20. Heidi
I had called my long-time oncologist as soon as his switchboard started taking calls the morning after the barbecue at Lago Colina. The doctor went quiet as I told him my symptoms, then commanded me to come in immediately.
Logan and I sat in the doctor’s office, and I was consumed by the guilt of telling Callie we’d take little Hope in, then turning around and asking her to dog-sit so we could leave her less than twelve hours later. Neither of us spoke as we sat waiting in front of Dr. Patel’s mahogany desk. I’d made a second call to the park, telling Eli where I was and asking them to hold onto the deer until I could get there. He expressed concern for my health and assured me that no matter the outcome of my tests, at least I’d get to end the day on a high note.
I’d relayed the message to Logan, and he’d given me a thumbs up, impressed that Eli had the ability to be a good guy to me, after all. I wanted to point out that his great qualities were why we were friends once, but the air was charged with my anxiety and fear, until it felt like my hair was going to stand up with the static. I didn’t want to say anything that would set off a fight with Logan. Not when so many frightening possibilities hinged on the blood, piss, and pictures taken before we were told to sit and wait, patiently, to find out if I had a future.
“You’d think they’d be better about not making people wait, considering some of us are about to hear we could be dying,” I fumed, and jumped out of my seat to pace the office. I examined the knick-knacks and thank-you cards from patients who had gone into remission under Dr. Patel’s care. I searched the shelves for an old, dusty card from a fourteen-year-old me. He’d kept it, and it was just as I remembered it. It was faded, but you could still make out the girl on the front of the card, mid-leap, about to jump a hurdle.
Inside it said, Thanks for not letting me die, even when my world crumbled, and I didn’t have the strength to fight anymore.
I’d given him the card shortly after my dad left and my mom and I had gotten our first clear test after a difficult round of chemo and then radiation therapy. There had been times I wanted to just die. There’d been times I wondered if my mother didn’t wish it, too. We’d made it through, but my dad leaving and blaming me for not wanting to stay had put a blemish on our relationship that we never really recovered from.
“What is it?” Logan’s voice drew me back to the office, and I set the card back on the shelf.
“Just a card from a very grateful teenager who was excited that one day she’d have the chance to meet and fall for a handsome, famous photographer.”
Logan shook his head and scoffed. “A photographer who just so happened to be trying to commit radical acts of animal rights activism and trespassing on parts of the park he wasn’t supposed to be in.”
I put my fingers in my ears. “Lalalalalala, I can’t hear you admitting to breaking the law,” I said in a singsong voice. “Don’t forget, I was in my office when I met you. No illegal activities taking place. Except maybe looking way too good while covered in mud and leaves and the blood of a baby deer.”
“Uhhh…” Dr. Patel had walked in behind me and was looking at us in askance.
“Doctor!” I cried.
He offered me a hug, and I accepted, then hurried back to my seat.
“Did you find your card?” he asked with a smile.
I nodded. “I can’t believe you kept it for all these years. It seems like such a long time ago that this was my second home.”
“It’s only been ten years, Heidi. I have cards up there older than you are, let alone your remission. But I treasure every one of them as much as each new patient does. Those cards are a visible reminder that this can be beaten. You beat it.”
“Did I?” My voice trembled.
The doctor folded his hands on top of my file, just as he’d done every visit since I could remember. “I’m sorry, Heidi. Your preliminary tests don’t give me definitive results.”
Logan shifted and leaned forward. “Wait. What does that mean, then? Does she need more tests to find out anything at all? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?”
I put my hand on his knee, and he glanced at me, his brow furrowed with worry, and covered my hand with his.
“I know we haven’t met. What’s your name, young man?”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Patel. This is Logan. He’s my—”
“I’m her fiancé.” He didn’t let me contradict him before he continued, “Please, Doctor. Can we take hope from this?”
The doctor opened the file and reread the test results I was sure he had already memorized. “All I can say is that there is no clear cancer in your blood or tissue. We’ll schedule an MRI and more tests, okay?” I nodded numbly. “To answer your second question, Logan, I always say there is room for hope until there isn’t. No cancer in her blood cells means no cancer in her bone marrow.” He sighed and slid his glasses into the breast pocket of his lab coat.
“I’ll make another appointment, then,” I said, and stood to leave.
“Please, wait. I need to understand your symptoms. Please tell me what happened?”
Logan and I took turns explaining the incidents where I’d lost strength in my legs, and I tried to describe the sudden pain in my back that left me paralyzed from the waist down until the sensation wore off. His face was thoughtful, and I wondered how long it had taken him to develop a blank face that wouldn’t show his patients any fear or concern.
“Heidi, I’m not going to pretend that I know what you’re experiencing. I want to have you schedule an MRI, and I’ll get a consult on your pain. Right now, as far as we know, you don’t have cancer. No one knows what tomorrow will bring, but for now, let that be enough to keep you going, okay?”
