Page 4 of Born to be Wilder

She sobbed harder.

“I know this is scary news, but I need you to stop. Please.” Alice reached for her whiskey and took a swig. “I have had approximately three weeks to adjust to this information, and I have not cried once, and I need everyone in this room to match that energy. I’m not crying, so you’re not crying. Capisce?”

Doris pressed her lips together and nodded hard, her chin wobbling with the effort. Her face immediately turned an alarming shade of pink.

I got up and moved to the couch beside Alice, and my legs managed to hold me upright despite the way they felt like Jell-O beneath me. I settled beside her, reached over, and put my hand on her arm. Internally, my heart pounded so hard I was fairly certain everyone in the room could hear it.

I wanted to do what Doris was doing.

I wanted to do what Marge was doing.

I wanted to cry and pace and locate a power tool.

Instead, my voice came out calm and steady.

“Tell us what you know,” I said.

“They caught it early,” she answered. “That’s the good news, and there is good news, so I need you all to hold on to that before you do anything else dramatic.” She aimed this last part at Marge. “I have a small tumor. Very early stage. Stage 0 ductal carcinoma in situ, or as they call it, DCIS. The options they gave me for treatment are a lumpectomy—they take the tumor and some surrounding tissue—or a mastectomy. And for me, it would have to be a double mastectomy because I don’t want them uneven.”

“Take them off,” Marge said immediately.

Alice looked at her. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“What’s to decide? Off. Both of them. Done. Boom.”

“It is slightly more complicated than that.”

“It really isn’t. Your tiny titties have turned on you. Traitors. And traitors face execution. Off they go.” Marge pulled her thumb across her throat like a threat, then crossed her arms with the confidence of someone who had just solved the whole thing.

Alice pressed two fingers to her temple. “It’s harder to decide than that, Marge.”

“Not for me. If it were my boobs trying to murder me, I’d hack ’em off in a heartbeat. Hell, I bet life would be better without these big swingers weighing me down. I could swim faster with a new streamlined figure. Skydive better with no wind resistance since I’d be aerodynamic. Like a freaking Marge missile. Want to shoot me out of a cannon? Bring it on. I’d be unstoppable without these big beasts flappin’ in the wind. Yep. Mine would be gone in an instant. Yours should be too.”

“Everyone has different feelings about mastectomies, Marge,” I answered before Alice could. “Some women are happy to have them gone. Some want to rebuild. Others don’t want to go through it and prefer the lumpectomy. This is Alice’s journey. Now we have to give her space to figure out what she wants.”

Marge opened her mouth to argue back, but I shot her a look. She seemed to get the hint that now wasn’t the time to argue and went quiet.

“Go on, Alice,” I encouraged.

“I don’t know yet if there will be chemotherapy. I don’t know which surgery I’m choosing. I have appointments in two weeks. Right now...” She paused, and for the first time since she’d said the words breast cancer, something moved behind her eyes, and for a split second, I caught the slip in the armor and the fear residing inside them. Then in an instant, she was back. “Right now, I just wanted to come here and tell you, and to say that I can’t come on the trip this year. But you should all still go without me.”

The silence that followed was shorter than a breath.

“No,” Marge said simply.

“Marge—”

“No. Absolutely not. No woman left behind. That’s not how we operate.”

“I’m not saying abandon me. I’m saying⁠—”

“I heard what you said and the answer is no.”

Alice looked to me, then to Doris, clearly hoping for a more rational ally. Doris was still sitting on her hands with her lips pressed together and her face an increasingly alarming shade of red.

Alice tipped her head, brows furrowing with concern. “Doris. Are you alright?”

Doris gave a very tight nod and said nothing.