Life and Other Near-Death Experiences (19 page)

I smiled wistfully, even as my eyes filled with tears. “I wish we could, but to tell you the truth, I’m not so sure I can handle that.”

Tom was right in front of me, so close I could touch him. But it now seemed we were on opposite sides of a rapidly expanding pond. It would not be long before that pond was a lake, and the lake, an ocean, and we would never again see each other from our respective shores. I would miss him.

He nodded. “I understand. Good-bye, Libby. I love you.”

I looked at him, one last time. “Good-bye, Tom.”

THIRTY-FOUR

The wind rattled the windows and howled through the cracks in the back door. I had an hour or two to kill before I was required to legally vacate the apartment, but even with a winter storm brewing, there was no point hanging around a place that was no longer my home. Besides, there was something I needed to do. I packed my suitcase, made sure the counters and floors weren’t too filthy, and dropped my keys on the counter. Then I walked to Damen, where I hailed a cab.

As the driver began speeding east, I pulled my phone out of my bag and typed in a number.

“Can you hear me?” I said into the phone.

“Yes,” said Shiloh.

“Good. Thank you for doing this.”

“You don’t have to thank me. Thank
you
.”

“Let’s not dog pile the gratitude, okay?”

“Aye, aye, captain. You nervous?”

I wiped the foggy window with the edge of my palm. Through the clear spot in the glass, cars whizzed past, their drivers seemingly unfazed by the fast-falling snow. “I feel not unlike my plane is about to nosedive into the ocean.”

Shiloh laughed. “Deep breaths, Libby. Deep breaths. You can do this.”

I breathed in deeply, which kind of hurt. Then out. And in again.

“Good,” he said, like he was coaching me through Lamaze. “You’re doing great. Remember, get it over with so you can move forward.”

“Forward,” I said.

“Forward,” he repeated. “Now, did I tell you about my first day back to work?”

Shiloh jabbered on for the next ten minutes, until the cab pulled up to a covered service drive. “Well, I’m here,” I told him.

“Sure you don’t want me to stay on the phone a little longer?”

“No, but I promise I’ll call you if I freak out. And I’ll let you know as soon as I’m done, okay?”

“Cutie, I’m proud of you. I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

I walked through the double doors, took yet another deep breath, and marched up to the reception window. “I’m here to see Dr. Sanders,” I announced.

The receptionist looked confused. “He’s in clinic on the other side of the building.”

“Do you expect him back at some point?”

“Yes, though I have no idea when. Do you have an appointment with him?”

“No, but I can wait.” I leaned through the window toward her. “I’m Libby Miller. The patient who wasn’t going to get treatment. I missed my appointment with Dr. Sanders last week.”

Her mouth morphed into a soft
O
. “I see. Let me page him. Please have a seat.”

A long, stale hour passed. People came in and out of the waiting room, presumably to see other doctors in Dr. Sanders’s practice. I tried not to look at them too closely, knowing I would inevitably attempt to tea-leaf my own health based on their appearances, even though it was statistically improbable that a single one of them had the same type of cancer I did, if they even had cancer at all. I struggled to stay awake as another hour went by. But I was determined to wait it out, mostly because there was no guarantee I’d be able to convince myself to return.

I was nodding off when I felt someone sit beside me on the sofa where I’d been stationed. I looked over sleepily, and there was Dr. Sanders, dressed in pale blue scrubs. I sat up quickly and he smiled, then clasped my hands in his own. I resisted the urge to yank them back.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you here,” he said, leaning in so close that I could see the broken capillaries swimming up and down the side of his nose.

“Try me,” I said.

He laughed. “Will you come with me?”

I agreed, though my bravado had been replaced by the sensation that I had showed up to my own surprise party after it was over. When we reached his office, he motioned for me to sit in the same chair where he’d barely managed to deliver bad news the first time around. This time he didn’t go behind his desk. Instead he pulled another armchair across from me, just below a section of wall decorated with scripted diplomas, and sat down. Crossing one long leg over another, he regarded me for a moment. “Well, Libby, you’re the first patient who has ever disappeared on me, but my colleagues say it’s not unheard-of.”

I stared at him.

“No one wants to hear they have cancer. There is absolutely no way to prepare for it. And in your case . . .” He shifted. “Let me put it this way. I lost my father to lung cancer when I was eighteen, after watching him fight with it for nearly five years. Those were years he should have been going to baseball games with me, helping me choose a college. But he was either in the hospital or wasting away in his recliner, smoking and watching TV and waiting to die. I remember you saying that you lost your own mother to cancer. I know the trauma of watching a parent succumb to a terrible disease. I assume that is why you didn’t want to continue your medical care.”

“Sort of,” I said. “And I’m sorry. About your father, I mean.”

He folded his hands together. “Thank you. I’m sorry for your loss as well. It doesn’t have to be like that for you, though. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Not really,” I confessed.

