Chapter 2: Twenty-Seven Days
For a moment, nobody moved.
The doorbell rang again.
Lucas remained on his knees beside me, staring at the medical report as if he could force the words to rearrange themselves.
Mark snatched the paper from his hand.
“Give me that.””
“Dad, it says twenty-seven days!””
“It's a medical estimate.””
“Twenty-seven days!”” Lucas shouted.
“She's dying!””
Mark's face tightened.
“People with cancer live for years. Stop making this into a catastrophe.””
I closed my eyes against another wave of pain.
My port dressing felt wet beneath my fingertips. The room smelled of rosemary and roasting meat, but underneath those familiar holiday scents was the metallic smell of blood.
“Mark,” I whispered.
“Please.””
Something in my voice finally made him look at me properly.
My lips had gone nearly white.
My hands were shaking so violently that I couldn't keep pressure on the dressing. I tried to push myself upright, but my arms buckled.
Lucas caught my shoulder.
“Don't move,” he said, his voice breaking.
“Please, Clara. Just don't move.””
The words were so familiar that, for one painful second, I was back in the hospital room five years earlier.
Lucas at twelve.
Lucas with tubes in his arms.
Lucas begging me to stay while frightened doctors discussed what would happen if his kidneys failed completely.
I had sat beside him until dawn, singing the same silly song over and over because it was the only thing that made him stop crying.
Now he was kneeling beside me, and his hands were shaking almost as badly as mine.
“Call an ambulance,” he shouted at his father.
Mark glanced toward the front door.
“Vanessa is outside.””
“Then let her wait!””
The force of his answer surprised all of us.
Lucas had spent years defending his biological mother, comparing me to her, and insisting that no woman could ever replace the person who had given birth to him.
Tonight, for the first time, he seemed to have forgotten Vanessa entirely.
Mark finally reached for his phone.
As he dialed, he looked down at me.
“Why didn't you tell us it was this serious?””
I almost laughed.
The movement hurt too much.
“I did.””
“When?””
“Last Thursday. At breakfast.””
He frowned.
“You said the treatment was complicated.””
“I said the doctors were worried.””
“You didn't say you were going to die.””
“I didn't want to frighten you.””
His expression changed for half a second, but only half a second.
Then the old defensiveness returned.
“Well, how was I supposed to know?””
I stared at my husband.
There had been a time when he could recognize sadness in my face before I said a word.
He used to bring me tea when I worked late. He used to leave notes in my lunch bag. He used to kiss my forehead whenever I fell asleep on the couch.
I couldn't remember when those small acts had stopped.
Perhaps it happened gradually.
Perhaps I had been so busy keeping everyone else comfortable that I hadn't noticed how cold our home had become.
The emergency operator answered.
Mark gave our address, then described the injury in a clipped, impatient voice.
“Yes, she's conscious. She has cancer and an implanted port. There's blood.””
The operator began asking questions.
Mark's answers became shorter.
Lucas took the phone from him.
“My stepmother has an implanted chemotherapy port,” he said rapidly.
“She fell and hit her chest. She's bleeding, and she's in a lot of pain. Please hurry.””
He gave the operator every detail he could remember.
When he finished, he set the phone down and turned toward me.
“Clara, look at me.””
I opened my eyes.
“I'm here.””
“Why didn't you tell me?””
The question came out so small that I almost couldn't hear it.
“I thought you knew.””
He shook his head.
“I thought you were getting better.””
I watched him look at the blood on my sweater.
His gaze dropped to the hospital report lying near his shoe.
“You were sitting with me every night when I was sick,” he whispered.
“You never told me how scared you were.””
“You were a child.””
“And now I'm not.””
“No,” I said gently.
“You're not.””
His mouth trembled.
“Then why did I treat you like that?””
I had no answer that would make the moment easier.
I couldn't tell him that he was forgiven before he had even asked.
I couldn't promise him that nothing had changed.
And I couldn't reach across the distance between us simply because he was suddenly afraid of losing me.
So I told him the truth.
“Because you thought I would always be here.””
