I think somehow we are both letting this reality sink in. However, it’s only slowly seeping through the walls I built to get past this. Any more revelations and everything bearing down on them might cause my shelter to break. But what else can I do? I need to get through this conversation.
“After the surgery?” I ask.
“Um, yeah, after you will do five rounds of chemotherapy.” He starts to go over the way that the tumors look and their positioning, but I honestly don’t care. Where they are or how bad they are is the reason why we have to take these measures. I don’t need to know their first and last name to hate them.
“Can you stop?” I raise my hand, my mind finally registering that he is still talking.
“Ms. Pierce, unfortunately, we need to go over this information.”
“Write it down or something because I can’t do this.” Finally feeling it all start to crumble, I stand up, not giving him a chance to protest. I run out of the room and down the stairs until I can smell fresh air.
With every inhale, a choking sound follows. It doesn’t feel like I’m breathing from the way my chest is constricting, but at this point, I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be doing anything at all, which is why I sit down on the sidewalk and curl my knees into myself. I keepstuttering over my breaths, as my eyes release everything I have been holding in.
It doesn’t feel like enough. It doesn’t feel right. Nothing may feel right ever again.
Which is why I finally give in to the hysteria. I finally let myself face what is actually happening to me.
I have cancer, I will never carry a child, and I have to put my body through hell to survive this.
But can I do it? Am I strong enough?
After I scrape myself off the street and stop making a spectacle, I call Farrah on my way home. She meets me at my door and instantly pulls me into a hug.
Once inside, she gets me a tea and wraps her arms around me, surrounding me in her support.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.
I explain the treatment plan and let her see the email from the doctor with the paperwork. She reads it all quietly before breathing out a big sigh.
“I’m so sorry, Monty.” She squeezes me tighter and rests her chin on top of my head.
A sob escapes despite my best efforts to keep it together. I hear her sniffling too.
“This isn’t fair,” she says, her voice weak.
What is fair? What is a justifiable reason to get cancer? This disease doesn’t care about fairness; it doesn’t choose people who are “deserving”. It just is what it is, and I need to face it.
Still, the pain in my chest only intensifies every time I think of everything that has to come next. And the tears pour down my cheeks unrelentingly. I have to curl into myself to hold it all together.
“I’m scared,” I whisper, the words pushed free by the building panic.
“I’m scared, too.”
“I don’t know if I can do this.” I breathe out a shaky breath while closing my eyes, scared to face this confession.
Farrah squeezes me in her arms even tighter, the pressure keeping me in one piece.
“Of course you can. You’re the strongest person I know, Monty, and you have accomplished everything you set out to do. There is no way that cancer is going to be the thing to stop you.”
“But what if it changes me? What if it hollows me out?” I press a hand to my chest like I can keep everything inside of me. Every part that I fought to build to make me who I am today.
“It’s going to change you, but it’s not going to break you. You won’t let it, and neither will I.”
I try to nod, but I don’t know if I believe that enough to make it look like I do. She can tell I don’t, so she turns me and forces me to look into her eyes.
“You are going to be okay. I promise.”
“Can you promise that?”
