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“Not necessarily, but I’m glad to hear that. Connor called me yesterday.” She looks up at me. “He told me about you getting so sick the other night.”
“It was just exhaustion, the ballet company doctor checked me out the next day.” I’m going to kill Connor for telling her. I’m plotting forty different ways to do it when she continues.
“I googled, and it doesn’t look like that type of reaction is a common symptom of MS, so it could definitely be exhaustion. Have you been pushing yourself too hard?”
“I’ve definitely been going hard. I have to be flawless for the performances. I can’t risk slowing down when I’m so close to what will be the pinnacle of my career as a dancer.”
“I get that.” She nods and goes back too weeding. “But your body isn’t like everyone else’s, you have to take better care of it.
“I’m aware.”
“Could you be pregnant?”
I almost fall of the chair. “What? No.”
“Are you sure? I was always exhausted early on when I was pregnant with both you and your brother. And then Connor told me you randomly vomited. It sounds like it could be a possibility.”
“Mom.” I rub my temples to the ease the ache already building. “I’m not pregnant.”
“Did you take a test?”
“No. I don’t have to take a test to know I’m not.” I pause, trying to decide if I should anything. “I’m infertile.”
“What?” She stands up and walks over to me. “You are twenty years old, how could you even know that?”
“After my last flare, I was in the ER and asked the doctor if this is something I would have to worry about passing onto my kids. He said no, because it’s not genetic and then added that most women diagnosed young can’t conceive a child anyway. Then I asked my specialist, and he said the same thing.”
“Oh, honey.” She sits down and pulls me into a hug, and for the first time in years, I let her. “I’m so sorry.”
The unexpected comfort of her arms around me and the warmth of the sun must melt that ice cold heart in my chest because, all of a sudden, a torrent of tears start falling from my eyes. I sit there, wrapped in my mom’s arms, and cry.
I cry for the loss of the future I wanted. I cry because I’m so scared of what the future holds for me that sometimes I can’t breathe. I just lock all those feelings away deep inside, unable to confront them. I cry because the amount of love I feel from my mom in this moment is overwhelming. I cry because I love my nieces so much, but I’m so heartbroken at not being able to have children that holding them feels like the most exquisite torture. I cry because I love Griff with every single fiber of my being, but it’s not fair to tie him to dying a woman. My life feels like death by a thousand cuts. I have no control anymore.
Mom cries with me. We sit together on the hot marble bench, in her beautiful flower bed, crying in the harsh summer sun. Eventually I hear Friday come over. She sits on the other side of me and wraps her arms around me too.
