Growing and Kissing (5 page)

That’s when his free hand grabbed my other breast, lifting it and squeezing it hard. He used his palm to roll it in slow circles as he squeezed and my whole body followed in response. It would have been too rough, if I hadn’t been on the very edge of orgasm, but now it was perfect, brutish and hard, showing me how hungry he was for me. God, I was being held up against a wall and
mauled—

His mouth left my breast for a second. When he spoke, each syllable was a little blast of hot air against my slickened flesh, making me dig my fingers hard into the muscles of his shoulders. “
This is what you want, isn’t it?”
he growled.
“You’re all innocent but you don’t want innocent and fuckin’ sweet. You want it hard and dirty.”

I gasped and panted for air and found myself nodding.

Suddenly, his hand dropped to my groin. Two thick fingers hooked under the front panel of my panties and, before I could even cry out, he was tugging the fabric away, stretching it clear of my body. The material held for a second and then there was a jagged ripping sound and I was naked below the waist. I saw him toss the ruined panties away and then those same two fingers were between my thighs, probing my entrance, and finding me soaking wet. They slid up inside me, stretching me, while his thumb found my aching clit and—

I came, shoulders and ass pressed hard against the wall and my back arched like a bow, thrusting my breasts out to meet him. My cry of release was so loud it shocked me, but I couldn’t hold it in. And I couldn’t stop: not with his hot mouth still working at my breast, not while his fingers plunged inside me, not while his thumb circled and rubbed. Not when that big, hulking body was pressed between my thighs and pinned me there so easily. And not when my eyes fluttered open and I saw that he was staring right into my eyes, those blue orbs gleaming with a lust that matched my own. I shouted all of it out in a long, keening, panting cry that rose and rose and only ended when I was utterly spent.

My eyes fluttered open and I found myself lying in my bed: no Sean, no broken coffee table or splintered door. My panties were still in place—though I’d shoved them to the side to plunge my own fingers inside me—and my nightshirt was in place, though it was rucked up around my waist. I lay there panting and sweating, my mind slowly spinning to a halt.

Sean O’Harra?!
Was I
insane?
He wasn’t a guy to fantasize about! He was an actual, real-life criminal. He existed in a world I barely even came into contact with. And even if I
was
going to have some sort of crazy, bad boy fantasy about him, I didn’t like it rough and up against a wall with my panties torn off…

...did I?

I closed my eyes again, reddening
.
Anyway, whatever I did or didn’t think about Sean O’Harra, he certainly didn’t think about
me
that way. That embarrassed me even more than the fantasy itself: that I could be vain enough to think some guy like him would want to jump my bones.

On the plus side, I was now very, very relaxed. My eyelids were already sliding down, my head heavy against the pillow. A bit of harmless fantasizing never hurt anyone, right? It’s not like I’d ever even dare speak to him, in real life.

***

“We’re here to see Dr. Huxler,” I told the hospital receptionist.

She frowned. “I’m sorry: who?”

I dug the Post-It note out of my purse, just to make sure I’d written it down right. “Huxler.”

She shook her head. “Dr. Huxler is Oncology. Next floor up.”

I smiled. I actually smiled. “No, our appointment is definitely here. Endocrinology.” I checked the sign. Yep, we were in the right place. “My sister has a thyroid problem. Or, you know, something like a thyroid problem.”

The receptionist’s gaze flicked to Kayley and then back to me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Dr. Huxler is definitely Oncology.”

It was the tone of her voice that did it. She was so...apologetic.

There are some places your mind just doesn’t go to, as a parent. For the first time, I went there. And suddenly, it was as if the floor had turned to nothing but spider webs, with only a midnight-black void beneath.

“What’s going on?” asked Kayley in a voice I hadn’t heard her use for years. The one she used to use when she woke from a nightmare and she still wasn’t sure if it was real.

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s probably just a mistake.” And I took her hand and stalked towards Oncology, pulling her away from the receptionist before she could tell her any different.

***

Dr. Huxler was in his late fifties with thick, fluffy curls of gray hair. There were orchids in his book-lined office: beautiful and peaceful and probably designed to make patients feel calm. They weren’t helping.

“Your parents,” he said, studying Kayley’s records, “they’re deceased?”

I always think
deceased
sounds so peaceful, as if they passed away happily in their sleep aged eighty-three instead of being snatched away from us in a heartbeat.

“Yes,” I said. “They’re deceased. I’m Kayley’s legal guardian.”

He nodded. Took a breath and held it. I was digging my nails into my knees, part of me wanting him to spit it out, and part of me wanting him to never speak again.

“Your blood tests indicate that you have leukemia,” he said to Kayley.

I grabbed Kayley’s hand and squeezed it harder than I ever had in my life.

“We need to do more tests to narrow down the exact type,” said Doctor Huxler. “We can run those right now, if you’re okay with that.” He was calm, but the urgency in his voice scared the shit out of me. I nodded. Next to me, Kayley nodded too. Her jaw was firm, her hand gripped mine, and she didn’t shed a single tear.

