At Any Turn (Gaming The System) (36 page)

I waited for her to come out, bent over the tiny screen, my elbows on my knees, my face in one hand. Finally, after over half an hour, I heard her step down the hall. I slipped my phone back into my pocket.

She wore those same baggy jeans from yesterday and had pulled on a bright pink T-shirt, just as baggy. I didn’t move, didn’t look up until I felt her sink down on the couch next to me, curling her legs underneath her.

I stood up. “You need breakfast,” I said.

She looked away from my gaze. “Not feeling real hungry right now.”

I ignored her, went into the kitchen, stuck a piece of bread in the toaster, scraped a small bit of butter across it, the way I knew she liked it, and brought it back to her, holding it in front of her. “Eat,” I ordered.

With a distinct sigh she pulled it off the plate and took a tiny bite, then pulled it away from her face, taking forever to chew it. I continued to watch her and when she swallowed the first bite I raised my brows at her expectantly. She grimaced and took another bite, tearing it off reluctantly and chewing.

When I was satisfied that she would continue, I sat down on the same spot beside her. She only finished half the toast before she set it on the plate. I didn’t protest. It was better than nothing.

“Heath told me that you know everything,” she finally said in a shaky voice.

I cocked my head toward her, trying to ignore the ice-cold boulder of panic forming at the center of my being. But it wasn’t just panic. It was betrayal. Hurt. Helplessness. God, it was like Bree all over again only ten times worse.

“Do I?” I finally asked in a tight voice.

She blinked. “I was going to tell you right from the start but—” She cut off at my look of disbelief. “I
was
. That night we hung out at Dale and Boomers…I was going in for the biopsy the next day and I was going to tell you, but…you were stressed and upset about the lawsuit and I didn’t even know if this was going to turn out to be anything so I didn’t say anything.”

I continued to stare at her without responding, with the hope that this would draw out more details. “Adam, it’s been a shitty few months for you and I didn’t want to make it worse. But when the test came up positive…I came over to your house to tell you.”

I blinked and looked away. The day she’d found out about the PI.

“And yeah, I got pissed off because you were trying to take over and take control instead of letting me come to you. I was so angry and I felt betrayed. So I didn’t want to tell you for a while. After that you were pissed because I went to Baltimore and then you started dating other people so I thought it was over—” Her voice trembled and cut off at a sob. She put the back of her hand to her mouth as if to smother it.

I closed my eyes, utterly horrified at what she’d gone through alone—and then thinking I’d moved on with someone else. “One person. One time. And only because…because I thought your going to Maryland meant that you’d decided to move on without me.” I reached out and took her hand in mine. It felt limp, cold. Like death. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

Her fingers returned the pressure, but she didn’t look at me. “There were so many times when I wanted to tell you—when I almost told you. But something always stopped me. Or maybe it was just my own cowardice.”

That frustration rose up inside, me, tightened in my chest. “I could have helped you. I would have taken care of you. Fuck, I’d walk through Hell barefoot for you if necessary.”

“You would have taken
over
.”

I was silent for a long moment, scrubbing a hand over my face. “And my not having any control at all has turned out so well,” I said dryly.

“Adam—”

“You remember when you said I was like a storm blowing you this way and that? And I told you that the storm was life and I was the anchor holding you down. I
could
have been, for this. I
would
have been here for you, if you had let me.”

She tilted her face down so I couldn’t see when I glanced at her, but she sniffed a little and swept a tear away with the back of her hand. Long silence stretched between us, thick, solid. I felt lightheaded, disoriented.

“What happens now?” I asked.

She opened her mouth to reply and then shut it. “I—I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

Of course she hadn’t. Neither of us had. But Heath’s words were still fresh in my mind.
You know what she has to do
. I did know. And I had no idea what her reaction would be.

“Well, you should see your doctor first thing on Monday. You’re seeing an oncologist?”

She nodded.

“A
good
one?”

