Dr. Kensington looked surprised. “I don’t believe anyone will. I consulted with our top neurosurgeon on this. He agrees with my diagnosis. The procedure would be too dangerous.”
“Oh, really? It might kill her, huh?” Meg looked disgusted. “Who will do this kind of operation?”
“No one in this hospital.”
Meg grabbed her handbag off the floor. “Come on, Claire. We’re in the wrong hospital.”
Claire looked helplessly from Dr. Kensington to her sister. “Meg,” she pleaded, “you don’t know everything. Please …”
Meg went to her, knelt in front of her. “I know I don’t know everything, Claire, and I know I’m a blowhard. I even know I’ve let you down in the past, but none of that matters now. From this second on, all that matters is your life.”
Claire felt herself starting to cry. She hated how fragile she felt, but there it was. Suddenly she felt like she was dying.
“Lean on me, Claire.”
Claire gazed into her sister’s eyes and remembered how Meg had once been her whole world. Slowly, she nodded. She needed a big sister again.
Meghann helped her to her feet, then she turned to the doctor. “You go ahead and teach Dr. Lannigan how to read a thermometer. We’re going to find a doctor who can save her life.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
A few years ago, Claire had gone through a foreign-film phase. Every Saturday night, she’d handed Alison to Dad, gotten in her car, and driven to a small, beautifully decorated old movie house, where she’d lost herself in the gray-and-black images on screen.
That was how she felt right now: A colorless character walking through an unfamiliar gray world. The sounds of the city felt muted and far away; all she could really hear was the thudding, even beat of her heart.
How could something like this happen to her?
Outside the hospital, the real world came at her hard. Sirens and horns and screeching brakes. She fought the urge to cover her ears.
Meghann helped her into the car. The blessed silence made her sigh.
“Are you okay?” Meghann asked, and Claire had the impression that her sister had asked this question more than once. Her voice was spiked and anxious.
She looked at Meg. “Do I have cancer? Is that what a tumor is?”
“We don’t know what the hell you have. Certainly those dipshit doctors don’t know.”
“Did you see the shadow on that X ray, Meg? It was huge.” Claire felt tired suddenly. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep. Maybe in the morning things would look different. Maybe she’d find out it was all a mistake.
Meghann grabbed her, shook her hard. “Listen to me, damn it. You need to be tough now. No getting by, no giving up. This isn’t like cosmetology school or college, you can’t take the easy road and walk away.”
“I’ve got a brain tumor, and you throw quitting college at me. You’re amazing.” Claire wanted to be angry, but her emotions felt distant. It was hard to think. “I don’t even feel sick. Everybody gets headaches, don’t they?”
“Tomorrow we’ll start getting second opinions. First we’ll go to Johns Hopkins. Then we’ll try Sloan-Kettering in New York. There’s got to be a surgeon who has some balls.” Meghann’s eyes welled up, her voice broke.
Somehow that frightened Claire even more, seeing Meg crack. “It’s going to be okay,” she said automatically; comforting others was easier than thinking. “You’ll see. We just need to keep positive.”
“Faith. Yes,” Meghann said after a long pause. “You hold on to the faith and I’ll start finding out everything there is to know about your condition. That way we’ll have all the bases covered. God and science.”
“You mean be a team?”
“Someone has to be there for you through this.”
“But … you?”
The whole of their childhood was between them suddenly, all the good times and, more important, the bad.
Claire stared at her sister. “If you start this thing with me, you have to stick around if things get tough.”
Meg glanced out the window at a passing motorist. “You can count on me.”
Claire touched her sister’s chin, made her turn to make eye contact. “Look at me when you say that.”
Meg looked at her. “Trust me.”
“I must be near death if I agree to this. God help me.” Claire frowned. “I don’t want to tell anyone.”
“Why should we say anything until we know for sure?”
“It’ll just worry Dad and make Bobby come home.” She paused, swallowed hard. “I don’t even want to think about telling Ali.”
“We’ll tell everyone I’m taking you to a spa for a week. Will they believe that?”
“Bobby will. And Ali. Dad … I don’t know. Maybe if I tell him we need time together. He’s wanted us to reconcile for years. Yeah. He’d buy that.”