Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 78696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
So would Remy. And Remy’s kids, Macynn and Madison.
Jacklyn Corrie, a woman also getting chemo at the same time as me, would leave behind two kids, her husband, her parents, and the students she taught.
Hundreds of lives would be affected if she died.
I had maybe eight.
Sure, my friends would probably miss me, too.
But they’d move on.
“Your phone’s ringing in your bag. Do you want me to get it for you?” Misty asked.
I nodded. “Yes, thank you.”
It was easier to stay still while this was going on.
Chemo, I’d learned, was extremely toxic.
If the line from my port were to disconnect, it’d be bad, and I didn’t want to have to put Misty in the position of having to clean the mess up that would happen if I did.
Misty handed me the phone and patted me on the shoulder.
“I’ll be right over here if you need me, okay?” She asked.
I nodded and answered the phone, putting false cheer into my voice.
“Hey, Remy!” I sang into the receiver.
“Where are you?” Remy asked with annoyance.
“I’m doing a little shopping,” I lied. “Why?”
He snorted in disgust.
Remy hated shopping.
That was because his wife was a super shopper.
Something that he hated since he couldn’t afford her shopping habits on the best of days.
“I’m at your house, but you’re not here. There’s eight million police cars outside your neighbor’s house, too. They tell me there were guns found on the premises that were used in a drive by shooting of a kid. Did you hear about that?” He asked.
“No, I haven’t.” I said honestly.
Had that been why Griffin had been there the night before? Was he trying to catch the man who had killed a child?
For some reason, it’d never occurred to me that he’d been there to plant the guns.
I couldn’t say that I knew Griffin, other than in the biblical sense, but I just knew he wouldn’t harm an innocent child.
“I’d suggest not coming home any time soon,” he said. “They’re blocking the street all the way up to the first house.”
Little did he know that I had another couple of hours of this left.
“Okay,” I said. “What were you wanting?”
“Nothing, just to shoot the shit. Got off early,” he muttered.
I could sense he was distracted, and I knew he’d be all up in the middle of the cop’s business if they let him.
Curious Remy always getting himself in trouble.
“How was work?” I asked.
Remy worked in the oil field, one week on, one week off.
He’d been gone since last week, and I expected my place was the first place he’d gone once his tires had crossed into Uncertain territory.
“Long and hot as hell,” he answered. “You busy later tonight?”
I nodded. “No, come see me.”
Dr. Parsons cleared his throat, and I looked up.
“Oh, gotta go,” I said before he could reply. “Bye.”
I hung up before he could say anything else, and I turned to smile at Dr. Parsons.
“Hey!” I said.
He smiled.
“You doing okay, Ms. Lenore?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. So what’d the scans show?”
He shook his head.
“Nothing. It hasn’t grown, but it hasn’t shrunk either. So my best plan of action, as of now, is for us to monitor it. No more chemo, but I would suggest a CAT scan at least every three months. Or if there’s any changes in your headaches or eye sight. Anything at all, okay?”
I frowned.
That hadn’t been what I wanted to hear.
I’d hoped to hear that the little ‘pea sized blip’ had shrunk to nothing.
When I’d come into the ER for extreme headaches two months ago. I had a CAT scan done, which was how they’d found the mass.
Since it was in a location that made it inoperable, they’d decided to do a few rounds of chemo to see if they could shrink it.
And apparently it wasn’t shrinking.
“So what do you think it is?” I asked disappointedly.
Dr. Parsons shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years of practice. It’s not hindering anything at all. And since we don’t know when it appeared, we can’t correlate it with any of your other symptoms.”
I had migraines.
Then again, so did a lot of the US population.
“Just don’t worry about it? If my migraines come more frequently, I should contact you?” I asked.
He nodded. “That’s my suggestion.”
I scrunched my nose at him.
“That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.”
He smiled.
“The good thing is, is that it hasn’t gotten bigger. Which it would have if it was cancerous, in my honest opinion. Now all we can do is watch it, and go from there,” he said softly.
I sighed.
“Well, I guess that’s something,” I said tiredly.
He smiled.
“Let me know if you have any questions. Call my office, and they’ll get you to me, day or night.” He extended his hand.
I took it.
But I couldn’t help but think that this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.
He was supposed to tell me that everything was fixed.
That I could live my life like it was supposed to be lived.
I guess I was destined to be disappointed.
First Griffin, and now this.
Awesome shit.
***
The day after my final chemo treatment, I wasn’t awakened nicely.
I peeled my eyes open with the utmost reluctance.
But with the way somebody was shaking the shit out of me, on top of the glaring light in front of my eyelids, I finally opened them.
Griffin was staring down at me worriedly.
His face a mask of…fear?
“What the fuck did you take?” He asked sharply.
I blinked.
Once. Twice. Three times.
“Snap out of it,” he said, snapping his overly large fingers in front of my face.
“A sleeping pill,” I said tiredly. “What’s it to you?”
He blinked.
“Why the fuck are you taking sleeping pills?” He growled.
“Because it was either I take them or I feel nauseated,” I said slowly.
I couldn’t get my brain to function.
Man, these pills were no joke!
Then my eyes widened.
It’s kind of like when you’re not thinking about it, it’s not real. But the moment you give attention to the monster, this one being my upset belly, it comes roaring back to life with a vengeance. Pissed off as fuck that you’d been denying it attention.