I thought wildly. I was losing my mind. Maybe I’d feel better without it.
“This is your right breast and this is your left,” Dr. Dreamboat said. “As you notice, there is a considerable difference in the tissue between the two. If you’ll look right here…” He used his pen as a pointer and circled a spot on the X ray that looked alarmingly out of place. Before he said another word, I knew Kim was in trouble. Dr. Andrews’s words jumbled together as I focused my full attention on the spot to which he was pointing.
“…rather large…doesn’t appear to be a cyst…biopsy will tell us for sure…think it should be done right away…tomorrow…any questions?”
Questions? All I had was questions! I looked at Kim. She had a stunned look on her face and was curling her shoulders forward into a fetal position.
Dr. Andrews moved around the burnished cherry desk and angled one hip against it until he was half sitting, half standing in front of her. His posture was relaxed and somehow comforting. He gave off waves of “I am competent. I’ll help you. You’re safe with me.”
I wondered how he did it. He must have learned it somewhere other than medical school, because if it could be taught, it would be a required class. The muscles in my own shoulders relaxed when I saw Kim shift in her chair.
“Do you think it’s…?”
“It could be,” he answered, without her having to say the word, “but it looks well contained, which is a good sign.” He looked at Kim with so much compassion and understanding that I felt tears forming in my own eyes.
“Maybe we should wait and see….” Kim grasped at straws.
“We could,” he agreed pleasantly, “but the reality is, it’s here. Why not take care of it? Get on with whatever we need to do and be done with it. You have a life to live—why waste time worrying about something we can do something about right now?”
I saw Kim lift her chin and square her shoulders.
You have a life to live…. She did. She knew it, I knew it and the doctor knew it. This was a hurdle she had to move past, but Dr. Andrews was the man to help her.
I looked at him and knew immediately that he’d chosen his words with intention. He was confident that he could do what needed to be done. His competence and assurance enveloped both of us and radiated optimism and peace right into our cells.
While he and Kim were going over the details of the next step, I called Betty and told her that I’d be late and Kim wouldn’t be coming in today. Then I called Kurt and left a message suggesting he meet us.
It was after two o’clock by the time I got back to the office, and it was like walking into a tree full of vultures, hunched with anticipation, sharp eyes scanning my face for clues, hungry for every detail. Mitzi, of course, was the most vulture-like of the batch. Bryan hung back to see if whatever I had to say would be of interest to him or if he’d have to disappear into the men’s room until it blew over.
Betty jumped to her feet when I walked in, but I held up a hand. “I’ll be back in a minute, I have to see Harry.”
He was, as usual, riveted to his computer screen. There were pencils behind both ears and one even stuck into his Chia Pet “do.” He’d rolled up his sleeves, loosened his tie and filled the candy dish by his mouse with Hot Tamales. That meant Harry was doing some serious work—he never ate Hot Tamales unless the project was really important. There were usually jelly beans in the dish, unless he’d had an easy day and had dug into his enormous stash of dried-up Peeps left over from Easter. I can’t explain why he loved those sugary, pastel-colored marshmallow chicks, but he did. He sent me out to gather up all I could find right after the holiday and made them last most of a year. I guess that was how we’d come up with the terminology for the tranquil days when Harry was out of the office—that was “a Peep kind of day.”
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