Found

Kathie Giorgio

Madeline set her cell phone on her desk. Years ago, when her first breast cancer diagnosis came over the phone, she’d dropped the receiver and the cord caught it before it hit the floor. It dangled there, strung up like an animal in a rope trap, and her doctor’s disembodied voice called out, “Maddie? Are you there? Maddie? Did you hear me?”

She did. A month later, she had what was called a partial mastectomy, and she lost an ice cream scoop-sized portion of her right breast.

The next time the bad news came, Madeline was on a cordless phone. She slammed it into the cradle, and then, for good measure, she picked it up again and threw it against a wall. There was no cord to rescue it and it fell to the floor, its battery case cracking open and batteries rolling across the floor like severed organs.

Like her breasts. She lost the rest of her right and all of her left that time, and many of her lymph nodes as well.

And now, the cell phone.

Her doctor said the cancer spread to Madeline’s bones. Breast cancer in her bones. She talked about treatment options. More surgery. Radiation. Chemo, lots of chemo. And then she said, “I’m so, so sorry, Maddie.”

Madeline didn’t answer, but she hit the red circle on her phone’s screen. It was remarkably unsatisfactory. She thought about throwing the phone like she had the last one, but this was an expensive device and financial respect caused her to set it gently down.

How in the world did breast cancer get into bones? It belonged in breasts. She didn’t have breasts anymore. She hadn’t had them in years. So how could it be in her bones?

Her doctor said that a single cancer cell could have drifted during the double mastectomy or even the first partial mastectomy, wandered down her body, and settled at the base of her spine. And then sat there, dormant, sleeping, all this time. All this time that she felt good. That she felt she was cured. That she thought cancer was gone out of her life forever and she’d never again see a surgeon smiling at her before she was put under, she’d never again lie strapped and still under the radiation machine as everyone else ran from the room to avoid what was being done to her, she’d never again be hitched up to IVs and watch as poison flowed into her veins through a special port that stayed in her chest for months and flooded her body and nobody stopped it. That’s what she thought.

But the cancer was sleeping. Peacefully tucked way down deep at the base of her spine. She carried it with her all these years. Her doctor said it woke up and it began to run, producing more cells behind it like the dust behind sneakers pounding on a gravel road.

Madeline thought she just had a backache. Arthritis, maybe. Caused by her getting older, which she was able to do because she’d beaten breast cancer. Twice.

What was that phrase? That cliché? Third time’s the charm.

She looked at her phone, the screen black, as it slept, just like the cancer, waiting to be awakened.

Financial respect be damned. She picked up the phone and threw it against the wall. It shattered.

When her husband walked in that night, home from work, he immediately looked at her face, wet with steam and tears she thought were hidden, as she stirred a pot boiling with spaghetti. He set down his briefcase. “You heard, didn’t you,” he said. “And you didn’t call me.”

She kept her eyes on the rolling noodles. “I thought it was better if we were all together when we talked about it. Emma will be home from practice in about fifteen minutes. We’ll eat, then we’ll talk. Okay? Please?”

Her husband took off his coat and carefully hung it on the row of hooks by the garage door. Then he came behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist as he had for twenty years of marriage and four years of dating, and two cancer treatments and the removal of her breasts and innumerable cancer scares, and he rested his head on her shoulder. Then he sobbed.

Madeline allowed her tears to mix more obviously with the steam. She thought about telling her husband that there was still a treatment option, this third time, this charmed time, this time when it wasn’t in her breasts, but her bones.

But she didn’t say a word. She just kept stirring the noodles. Eventually, he went to change into everyday clothes and she prepared the sauce. By the time their daughter came home, Madeline’s face was dry. She told Emma to wash up and then she put dinner on the table.

As they ate, Madeline avoided looking at her husband. She kept the conversation light, talking about Emma’s day at school, her classes, what her friends were up to, how basketball practice went. She marveled with her husband over their daughter’s height, her leanness, the mean strength of her body. She had next to no breasts, due to her athleticism. And her bones were strong.

