The Wave by Kristen Crusoe (ebook reader online txt) 📗

in a moment’s time. He woke with a start when he heard his phone’s ringtone. Dark now, the lights in the parking lot casting a yellow glow, he was momentarily disoriented.

‘Where the hell is she?’ Ben’s voice cried into the phone. ‘They’re saying she’s not there, on the unit. That they’ve never heard of a Clair Mercer.’

‘Oh fuck. They are so obstructive. I’ll be right there. Wait for me in the lobby.’

He used the door handle to pull himself out of the car. Stiff, sore, he stretched tall, lifted his face to catch the cool mist drifting down, allowing a moment to breathe in its velvety softness. Pulling his jacket hood over his head, shoulders slumped, he lumbered off across the tarmac.

* * *

The intercom buzzed.

‘It’s Adam Gage, here to see Clair Mercer. Belinda, you know it’s me. This is Clair’s family. Please, let us in or at least let Clair know we’re here.’

The voice coming through the speaker was tinny. ‘Dr Gage, it’s Charles. Hold on, I’ll come out and talk with you. Better yet, come in. I’ll let you into the conference room.’

‘What the hell is going on?’ Adam said to Ben. ‘I don’t get it.’

The buzzer, indicating the door to the sallyport unlocking, sounded. Adam pushed through, holding it for Ben and Jodie. They waited in the center of the small cubicle, for the second click, indicating they were released to enter into the locked unit. Charles, a middle-aged nurse with shaggy, gray hair and a gold stud in his earlobe, stood sentinel, shepherding them into the conference room to the right. But before they were able to enter, two surgical technicians, wearing the green scrubs of the operating room, wheeled a gurney towards them. As they moved aside to make room for the team to pass, Adam saw Clair, her head covered by a surgical cap, IV line dripping from her arm. She caught his eye as she passed, and mouthed the words, ‘I’m sorry,’ as they pushed by.

Chapter 13

Clair

Clair laid still on the white sheeted bed, an IV-line snaking into her right forearm, a sting, each time the machine beeped, pumping a hit of morphine into her fragile vein, followed by immediate and intense nausea then blessed nothingness. She would drift off for several minutes, then awake again with a start, panic and dread chilling her blood, her entire body shivering in spite of the room’s sticky warmth and the heated blanket thrown over her near naked body. A thin cotton gown, untied to allow for easy access by the nurses barely covered her. She felt carved out, unmasked, and vulnerable. The only thing keeping her connected with reality was the punishing pain in her chest, where her breasts used to be.

A soft knock sounded at the door, followed by a voice.

‘Hello, Clair. How are you feeling? OK if I come in?’

Clair turned her head, eyes trying to focus through the morphine cloud.

‘Hmm, Jet, come in.’

Jet stopped at the sink to wash her hands, then walked over to the side of Clair’s bed. A stool on wheels sat in the corner. She pulled it over so she would be at eye level with Clair. Clair had turned her head away again, looking out the window at passing clouds cutting through the tops of tall evergreens. The light was fading early, fall bringing shorter, cooler days, longer nights. Jet noticed her hands gripping the blanket on the bed.

‘Are you hurting now?’ she asked. ‘Do you need your nurse?’

‘I’m OK,’ Clair said, keeping her head turned so Jet wouldn’t see the tears glistening in her eyes. ‘I don’t like the morphine. It makes me sick. I prefer the pain.’

Jet didn’t say anything. They sat there, in quiet, for several minutes until another knock sounded at the door. They looked up together, seeing a tall, slumped-shouldered man, with short, dark-brown hair standing there. He wore a bright purple shirt, lime green tie, and jeans. He wasn’t old, but not young either. He looked like he might have looked since he was a high school student, except for a receding hairline.

He walked briskly over to the side of the bed. Jet had to scoot over on her rolling stool to make room for him. He held out his hand, eager as a puppy. Clair began to reach up to take it then winced, tucking her arm back down by her side. He smiled and tucked both hands in his pockets, nodding at Jet. They knew each other from having worked together over the years, Jet consulting on his patients with depression and anxiety. Jet stood up, offering him her stool, the only available seat in the room.

‘Hello, I’m Robert Ellerby, oncologist. I’ve been asked to review your case, and I did. What I found is not good, in fact it’s about as bad as it gets, but the good news is we have treatment that can slow it down and, sometimes, send the patient into remission. We should get started right away, with several treatments of chemo, followed by radiation. If we do, I think you can plan to live out most of your life expectancy, maybe with some recurrence but we can treat that too. First, we need to do a PET scan, but that has to be done as an outpatient. So, that first, then we start the chemo. Questions?’

Clair was stunned. She looked at him, shaking her head slightly from side to side, eyes trying to focus on his face, his skin, his hair, anything but his eyes, which were so kind. His words had spilled out like foam, bubbling away so that all that was left was the bitter taste of bile rising in her gut.

‘Are you saying I have cancer?’ she asked, eyes now seeking his.

‘Yes, sorry, I thought I had explained that. You do have what looks like stage IV, inflammatory breast cancer. We’ll have to wait for the full biopsy results but just based on the number of lymph nodes involved, and