Chapter Twenty-One
Eric
I was in the middle of an appointment on Monday afternoon when my cell phone rang. I frowned, planning to ignore the thing. I could give them a call back afterward. But as soon as the phone quit ringing, it started up again. I glanced at Mrs. Allbright as I finished up the prescription that I was writing for her. “So you'll need to take two of these twice a day until they run out,” I instructed her. “But they'll print those instructions on the bottle when you go to fill the prescription. Let me know if you have any problems or if your symptoms get worse.”
Mrs. Allbright looked doubtfully toward my bag, where my phone had started ringing for the third time. “Aren't you going to answer that, dear?”
“Is it all right if I do?” I asked.
“It sounds like it must be important,” she said.
I nodded and grabbed my phone, stepping out onto the back porch to answer, giving me a little privacy. “Hello?”
“Eric! Eric, thank God. It's my mother. I don't know what's wrong with her or why she hasn't called 911, but she called me and said she can barely breathe and that she has severe pain in her chest. I don't know what's wrong, but I can't go over there right now because I have the kids.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said. “Olivia, I need you to take a deep breath for me, okay? In and out, nice and easy. Where is she?”
“At her house,” Olivia sobbed. “She's at her house, and Eric, I don't know what's wrong. It's so unlike her to complain about anything; it must be really serious.”
“I'm on my way over there now,” I promised. “I'll keep you updated. For now, just stay where you are. I'm sure everything is fine; we'll just do a couple of tests to make sure.”
The truth was, I wasn't sure that everything was fine. But worrying would only make Olivia panic even worse.
I hung up the phone and headed back inside, grabbing my things. “I've received an emergency call. I have to go,” I told Mrs. Allbright. “You can pay me later for the visit.”
“All right, go!” she said, waving her hands at me.
I ran over to Jeannie's house, bounding up the front steps in a single leap. Fortunately, the front door was unlocked, and I tore inside. “Jeannie?” I called, running from room to room. I skidded to a halt outside the bedroom, panting slightly.
Jeannie was laying back on her bed, her breath rattling from her lips. She coughed lightly. “Good to see you, doctor,” she panted.
“What seems to be bothering you?” I asked, putting on my professional voice as I strode into the room. “Olivia said your lungs were hurting you and that it was difficult to breathe?”
Jeannie nodded but didn't respond further.
Her breaths were coming irregularly, I realized, and I started to do a full examination, or as full of one as I could do here. I strapped a breathing mask over her face, but it didn't seem to help as much as I would have liked.
I frowned, feeling grim. I had a feeling I knew exactly what the issue was, and if I was correct, it wasn't a good sign. “Jeannie, I need you to come with me to Kingsfield to go to the hospital,” I told her as gently as I could. The woman's eyes widened, and I could tell that she was scared. I hurried to soothe her. “I just want to have some X-rays taken of your lungs,” I told her. “Just to see if we can figure out what's causing your pain.”
Jeannie's face clouded, and I thought for a second that she was going to argue. But she must have been in a decent amount of pain because, eventually, she nodded and let me help her up from the bed. I wondered if we would be better off taking an ambulance, but she was able to walk under most of her weight, although her breaths were still uneven and rattled.
Besides, an ambulance wasn't going to be able to help her more than I could. I had a feeling that the problem was that she had tumors growing in her lungs. Only a CT scan could tell; we would be able to see the vessels of the tumors and be able to go from there.
I swallowed hard, wishing that it hadn't come to this. Maybe if I'd been a little more insistent about the chemo treatments, we could have avoided this. Or at least delayed it, giving Olivia a little more time with her mother.
I drove too fast on the way to the hospital, but fortunately, I wasn't pulled over. I used my connections to get Jeannie in immediately for the X-rays, doing my best to fill out her paperwork based on the information I already had in her file, which fortunately had been in my doctor's bag since I'd been planning on having another talk with Olivia soon anyway.
I stood up as one of the doctors made his way over to me. “Dr. Halsey, good to see you,” I said, reaching out to shake his hand.