Madeline took a couple bites to hide the fact that she was praying for the continued health of her daughter’s tiny breasts and solid bones. Please, God, please. Don’t let her be like me.

They were finishing up their dessert, a surprise treat of ice cream with chocolate syrup, when Madeline set down her spoon. “So, we do have something we need to talk about.”

Her husband and daughter put down their spoons too. Emma, sounding eerily like her father, said, “You heard, didn’t you.”

Madeline nodded. “It’s back. And this time it’s in my bones. It started at the base of my spine, apparently, and then spread up and out. That’s why I’ve been having the backaches. But it’s likely other places too. The MRI showed that it’s pretty widespread.”

“So what exactly did the doctor say?” her husband asked. He’d reached out and held their daughter’s hand. Emma’s free hand was fisted.

Madeline looked at them both. “She said she’s so, so sorry.”

Emma pulled herself free from her father and wrapped herself around Madeline’s shoulders. Madeline felt the shudders she’d known for fifteen years, her daughter’s body growing in mass and strength, the shudders that used to only shake Madeline’s arms where she cradled her baby, and now they made her whole body tremble in sync. Her husband put his face in his hands.

Madeline stared straight ahead. It’s not lying, she thought. I’m not lying. That is what my doctor said. It’s just not all that she said.

She didn’t want to say anything more just then. Not yet. She needed time to think.

After the sound of pacing from her daughter’s room faded away, and when her husband finally fell asleep after sad and careful lovemaking, Madeline slid out of bed. There was a bay window seat in their living room, and Madeline loved it and often sat there on nights when chemo left her too sick to sleep or the surgeries left her in too much pain or if she was simply too scared or worried to shut her eyes. She sat there on good nights too, admiring the moon, the new snow, the budding daffodils, the every-now-and-then deer. On the bad nights, she would look at all this and whisper, “Please, please, please,” over and over. On the good nights, she whispered, “Thank you.”

Tonight, she said nothing. She looked and she considered.

She wasn’t sure if she could take any more of this. The pain of illness followed by the pain of treatment followed by the pain of recovery followed by the pain of failure when cancer just came back again, like her whispers of gratitude and her whispers for mercy. She didn’t know if she could do this again.

She thought about her options. It seemed like there were only two.

Treatment. Again. At the hands of surgeons and radiation oncologists and medical oncologists.

Or end it now. On her own. Under her own terms and under her own hands.

And she wondered, if she chose that second option, would God even listen to her anymore? Would He listen to her “Please, please, please” or her “Thank you”?

Did God put the cancer in her? Again?  Did He send it on its way quietly down her body, allow it to nestle in peace in its cradle, rocking for years on the curve of her hips? Did He wake it, put it in motion? Is that how breast cancer ended up in bones, of all places?

Getting up, she first went to the medicine cabinet and cataloged the many bottles. She wandered to the kitchen and studied the knife block. Glancing at her wrists, she doubted that it would take much. The garage was her next stop and she sat in her car, wondering how airtight the windows were, wondering if air escaped where the big door touched the driveway, and she thought about turning the key in the ignition.

And then she thought about who would find her. How they would find her. Her fifteen-year-old daughter whose shudders vibrated Madeline’s whole body, whose pacing shuffled through the shared wall of their bedrooms. Her husband, who put his face on Madeline’s shoulder and cried.

Emma was four when cancer struck the first time and removed part of Madeline’s breast. She and her husband decided then that there would be no more children. Madeline was disconcerted by the fact that she’d fed her daughter for the first year of her life from a place in her body which would become so, so sick. She couldn’t knowingly feed another child from a breast that held disease. And quietly, she whispered to her husband, “What if I’m pregnant and it comes back?” So no more children.

For that matter, six years later, there were no more breasts.

Six years later, Madeline saw the way ten-year-old Emma snuck sideways glances at her mother’s newly flat chest, as flat as Emma’s own. She never cried in front of Madeline, but Madeline heard the sobs through their shared wall in the bedrooms. One night, Madeline went into her daughter’s room and she held Emma on her lap, despite her ten years, and they rocked for an hour or more. Emma was already tall; in her mother’s lap, her bare feet touched the floor.

