Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance) (38 page)

“What about the boy, what was his name?
Brock?” She knew darn good and well what his name was.

“He’s been busy with school and stuff,” I
lied. He had left me four voicemails and texted me at least a half dozen times.
I texted him back…once. I told him I would see him when I got discharged. I
didn’t want to see him here. This place would only taint our friendship. I know
this…from experience.

Grandma raised a perfectly plucked gray
eyebrow. She was no fool, and she knew I was fibbing. She let it go, however
and a few minutes later, Dr. Harris came in.

“How are you feeling today Molly?” he
asked in that always-chipper voice. I’d be chipper too if I was a doctor and I
made a bazillion dollars a year keeping people imprisoned in hospitals.

“I’m feeling great, Dr. Harris. Can I go
home now?”

“I wanted to wait until the results of the
MRI came back, and they have.”

“Good,” I said, the first time I had been
hopeful all day. “Then I can go?”

“Molly, I have a few concerns about the
MRI. I want to get another one from a few different angles.”

I swear it was the closest I had ever
coming to screaming like a mad woman at the top of my lungs.

“Okay,” I said, trying to tamp down the
scream and stay calm. “Let’s do it.”

“We can’t do it tonight. Radiology is
already closed except for emergencies. I’ve got you scheduled for first thing
in the morning.”

“This is an emergency Dr. Harris. If I
don’t get out of here, I’m going to lose my mind. That’s an emergency, wouldn’t
you say?” I was on my feet again. The restless energy pent up inside me was
pressing against every nerve in my body.

“Molly, sit down please,”he said it in his
“keep the crazy person calm” voice. I looked at Grandma and she nodded. I sat
down. “Molly,” he said, “you have one kidney. If it is not functioning
properly, sending you home could be dangerous. Let us get this MRI tomorrow
morning, okay? If I discharge you, we’ll have to do it outpatient and that will
take longer.”

“And what then, Dr. Harris. If it’s not
working do I stay here…forever?”

“No, I promise, barring some kind of
unforeseen problems I will discharge you tomorrow. I will at least know what we
need to do after the MRI, and we’ll go on from there…outpatient, as long as you
do well.”

I looked at Grandma who nodded again. Some
wingman she was. She was supposed to be dancing with the ugly doctor so I can
slip out. “Okay, I’ll stay until after the MRI, then I blow this joint.”

He smiled. He was not the least bit ugly,
I was just being pissy. I actually liked him a lot. I just wanted to go home.
“One more thing…”

“Uh-uh,” I said. “We already made our
deal.”

He smiled again and waited for me to
finish and then he said, “I know we talked about this before, and you said no
because you’re afraid your peers will find out about your illness, but I think
the support group we have here on Sunday and Wednesday afternoons could really
help you.”

“You’re right, we talked about it before,
and I have to stand firm on my earlier decision.” I wasn’t going to some
support group with a bunch of people I would then run into on campus or in one
of my classes. It was not going to happen. I didn’t want to talk about this
anyways.

“I can’t force you, Molly. But please at
least tell me you’ll think about it. You could go tomorrow afternoon before you
leave here.”

“I thought I was leaving tomorrow
morning?” I had caught him in a web of lies. Okay, it was only one lie, but it
was a whopper.

“We agreed after the results of the MRI.
That will probably not happen until early afternoon.”

“Dr. Harris…”

“Molly,” he said, standing up. “Just think
about it, okay?” I was mad again. I could feel the heat of Grandma’s stare
however so I said, “Okay.”

My grandmother then thanked the man. If I
was rich, I’d cut her right out of the will.

The next morning I had another text from
Brock. It simply said:

  
 
Thinking
of you and hoping you’re well. Missing you, Molly
.

I took a deep breath and I texted him
back.

  
I’m doing fine, thank you. Will
hopefully get sprung later today

 
I
didn’t say miss you too, although I did. I hadn’t passed an hour here without
thinking about him. I wondered what he was doing, and even if he was thinking
about me. I thought about him singing to me, and it made me smile. I remembered
dancing in the rain, and that made me want to cry.
I miss you too, Brock. I’m just too much of a coward to say so.

The nurse and the radiology tech came to
get me at ten for my MRI. Let me just say here that I despise that machine. If
you’ve never been inside of one just imagine it for a second. You’re lying
inside of a metal tube, kind of like a huge, old metal garbage can. It’s
freezing, and your ass is hanging out of the gown they give you to wear, only
adding to the draft. Then someone with a penchant for torture takes a hammer
and they start to bang on the tube. That goes on for hours sometimes and the
whole while they’re yelling at you not to move. That’s the process in a
nutshell.

Two hours and one tension headache and a
lower backache later, I was back in my hospital room. Now Grandma and I sat and
waited for Dr. Harris. While we waited she said, “Molly, did you think about
what Dr. Harris said, about the support group?”

