When we pull into my sister’s driveway, her car is in front of the garage. The clock on the radio says it’s 4:23pm. Parker said he’d be over after work, which means I have roughly thirty minutes to let it all out and compose myself.
My mom turns off the car but doesn’t move. Looking out her window, she tells me to go inside without her.
The lump begins to get tighter, and I can feel my throat closing. I only nod and make my way to the door. When I’m almost to the front door, I turn and look back at my mom. I watch as she sits with her face in her hands. Through the window, I can see her shoulders and I know she’s crying. I want so badly to wrap my arms around her and tell her how much I love her, but I can’t. I can’t force myself to tell her it will be okay when I’m not sure I believe it myself.
I don’t bother taking off my shoes when I enter the house. I close the door and make my way through the living room and down the small hallway to my bedroom.
Genna calls my name and I stop. She comes out of my room holding an empty laundry basket. Her smile instantly fades when she sees me.
“Aundrea! What happened?”
She looks concerned as she sets the laundry basket down on the floor and rushes over to me. I can’t deal with her right now. I hold up a finger, indicating that I need a minute. Dodging to the left, I make my way into the bathroom.
Closing the door behind me, I place both hands on the counter. I bow my head, tucking my chin into my chest and trying desperately to calm my breathing. I hear Genna talking through the door, and my throat is getting tighter by the second. My legs begin to shake and my hands begin to tremble. I splash some cold water on my face, trying to bring the color back, but it does nothing. I can feel my eyes burning from holding them open, trying not to allow the tears that are begging to fall, but they fall anyway. They start in slow steady streaks, but eventually pick up, clouding my vision.
The tears come out in cries of pain and choking sobs.
The walls around me start closing in. The room begins to suffocate me, making it difficult to catch what little breath I have. The pounding in my chest grows and my breathing becomes panicked as I try to control it, but it’s useless.
The sobs breaking through feel like daggers being shoved through my heart. The pressure is so tight. Unbearable even.
I need it to stop.
I want it to stop.
Why am I the one who deserves to die? What did I do that I deserve to be punished?
“Why me?” I scream at the hazel eyes taunting me. My stomach hurts. I can feel my entire body tightening, squeezing down as if someone is trying to suck all the life out of me.
The room becomes too small.
My chest is tight.
All I feel is the pressure of a fifty-pound weight holding me down.
I can fight cancer. I know how. But this is something that will kill me.
Not if.
Not maybe.
Will.
Still looking at my reflection in the mirror, I pick up the blue and white soap dispenser on the counter and throw it at the mirror. The glass breaks into tiny pieces upon impact. Glass shatters onto the counter and floor. My face becomes distorted between the cracks. I let out a small laugh. Finally, my reflection looks like I feel.
Broken.
My small laugh turns into a cry of pain as I scream in frustration through the tears. It feels wonderful to finally let it out. Everything that has been bottled up for the last four years is finally being released. I scream again and again until my dry throat burns. There is pounding on the door and shouting from the opposite side, but I ignore it. It’s beyond liberating to get all my pain out. I cry harder, clenching my fists into my chest, trying to take the stabbing pain away.
I grab the shower curtain, yanking it until it comes loose. Throwing it to the ground, I lose my balance. My sobs become uncontrollable as I pick up the small white fiberglass trashcan and throw it against the shower wall, watching it burst into a hundred pieces.
The pounding on the door gets louder, and there are more voices screaming, “Right now!” and “Kick it in!”
I reach for the soap dispenser that is now on the tile floor. Picking it up, I slam it back into the mirror a few more times, shattering what glass is left, over and over again. My hand is red from blood, but I welcome the pain.
I sink to the floor between the tub and the toilet. I don’t care that I’m leaning against the toilet, or that I’m bleeding. The bathroom door flies open, and Genna’s arms grab my elbows, pulling me to her. I rest my head on her chest and cling to her. Fisting my hands in her shirt tightly, the blood begins to drip.
With everything I have, I clutch at her as if she is going to disappear. I let the last tears fall because after this moment I refuse to submit to them again. I will bounce back from this.
I will move on.
I will live my life.
I will survive.
“Shh,” she says over and over again, swaying us back and forth. “I’m here. Shh, it’s okay. Let it out.”
“What the fuck happened?”
I’m being pulled out of Genna’s arms into strong ones, but I don’t look up. I never thought I had this many tears in me, but I guess four years of keeping it bottled up will do that.
“Aundrea, baby, what happened?”
I don’t answer.
“I don’t know, Parker,” Genna says. “She came home twenty minutes ago and did this.”
“Your mom is sitting out in the car alone. You might want to go check on her,” I hear him say while pulling me onto his lap.