She thought of Emma finding her now, if she chose to dig into the medicine cabinet or climb in the bathtub with a knife from the kitchen or turn the ignition on her car. And she thought of Emma watching her again, if she chose to go through treatment. What would Madeline lose this time? Her hair again, for sure. But what else? How could bones be carved out of her body? If random cells wandered then, where would they go now? How long would they sleep?

She returned to the bay window and watched the moonshine slide across her yard. She would buy a new cell phone tomorrow and she would call her doctor back. She would make an appointment and they could talk.

Then she would consider her options again. She needed to know more, even if she didn’t want to hear it.

The first number Madeline called as she stepped out of the cell phone store was her doctor’s office. When she asked for the next available appointment, the receptionist said, “Actually, we have an opening in an hour. Dr. Franklin was hoping you’d call back today and she saved a spot for you, in case you did.”

Madeline was both flattered and worried by this. She loved that her doctor thought enough of her and cared enough for her that she saved an appointment. She also worried that the doctor thought it was so necessary for her to come in right away. But then, on the phone yesterday, Dr. Franklin said she was so, so sorry. Just what did Madeline expect?

Madeline stopped for lunch even though she wasn’t hungry and then she went into the clinic. The nurse patted Madeline’s shoulder and skipped all of the preliminaries, the weight, the blood pressure, the questions, instead leading her into an office. Madeline settled in a chair and only had to wait a few minutes before Dr. Franklin walked in.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “I tried calling you back yesterday, but—”

Madeline held up her new phone. “I threw my phone across the room. It broke. I’m sorry.” She tried to smile, at least just a bit. “This little side effect of the new diagnosis cost me a bundle.”

Dr. Franklin stretched across her desk, offering her hands. Madeline took them. “Maddie, this is bad. I won’t sugarcoat it. But it’s not hopeless. We can treat this.”

Madeline nodded and then sat and listened as, first, Dr. Franklin talked about surgery — more than one, actually, surgeries. The cancer weakened several places in her spine; already, there were fractures that needed to be repaired or Madeline would soon be unable to walk. Dr. Franklin talked about something called spinal cement and suddenly, Madeline pictured her back looking like a concrete driveway. More surgeries than expected could occur, depending on if more weakened spots showed up. Second, there was round after round of radiation, of course, that would be pinpointed to all of the spots where the cancer was already known to be. They would have to map a route over her body, as the spots were too widespread to cover all at once. And third, there was extensive chemo, using a variety of drugs. Madeline would be sick, yes, she would lose her hair, yes, she would get burned, yes, she would be in pain, yes, and ultimately, it might not work, yes, but —

“How long?” Madeline interrupted.

Dr. Franklin sat back. “How long for what?”

“How long would the treatment last?”

“Well…” Dr. Franklin looked on her computer and jotted notes on a notepad. “Probably at least a year,” she said, sounding unsure. “Maybe a little over. A lot depends on how it goes, how quickly you recover from the surgeries, how you handle the chemo. We have to balance when each treatment should come in.”

A year.

“And if I don’t have treatment, how long will I live, with the rate that this cancer is growing?” Madeline wanted to feel calm, she wanted to feel stoic. Logical. Reasonable. She sat still, trying to paint herself as that picture, even as everything in her wanted to run away. Maybe in front of a bus. Over a cliff. Somewhere that wasn’t a year. Maybe backwards in time, before she had her first backache that didn’t seem to go away.

Dr. Franklin took her hands again. “Two, maybe three months? It’s been growing for a while, Maddie.”

Madeline thought of the massages, the chiropractor, the ibuprofen, the heating pad. All things she reached for to treat a backache, refusing to think the unthinkable. But how could she think it? Why would breast cancer be in her back? She had no breasts!

And now she wondered how she couldn’t have known. The pain was already pervasive. She just didn’t feel well.

