I AWOKE TO a killer headache and a sense of well-being that completely belied the pain. Millie had let me sleep, though she’d gotten up with Henry for school and had been awake for hours, just waiting for me to roll out of bed. I liked the way it felt, coming awake in Millie’s bed, listening for her in the house. I thought of the ring in my glove box and wondered if today wasn’t as good a day as any to extend an official invitation to join Tag Team.
I staggered into her bathroom, considering how I would pop the question. One look at my reflection—both eyes black, my head swollen and ugly, the stitches across my forehead garish and spikey—and I decided it could wait until I felt a little better.
After a few kisses, a couple of pain killers, and a pile of fluffy eggs that Millie had expertly prepared, I was finally ready to start my workday, though it was almost noon. Millie had a full day too, and we parted at her front door, Millie going one way, me going another. She didn’t want me to drive her to the blind center. She wanted to walk. Surprise, surprise. So I watched her walk away, enjoying the view enormously.
Millie didn’t drag her stick from side to side when she walked. She tapped it, rapping it against the concrete, left foot forward, stick goes right. Right foot forward, stick goes left. Click, clack, click, clack. Maybe it was the dancer in her, but she liked creating a rhythm when she walked. Sometimes she bobbed her head, and wiggled her hips, even though anyone looking on would probably wonder at the blind girl shaking her butt to the rhythm of her walking stick. But she said she couldn’t see them staring, she couldn’t see them laughing, so she didn’t care. Perks of being a blind girl.
“Hey, Silly Millie!” I called after her.
She stopped and turned around.
“Yeah, big guy?”
“What song you dancin’ to?”
“It’s a new one. Maybe you’ve heard it. It’s called ‘Nothing Rhymes with David.’”
I threw back my head, laughing at her quick wit and bellowing the song I’d composed the night before as she continued on her way. “I love the way you smell so fruity, I love the way you shake your booty!”
“That’s the song!” she called out and wiggled a little more as she waved and continued down the sidewalk. My phone vibrated in my back pocket, and I answered it, still laughing at my girl.
“Mr. Taggert, this is Doctor Stein at LDS hospital. I had a chance to look over your MRI test results with radiology.”
“Don’t tell me. My brain is abnormally small,” I teased, my mind not really on the conversation at all, but on Millie’s retreating form. She made it hard for me to concentrate on anything else.
The doctor didn’t laugh. That should have been my first clue. That and the fact that I’d left the hospital less than eight hours before and he was calling me himself. But in that moment, the moment before the news left the doctor’s lips and my eyes left Millie, I was completely, perfectly happy. Life isn’t perfect, people aren’t perfect, but there are moments that are. And that was one of them. That moment was a bright red balloon filled with anticipation of what life would bring, of Millie and me and a million tomorrows. And then it ended. It popped with a loud crack, and the rubbery remnants of my perfect moment lay at my feet.
“I would like you to come back in. I want to run another test, focusing on the area of concern. There are some abnormalities, a shadow that needs some further investigation. This is not my area of expertise, so I’ve consulted a specialist, and he is actually available this afternoon. Could you come in an hour?”
I KNEW I was a little claustrophobic. I was claustrophobic for the same reason I was afraid of the dark. I had always attributed it to the asthma I’d had as a kid. Waking up in the middle of the night gasping for air, the feeling of being closed in, of not being able to take a deep breath. Of knowing you had to breathe or you would die, and not being able to. Claustrophobia was just another word for helplessness. I hated feeling helpless.
They told me not to move and I didn’t, but I didn’t breathe either, and they aborted the first attempt until I got my shit together.
“Is there someone we could call, Mr. Taggert? Someone you would like to be here?”
I shook my head. No. I didn’t want a soul knowing I was here. They all thought I was okay. I had insisted I was okay. What was it Millie said about her blindness? The image in my head is the only one that matters? I was adopting that attitude. I was okay. And my opinion was the only one that mattered.
“Nah. It’s good. I’m fine. Let’s just do this.” I found myself winking at the pretty nurse, putting on a show the way I always did. Distracting myself. She winked back. I knew she liked me. I could always tell when a girl found me attractive. The way their lips pursed, the way their eyebrows raised, the way their eyes darted. All the little clues and signals that I’d never gotten from Millie. And yet Millie loved me. Millie loved me, and I loved her.
“Whenever you start feeling trapped or helpless, just close your eyes, and you have more space than you’ll ever need.”