She cleared her throat. “The day after the diagnosis, I went to see Dr. Martin—the oncologist I did my undergraduate research under. He’s the one who sponsored my application to Hopkins. He got on the phone with a colleague who specializes in breast cancer oncology here and then set up my consultation and surgery in Maryland.”

My mouth dropped open. “How did you afford all that?”

She took a deep breath and shot me a fearful look. “Um. Credit card and…the engagement ring.”

I looked away, and wildly, a chuckle rose in my throat. A strange orphan of a creature, this cynical, dry laugh. It was born from the bizarre irony we found ourselves in. That ring—that symbol of my trying to take control of a situation quickly slipping away from me, used instead by her to assert her independence, so she wouldn’t have to come to me for financial help.

I pulled my hand away from hers. It probably should have hurt my feelings more than it did but at this point I was starting to feel dead inside.

“You need a second opinion. I’m going to find out who the best is and you are going to see him or her.”

She stiffened next to me. “I have my treatment plan in place. I’m already—”

My voice rose. “Oh really? What part of your plan involved getting pregnant?”

She blinked. I instantly felt like a dick for blurting it out. I reached out and took her hand again. “I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t what you planned. I’m just…” and I let my voice die out.

“Scared?” she said.

Fucking utterly pit-in-my-stomach terrified was more like it. I looked away, nodded. My hand tightened around hers. Was Heath right? Was getting her pregnant like handing her a death sentence?

“I’ll find a good clinic, too. I’m sure there’s something fantastic up in LA where we can have it done quickly.”

She frowned. “Have what done?”

“The abortion.”

She sat back, pulling her hand away from mine. “I haven’t made that decision yet.”

I turned on the couch so that I was fully facing her. “The decision has been made for you. You have cancer. You need chemotherapy. You can’t have that and be pregnant. And who knows what damage the radiation has done…”

She shook her head. “I finished that before I conceived. There’s no risk after the fact.” Her eyes drifted to the window, her head tilted, thinking. “As for the chemo, I could delay it.”

My fist closed on the couch beside my thigh. “
No,
you
can’t
. You have no time. You need to fight this shit
now
.”

Her gaze returned to mine. “There are some forms of chemo that are safe for a fetus in the second trimester.”

Yeah, I’d just read that. But it wasn’t the type of chemo she needed and the second trimester was at least two months away. “You don’t have that kind of time. I’ve been sitting here reading about this and it’s worse than most other types of breast cancer and—”

She put her hand out to stop me. “Please. I know and I don’t need to hear this right now.”

“But maybe you need to be reminded that your type of cancer is particularly sensitive to hormones. That’s why you had to stop taking the pill, right?”

She nodded.

“And what do you think the pregnancy hormones are going to do to you? What do you
really
think your oncologist is going to say?”

She slumped back, rubbing her forehead. “Please tell me you aren’t saying all this because you don’t want this.”

“What
I
want doesn’t even belong in this conversation, besides the fact that I want you to have the best chance to
fight
this. To
live
.”

“Where would
I
be if my mother had made the choice to abort her pregnancy?” she said in a quiet voice. “She had the choice and she chose not to.”

Ah fuck.
Fuck
. She was actually considering this lunacy. “Her circumstances were different. If she were here right now she’d tell you that exact same thing.”

She turned to me, paling. “Please don’t tell her. She’ll get worried. She might get sick again—Please, Adam!”

That was an argument for another day. I wouldn’t make that promise. If I determined that Kim was the only one who could talk sense into her daughter, then I sure as
hell
was going to tell her. And for fuck’s sake, there’d been more than enough secrecy about this already.

“You can’t go through with this.”

“My father wanted my mother to get an abortion,” she said in a raspy voice, glaring at me.

Great. Now she was comparing me to that bastard. Why did it always come down to this? “Emilia, you can have other children, when you are healthy again.”

“If chemo doesn’t destroy my fertility like it could.
This
might be my only chance.”

I clenched my teeth. “This is no chance, for you or a baby. If the cancer becomes metastatic during the pregnancy, then it’s all over and that child has no mother to grow up with.”