“Grandma, you know how I feel about all
that.”

“Yes, I do. I also know that you need to
talk about this. You don’t talk to me about it, and I doubt you talk much about
it to Megan since everything is so secretive. These people are the same as you,
baby. They’re not going to go telling tales any more than you are about them.”

“I really just don’t want to talk about
any of this, Grandma.”

“I know, honey. But the truth is you need
to.”

I sighed, she was wearing me down. Not
that I was changing my mind about wanting to go, but I was thinking about going
just to get them off my back. Then she played really dirty…my own grandmother.

“Would you go just once, Molly? For me,
please?”

“Okay, Gran,” I told her, “Just once.”

Dr. Harris came by a while after our
conversation about the support group.

“Molly,” he said, “The MRI showed what I
was afraid of. Your nephrons are hardening, becoming necrotic. The tumors are blocking
the blood supply to them.”

I wish he would have just kicked me in the
stomach, it would have felt better. I was holding my breath because I was
afraid if I let this one out, I wouldn’t be able to take another. I felt Gran
reach for my hand and I took hers. She didn’t say anything, and neither did Dr.
Harris. They just left me alone for a minute to process what he just said. In
layman’s terms, he had just told me that the only kidney I had left was being
choked to death by the tumors that kept multiplying. I can’t live without
kidneys, can I?

“So what comes next?” I asked him finally.

“You’re still producing some urine, so
functionality is not completely gone…yet. But Molly I need you to drink plenty
of water; you know how much you need and you can’t forget. No sampling the
coffee samples at work, no caffeine or anything diuretic at all. I also need
you to keep a record of your intake of fluids and your output of urine and I’ll
give you some guidelines of what you need to report to me, right away.”

I was in some form of shock, I’m sure. He
was telling me that an essential part of my body was failing, but all I could
think to say next was, “Sure, Doc. Thanks. Can I go home now?” I saw the look
between my grandmother and doctor. The one that said, “Now we need to worry
about her emotional health.” I was a pretty big wreck inside, emotionally, but
I wasn’t going to do anything stupid so there was nothing to worry about.

“What about the meeting, Molly?”

I smiled pretty and said, “I’m still
going. I promised you that I would.”

“Good,” Dr. Harris said, enthusiastically.
I was so glad I could make him happy, since he always had nothing but good news
for me.

After Dr. Harris left, Gran and I just sat
quietly for a while. I felt bad, because I knew she wanted to talk about this.
I just really didn’t want to. All I wanted was out of here. I wanted to see
Brock, worse than I’ve ever wanted to see anyone. I wanted things to go back to
normal again. After a while I said, “Why don’t you start home, Gran. The
meeting is at two, so I’ll go to that and then I’ll call Meg for a ride home.”

I could tell that she didn’t want to
leave, but she also knew that no matter what she said I was going to push her
out the door. That was when she finally did it. She grabbed me in a big hug and
as she held me tight she said, “I love you to the moon, Molly-girl. If you need
anything, and you don’t call me, I’ll find out, and then I’ll kick your skinny
little butt.” We were both crying then, and when she said that I laughed
through my tears and said, “Skinny? Have you seen my butt, Gran?” She smacked
me on it and said, “Do everything the doctor says, Okay?”

“Okay, Gran. I love you to the moon too.”
After she left I washed my face and packed up the nice little patient
belongings bag they had brought me. Then I signed the discharge papers, took my
instructions and walked out the door of the oncology unit. I stood just beyond
the double doors and I hate to admit this but I seriously considered not going
to the meeting and just telling Gran that I had. One thing I am terrible at is
lying though, especially to Gran….so I went.

I walked down the hall towards the group
room signs. When I reached to door I stopped and took a deep breath and then I
pushed on the door. There were five people in the room. Two girls about my age.
Two guys who were both a little older, and an older lady, probably the group
leader.

“Hi,” the lady said. “Welcome. Come on in
and find a seat.” I looked around, one wouldn’t be hard to find. There were at
least twenty empty ones. I picked one close to the back. I probably wasn’t
going to say much anyways. I sat there, waiting for the group to begin as more
people filed in. After everyone was seated, the group leader introduced herself
and thanked us for coming. As she talked the door behind her suddenly opened
and I thought I would pass out. In walked Brock…in the flesh. He looked around
for a seat, and when he saw me, I like to say his face lit up. He came towards
me and took the seat next to mine. The lady was still talking but I had to know
what the heck he was doing here. I lowered my voice to barely audible and said,
“Hi Brock.” He grinned at me. God he was so handsome I almost forgot what I
wanted to ask him.

“Hi Molly,” he said.

“What are you doing here?”

