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“I have good news.” He lowered himself onto the edge of the leather chair behind his desk and leaned across its polished expanse. “You have a grade 1 astrocytoma, a type of glioma, pressing on the temporal lobe. This is the part of the brain that controls memory, language, comprehension, and emotion. A logical explanation for the mood swings, memory lapses, headaches, and cognitive difficulties you are experiencing. The symptoms of gliomas overlap those of other diseases and conditions, like pregnancy, which can delay diagnosis. It is fortunate you experienced the seizures, or the tumor could have gone untreated for months. Possibly years.”
Jules didn’t feel lucky, but she was relieved to know what they were dealing with.
“Are gliomas common in pregnant women?” Ben asked, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze.
“No. In fact, gliomas in pregnancy are rare. If they occur early in pregnancy, termination is often recommended. In cases where the tumors are larger or more invasive, treatment can cause a medical dilemma because of the risk to maternal and fetal life. Those cases often require C-sections as soon as possible, as early as 34 weeks, followed by craniotomy, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy.”
Jules shuddered, a rush of emotion triggered when Skye rolled in her belly. If they had to make a choice between her and the baby…
“Given the facts in your case,” Dr. Navi met Jules with a steady gaze, “we have time. Time for your baby to get bigger and stronger, and time to manage the tumor before surgery is required. There is a medication that will control the seizures without risk to the fetus.”
“That’s good, right?” Ben asked.
“You’ll continue to experience some of the symptoms,” Dr. Navi told her. “The headaches, the fatigue. And the memory loss will certainly worsen.”
“The recall?” She knew what the doctor wasn’t saying.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Rosner.” The physician’s gaze shimmered with sympathy. “It’s possible you may not remember that last three months of your pregnancy.”
3
30 weeks
Ben stoodin the bedroom doorway watching his wife sleep. It was early, barely past dawn. A thunderstorm was brewing, so the air was heavy and thick, the golden sunlight pouring over Jules like honey.
God, she was beautiful. With her short haircut and fine features, she reminded him of a pixie. The pregnancy had filled out her slim frame, creating lush, feminine curves that drove him crazy. The second trimester had been the best part of her pregnancy, partly because her libido skyrocketed and partly because she embraced the changes wrought to her body. She loved showing off her belly and laughed when he fondled her breasts, now almost twice their usual size.
Sex had become a daily pleasure, but that was before Dr. Navi diagnosed her brain tumor. Now Jules rarely got out of bed, she barely ate, and she slept—or pretended to sleep—all the time. Dr. Kettner had warned Ben that if Jules began losing weight and became too stressed, it could affect the baby.
His hands curled into fists. He didn’t know how to help his wife. He didn’t know how to make it better. Worse than the feeling of helplessness was feeling like a failure. He was the husband and father. He was supposed to be the protector.
He swallowed the shout of frustration clawing the back of his throat. They’d overcome so much. Neither admitted it, but before Jules got pregnant with Skye, they’d been on the verge of divorce. Her obsession with having a baby and his inability to make that happen created a divide between them that had only just begun to heal.
Ben refused to lose Jules again. There had to be a way to help her get through the next few months. His gaze drifted back to her face, and his heart swelled, seeming to cut off his air and press against his ribs. He loved her and their unborn daughter more than he could ever express.
She lay on her side, curled around her belly, one arm crooked under her head, the other curved over her baby bump. Her hair was in disarray, the tufts a dark contrast against the white cotton sheets. Long lashes fanned out over creamy cheeks, and her lips were parted in the barest whisper of a smile as if she dreamt about holding Skye. The image etched itself in his memory, but Ben wanted to capture it in a more meaningful way. Quietly sliding his cell from atop the maple dresser, he snapped a series of pictures, zooming in on her face and then zooming out. If her memory didn’t return after the tumor was removed, she’d have these images to look back on.
As Ben reviewed the pictures, an idea slowly began to take shape. For the first time since she’d been diagnosed with a brain tumor, he felt hopeful. The hard part would be convincing Jules that an operable brain tumor wasn’t such a bad thing. For that, he needed a little help.
* * *
A wall clockticked off seconds as silence stretched between Jules and Marisol Zimmerman, the family therapist she and Ben had been seeing for years. She didn’t want to be here, but he’d insisted. After walking her to Marisol’s office occupying half of the downstairs of a converted Victorian home, he kissed her cheek, rubbed her belly, and said he’d pick her up in an hour.
“Ben told you about the seizures?” she finally asked.
“Yes.” Marisol, a beautiful Hispanic woman in her early forties with wide eyes and long cinnamon-brown hair, sat with one elegant leg crossed over the other, hands folded in her lap as if she had all the time in the world to wait for her client to say something.
“And the brain tumor?” Jules added after a lengthy pause.
“Yes.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me how I feel about that?” she grumbled.
Marisol laughed lightly, easing some of Jules’ discomfort. “You know how this works. When you’re ready to tell me how you feel, I’ll listen and then we can explore the issue.”
“I don’t know how I feel.” She linked her fingers on top of her belly, a gesture that never failed to ground her. The surprising hardness of her uterus and the unexpected thrust of the baby’s foot or elbow reminded her of the miracle she and Ben had achieved.
“It’s a lot to process, in addition to managing a high-risk pregnancy,” Marisol acknowledged. “Ben said the doctor was optimistic about allowing the pregnancy to continue until you deliver and then removing the tumor.”