I nodded and sniffed back tears. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”
Dr. Patel smiled at me and clasped his hands together. “Because you don’t know how to feel, and you’ve been running all morning on adrenaline. Now that the adrenaline rush is subsiding, you feel unbalanced.”
I gave him a wan smile. “And now I know.”
Logan reached over and rubbed my back in small circles while I tried to get my heart to beat at its regular rhythm.
“I’ll get your prescriptions and the MRI order to the front desk. You just take your time, okay?”
I nodded, and he shook Logan’s hand before he left.
“Are you okay?” Logan asked once we were alone.
I shrugged. “Why did you say you’re my fiancé?” I refused to look at him, afraid my eyes would give away just how my heart had leapt at those words.
“I was afraid he wouldn’t let me stay with you while he told you if I wasn’t family. I wasn’t going to leave your side when you needed me the most, Heidi. But I didn’t mean any harm by it. You know I hope someday that’s where we end up.”
I nodded and glanced at him sideways. “I didn’t hate it.”
He laughed. “Well, thank God for that, at least. Hey. You do need more tests, but you get to live the rest of today as though you don’t have cancer. Let’s go see Honey and his mom off, and then maybe do some research on our own about what else you might be dealing with. What do you think?”
“I think I’m going to take Dr. Seale up on his offer and put in my resignation today. I can’t go back there knowing that my life could possibly end surrounded by people who despise me. Even if I’m not dying, I can’t go back to living that way.”
Logan jumped up from his chair and did a running man by the window of the small office.
“What are you doing?” I gasped.
“The Running Man,” he said with a laugh. “It’s a celebratory dance, Heidi, because you’re doing something new and different that has the potential to make you feel good about your work again.” He sighed and sat back down, taking my hand in his. “I don’t have to put up with harassment or backstabbing at the construction company. But even I know how hard it is to find joy in life when your happiness is sucked away in the vacuum that is your job.”
I felt a swift stab of guilt knowing that Logan’s joy was in his photography. It was what had made me care about him at first. His complete absorption in his photography, and the joy it brought him to be out in nature, capturing it forever and protecting it at the same time. Then there was me, who was asking him to give it up and try to stay put. Maybe he wasn’t like my dad, and he’d always come back to me. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t.
I glanced around Dr. Patel’s office. It was a tiny space full of overflowing shelves of medical periodicals, cards and gifts from patients, and papers and folders in general disarray I’d come to think of when I was a child as what it meant to be a doctor.
Now, I saw years of labor fighting an enemy that won more often than it lost, taking with it entire families, even when it released its victims from the grasp of death. The same old, dusty office with a single window that overlooked the roof of the building next door and not much else, and Dr. Patel was still the first surgeon to take patients every morning, and he was likely the last one to leave every evening. He’d been to thousands of funerals in his career, and someday, I still hoped I could invite him to my wedding. How had he managed to keep faith in his work through it all?
“What are you thinking?” Logan was by the exit, holding his hand out to me.
“I was wondering how someone like Dr. Patel comes into work every day with rare holidays or vacations, dealing with what he does. I feel guilty that I couldn’t give the same level of commitment to my work that he does to his. Or that you do to yours, for that matter.”
“Everyone loses faith, Heidi. Not everyone gets sexually harassed and then emotionally abused by their employer though. I didn’t want you to quit because you couldn’t cut it with the park service. You just deserve better.” He scratched his head. “You deserve friends who see how compassionate and generous you are and an employer who has his eye on your amazing problem-solving skills instead of your ass.”
“I feel like I’m giving up,” I sighed, and it was true. I felt like I had never finished anything that I’d started in life. Not school, not my job, and soon I would lose my first relationship.
“Moving up is not the same as giving in. Your life is only going to get better from here. We’ll make sure of it.”
I bit my lip and nodded.
“C’mon,” he said, shaking his hand at me. I took it and let him escort me to the front desk and pick up my scripts.
The truck was quiet as we drove out to the park to see Honey be released back into the wild. Logan was as lost in his thoughts as I was, though I was sure his mind was on his work as much as mine was on… Well, I was thinking about his work, too. We couldn’t keep pretending that we were a solid couple, meant to be from the start and “ride or die” to the end. He needed to go. And now, I needed to stay. I was frustrated and angry with the world. I had just made up my mind to leave Texas and follow Logan wherever his travels sent him and the next thing I knew, I was holding a printout for more cancer screening tests.
“So, what do you say we plan a little getaway for when this is all done. You, me, Hope, a cooler of beer, and a houseboat sound okay?” He glanced over at me and grinned, then did a double-take when I didn’t respond. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t have cancer today. But next week, I probably will. That’s just the reality of it, and I’m ready to face that.”
“So, you don’t have to face it alone.”
“Yes, Logan, I think I do.” I couldn’t make myself look at him, so I watched the scenery speed by us, flat plains of grasses bisected by the occasional stream as we headed out of the flatlands and into the rolling hills that marked the outer edge of the Davey Crockett National Forest.
“No. You don’t. Don’t you understand how I feel about all of this?”
