“I’m so sorry,” he says.
“How…” I croak. “How did it happen?”
He exhales loudly. “It started over a year ago. Every morning when you woke up, you would complain about terrible headaches, always on the right side. I kept telling you to go to the doctor, but… well, you know how you are about doctors.” A corner of his mouth quirks up, even though there’s nothing funny about what I just read. “The headaches kept getting worse, and then one day while you were driving, you crashed your car. The accident was minor, but it turns out it happened because you had a seizure while driving.”
I cover my mouth, barely able to listen to this. But nothing he’s telling me is a surprise after what I just read in the stacks of my medical records from Mount Sinai.
“When they took you to the hospital after the accident, they found a large tumor in the right side of your brain,” Graham says. “They did surgery to try to remove it, but they couldn’t get it all. The pathology came back saying it was a malignant tumor. Stage four. Glioblastoma.”
Those are the words written on every doctor’s note in the stack. From neurosurgeons to neuro-oncologists to neurologists.
Stage four cancer.
Glioblastoma.
Poor prognosis.
Terminal.
“They tried doing chemotherapy treatment for a short time,” he goes on, even though I wish he would stop. “But youhatedit. You hated going to the doctor so often. You hated the side effects of the medication. And it wasn’t working. So you decided to stop treatment.”
And then a memory comes back to me. Sitting in front of the desk of a doctor. The doctor has a white beard and a grave expression on his face.There’s nothing more we can do, Mrs. Thurman. I’m so sorry.
The realization that I was going to die. The same way my mother did.
Graham takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes with his fingers. “I thought you might be at peace after we decided to stop treatment, but you weren’t. You were miserable. You woke up every day, acting like you were already dead. You couldn’t stand the idea of wasting away like your mother did. We tried anti-depressants, therapy… but nothing worked. You had so little time left, and it felt like you were going to spend that time wishing you were already dead. So that’s when your psychiatrist got the idea…”
I lift my eyes. I already know what he’s going to say—I almost remember it—but I want to hear him say it.
“It was an injectable drug in a clinical trial to treat victims of trauma.” He slides his glasses back on his nose. “It affects recent short-term memory. The idea was that I would give you an injection every night, and you would forget your diagnosis. And you could be happy for the remaining time you had left.” He shakes his head. “And itworked. Really well. I mean, yes, there were gaps in yourmemory and you couldn’t work anymore, but you couldn’t work anymore anyway because of the tumor. You were happy again. We explained the scar on your head by telling you that you were in an accident, and generally, you enjoyed your days.”
Distantly, I can hear the doorbell ringing on the first floor.
“But then it all changed.” He lowers his voice. “I don’t know if it was too much of the medication accumulating in your bloodstream or maybe just the progression of the tumor. Your psychiatrist wasn’t sure. But the gaps in your memory became worse. You would wake up, unable to remember most of the last decade. You couldn’t even remembermeanymore.” He takes a shaky breath. “Do you know what that’s like? To wake up every morning next to a woman who has no idea who you are and accuses you of being an intruder in your own bed?”
“I don’t know,” I shoot back. “Is it worse than finding out you’re dying of terminal cancer?”
The doorbell rings again downstairs. Someone is pounding on the door.
Graham hangs his head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Tess. This is why I didn’t want you to know. I kept hoping to make it work…”
There are footsteps on the stairs. The footsteps grow louder, and a second later, an elderly man bursts into the study. I stare at the slightly hunched figure with the white hair and deep grooves in his cheeks. It takes me a second to place him.
“Dad,” I whisper.
“Princess,” he says.
He looks so old. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, even before my engagement to Harry, and it shocks me now that my father has become an old man. I wonder how many of the creases in his face are my fault. He aged ten years in the months leading to my mother’s death. And I bet in the last year, he’s aged another ten years.
“Are you okay?” The wrinkles on my father’s forehead deepen. “Did Graham tell you…?”
“Yes,” I manage. “He told me everything.”
“I thought you deserved to know the truth,” he says softly. “Your mom… as much as it hurt her to leave you, she always said how grateful she was for those last few months the three of us had together. I didn’t want you to miss out on that.” He shoots Graham a hard look. “He disagreed.”
“You don’t know what she was like,” Graham says through his teeth. “You didn’t see how miserable it was making her.”
A tear escapes my right eye and I swipe at it. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe I’m dying, just like my mother was. My father sees the look on my face, and his Adam’s apple bobs. “I’m so sorry, Princess.”
