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“I’ll be paying off my student loans for the rest of my life.”
“I’ll help you,” he said. “That’s what husbands are for.”
“Aw, you still want to get married! I must be doing something right.”
“You do everything right,” he replied. “Will you marry me?”
“Yes! Of course. We’re just going to run away, right? No white-dress, bridesmaids, flower-girl extravaganza?”
“We can run away if it will make you happy.”
“Okay, well, let’s get married and have a Hawaiian honeymoon.”
“Sounds perfect to me.”
So they took their well-earned vacation, got married at city hall, and flew that afternoon to Maui. Finally slowing down meant getting in touch with previously ignored issues, and once she accepted that, she knew there was something seriously wrong with her.
Home from Maui the following week, her head in the MRI machine, eyes closed, hands folded across her belly, Caroline thought of Ryan. She didn’t tell him her concerns that she was afraid she might have a brain tumor until they were home Sunday afternoon, returning to work Monday looming in the near future.
“What are your symptoms?” he asked, confused. She’d never complained until that very moment, and now she was talking brain tumor.
“I felt sick to my stomach last week, which was why I didn’t eat much.” He was on her the whole time they were in Hawaii about not dieting while they were on vacation. “Double vision, headache, syncope, weakness on my left side, memory loss, do you need more?”
“No.” He ran his fingers through his hair, thinking. “Call Albert, now.”
Albert was the senior partner in the practice she’d just joined. It took that one call for her to get an appointment to have an MRI done first thing Monday. Before she slid into the machine, she saw Ryan, Albert, the chief of radiology, and the head of neurosurgery watching her.
An hour later, she was sitting up on a stretcher with a glass of orange juice in her hand, Ryan at her side, telling her a bad joke, which included the president, a spaceship and the Three Stooges.
“Oh god, that’s awful,” she said, laughing. “I’m going to have orange juice coming out of my nose if you’re not careful.”
Then the three doctors entered her cubicle, looking grim.
“What is it?” she asked. “Hurry.”
Albert and the radiologist deferred to Randall Peterson, the neurosurgeon. “It looks like a tumor, Caroline. There’s a possibility that it could be glioblastoma because of the rapid onset of your symptoms. Which means you should have surgery as soon as we can work you up.”
Like the air had been sucked from the room, Ryan didn’t move, barely able to breathe. Glioblastoma was the most lethal brain tumor known. Survival rate was very low. He didn’t hear what the doctors were saying to Caroline after the wordurgentwas uttered, their voices hissing on the edge of his comprehension.
“Do you have any questions?”
Caroline had taken Ryan’s hand at some point in the monologue and, squeezing it, looked up at him. “Ry, any questions?”
He shook his head.
“I’m sure they’ll have them later,” Albert said.
“We’re at the beginning of the planning stage. Go home. Get a good night’s sleep if you can.”
“I have a busy day scheduled today,” Caroline said. “It’s probably not safe for me to operate with double vision.”
Ryan looked at her, concerned.
“No worries,” Albert said. “I’ve cleared your calendar for now.”
The unspoken: you’ll never operate again.
“Truly, you two. Take the day off. Ryan, I can intervene for you if need be.”
