A Cancer Patient’s Wife Chapter 1
I named my husband’s tumor ArnIe. I assumed this mass was likely some random fat cell gone wild. My husband, Luke, was a healthy forty-four-year-old. Now the little bastard, Arnie, had made us spend Friday night in this dirty hospital emergency room. How would they get rid of Arnie, anyway? Surgery? I hoped it wouldn’t be too dangerous.
You’d think it would be difficult to shock me, a former reality TV producer. But today had done it. The drug-addicted wannabe stars literally throwing ice at me had nothing on this tumor. Luke had gone to the doctor with a tickle of a cough and ended up in the emergency room, meeting that jerk, Arnie, who was busy pushing Luke’s right lung and esophagus aside, like last night’s tuna casserole.
Was that tuna casserole I could smell drifting through the room as I waited? No, it couldn’t be. Everyone knows to not heat tuna, or any kind of fish, in a public microwave. Could someone be that rude in the emergency room of all places?
For that matter, who the hell eats tuna casserole anymore? Not me, that’s for sure!
My internal musings about tuna were interrupted as Luke was rolled back into our room. Relief rushed over me when I saw those warm brown eyes and a calm smile. Our eyes met, and I grabbed his hand.
“Do you smell that nastiness?” I asked, avoiding the more pressing questions.
“Fish. Your favorite!” He grinned, then looked away. “So much for something simple like pneumonia.” We laughed, unsure of how to behave.
Instead of discussing our concerns, we decided to make this fun. First, we took a picture of Luke’s hairy chest, which was missing four square patches where the heart monitors were seated. Next, he faked surprise as he showed off one cheek through the crack in the back of the hospital gown. We agreed that the hospital gown was craving a makeover; the designer could have found a more lively pattern than faint blue squares.
Once we finished the photo session, we noticed a tall doctor standing in the doorway, watching. When we made eye contact, he approached, saying many words that became a jumble. The only ones I actually heard were “could be cancer.”
We sat in stunned silence. How had we ended up here? We looked at one another, then back to the doctor as if we were in a slapstick comedy. This can’t be happening, I thought. We were about to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. In our early forties, we were too young for cancer, right? This kind of thing happened in your eighties, not now. Not just as we were starting our life together. “‘Could be’?” I asked once my head cleared enough for words to be possible again. “What are the chances that this tumor is not cancer?”
The doctor stared at the gold-specked floor. His head shook from side to side. No, not in disapproval at the dirty floor. Staring at the floor meant no, Arnie was cancer.
“What is the prognosis?” I asked.
“We won’t know until all the tests are complete. For now, we have to be patient.” He looked away again.
“For how long? Will he need surgery?”
He shrugged. “We’ll start tests on Monday, and it will take four to five days to get the results.”
My stomach dropped. A week? Seriously? How could I wait a week? How could Luke wait to know if he had six days, months, years, or decades left? How? And what about me? What if he died?
I felt like I might throw up.
What happened next was a blur to both of us. More words floated around the room. People buzzed around Luke’s bed. The only thing we both knew was that our lives had just changed forever—all due to some six-inch unidentified mass named Arnie.