“I wish I had better news for you,” Halsey said grimly. “It's exactly what you suspected: the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes, and the tumors in her lungs are growing. Pretty soon, they'll be large enough that she won't be able to breathe properly.”
I closed my eyes and pressed my fingertips against my eyelids. “All right,” I said. “What do you suggest we do? Chemotherapy?” Halsey was one of the leading oncologists in the state; if anyone was going to be able to come up with a solution, it was him.
Unfortunately, he looked grim. “There's not much that we can do at this stage, Eric,” he said quietly. “Even with chemo, the chances are slim to none that she'll survive for much longer.”
I winced. “Could we surgically remove the tumors?” I asked, even though I knew that wasn't a viable option at this stage.
Sure enough, Halsey sighed. “We could try to remove them,” he said. “There's a chance that could make things worse for her body because it would have to fight off possible infection as well as the cancer. But even if we were successful in removing them, I'm afraid the cancer is in her blood at this point. Nothing is stopping it from coming back or spreading. It would only be a matter of time before we have to face the high likelihood of death again.”
I sighed. “I know,” I admitted. “I just hoped there was something else that we could do.”
Halsey gave me a strange look. “This isn't the first patient that you've lost,” he said slowly. “Why are you so fixated on this one?”
I grimaced. “I lost my wife to cancer a couple of years ago,” I admitted. “And Jeannie is the mother of my…of a good friend of mine.” I stopped just short of calling Olivia my girlfriend. We might have agreed that we were going to keep dating, albeit in secret, but I still remembered her insistence on not labeling this, on not putting undue stress on the relationship.
“I'm sorry to hear that,” Halsey said sincerely, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder. He paused. “Where is her daughter?” she asked. “Her mother's been asking.”
“Olivia runs a daycare,” I told him. “She's got kids at the moment so she couldn't get away. That's why she sent me here with her mom.”
I knew that I needed to call Olivia, but I could only imagine how that conversation would go. Plus, I knew that she would have no choice but to bring Emma, but I didn't want Emma exposed to hospitals and death. She had been too young to remember everything that had happened when Emily had died, and I wanted to keep it that way. Keep her innocence, in a sense.
But we didn't have a choice; it wasn't like she could go back with Nana for the day.
Fortunately, Olivia made the decision before I even had a chance to call her. She burst through the doors of the hospital looking distressed but bravely staving off her tears. Emma came with her, clinging to the woman's hand, looking around in fascination.
“Hey,” I said, moving to intercept them.
Olivia gave me a brave smile and looked down at Emma. “Harlan went back home for the afternoon. Sorry to bring Emma here, but I had to see Mom.”
“I know,” I soothed. “Come here, let's see if Emma can stay with one of the nurses while you and I go in to see her.”
The nurse was more than happy to watch Emma, and Emma was more than happy to stay with her, once she was promised coloring pages, a sucker, and (if she was really good) a balloon. I breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that she'd chosen today of all days to cooperate.
“What's happening with Mom?” Olivia asked as we hurried away from the nurse's station. “She's all right, isn't she?”
I took a deep breath and pulled her into an empty room, closing the door behind us. “She's awake and aware, but she's not doing good,” I told Olivia. “The cancer has spread, and she's having a difficult time breathing. At this point, there's nothing else that we can do except make her comfortable.” I scowled, knowing that I shouldn't take my anger out on her, but I was frustrated. “You know, if the two of you hadn't ignored my warnings, we could have at least extended her life for a little while, if not managed to save her.”
Olivia stared at me, her mouth falling open. “Excuse me?” she asked.
“She's dying, Olivia. And soon. It didn't have to be this way. If you'd cared enough, you would have convinced her to take care of this when it first became an issue. And don't try to tell me you didn't know that it was this severe; you moved to Tamlin because you knew exactly how severe it was.”
Olivia was silent for a long moment, tears welling in her eyes. “You ass,” she finally whispered.