Everything Changes

scared,” I tell her.
    “It’s going to be okay,” she says.
    “Not just about the biopsy.”
    “What, then?”
    I look straight into her lily pad eyes. “Everything.”
    She looks right back at me and smiles. “Everything will be okay too.”
    “How do you know?”
    “It has no choice,” she says.
    “Sometimes it feels like I can’t even breathe,” I say.
    “I get that too.”
    “What do you do?”
    “I call you,” she says. “You’re my oxygen.”
    When I get out of the car, she climbs out too, to give me one of our borderline illegal hugs in the xenon glow of the Volvo’s low beams. The cold has developed an edge, winter taking an early first bite out of autumn, and I shiver involuntarily in Tamara’s embrace. “You’re mine,” I say.
    She looks up at me, confused. “What?”
    “Oxygen.”
    “Oh.”
    She kisses my cheek. We stand there, foreheads pressed together, looking at each other with weary smiles. Her lips float tantalizing inches away from mine, but I know it would be a mistake. After a moment, she kisses my jaw and climbs back into her car, and I wonder if she was waiting for me to kiss her. “Call me tomorrow,” she says. I tell her I will and step back and watch her drive off. When I turn around to walk up the brownstone stairs, I’m startled to find Jed, standing bare chested in the living room window, staring down at me in dark, angry judgment.
    “Was that Tamara?” he asks me when I come through the door. He’s back on the couch, watching
CSI,
looking vexed.
    “She gave me a ride,” I say.
    “That was nice of her.”
    “What’s with you?” I say.
    “Nothing.”
    “She just gave me a lift home.”
    He raises his hand to silence me, his eyes resolutely glued to the screen. “Not my business, man,” he says.

Chapter 26
    By ten thirty Friday morning, I’m bouncing off the walls. I’m supposed to hear from Dr. Sanderson today with my biopsy results. So why the hell hasn’t he called? If it were good news, I would think he’d have called already, only too happy to release me from the purgatory of my suspense. Bad news, though, he might wait to tell me, wait until he had a chunk of free time so as to answer my questions and discuss treatment. No one likes to deliver bad news. Maybe over the years he’s developed a routine wherein he makes all his happy calls immediately and leaves the tough ones for the end of the day, after he’s seen all his patients. Only then does he plop down into the rich leather chair behind his mahogany desk, take a measured shot from the bottle of single malt discreetly stored in a file drawer to bolster his resolve, and begin making the bad calls. He’s a middleman too, all that stands between the lab results and the patient, and even though it’s not his fault, it’s still his problem. We’re always quick to make the good calls, to tell a client his goods have shipped ahead of schedule, or that we were able to work out a production issue. But when it comes to bad news, we’ll procrastinate as long as possible and then hope like hell to get their voice mail. I am Sanderson’s Craig Hodges, my cancerous cells the wrong-colored swooshes, and even though it’s not his fault, he still knows it won’t be a pleasant conversation.
    Fuck. I have cancer. I know it.
    I’ve already dialed the doctor’s office a half dozen times, only to hang up before the first ring. I am terrified of upsetting some delicate cosmic balance, as if the act of calling itself might somehow influence the outcome. No. The thing to do is to wait here, all Zen-like, remain calm, and wait for the call to come. But my sweaty back, my clammy hands, and my shaking legs are the antithesis of Zen, so I get out of bed and head for the shower. Under the insulating spray, I run the scenarios, scripting conversations with Hope and Tamara in which I reveal my illness to them. Hope cries and hugs me, and then gets on the phone with her family, pausing for a brief, heartfelt cry with her mother before getting down to business, insisting that her father locate the top specialists in the field and use his connections to get us seen immediately, her chin bravely set as she takes charge. Tamara fights back tears and then throws herself into my arms, releasing all of her pent-up passion in an endless kiss, and then wordlessly leads me to her bedroom with no greater agenda than to consummate our unspoken emotions in the face of my impending life-and-death struggle. And then,