He looked like he was pondering the answer
to that, and then he said, “I’m a patient here too.” I couldn’t for the life of
me figure out why, but I thought he was making fun of me. Candice, the group
leader was looking at me and moving her lips but I wasn’t processing what she
was saying. I was still trying to process what Brock had said.

“I’m sorry?” I said, acutely aware that
all eyes in the room were on me now.

“I said would you like to introduce
yourself to the group?”

“I-I’m Molly,” I said.

“Hi Molly!” Everyone said it at once, and
I thought maybe I had stumbled into an AA meeting by mistake.

“Molly, would you like to tell us a little
about yourself?”

I looked around the room again. They were
all still staring at me. I needed to get out of here.

“No, thank you,” I said. “I really have to
go.”

I stood up, and I felt a hand on my arm.
It was Brock’s hand.

“Molly, I think you would really like it
if you stayed. It helps to talk about it.”

Was he kidding? What did he know about any
of this? I shook his hand off my arm and headed for the door. I could hear him
say something to Candace, and when I was about halfway down the hall, I could
hear his footsteps behind me.

“Molly, wait!” he said as I hit the outer
door. I kept going, but he had longer legs than me and caught up quickly.
“Molly, stop please. Just for a second.”

“I don’t want to talk to those people,
Brock. I don’t even know those people. I don’t know what your deal is
either…coming here and acting like you know how I feel…”

“Molly, listen to me, please…”

I could hear him talking, but I didn’t
want to listen. I wanted to go home. I started walking away, and that’s when I
heard him say, “I have it too, Molly. I have cancer. I have a malignant tumor
in my brain.” That stopped me in my tracks.

I turned around and looked at him. I was
searching his eyes, his face for anything. I was all at once hoping he was
making fun of me somehow and he didn’t really have this awful thing in his
head, and praying that he couldn’t be that cruel.

“What are you talking about?”

He took a deep breath and he said, “When I
was fourteen I was diagnosed with what they called a pineal germinoma. It’s a
form of childhood tumors of the brain. It metastasized to my spinal cord. I had
surgeries, but they never could get it all. Part of it wrapped itself around my
brain stem. They did chemo, and radiation, and for a while I was in remission.
The doctor told me there was only like a one in five million chance that it
would ever come back….but it did. It’s inoperable again, but they’re trying
some new medications. That’s why I’m here too, just like you. I should have
told you before, but….”

“But you thought that would make things
weird between us? Trust me, that part I understand.” I couldn’t believe what he
was telling me, yet I did. It explained a lot. The special diet, the juice
drinks with all the vitamins, the fact that like me, he didn’t drink. “So, are
you okay?”

“I’m doing okay, yeah. So far, it hasn’t
grown and I’m not having too many side effects from the meds.”

“The night you got sick…when we watched
Benny and Joon?”

“Yeah, that was night four. I only take
the meds five days a week. Four is the worst. It’s today, in fact. So far, I’m
hanging in.”

“Wow,” I was just blown away. “I’m sorry.”

He smiled and said, “For what?”

“That you have cancer,” I said. I know
that sounded stupid, but all of a sudden I was at a loss for words with him.

He laughed and said, “Me too. I’m sorry
for you too. Can I walk you home?” I nodded, and then I said, “Where’s Suzie?”

He said, “You’re the only girl who has
ever called her by her name. Thank you. She’s in the shop, getting a new
starter. I’ll tell her you asked about her though, that will make her happy.”

I laughed and said, “Are you a little bit
crazy?”

“Just a little,” he agreed.

After that we walked in silence until we
got to the dorms. He even carried my little patient belongings bag for me. When
we got there he said, “I have a gig at Aqua tomorrow night. I think Jake and
Megan are coming. Would you like to go too?”

I had so much crap in my head at that
moment I barely knew my own name. “Can I let you know tomorrow?” I asked him.

“Sure,” he said. “Good night, Molly.”

“Good night Brock, and thank you.” I was
used to my cancer, and as bad as it sucked, it had become part of me by now. I
wasn’t used to his though, and I didn’t like it. I was glad that he took such
good care of himself though.

 
“Maybe you’ll beat it for good this time,” I
said.

“Sure,” he replied. “Good night, Molly.”

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

BROCK

I walked home like one of Jake’s zombies.
I couldn’t believe I told her that. I hadn’t told anyone else besides Jake and
of course other medical people and stuff. My heart was breaking for her, and I
got the feeling that she was in the hospital for more than dehydration. I
didn’t blame her for not telling me though. She was right, back in school
things got so weird after I was diagnosed, even with my good friends. Except
for Jake, of course. He never treated me any differently than he had since we
were seven. I’m glad Molly has Megan too. She and Jake really were two peas in
a pod, and Molly and I really were lucky to have them both. I needed to
remember to be nicer to him. I wish he would make it easier.