“We’ve come a long way since my father was in treatment, and since your mother was, too. I’m not promising you that you can be cured, but you
can
fight this. And you should. Can you agree to take it one day at a time? We need to find out whether the cancer has spread, and if so, how far. Then we can tailor a treatment plan to your needs. As you know, this form of cancer is rare, but as I mentioned before, I’ve been researching your options, and you may be eligible for a clinical trial. I’d love for us to begin this process right away so you have the best possible chance of getting better.”

“So . . . here’s the thing,” I said. “I’m not planning to stay in Chicago. In fact, as of today, I no longer even have a home.”

“Is this a financial issue? Our social work department can help you navigate insurance and assist you with housing issues.”

“No, no, it’s not like that. It’s just that . . . I’m kind of going through a divorce, and Chicago is the last place I want to be.”

“How terrible for you.” He sounded sincere, and my throat caught.

“Thank you.”

“Of course. Do you have plans to go to a specific city?”

“My brother and his family are in Manhattan. It’s not exactly my favorite place, but . . .”

He nodded. “I’d be concerned if you said you were heading to rural Kansas, but New York is a good place to seek treatment. Our cancer care center has a close relationship with Sloan Kettering. You’d be in good hands if you chose to go there, and I could help you make the transition.”

“What am I up against, exactly? The last time I was here,” I said, gesturing around his office, “you said six months.”

Dr. Sanders was staring at the space just above my head, which did not feel like a good sign. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“But it’s not untrue,” I said, heat rising in my chest. “Don’t sugarcoat it. I was basically ready to die a while ago, so nothing you say now is going to shock me.”

“As I said, this cancer is so rare . . .”

I resisted the urge to pull a move from the Paul Miller playbook and start opening and closing my hand like a puppet. Sensing my exasperation, he looked me in the eye and said, “What I am trying to say is that until you go through more thorough testing, I cannot give you a real answer. That’s exactly why I never should have said that in the first place. I made a mistake, and for that, I am truly sorry.” He put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “What I can tell you, Libby, is that you’re going to have to be strong. And I know you have it in you.”

I stood up and adjusted the shoulder strap on my bag. “I am well aware that I’m strong enough.”

“Please sit down,” Dr. Sanders said.

I looked at him, then at the door. Then I sat back down on the edge of the chair. “I know I can be strong,” I said, more quietly this time. “It’s just that I don’t want to.” I had been strong before—stronger than I would ever need to be now, because truth be told, my mother’s life meant far more to me than my own. And it had not changed a damn thing.

“You have a choice—”

I cut him off. “If you tell me to choose life, I will murder you in your sleep.”

He held his hands up. “I was going to say something along those lines, but I’ll refrain.”

“Good choice.”

We sat in silence: Dr. Sanders, staring in my direction; me, staring out the window at the frozen white waves lining the lakeshore.

“Okay,” I said after a few minutes.

“Okay?” Dr. Sanders said with surprise. It’s true that he had no reason to believe me, considering the last time I said that very thing, I followed up with a no-show.

“Yes. If you can help me get into a good hospital in New York right away, then I’m ready to do this.”

He stood up. And he walked over to me and held his hand out. “I’d be happy to, Libby. Thank you.”

I reached out and let him help me stand. “Thank
you
, Dr. Sanders,” I said. His bedside manner was not going to win him any awards, but his persistence may have bought me a little extra time.

THIRTY-FIVE

After leaving Dr. Sanders’s office, I got into another cab, this one heading to the airport. As I stared out the window, I didn’t think about treatment, or Tom, or anything concrete, really. I just kept seeing my father’s face in my mind. And the longer he lingered there, the more ashamed I became. Mental break or no mental break, I should have told him weeks ago, before my silence took shape as a lie. And so, in a not-so-quiet corner of O’Hare, I finally called him.

Naturally, my father assumed my mewling (which began before he even answered the line) was on account of Tom. And then I had to correct him with three words he had undoubtedly prayed he would never have to hear again:

I have cancer.

Let’s be honest: it was awful, and that was my fault. My father cried, and I cried some more. When we got through the worst of it, he asked questions I could not answer, and I had to explain why I couldn’t answer them, which made me feel not unlike someone who had run over a basket of puppies.

“What can I do to help you through this, Libby Lou?” he asked, and even though I’d just calmed down, a strangled sound escaped my mouth. I thought of my father wiping my mother’s brow with a cool washcloth as she lay lifelessly in bed. He had already been through enough, which is what I told him.

“Nonsense,” he said. “It’s not your job to shield me. Being your father means seeing you through this and anything else you need help with. That is the single most important thing to me in this world. Let me at least do that for you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, for what was probably the thirteenth time.

“The only thing you should be sorry about is apologizing again.”

“So I probably shouldn’t apologize for that.”

“Don’t even think about it.” He laughed. Then I heard him sigh deeply. “So this is why you took off to Puerto Rico.”

