Time passes like a slow leak. Hours later a man in blue scrubs comes up. When her family stands, I wait until he reaches them before standing and moving close enough to eavesdrop.
“She’s fine,” he says in greeting. I can’t see his face, so I can’t anticipate his next words. “Although the tumor looked …” His words are drowned out by Sam’s mother’s gasp. “Her breast tissue didn’t look very healthy.” I rock on my feet wanting to find a chair, but force myself to stand to try to hear anything else he has to say. “She’ll be in for a little while longer before she’s taken to recovery. You guys might want to go get something to eat. It probably won’t be until later this afternoon before you can see her.”
I go back to my seat where I plan to wait it out until I know she is safe at home.
“You should leave,” one of her friends spits out at me as they head out.
“I should,” I whisper. “But I’m not.”
“She’s not going to want to see you. But you don’t care do you? It’s all about you.”
She’s right about part of that. I don’t care that she doesn’t want to see me. Still I sit. Night comes and I watch her family escorted through the patient doors. And hours later, I watch them leave.
“She says go to home,” Laney hisses at me before telling her friends they can go back.
Still I wait.
I overhear her mother tell Sam’s friends she’s being moved to a regular room. She glances at me as if she’d hoped I would hear. I wait before following them to that waiting room where I plant myself as a fixture.
As time passes, several nurses feel sorry for me in my rumpled clothes and overall disheveled appearance. They bring me bottles of water and tell me they don’t want me to end up in the emergency room. So I drink the water, but I refuse food. I just need to see Sam leave this place. Nothing else matters.
I continue to wait, only answering e-mails while Mark and Jeff cover for me.
It isn’t until late a couple days later that the doors open and Sam is ushered out in a wheelchair. When our eyes connect, I wait for any reaction.
Laney, God love her, clamps my hand in a bone-crushing grip, all the way to the hospital for my surgery. How in the world did she go through this alone? Okay, she had Mom to guide her, and Dad and Evan were with her, too. I was off at school with my head up my ass my senior year, and not a care in the world. I could kick myself in said ass right now.
“What would I do without you?” My words are choked.
“What do you mean?” Her eyes pin me.
“You’ve done so much for me this past week. Work, the rescue from Ben’s, the surgery. I mean, I seriously don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Sam, I’m your sister. It’s what families do for each other.”
“Yeah, but when you had your surgery …”
“You were in college. Did you think I would pull you out of school to help?” She laughs. “I had Mom. And Evan was my savior.”
“Yeah. You didn’t have an asshole boyfriend who dumped you like a hot potato the first minute he found a lump in your boob.”
“Jesus. I wish I had something better to say than I’m sorry, Sam. If I’d known what a jerk he turned out to be, I would’ve kicked him in the balls that night at Mom and Dad’s.”
“And I would’ve let you. But I guess it’s best he showed his colors now rather than later. Can you imagine if this had happened after we were married?”
Her hand squeezes mine tighter, if that’s even possible. “You guys talked marriage?”
“No! It was only a hypothetical comment.”
She relaxes her grip and I flex my hand.
“Sorry. It scared me for a minute that he had the potential to do that much damage.”
“Oh, he had the potential. I just never saw it coming.” My hand automatically goes to my chest and absently rubs the place where my heart is. Like that’s going to ease the ache that seems to have permanently lodged itself there. “I wish life had a rewind button, you know?”
“How so?”
My hand moves from my chest and slashes through the air. “I’d like to erase what I said to him. I humiliated myself, when I told him I loved him. And then I gave him all those chances with my idiotic texts. It’s a terrible feeling and I want it to go away.”
“Listen to me. You did nothing to humiliate yourself. If anyone should feel that way, it should be Ben.”
“Easy for you to say, but I’m at the receiving end of an emotional cannon and I’m getting bombarded here. Have you ever been in love and had someone do something like this to you?”
Laney shakes her head. “No. Not to this degree.”
I’m silent because there really is nothing else for us to say. We arrive at the hospital and Mom and Dad are waiting on us. They both hug me, but relief marks their eyes. Mom has been ready for me to get this over for about a year now. And who can blame her when she’s a breast cancer survivor herself?
Trying to be as upbeat as I can, I say, “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Mom says, “What about the girls? Aren’t you going to wait on them?”