“She’s okay. She just came in and is sitting in the living room. She’s not speaking, but she’s okay. I called your dad to come back from the store.” It’s Jason who speaks.
“I’m going to go check on Mom. Jason, can you get her something for her hand? Parker, why don’t you take her in her room and lay her down?”
Parker pulls us to a standing position. Still keeping ahold of me, he reaches for a towel wets it, then cleans my hand, wiping away the blood and glass. It looks worse than it really is.
“Baby, what did you do to your beautiful hand?” He kisses my temple as he walks us across the hall to my room.
Once we’re there, he sets me on the bed as Jason comes in with some gauze and tape. “Here. Will you be okay?”
“Yeah, why don’t you give me some time with her?”
Jason closes the door, leaving us alone.
After my hand is wrapped, Parker presses for answers. “Aundrea, you have to tell me what happened. What did the doctor say? From the remodeling you did across the hall, I know it wasn’t good news.”
So I do. I tell him everything Dr. James and Dr. Olson said.
Then I tell him what I said.
He doesn’t speak right away. He soaks up all the information. Processes it.
“I understand your reasoning for saying what you did. At the time, in the moment, it seemed right. But, Aundrea, they were foolish words to speak or even think.”
“Where do you get off telling me that? You don’t know! You haven’t felt what I am feeling.”
“You’re completely right, but I do know you didn’t mean anything you said. God, Aundrea, think of everyone around you.”
“Don’t you dare say anything more. Don’t you dare say that to me. I have been thinking of everyone for the last four damn years of my life. I’ve been thinking of only them, so much so that I forgot to think of myself. What I want. I can’t do it anymore, Parker. I am too damn exhausted. I was born to die. I get that. Please, just let me enjoy whatever life I have left instead of counting it down by doctor visits and fear. Besides, I didn’t say no to the damn drugs. All I said was give me time to understand. Let me process it. Don’t sit here and tell me how I should react or what I should and shouldn’t have said.”
We all have an end date. We know we’re going to die. The only question is when. It’s the not knowing—the somedayness—that makes it easy to not think about. It gets thrown to the back of our minds. But when you’re told your end is a lot sooner than you ever imagined, it makes everything clear. Life becomes clearer.
It’s the little details in life that we take for granted. Everything we do is to plan for our future. We buy a certain piece of clothing to wear for a special occasion, or we start saving for our child’s college education before they’ve even had their first birthday. We’re constantly thinking ahead, and not thinking about today. We don’t use our nice china outside of those special holidays, or wear our fancy clothes just because we want to. People simply don’t think about the end.
Well, I do. It’s all I ever think about, and I don’t want to think about it anymore.
“Aundrea.” He gets down on his knees in front of me. “I’m not telling you what to do. But I am begging you, please, for me: get on the damn medication. I know that no matter how hard life gets, it’s amazing to just be here. To be alive. Don’t throw that away. Don’t throw us away. Our life, your life, is just beginning. I want to grow old with you, Aundrea Leigh McCall.”
“I don’t look at this as throwing my life away. I look at is as living my life. I’m right where I want to be. With you.”
“There isn’t anything to think about. Take the medication. We’ll take it day by day. Together. I just got you and I refuse to let you go.”
I’ll get through this. I always do. You have to get through the bad days in order to get to the good ones. This is a bad day. But I know tomorrow, and the days that follow, will be good.
Parker slumps in front of me, burying his head in my lap. His shoulders start to shake, then I hear the quiet sounds of him crying.
“Parker, look at me. I never said I wasn’t going to take the medication. I’m trying to process all this, and it fucking hurts. You have no idea what it feels like to be told that you’ve survived cancer only to be handed a heart condition in return.”
When he looks up, his eyes are shining.
“Aundrea, I will marry you. I will have children with you. I will live a long life with you. You and I will take on this world together. It’s you and me. I will have it no other way. I love you more than I have ever loved anyone, which is why I will fight for you until my dying breath.”
“Promise me that after this moment, you will never pressure me regarding any future surgeries or treatments. I am beyond ready to be done. I just want to start living my life with you.”
He wraps his arms around me, pulling me tighter. “I can’t make that promise because I will stop at nothing if it means saving your life. I will give you my own breath, if it means keeping you alive.”
I pull him tighter to me and sob into his shirt. We hold each other all night, talking about our future, making plans, and not looking back.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Parker suggests we get away for a while. I agree, thinking we’ll go up to the north shore for a weekend, but he recommends a week in Florida to meet his family and relax on the beach. It sounds like the perfect getaway, escaping from reality for a while.
Before we leave, I meet with Dr. James to discuss my future schedule in depth and start my new lifelong medications.