That’s what Millie had told me. I tried to take her advice, closing my eyes and allowing the huge darkness to help me breathe. I had to be okay because if I wasn’t, Millie was going to get hurt. And I had tried so hard to take it slow, to not rush her, to not rush us. To be absolutely sure I knew what I was doing. I had been careful for the first time in my life. I had been so careful. So cautious. And I was still going to hurt her. I felt panic rise in my chest and heard a voice telling me to breathe, to calm down.
“You’re doing just fine, Mr. Taggert. You’re almost there. You’re almost done, Mr. Taggert.”
“God? Oh God,” I prayed. “I don’t want to be done. Please don’t let me be done. Please don’t let me be done.” I prayed like this all the time. It was my upbringing. Talking to God felt a little like having a conversation with myself, the inner me. I’d always believed God created that inner me, so talking to him was a bit like having a heart to heart with myself. No, I don’t have a God complex. I just think most people make too big a deal about God, fighting wars to defend him or staging protests to deny him. He just seems like a good guy to me. I like talking to him.
I don’t usually kneel when I pray, though I had when Moses almost died. I’d made all kinds of deals too. And I don’t make deals with God—I know myself too well. I just ask him for stuff and thank him for stuff—no strings, no promises in return—so that I don’t ring up a huge tab that I have to pay off at some point. I figure if He helps me, gives me what I need, it’s because He thought I deserved it or wanted to give it to me. So I don’t owe him anything. But I’d broken my rule for Moses. I guess that’s what you did for the people you loved. You broke your rules. Moses had done it with Georgia. He’d smashed all his stupid laws. And I had broken mine. Not just with Moses, but with Millie. I had finally settled on one woman, and I was breaking my rules again now, begging God to forgive the tab. I’d made a deal for Moses, and I hadn’t fulfilled my end of the bargain. Maybe God was calling it in.
“THERE’S A GIANT mass on your frontal lobe.”
The doc didn’t beat around the bush. He just pointed at pictures of my brain and spoke, very matter-of-factly. I could see the black mass he was outlining as clear as day. He turned to look at me.
“You haven’t had trouble with your handwriting, trouble with speech . . . maybe weakness in your right side. It’s off to the left side of your brain, which will always affect the opposite side of the body. You haven’t had any symptoms?”
I wanted to say no, but the symptoms had been there. I just always rationalized them away. “I’ve been seeing spots when I’m tired, and I have noticed more muscle fatigue on the right side. My left hand has always been my dominant hand, so maybe that’s why it didn’t affect me as much. I’ve been training hard. I thought it was dehydration. Thought it was stress.”
“You took a blow to the head in an altercation?”
“Yeah, to the forehead. It didn’t even hurt, but it stunned me a little. It was a good thing he stopped swinging because I couldn’t see a damn thing for about ten seconds. I just stood there while he laid on the ground, covering his head. My vision cleared once I mopped the blood off my face, and I could see again. I guess it was a good thing the guy was drunk and stupid.”
“Guess so.” His lips quirked, and I was glad he wasn’t going to lecture me on the seriousness of the moment. I got it—the seriousness hadn’t escaped me.
“So what do we need to do?” I asked.
“We have to get in there, see what the mass is, and remove as much of it as we can.” He didn’t call it a tumor. He called it a mass. But I wasn’t stupid.
“Get in there?”
“Craniotomy. We put you out, drill a hole into your head, remove as much of the tumor as we can, take a section for biopsy, and stitch you up. It sounds a bit Frankenstein, but you can actually go home in a day or two. It’s not something that requires a lot of recovery time.”
“So it’s no big deal?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. We are talking about your brain, after all.”
“And what are the risks? What if I don’t want you drilling into my head?”
“The risk of leaving it there, of not determining whether it’s cancer or not, could be fatal. If it is cancer and you don’t treat it, it will be fatal. And then there are the risks that come with any type of surgery that involves the brain. Loss of memory, sight, motor functions . . . We’re talking about the brain,” he repeated.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.
Idon’tknowwhattodoIdon’tknowwhattodo. The words became blurred and blended, and yet I couldn’t shake them from my brain. The doctor urged me to move quickly. He said time was “of the utmost importance.” He said we needed to act . . . And all I could do was shake my head.
“No,” I’d said. “No.”
“David. It’s the only way we can move forward. We have to operate as soon as possible.”
Millie was the only one who called me David.
“Tag. Call me Tag,” I insisted numbly.
“Tag,” he nodded agreeably. “Talk to your loved ones. Tell them what’s happening. You need some support. And then we need to see what we’re dealing with.”
“What are the odds?”
“What do you mean?”
“This kind of mass—it’s a tumor, isn’t it?
“Yes. It is. We don’t know if it’s cancerous, but even benign tumors need to be removed.”