He covered his face with both hands.
Mark turned away.
The ambulance siren grew louder outside, and Lucas immediately stood.
“I'll open the door.””
“No,” I whispered.
He stopped.
“Stay with me.””
He came back down beside me without hesitation.
For a moment, he held my hand exactly as he had held it during his first kidney procedure.
His palm was warm.
His fingers were damp.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
“Clara, I'm so sorry.””
I wanted to tell him that I loved him.
I wanted to tell him that I had loved him even when he refused to call me Mom, even when he rejected the lunches I packed, even when he told his friends I was merely his father's wife.
But the paramedics came rushing into the room before I could speak.
One knelt beside my head while another examined the dressing beneath my cardigan.
“Ma'am, can you tell me your name?””
“Clara Bennett.””
“Do you know what happened?””
“My stepson shoved me. I struck the sideboard.””
The paramedic's eyes flicked toward Lucas.
He recoiled as if she had struck him.
“I didn't mean to hurt her,” he blurted.
“I only meant to move her away from the chair.””
“Lucas,” I whispered.
He looked at me desperately.
“I swear, Clara. I didn't think—”
“Not now.””
The paramedic examined my injury again.
“We need to get her to the hospital immediately. Please give us room.””
They placed me on a stretcher, secured the dressing as best they could, and warned me not to move unnecessarily.
As they lifted me, I caught sight of the dining room.
The roast sat beneath the chandelier.
The candles still burned.
My Christmas tablecloth was stained with spilled wine, and one of the crystal glasses lay broken beside the chair at the head of the table.
Seven hours of work.
One ruined sweater.
A dinner nobody would remember for the reasons I had wanted.
I turned my face away.
At the front door, a woman stood in a pale cashmere coat, holding a designer handbag and a gift bag covered with silver stars.
Vanessa.
Her eyes widened when she saw the stretcher.
“Mark? What's happening?””
Mark stepped toward her.
“It's Clara. She fell.””
Lucas sprang to his feet.
“She didn't fall! I shoved her!””
Vanessa stared at him.
For several seconds, she seemed unable to find a response.
Then her gaze moved to my bloodstained cardigan.
“Why would you do that?””
Lucas looked down.
“I was angry.””
“Angry about a chair?””
He said nothing.
Vanessa turned toward Mark, but he had already started explaining.
“She's had a difficult few weeks. She's been emotional. The whole thing got out of hand.””
I had heard him describe my cancer in a dozen different ways over the past month.
Difficult.
Exhausting.
Unfortunate.
He had never once called it frightening.
Vanessa looked at the hospital papers scattered near the table.
Then she looked at the paramedics.
“Is she seriously ill?””
No one answered quickly enough.
Lucas suddenly spoke.
“She has twenty-seven days.””
Vanessa went still.
The silver stars on her gift bag glittered beneath the hallway lights.
“Twenty-seven days until what?””
“Until…” His voice collapsed.
“Until she might die if she doesn't get treatment.””
The paramedic standing beside me looked up sharply.
“Ma'am, we'll need to discuss her medical history at the hospital. We have to move.””
As they rolled me out, I heard Lucas turn toward his mother.
“Why didn't you tell me cancer could get this bad?””
Vanessa didn't answer.
I looked back once.
She wasn't staring at the blood.
She wasn't looking at the medical report.
She was looking at Mark.
And the expression on her face was not shock.
It was recognition.
As the ambulance doors closed, I saw her mouth two words.
You knew.
Mark's face went pale.
Then the doors shut between us.
Inside the ambulance, a paramedic tightened the monitoring leads and asked me about my medications.
I answered as clearly as I could.
But my thoughts remained at home, beside the dining table where my husband had continued eating while I lay bleeding on the floor.
The man I had loved for five years had watched our marriage fracture in front of him.
And somehow, the terrible thing waiting for me at the hospital wasn't the worst part of Christmas Eve.
May you like
It was the possibility that Mark had known something about my illness long before Lucas ever picked up that piece of paper.
Something he had deliberately kept from both of us.