When I finally got home, Jake was there on
the couch, staring at God knows what on the television. I went over and gave
him a backwards, sideways hug and said, “I love you man!”

He looked at me like I had grown a second
head but then he said, “Yeah, me too.” Then he went back to his TV. I started
to head for my room when I felt it…that tell-tale rumbling in my stomach. The
one that always hits me right before the nausea comes. I bypassed my room and
headed for the bathroom. I stood leaning against the counter for a minute,
hoping that it was just going to pass. When it did, I leaned down and splashed
cold water on my face. I reached for the towel and as I did, I suddenly felt
the bile rise up in the back of my throat. I moved quickly to the toilet and
promptly deposited the remnants of the avocado and turkey sandwich I had eaten
for lunch. My hands were shaking now and I could tell that this was going to be
one of those nights. I reached for the counter to pull myself up off the floor
and my hand slipped. I went down hard, luckily bracing the fall with my
shoulder, rather than my head.

“Hey, are you okay?”

It was Jake, knocking on the door. I
didn’t answer right away, so Jake just let himself in. He saw me on the floor
and was on his knees next to me in a flash. “Did you fall? Did you hit your
head?”

“No, I hit my shoulder. I’m okay. Help me
up, please.”

Jake did, and once I was back on my feet,
another wave of nausea hit and I went back down to the toilet. Jake, bless his
heart, stood there and waited until I was finished. When I had nothing left in
my stomach to expel, he handed me a wet washcloth and while I brushed my teeth,
he went into the kitchen and brought me my Zofran. I leaned against the counter
again after I put it under my tongue and I waited for the next wave to pass.
Jake stayed right there, not saying a word. You can’t buy friends like that.

When I thought I could move without the
motion making me want to puke again, I picked up the little metal wastebasket
and a towel and said, “I think I’ll take it in my room. Thank you, Jake.”

“No problem,” he said. “Let me know if you
need anything.”

“I will,” I said. Then on my way into the
room I looked over my shoulder and said, “I told Molly tonight.”

Jake stopped and turned around. The look
on his face was pure disbelief. “Wow, what did she say?”

My stomach gurgled again, so I said, “I
better tell you about it later. Good night.”

“Night.”

It was a night…a long one. I slept off and
on with my head hanging off the side of the bed. I think the most I slept in a
row all night was about half an hour. Then the wave of nausea would hit me
again and I’d have to roll over and heave nothing but bile and stomach acid
into the bucket once more. Sometime during the night it occurred to me that I
had told the one person whose opinion really mattered to me that I was walking
around with a tumor in my head. Too bad she couldn’t see me now; she’d know
what a real prize I was.

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

MOLLY

“I’m so happy you’re going!” Megan’s
enthusiasm was cute, sometimes. We were getting ready to go to Aqua and watch
Brock. He was singing again tonight with his friend’s band and I was really
looking forward to it. It was the first time in four or five days that I felt
really good. I had drunk a lot of water, took my vitamins and wrote down how
much I peed. I had to leave this funky looking little “hat” in the toilet to
catch and measure my urine. I made sure to take it out and clean it each time.
I didn’t want to gross out Megan. I told Megan that Brock knew now, about me
being sick. It was weird, but that made her really happy. I didn’t tell her
about him. I didn’t know if Jake knew and I’m pretty sure that my illness was
the only thing she had ever not told Jake about. I didn’t want to tempt her.

“What are you wearing?” I asked her.

“I got a new dress yesterday,” she said
with a guilty smile. Megan’s dad loves her; he dotes on her as a matter of
fact. He had given her a credit card before she left for college and told her
it was for emergencies. Megan thought having nothing to wear to the club was an
emergency. I found myself wishing that my dad was like Megan’s as I rummaged
through my clothes. That was a joke. I had spent the first ten years of my life
wishing that he just had a name. After that, I accepted that I would probably
never know who he was, and I suspected that my mother didn’t either.

I stood staring at my clothes while I had
these thoughts. I really wanted to look nice tonight.
 
Megan tried to get me to wear a black
sundress that I had bought over the summer and I accused her of wanting me to
die from pneumonia. I tried to wear a black sweater dress and she said it was
fine and to call her after the funeral. We both finally settled on a blue knit
blouse that was cut almost to my waist in back, but not too low in front and a
matching skirt. It wasn’t long, but it wasn’t so short that I had to worry
about matching it to the color of my panties either. When we were both finally
ready, I was satisfied. Not overwhelmed, or wowed, but satisfied. As we walked
out to the car I had the Bruno Mars song Brock had sang to me in the hospital
in my head. It gave me chills to know he thought that I was beautiful. He made
me feel beautiful too, and that was really all that mattered.