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Kent sighed. “I mentioned the vision thing to Dr. Hughes the other day when we emailed back and forth about your seizure. She suggested you try some of those reading glasses that the drugstores sell. She said they might help. Do you want me to stop?”
Palmer thought about it for a second and then nodded. “I’d like to see better, even if things are still fuzzy around the edges.” Ever since she’d had another meltdown about dying, she’d vowed to try and be positive. She realized the negativity she surrounded herself with made her angry and caused her pain. She didn’t want to be remembered like that.
Kent redirected the navigation to the nearest store. While he followed the directions, Palmer slipped her shoes on and tied the laces, which took her longer than normal with her stiff and numb fingers. She hadn’t told Kent yet and knew it was a matter of time before he figured it out. Palmer glanced at the clock and timed herself. As the minutes ticked by, she gave up and sighed heavily as tears fell down her cheeks.
“What’s wrong?” Kent asked as he turned into the parking lot of a superstore. He put the Jeep into park and pressed the ignition button to turn off the engine.
“I think . . . maybe I had a stroke?”
His eyes widen. “What? When?”
Palmer shrugged. “I don’t know. I may be wrong, but it’s my hands.” She held them up. “My fingers feel tight and thick, and they’re hard to use.”
Kent frowned. “Both hands?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so I’m going to say it’s not a stroke, which is good. Do your hands hurt?”
She shook her head. None of this was a good thing, but she understood what he meant. If she’d had a stroke, she would need medical attention, and their trip—mostly meeting her sister—would derail. “They feel funny. I don’t know how to explain it.”
Kent took her left hand and examined it, and then looked at her right. Since their trip had started, Palmer had learned how to read Kent’s expressions, and she could tell he wasn’t overly concerned but curious. “I’ll email Dr. Hughes, but I suspect it’s the tumor.”
“Octopus,” she reminded him. Not that either of them needed a reminder. She hated both words, but “tumor” was entirely too clinical for her, and calling the mass an “octopus” gave it a face she could pretend to punch.
They went into the store, and instead of bringing her chair or using one of the motorized ones the store offered, Kent insisted that Palmer push the cart. He walked next to her but focused on his phone. He told her he was searching her symptoms in hopes that someone else with a GBM had a blog post or something they could read. So far, the results came back with nothing of any importance to their current situation.
In the pharmacy section, they found the display with the reading glasses. She tested each pair she tried on by reading something on Kent’s phone. He’d enlarged the font for her, but many of the apps didn’t have a feature to make an adjustment. The strongest pair the store sold ended up helping Palmer see a little better. They had some time to waste and chose to walk around the store to help Palmer adjust to seeing through them.
“I think maybe I’ll use them for reading,” she told Kent. “I don’t really like how they’re making me feel.”
“Nothing says you have to wear them all the time. Although you do look pretty adorable in them.” He tapped the tip of her nose and smiled.
She turned away from him to prevent him from seeing her flushed cheeks. Every day they spent together, her attraction to him grew exponentially. She wondered what the opposite of the Florence Nightingale effect was because she was surely experiencing it.
Kent loaded up on what he referred to as “road snacks”: candy, cheesy crackers, soda, and his favorite red licorice. He’d only eat one kind, and stores rarely carried it. As soon as he saw the pack, he raced toward it and loudly proclaimed that today was the best day of his life.
After they got back on the road, Palmer opened the licorice and gave Kent a piece. He asked for another and put it into his soda to use as a straw, which made Palmer’s stomach turn. “That’s so gross.”
“Don’t knock it until you try it, babe,” he said, laughing. She scrunched her face at him in disgust.
“No way,” she said. “I’m even on my deathbed, and that’s not something I want to try.” Silence filled the space between them. Kent’s expression went blank, and Palmer regretted her words. She was dying and had made a joke about it. Sometimes she needed to say it aloud to remind herself that she was on borrowed time.