“I don’t care, Logan. That’s what you need to understand,” I blurted, and then I couldn’t stop the words from spilling out. “I don’t have to care what you feel or my mother or anyone else. I’m tired of fighting this for other people. I fought so my mother wouldn’t have to bury her child. I survived so I could show my dad I was worth being loved. I’m tired, and I don’t know that I want to fight anymore. But I know I don’t want to fight so that someone else can feel better about their life.”
I hugged my knees to my chest and buried my face in my arms so I wouldn’t have to face him. Neither of us spoke, and I waited to see if he turned the truck around and took me home. I hoped he would, so I could avoid the humiliation of quitting my job and having to call a cab to leave. When I couldn’t stand the silence any longer, I glanced up. He was slowing down and turning onto a dirt road, his face set in a scowl.
“Where are you going?” I asked in a small voice. My heart raced at the thought of being stranded out on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.
“I have to pull off the road for a minute. If you don’t like it, you’re welcome to keep walking.” His voice was gravelly and raw-edged, like he’d been crying, even though he was dry-eyed and furious.
He turned off and parked the truck, then turned off the ignition. As he sat there, refusing to look at or speak to me, I started to wonder if I should get out and try my luck at finding a kind stranger to pick me up. I unfolded my legs and sat up straight, and an intense sharp pain shot through my body so suddenly I froze, a scream caught in my throat. I couldn’t let him know how much pain I was in. I was afraid he’d think I was making it up to get out of there.
I closed my eyes against the dizziness caused by the pain and concentrated on breathing and trying to relax my jaw without crying out. Just as the pain peaked and I thought I was going to pass out, the truck rocked as Logan jumped out. The movement was too much for me, and the scream I’d been holding back tore out of my mouth just as my door flew open and Logan yanked me out of the cab. He pulled me to the ground as I tried to fight him off, too weak to do more than harmlessly slap at his hands while he forced me to lay flat and stretch out my legs to their full length.
“It’s okay, it’s going to be okay,” he said as I panted in ragged breaths. “You’ve got this. It’s okay.” I couldn’t open my eyes against the searing pain, but I felt his hand as he smoothed it across my forehead.
“I can’t,” I started, but I couldn’t find the words to ask him to help me roll over.
“This one was bad, wasn’t it?” He turned me on my side then and rubbed my back. The change in position helped, and my body went limp.
“This is what I mean,” I said when I found the power to speak. “I don’t want to live with this, not for you or anyone else. I’m done, Logan.”
He kissed my forehead and ran his hand down my side. With each repetition, the pain seemed to decrease.
“I’m not asking you to suffer just so I don’t have to see you die, you colossal dumbass,” he replied, his voice thick with frustration. “I’m telling you that you don’t have to suffer alone. I’ll be here, whatever happens.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he cut me off.
“No, Heidi, you don’t get a say in it. I’ve never been so terrified as when I saw your body go stiff, and all the color drain from your face.”
I turned my face into his lap, and he cradled me while tears slid down my cheeks and soaked his jeans.
I didn’t want Logan to suffer with me. I wouldn’t have wished that on anyone, even my worst enemy. Still, I clung to him and prayed that he meant what he said and fought my stubborn pride as long as he could. Never had I been so scared as I was at that moment.
“Hey, good news, Logan,” my voice crackled through my raw throat. “I don’t have cancer today.”
He laughed and sniffled, and as he met my eyes, stray tears fell from his face to mine. “It’ll be a good day then,” he replied, still fighting back tears of his own.
“When I can move, do you think we can get a milkshake before going to see Honey?”
Logan was quiet for a moment before he nodded. “Sure thing, beautiful, so long as I get to rename that poor little guy before you ruin him for life.” He gently moved my head from his lap to the blanket he’d folded and laid on the ground before he pulled me out. He lifted me effortlessly and half-climbed into the cab of the truck while I helped by pulling myself up with the handles. My legs still weren’t right, but the searing pain had stopped, and my heart wasn’t racing a hundred miles a second anymore. I didn’t want Logan to see me bald and vomiting constantly. I didn’t want him to have to stand over my grave because he just happened to meet me at the wrong time. But I didn’t have the strength to chase him off any more than I had the strength to walk away from whatever was happening to me.
“I don’t want to go to the ER, Logan. Can we please just go see Honey, and I’ll get the X-ray ordered in the morning, like we planned?”
He sighed and his mouth twitched unhappily. “We’ll see the critters off, and then you’re going to bed until it’s time for your appointment.”
I nodded and leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the window while Logan got back on the road.
The episodes were terrifying, but I was so much more afraid of the diagnosis that I would do anything for one more day before I had to know the truth. One more day to let myself live in the fantasy that I could have happily ever after with Logan and finally feel like I was part of the world I had watched for so long from the outside. I knew someday soon Logan had to go and live his life free from the burden of my pain. But as I snuck furtive glances at him from my seat all the way across the cab of the truck, I was glad that day hadn’t come.