But, as we left Doctor Huxler’s office, heading for the first test, she squeezed my hand in a death grip and said, “Say it’s going to be okay.” And I heard the crack in her voice, like a fracture in a glacier that’s about to split wide open.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said automatically. But I could feel myself shrinking inside the parent suit I’d been wearing for the last few years.
This isn’t right. I can’t do this.
As we walked down the hallway, I looked around—I mean I actually, instinctively looked over my left shoulder—for my parents because I needed to hand things over to them, now, and get a hug myself.

But they weren’t there.

They made Kayley strip off her clothes and I gathered them up: the artfully distressed jeans and the belt with the obscure Japanese cartoon characters on it I’d bid for on Ebay as a Christmas present; the lurid pink top we’d argued over for days before I’d let her have it. The things that made her
her.
The hospital staff gave me a bag to put them in and Kayley and I exchanged a look as I folded the top down.
This is just temporary,
we nodded to each other.

But once she was in a gown, she looked like a patient.

For the next three hours, I watched my precious, fragile sister be stabbed again and again: stabbed in her arms for more blood, stabbed in the base of her spine for spinal fluid, stabbed with a slender, howling drill to collect bone marrow. The staff were polite and caring, but in the fake, rehearsed way that airline staff swear they’ll take
extra special care
of your package or your suitcase or your dog. Maybe it was because she was so stoic; maybe they just saw hundreds of patients and had gotten jaded. But I wanted to scream at them that she was a child.
My
child.

When it was all over, Dr. Huxler asked me to come into his office “for a second.” He made it sound as if it was nothing important, boring paperwork that Kayley didn’t have to sit through.

“I want to stay,” Kayley said immediately. “I want to be in there.”

Dr. Huxler caught my eye and I’ll remember the look he gave me until the day I die. “Kayley,” I said, fighting to keep my voice level, “go check your email. It’s okay.”

“I don’t want to check my email,” she said, her eyes huge. “I already checked it. I want to stay with you. I want to know.”

A lump was swelling inside my throat. My chest hurt. I was about to break down in front of her and I couldn’t let that happen. “Check it again,” I said. And took a step away from her, towards the door Dr. Huxler was holding open for me.

“No,” I heard Kayley say behind me. “No! I want to go in!”

Another step.
My legs are shaking.
Another. Another. I heard Kayley start forward behind me, then stop. I couldn’t turn around or I’d lose it completely. Then a nurse’s voice, murmuring to Kayley: “
You stay here with me, honey.”

“No!”

My heart felt like it was tearing in two. I walked into Doctor Huxler’s office and he closed the door.

And then it got worse.

Louise

“This is going to be a very difficult conversation,” Dr. Huxler said as soon as we sat down. “There’s nothing I’m going to be able to say that’s going to make this easier.”

I just stared at him.

“The tests confirm that your sister has leukemia.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”

My whole world was exploding but, for some reason, my body just continued as if it was still there. I found myself nodding. “
Um-hum.
What are our, uh...what are our treatment options?”
Leukemia.
Images flashed through my head. Charity drives to take kids to Disneyland. Bald heads and bags of chemo chemicals and throwing up. I’d quit my job. I’d be with her every step of the way. We could fight this.

Dr. Huxler swallowed.

“We can hold it back,” he said. “Extend things. Maybe as long as six months.”

It took a while for the enormity of what he was telling me to sink in.

“No,” I said. “No. You’re not…”

He just looked sadly at me.

“No,” I said, more determinedly, this time. “No, she’s
fine.
This is bullshit, she’s
fine!
She’s just
tired!”

He pressed his lips together and just waited.

“
No!
It’s a mistake! I want—I want more doctors. I want a second opinion!”

“We ran every test,” he said gently.

“Kids get leukemia and they get better
,”
I said. “They have chemo and they
get better!”

“Not this type,” he said. “Nothing in medicine is certain. But in this case, the best the chemo can do is buy her time.”

When we’d first been told to go to Oncology, it had felt as if I was on the verge of falling into a void. Now, though, the void was inside me. I could feel the hole growing, eating away at me. I was getting colder and colder. “Six months?” I whispered.

He nodded.

One hundred and eighty days.

Twenty-four Wednesday movie nights.

I sat there motionless as the hole inside me grew and grew, gnawing hungrily at its edges.

“There are things I can recommend,” said Dr. Huxler. “There’s a book—”

“A book?” I whispered.

“It can help you manage the journey.”

“Journey?”

“It can help you get ready to say goodbye.”

“A book?” I asked. Then the anger came, erupting out of nowhere. “A
book?!”
I yelled.

Dr. Huxler just sat there and absorbed it, which somehow scared me more than anything. I’d become just another screaming, stubborn parent and all this—all of it—was normal. We were both just playing out our roles in a drama that unfolded in this office every single day.

It was already inevitable.

“We can tell her together,” said Dr. Huxler. “Or the two of you can talk first. Sometimes it’s easier that way. Whichever you prefer.”

I think that must have been when I started crying, at the thought of breaking it to Kayley. Dr. Huxler dissolved behind a haze of hot, wet tears but I didn’t move, couldn’t move. I just sat there staring at him as my face crumpled.