something? Promise me you won’t tell any of them
. I’ll tell them all eventually,” she asks me as she wipes my tears off.

“Why?” I ask in a c
onfused tone.

“Because, they aren
’t ready to hear it yet,” she simply says.

After some time I saw she was doing better, so I figured she may have accepted to go into one of the treatments. She sure fooled me.

The first thing I di
d when I came here was call her doctor. It seemed like the right thing to do. When I called the doctor, he had told me that she had dropped him as a doctor. She had only gone to one of the treatment sessions and after that one she never came back.

Now
, how can I tell all of this to them without making them hate me? I know, I know it’s not my fault it’s nobody’s fault, but it sure is a lot of weight and responsibility for me to take.

It’s hard to tell your
whole family that one of them is dying.

It seems like it took them h
ours but the family finally arrived to the hospital.
Waiting here alone was getting tiresome. As soon as they all arrived, I explained everything. How they had to stabilize her and do some checkups, everything except the reason why she was really here. I had decided to tell them, but my two lifelines were missing and I just couldn’t do it without them. I asked where Mickey and Maddie are. They assure me that they are on their way. Mickey had been trying to find someone to take care of Maddie while we were in the hospital but he couldn’t find anyone and our baby girl didn’t want to be left with some stranger.

“Mommy,
” I hear her call for me and her little feet running towards me.

“Come here
, sweetheart,” I tell her, picking her up in my arms. As soon as I do, I completely lose it and start crying as I hold her in my arms. Mickey, seeing me, comes to where we are and hugs us, saying sweet nothings in my ear. Giving me strength and telling me it will all be fine, reminding me that Mama is a very strong woman.

Sensing all eyes on me from my family I finally turn to them
. “She has cancer.” I tell them letting out a breath I didn’t even realize I was holding.

“What do you mean she has cancer?” all but Junior and Lola ask.

It took a while, but with Junior’s, Lola’s, and Mickey’s help I was finally able to clear my conscience. No more secrets. They understood why I didn’t tell them and they told me they didn’t blame me, they could never blame me.  But, that doesn’t mean that they weren’t broken by the news. They were now more worried with her health condition than they were before. And, the fact that no one had come to us to tell us how she was, made things worse.

None of us wanted to leave, I knew that at least Micke
y and I should leave because Maddie needed to sleep but our little girl wanted to stay. Lola and mom had gone a couple of times to the hospital chapel to pray and took her with them. Then, whenever anyone wanted to go to the cafeteria she also went with them. I guess her company did them good, calmed them. I know that to me it did. It also helped to keep her mind distracted from what was happening around her.

It took eight hours for a doctor to finally come to us with new
s. “The family of Angelica Gonzalez?” he called from the door and we all stand up to go to where he was. “I guess she wasn’t kidding when she said she had a big family waiting for her.” he said with a humorless laugh.

“How is
she?” my mom and my uncles ask, moving the closest to him.

“She’s doing well. It took us a while but we managed to stabilize her. Once we did
, we kept her resting and kept an eye on her to check if her condition worsened. As you probably all know, Mrs. Gonzalez has bone cancer. Due to the fact that she is a diabetic it makes things more complicated. I checked her record and it said she had refused treatment. Due to this, the cancer had spread all over her body quicker than normal,” he said and I felt like the air was taken away from me.