“He’d have a father,” she said.

I blew out a tight breath and looked away. After a minute I shook my head. “Please tell me you aren’t seriously considering this—”

“I’m saying I have a choice and I need to think about—”

“
No!”
I nearly shouted, causing her to jump. Then I cleared my throat and took a breath to calm the fuck down. “No, there is nothing to think about. There is the choice of life or death.”

“No, it’s life or
life
. My life or the baby’s life. And terminating the pregnancy does not guarantee I’ll be healthy anyway.”

I ran my hand into my hair, curling my fingers so that it pulled at the roots. I would have happily yanked it out if doing so could solve this issue. I shot up off the couch, bubbling over with restless energy. I started pacing, like I was thinking through a programming snarl or working out a development issue, my mind racing over every eventuality.

In every one of them except Emilia getting the abortion, I saw her dying. Either next year or five years from now.

She watched me, her eyes glued to my every movement. “I don’t expect you to understand—”

I shook my head furiously. “No. No, I
don’t
understand. It’s like you’re giving up. Like you don’t give a shit about your own life.” I stopped and faced her. “Well, what about
my
life? What about what this does to me if you have the kid and then you die?”

She took in a shaky breath. “Don’t take over for me. Don’t railroad my decisions,
my
fight,
my
struggle. This is partly the reason I didn’t tell you in the first place. Because I knew how this would be. You’d step in—you’d ‘handle’ it. It’s my life—”

“It’s
our
life, Emilia. But you haven’t ever wanted to think of anything as
us
. Ever. That’s been our problem all along.”

She shot up from her seat, her face flushed with anger. “I was thinking about
you
, Adam. I
was
. Don’t you pull that shit on me. Who’s the one who flipped out when you thought I was going to Hopkins? Were
you
thinking about ‘us’ then or yourself? What about when you hired that PI to stalk me and tell you everything? Or going through my bag. Or—fuck does it ever end? So don’t you dare pull that ‘I’m the only one thinking about us.’ Because I call absolute bullshit on
that
!”

During her tirade, her pale features had grown flushed. I opened my mouth to respond but she waved me off with a cutting gesture.

“You don’t understand. You could never understand. You
refuse
to understand. I have life
and
death growing inside my body right now. I choose life.” She turned and left the room.

I stood, stunned, watching her go. She disappeared into her room and I could hear her rifling through the drawers in her dresser. I knew what that meant. I burst through her door when her backpack was half-packed.

“Oh, no you fucking don’t,” I said, upending the backpack and emptying it onto the bed. “You are
not
running away again.”

“Stop it! I need to get away and clear my head. I’m going up to Anza for a couple days.”

“Does that mean you are going to talk to your mom?”

She glanced at me as she grabbed fistfuls of her things and shoved them back in her bag. “She’s staying over with Peter this weekend. They were trying to convince me to go out to dinner with them tonight. She won’t be in Anza.”

“So you are going up there all alone?”

She raised her brow. “I’m a big girl.”

“You had better have your ass in that doctor’s office on Monday morning.”

“Or?”

“Or I’ll come get you and drag you there.”

She frowned, shaking her head. “This isn’t one of those problems you solve by pulling out your wallet, writing your check, or where you puzzle it out with your think tank. There is no one right answer and you think you can force
your
answer down
my
throat. This is why I couldn’t trust you.”

That sucker punch that Heath had thrown into my gut an hour before? Yeah, that hurt less than her words had.
This is why I couldn’t trust you
.

“Emilia—” I took her arm as she moved around me, with her repacked bag.

She shrugged it away. I grabbed her again and she turned and slapped me on the face, then backed away. The tears were coming now and she was shaking.

“No! You need to understand something. This is
my
body and I haven’t had full control over what’s happened to it for months. I’ve been poked and cut into and irradiated. Now they want to pump toxins through me to root the cancer out. But
this
I have control over and no one, not you, not anyone can take it away from me.”