“I know it seems impossible right now, but people do learn to live again after losing a loved one. With time.”
Her kindness meant everything, but the words sounded empty. A Chinese fortune cookie sentiment.
“I know because I lost a child myself,” she added.
My red, swollen eyes met hers.
“Our first child. She died when I was twenty-six weeks pregnant.” Her gaze drifted for a moment, and her jaw tensed at the memory. “I had very high blood pressure during the pregnancy, and it was too dangerous to have surgery to remove my dead baby girl. So, for days, I had to carry my daughter after she’d already passed. Until my body was strong enough to survive surgery. It was the worst time in my life. I prayed my heart would stop so I could leave this world with her.”
We sat in silence. My eyes wandered to the photos of her kids on her desk. Their smiles. Their missing teeth. Their whole lives untouched by grief.
“It might seem impossible right now to understand why such bad things happen, especially to good people, but with time, you can find happiness again, even if a part of your heart will always be missing.”
Dr. Langford reached for the tissue box on her desk and handed me one. I dried my tears.
“I’ll do everything I can for your daughter. For her chemo or imaging, I’ll transport her to the hospital.”
It took me a few tries to speak.
“It’s serious, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “It’s very serious, Mrs. Kolter. Clear cell ovarian carcinoma is one of the more aggressive ovarian cancers. And because we caught it late, the options inside the system are limited. The jail will only approve basic chemotherapy. That might slow the cancer for a while, but it usually doesn’t hold it back for long.”
“How long?”
Dr. Langford looked as if she were losing her own baby girl again. Like a mother truly understanding the horror I was living.
“If she stays in jail,” she said, “we’re looking at maybe ten months. A year tops, realistically. I wish I could tell you something different.”
“What if I could get her out?”
“If she’s released, that could change things. She could see a gynecologic oncologist. Start the advanced therapies the jail won’t approve. Avastin, PARP inhibitors, clinical trials … treatments that actually work really well with this cancer. With full care, she could have years. Two, four, even five years. I’ve seen it.”
That was all I needed to hear. I weakly squeezed Dr. Langford’s hand. Looked straight at her.
“Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Please do what you can while I get my daughter out.”
She nodded and rose with me.
I didn’t recall the walk through the parking lot back to my car, but I found myself standing in front of it. Time was jumping back and forth or sideways. The ringing in my ears was back. The sky looked warped, too bright.
I didn’t remember getting inside my car either. But I was driving now, the wheels rolling, the parking lot shrinking in the rearview mirror like a nightmare dissolving behind me.
I whimpered. I gasped. I made it almost a mile before pulling into a parking spot next to a small bridge crossing astream. Then I parked my car with my shaking hands and fell apart again.
“No!” I screamed, hitting the steering wheel so hard the horn blared beneath my fists.
“Noooo!” I screamed again, so loud my voice cracked. The pain flooded through me. I was losing my little girl not only to jail but forever to cancer. It was more than I could take.
Tears ran down my face as I broke into loud sobbing and screams, hitting things around me with full force. Whatever I could reach—the sideboard, the steering wheel—until I left a dent in the console.
I hated this world. My only child was dying in a jail cell, accused of a horrendous crime she didn’t commit. All while the whole world hated her and would continue to hate her kids. We’d already gotten death threats via email and even one in our mailbox.
It all crashed over me. The court trial. The arrest. The constant fight with the prosecutors. All the friends and family who had turned their backs on us. The loneliness. The shame. The fear. For a moment, the unthinkable ran through my mind.
What if I just put the car into Drive? Drove down that hill into the stream? Ended this unbearable pain?
But even having that thought angered me. How dare I? I had to be there for the kids and Brian. Even if I didn’t mean it, I couldn’t let my mind go there again.