“All right,” she said, knowing the veneer of reasonableness was fast wearing thin and she needed to get out of there. “I have to think about this.” She stood up and wondered for how long she’d be able to. “And…you can’t talk to my family about this, right? Because of confidentiality?”

“That’s right,” Dr. Franklin said. “But Maddie—”

“It’s okay. I just need to think. I’ll call you next week with my decision.” And Madeline left.

At home, Emma noticed her new phone. “It’s really cool, Mom,” she said, sliding out the mini-keyboard and sending her fingers flying over the buttons, finding things to do that Madeline would never do. “Why’d you get it? What happened to your old one?”

“I dropped it.” Madeline wondered if Emma saw longevity in that phone. New phone, long life.

One year.

Two to three months.

Madeline wanted to throw the phone all over again. Even though this one was more expensive than the last.

Madeline returned to the bay window that night. She looked out and considered. Then she held her hands out in front of her, palms up, and she lifted one, then the other, as if they were scales and she was trying to decide which was heavier. But in this case, heavier wasn’t necessarily the better thing.

One year.

Two to three months.

Or immediately, if she decided to take her life right now. The pills. The knife. The car.

She rested her hands on her knees. There was no movement outside. There was no movement inside of her. She thought, I am so done. I am just so done. I know this. I know this in my bones.

She allowed herself to smile, just a little bit, just like in the doctor’s office. Of course she knew this in her bones. That’s where the cancer was, wasn’t it.

But her daughter. But her husband. Who would find her?

How would she do it? How could she do it that would bring the least bit of trauma to them?

And that’s when she realized it. She already held her weapon. Her body held her weapon. The knowledge slid into her veins like the poison she’d already taken in, suffered through, and survived. Cancer had her. She would grasp it in her own hands, under her own skin, deep within her own bones, and she would use it to kill herself. It was her decision, not cancer’s.

It wouldn’t be easy. It wouldn’t be fast. Two to three months. Her husband and daughter would witness it, but they would witness what they were expecting and not see it as their wife and mother giving up and taking her own life. They would think that cancer took her life.

They wouldn’t know that she swallowed cancer, sliced her wrists with cancer, breathed it in as deep as she could in lungs that were likely already afflicted.

Madeline felt cancer’s ache, starting at the top of her hips and branching upwards. She rested her hands in that hollow at the base of her spine before her body swelled out into the cradle that once carried her daughter. She pressed down, felt the ache spread.

Then she went upstairs and finally fell asleep.

Two months later, Madeline was bedridden and her husband was calling in hospice. A hospital bed was in the living room, next to the bay window so that Madeline could look outside when she was capable of turning her head.

Emma sat down next to her mother and held her hand. Madeline treasured the warmth. She breathed shallowly; every movement, even the raising and lowering of her chest hurt. There would be no ventilator, no oxygen, nothing but morphine. Madeline signed the Do Not Resuscitate order; her husband witnessed it. Dr. Franklin watched, her lips in such a tight line, Madeline wondered how the doctor could breathe herself.

Madeline didn’t wonder much anymore. She just waited.

“Mom,” Emma said. “In school today, I was doing some research for a paper for my social studies unit on social justice. Mom, in Oregon, if you move there, they allow assisted suicide.”

Madeline searched, found capability, and turned her head, not to see outside, but to see her daughter. She widened her eyes. It hurt.

“Mom,” Emma whispered, leaning forward, resting her head beside Madeline’s on the pillow. “Do you want to go there? Do you want me to take you? Dad and I could take you.”

Tears rose, rolled down Madeline’s cheeks, soaking her daughter’s hair. “You’d be okay,” she said and then drew breath, let it out, “with that?”

“I just want you to not be in pain anymore!” Emma wept.

Madeline breathed in her daughter’s scent, the feel of her skin against her cheek, the shudders, the so familiar shudders, that rocked her frail, fractured body. Then she closed her eyes and breathed out, letting her daughter be the one to find her.