“That’s code for ‘Just sit here and stare at a magazine page you’re not really reading while we figure out if you should be worried or not,’” Darlene whispered.
I lowered the Vanity Fair I’d just picked up and looked across the waiting room at the petite woman with the cotton-candy hair and vibrant, almost indigo eyes. Her makeup was the epitome of 1980s chic—all purples and blues and stark lines. Her skin showed her age, but her eyes belied it.
“Not your first rodeo?” I asked, tamping down the nervousness that always—despite my positive self-talk—seemed to overwhelm me on these yearly visits.
“The nurses are on my Christmas card list. Does that answer your question?”
My smile felt less strained this time. “Every year—every year—I tell myself that it’s just a routine check,” I said, letting some of my anxiety show, “and that millions of women go through this without anything bad coming of it, but still . . .” I shook my head. “I sit in this room that’s clearly designed for optimism and calm, and it’s all I can do not to write an obituary in my mind.”
Darlene laughed and pointed at the speakers in the corners. “You think Elton John knew that his watered down Muzak would be the backdrop to so much mammography angst?” She extended her hand as she moved to the chair next to mine and said, “Darlene Egerton.” I felt a weight lift. There was something humanizing about sharing names.
“Cecelia—Ceelie—Donovan.”
“Nice to meet you, Ceelie Donovan.”
Twenty minutes later, the nurse who had performed my mammogram reentered the waiting room. “We just want to get a couple more shots from different angles,” she said in a friendly tone as she ushered me back into the hallway lined with exam rooms.
I could hear sympathy under the practiced cheer of her voice.
Just over two months later, Darlene sat next to me again and, by mere proximity, seeped comfort into my post-operative uncertainty.
Her voice was softer than usual when she said, “The worst is over. All that waiting and imagining. Now you know what kind of pain you’re dealing with. And it’s not as bad as you thought, right?”
I nodded and blinked back tears.
“You’ve got this, sweetie. Every day is going to be different. There may even be one or two when it feels like you’re slipping back instead of making progress—I had a few of those. But you’re in good medical hands. The best. And you’re a fighter.”
She must have seen something in my expression. Her smile faded and she sat back. Moments passed before she spoke again. “Tell me.”
The tears that had been threatening since I’d woken began to fall. I hunched a shoulder and winced. I wasn’t distraught. I wasn’t terrified. I was . . . daunted. And so very disappointed. “Dr. Sigalove said I’ll probably need chemo.”
Darlene’s pencil-fine eyebrows went up. “Didn’t she tell you going into this that the surgery would be enough—?”
“They found another tumor,” I interrupted her, needing to get it out. “One that didn’t show up on the mammograms.” I took a breath and let it out slowly.
Darlene sighed. “So . . . chemo.”
“I might have gotten a pass with the small tumor they knew about, but this one . . . She said it could change things. A lot.”
Darlene sat up straighter on the stool and projected such bold optimism that I felt it bridge the space between us. “So you don’t know for sure.”
“No, but Dr. Sigalove—”
“Lesson number one in being a survivor,” Darlene cut me off, “do not—I repeat, do not—borrow on tomorrow’s worries. Do today.” She put on her retired-high-school-teacher face. “Repeat that.”
I’d grown accustomed to the exercise. “Do today,” I dutifully repeated.
She gave me a hopeful look. “Dr. Sigalove didn’t tell you for sure about chemo because she doesn’t know for sure about chemo. They’ll figure it out when they get pathology back, but until then . . . Don’t borrow.” She squinted into my face and leaned in a little. “Repeat.”
“Don’t borrow.” There was something spirit-lifting in the words. After a pause, I added, “You had chemo, right?” So much for not borrowing.
I could tell she didn’t like the question, but she answered it anyway. “I did. And if the Chicago marathon I’m running next month is any indication, I’m fairly certain I lived through it.”
Surprise took my mind off of myself for a moment. “You entered a marathon?”
“October 13. Starts at Grant Park and goes all the way to the 31st Street Beach. But I plan on finishing my race at the Jackson Boulevard Starbucks.”
I felt myself frown. “Isn’t that . . . like . . . two blocks from Grant Park?”
Darlene winked at me. “Sure is. Now—tell me when that husband of yours is coming in to see you.”
Nate. Encourager. Perspective-giver. In-demand contractor prepared to sacrifice a job or two—or three—to care for me.
When I’d gotten back from my mammogram appointment that first day and told him about the repeat images followed by an ultrasound, he’d sat next to me on the couch and listened. Then he’d dragged me out to a nearby forest preserve for a walk in the sunshine.
When I’d gone back to the hospital two days later for a biopsy, he’d sat next to me again and held my hand, talking to the doctor and nurses calmly—steadying my nerves with his attentiveness to me and kindness to others.
When Dr. Sigalove’s office had phoned to tell me they had my results, I’d waited for Nate to come home before returning the call. He was sitting beside me—solid and still—when words like invasive, margins, and prognosis entered my vocabulary for the first time.
In the weeks that followed, he lay next to me night after night as I grappled with an appalling new reality, consumed by impossible what-ifs and what-nows.
In ways I couldn’t quite define, my diagnosis had altered our relationship. More than two decades of marriage had dulled our conversations and dampened our impulses. Our lives’ orbits had started off intertwined, but with time had imperceptibly drifted onto parallel paths. The shock of cancer—the waiting and absorbing and researching and decision making—had forced our trajectories back toward each other before we’d fully realized how far they’d strayed.
Nate had gotten me a vintage Crosley record player for our anniversary, five weeks after the dreaded call from Dr. Sigalove’s office.
“So . . . the traditional gift for twenty-four years is supposed to be musical instruments,” he’d explained as we sat on the floor in front of the fireplace washing pizza down with beer—a tradition that had begun at about two a.m. on our wedding night in a hotel off the Magnificent Mile.
I stopped chewing and flashed him my attaboy smile. “You did some research, Nate.”
“I did. But since neither of us is likely to pick up the saxophone at this point in our lives, I figured we could settle for playing classics on this old gem instead.”
He smiled and handed me an LP.
“Weezer?” I shouldn’t have been surprised. When we’d discussed what song we’d use for our first dance during the weeks leading up to our wedding, I’d brought “Endless Love” and “Now and Forever” to the table, and he’d tried to convince me that Weezer’s self-indulgent “The Sweater Song” was appropriate for that kind of occasion.