“Yeah.”

I could almost see him nodding. “That does make some sense.”

I sniffed. “Try explaining that to Paul.”

“Well, your brother’s not wrong for wanting you to get help immediately.”

“I know.”

“So, kiddo, tell me something good. How was the trip?”

“It was wonderful,” I said without hesitation. I told him about the beach house, and Milagros, and even a little about Shiloh, minus the heady affair and brush with death parts.

“You see the horses?” he asked.

“Yes. And the phosphorescent bay. You were right—it was amazing. A once-in-a-lifetime experience.” I felt a pang of regret for not snapping more than a few pictures. “Dad, how long were you and Mom there?”

He said it had been a week, maybe ten days; he couldn’t recall. “I do remember one thing well. Hang on a second. I’m going to e-mail you something.”

I switched modes on my phone. After a moment, an e-mail from my father popped up in my in-box. I opened it, and centimeter-by-centimeter, a scanned photo of my mother appeared on the screen. She was standing on the beach in a yellow bathing suit, the swell of her belly outlined against the sea. Her hands were overflowing with shells and she was laughing.

“I found it while I was cleaning out some boxes in the attic a few weeks ago. I meant to send it to you last week,” my father explained.

“It’s incredible, Dad. Thank you. I didn’t realize you and Mom went to Vieques while she was pregnant with us.”

“She was maybe four or five months along, though everyone thought she was about to give birth at any moment. She was so tiny, and there were two of you in there.”

“Thank you,” I repeated. “I can’t tell you how much the picture means to me.”

“I’m glad you like it. You remind me so much of your mama, kiddo.”

A lump formed in my throat. I hadn’t heard anyone refer to her as “mama” in years. “It’s Paul who looks like her,” I said.

“True, but who do you think you get your sunny outlook from? You’re just like her that way.”

I shook my head, thinking of how similar Paul and I had been for the first decade of our lives. It was only after our mother got sick that he’d become so cynical, and I’d begun denying the existence of any and all bad things. “I wasn’t really like that until everything happened,” I said.

“Not true, kiddo. Not true at all. That’s how you came out of the womb. Paul was colicky, but you? You just lay there cooing. We used to joke that you were singing to Paul to calm him down.”

“So I didn’t . . .” I wasn’t sure how to say it. “I didn’t get all weird and chipper because of Mom’s cancer?”

“Oh, gosh, no. Not at all. Do you not remember much of your childhood before that? I suppose that’s normal. That grief counselor I used to see once told me that many of your memories would be formed around that one awful year. But there was—” My father blew his nose into a tissue and continued. “There is so much more to our family. We had great times together. And you and your mom staying positive throughout the not-great times was one of the few things that kept me going. I just don’t think I could have handled it if she hadn’t believed, deep down, that everything was going to be okay.”

“But she died,” I said softly.

“Yes, she did. You know what they say: no one makes it out of life alive. But she was still right.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Libby, you and Paul are happy, functioning people who have lived, and loved, and made the world a little bit better by being in it. That was your mama’s exact definition of
okay
.”

I could feel the sobs coming on. “Thanks, Dad. I needed to hear that.”

“You’re so welcome, Libby Lou. I love you.”

Afterward, I went to the bathroom and cried in a stall for a while, then splashed my face with cold water. I was turning from the sink when I almost ran into a girl—she couldn’t have been more than eight or nine—who was attempting to walk while reading a well-worn copy of
Little House in the Big Woods
. She looked up at me and scowled, but I smiled down at her anyway, because my mother had loved that book. I hadn’t adored it the way she did, but I never told her that, because I was happy just to sit with her and take turns reading aloud. In fact, there was little I now recalled about
Little House
, save the main character, Laura, and her family, and the occasional cameo from a bear or panther in their woods.

But as I returned to my gate, I realized there
was
something I could remember. At the very end of the book, Laura tells herself,
This is now,
and feels happy because the
now
could not be forgotten as it was happening. “Isn’t that wonderful?” my mother said to me after she finished reading it. Her arm was around me, and she squeezed me tight. “This is now, Libby Lou. And it’s all ours.”

It was a night like any other, except the flood of bad memories from the following years had not washed it away. And though it was no longer
now
, it was still ours.

People were crowding around the boarding area, jostling one another to speak with the gate agent or get in line. I was less than eager to sandwich myself between them and take another flight. Especially
this
flight, which would herald an unknown and undoubtedly difficult period.

Yet as I stood and began slowly wheeling my suitcase to the gate, I had a deep, restful feeling of relief—a feeling I had not had since long before the double dose of news that started it all. My conversation with my father had not been an epiphany so much as a reframing. Life is devastating, if only in its limited run; but it’s incredibly good, too. And in spite of my circumstances, I could not deny that I was ready for more.

“New York LaGuardia, now boarding zone one,” said a voice over the loudspeaker.

I took a deep breath and got on the plane.