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First or second grade was late? What was early?
“Money was tight when we all wanted to skate, but mom made it work. It was pretty obvious, pretty quickly, that Vic and I were good. We had local places willing to sponsor us for equipment and travel. That helped a lot. We played well together. Twin Terrors, they called us. The Terrible Trio when we added in Robbie from next door. We were a novelty in a small town that loved hockey more than anything else.”
He smiled as the kids whooped and hollered over a win.
“We played together so our natural competitiveness wouldn’t destroy the family, but—”
The way he stops that sentence, like he hacked off the edge of the words rather than say them out loud.
“You were better, weren’t you?” I ask, and if I move a little closer to him on the bench, nobody needs to know.
Erik nods. “Quitting was never a possibility. I was that cocky. I just assumed I’d be drafted.”
“And then you were injured.”
He’d been so close to making it, too. I might not know everything about hockey, but even my dad had been impressed that Erik had almost played in the USHL. He’d impressed on me the importance of the league, that Erik had most likely planned to put his name in the draft the minute he was eligible. Dad had also looked up his stats, was confident Erik would have been snapped up that first year.
To have that all taken away in an instant, while his brother kept playing…that would leave a wound. Leg aside, the pain must have threatened to consume him. Blistering his organs and scalding his veins. I don’t fault Erik for not going to his brother’s games, not when each match-up probably felt like pouring kerosene on the glowing embers of his ruined dream. The distance that would have created between two boys who’d been inseparable—twins—well, no wonder breakfast had seemed strained. Erik’s just now clawing his way back to some semblance of a relationship with his family. It’s admirable.
He takes a deep breath in through his nose and releases it in a steady puff of air through his mouth. I catch myself matching my breaths to his. Erik closes his eyes and drops his chin to his chest.
“It wasn’t an injury,” he says and I have to tip my body toward him to hear.
“I’m sorry. I just assumed—”
“I was sick, Quinn.” Erik turns to look at me, his eyes haunted and his cheeks gaunt. As if the words are draining his very life-force as they drop onto the bench between us.
I shiver. It’s cold outside. The chill I feel has nothing to do with Erik trying to tell me he was...he had…. I’m jumping to conclusions. It’s my dad that has me assuming things before I have reason to.
“Cancer,” Erik says, sliding the word into my gut like a hot poker. “I was diagnosed with Stage IIB Osteosarcoma the spring after I turned sixteen. I had an eight point three centimeter tumor on my left tibia.”
The pain is spreading, radiating out from my chest, and I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t…
In hindsight, I wish I’d said something affirming, supportive, compassionate. I wish I’d said anything and hadn’t just stared at him without saying a word.
He watches me, waiting for… something, and I have nothing to give. Once again I’m sitting in the over-bright waiting room at Grace Hospital, trying not to shift too much on the plastic-covered chairs. The arm rests are cutting into my hips and my e-book holds no interest. The hum of some shopping network television channel has been quiet enough to stop anyone from watching, but too loud to ignore. Or maybe the buzz is the fluorescent lights.
There I am again. Stomach pitching as I count down the hours on my watch, reminding myself that while not routine, this surgery is performed a lot and that my dad has some of the best surgeons in the state. Seeing Dr. Wilcox appear two hours too early, but ignoring the lead feeling in my gut because she must be there for someone else. It’s just going to be an update, a quick “everything is going great” and then she’ll head back to the operating room. That’s normal. Doctors give updates to family all the time on Grey’s Anatomy.
Except no one is reassuring me of anything…and then Dr. Wilcox asks to speak to me in another room and I’m going numb. Icing over as he tells me to sit down. Frozen as the word “tumor” bombards my ears and my brain short circuits. And the only person who can make it better, who can breathe life right back into my stalled heart, is under general anesthesia having a softball-sized mass cut out of his body while I’m here.
Alone.
One point nine million new cancer diagnoses a year in the United States. Five point five percent of the population here, and yet I never imagined the possibility of it affecting me or someone in my life. I’d worn ribbon pins and taken part in school fundraisers. I’d sat around countless tables listening to the people around me name the friends and family who’d been affected by the disease, aware that I was one of a dwindling number who had no name to offer. I’d cried when I’d come across the stories of young kids fighting for their lives.
It had been luck that had kept me and my loved ones safe, and when that luck ran out, all I could worry about was what I would do if I lost my dad. I hadn’t thought about the pain he was in or the way his life was going to be permanently altered. I hadn’t thought about how he would feel when his surgery was over and he woke up not healed but facing an even longer road to recovery. No, I’d thought about what I’d do if he died, and months later I am still reeling from how selfish my response had been.
I’m still selfish.
That’s still my biggest fear. That I’ll lose the one person I’ve known my entire life and I won’t know what to do next. I promised myself that day in the hospital that my dad would never see me cry or rage or panic. I was going to take those feelings and push them so damn deep that he wouldn’t have to worry about me. We were going to focus on him. Making him better, getting through each round of chemo and each surgery. We were going to be a unit, coming out together on the other side. No other alternative.
“Quinn?” Erik’s hand slides into mine, long fingers squeezing, and I blink to bring his face into focus.
Sometimes I forget how heart-wrenchingly beautiful this man is. How there isn’t a single piece of him that isn’t appealing. How unfair is it that the universe put him in my life and then slapped a big “not for you,” sign across his torso. But I’d take him alive and well and far away, over him sick. I can’t handle that. Not Erik. Not now. I don’t have it in me to worry about this, too.
I’d give anything now for the man to be dumping me.
“Sick,” my throat throbs around the words. “You’re sick?”