“What are the odds?”
“That it’s cancer?”
“Yes.”
“I would be lying if I told you I believed it was benign.”
“Have you ever seen a tumor in the brain that wasn’t cancer?”
“Not personally. No”
No. No. No. No. There was an odd echoing in my ears and I couldn’t sit still.
I stood and headed for the door.
“Tag?”
“I need to think, Doc.”
“Please. Please don’t think too long, Mr. Taggert. You have my number.”
I jerked my head in a semblance of a nod and pushed out of his office and into the long, sterile hallway beyond.
I don’t remember walking out of the hospital. I don’t remember walking across the grounds or whether the sun was shining or whether rain fell. I remember pulling my seatbelt on and staring at the buckle in my hand and clicking it home carefully, as if it would protect me from the news I’d just received. I stuck the key in the ignition and backed out of the lot as my phone rang. I couldn’t talk. I wouldn’t be able to hide my agitation, but I clicked the speaker anyway almost desperate to avoid myself. I didn’t look at the display, didn’t know who was calling, but it delayed what came next.
“This is Tag,” I barked, and then winced at the volume of my voice. The echoing remained and I rubbed at my temple as if I could adjust the reverb in my head.
“Tag. It’s Moses.” With his voice on speaker it was like he was sitting beside me in my truck. I wished he was and was grateful he wasn’t.
“‘Sup, man?” I shot back and winced once more, this time because I was such a fake.
“You okay?” It was an I-demand-to-know question, not a polite how-are-you, and it shook me. It made me defensive too. How the hell did he know I wasn’t okay?
“Yeah. Yeah. Why you askin’?” I pushed back.
“I saw Molly.” Moses sucked at polite conversation.
My mind tripped over itself again.
“What?”
“I haven’t seen Molly in years . . . not since Montlake. Last night I ended up painting a mural of David and Goliath, like something from a Sunday School story, instead of painting the picture I’d been commissioned to paint. Now I’m behind. And I blame you.”
“Me?” I was only half listening as I backed out of the parking lot and began to drive. I didn’t know where I was going.
“Yeah. You. The David in my mural looks suspiciously like you. So your dead sister is obviously trying to tell me something. That, or she doesn’t like your chosen profession.”
“David kicked Goliath’s ass, remember? Nothing to worry about.” I was conducting the conversation from a very mechanical, detached side of my brain, and I observed myself talking to Moses even as my thoughts were bouncing in a million different directions.
“I don’t think Goliath’s ass was involved,” Moses growled. “If I remember right, it was his head. Goliath took a blow between the eyes.”
“Yeah . . . right. That must be it. I got cracked between the eyes with a bottle of beer last night.” Was it just last night? “Guy laid my head open. I have a few stitches. I’m impressed, Mo. So now you’re a psychic too?”
“You okay?” There it was again. The demand to tell him everything.
“Yeah. All stitched up. Doesn’t even hurt.” I wasn’t lying. It didn’t hurt. But I was skirting the truth. I wasn’t okay. Not at all.
“Well, that’s not surprising. You have the hardest head of anyone I know. What happened?”
“Just someone heckling Millie while she was dancing. I grabbed him to throw him out, and he nailed me in the head.” I didn’t want Mo saying I told you so. He’d never liked Morgan. So I left Morgan’s name out of it.
“Millie?” he asked.
“Millie,” I answered.
He was quiet for a heartbeat, and I waited, wondering what he was stewing over.
“You there yet, Tag?” he asked.
“Where?”
A huge sigh seeped through the phone’s speaker.
“Are you there yet?” he said again, louder, slower, so damn pushy.
“Yeah. I’m there. I love her. Is that what you want me to say?” My hands started to shake, and suddenly I couldn’t see the road. A horn blared behind me, and I realized I had drifted out of my lane.
I swerved and swiped at my eyes, trying not to kill myself, at least not yet.
“I don’t care what you say. I already knew. I’m happy for you, man. She’s kind of a miracle.”
“Yeah. She is.” The tears were streaming down my cheeks, and I gripped the wheel with both hands.
“I wasn’t sure you’d get one . . . or even that you needed one. But you did. We both did. How the hell did that happen?” He had relaxed with my confession, and I could hear the smile in his voice.
“You believe in miracles, Mo?” I wasn’t smiling. I was searching.
“I got no choice. I’ve seen too much.”
“You think I’ll get more than one?” It was all I could do to spit the words out.
“More than one miracle? Why? Millie’s not enough?” He laughed at me, but I heard the surprise too.
Millie was more than enough. I wasn’t greedy. I just wanted to be around to enjoy my miracle.