“Oh … yeah. It would be.”
“I closed my eyes and imagined the rays were sunlight. Healing me. Like that article you gave me.”
Meg had given her sister a stack of literature on positive thinking and visualization. She hadn’t known if Claire had read them until just now. “I’m glad it helped. The lady at Fred Hutch is supposed to be sending me another box of stuff.”
Claire leaned back in her seat and looked out the window.
From this side, she looked perfectly normal. Meghann wished she could say something that mattered; so much was unsaid between them.
With a sigh, she pulled into the underground lot and parked in her space.
Still silent, they went upstairs. In the condo, Meghann turned to Claire. She stared at the bald spot for a second too long. “Do you want something to eat?”
“No.” Claire touched her briefly, her fingers were icy cold. “Thanks for coming with me today. It helped not to be alone.”
Their gazes met. Once again, Meghann felt the weight of their distance.
“I think I’ll lie down. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
So they’d both been awake, staring at their separate ceilings from their separate rooms. Meghann wished she’d gone to Claire last night, sat on her bed, and talked about the things that mattered. “Me, either.”
Claire nodded. She waited a second longer, then turned and headed for the bedroom.
Meghann watched the door slowly close between them. She stood there, listening to her sister’s shuffling footsteps beyond the door. She wondered if Claire was moving slower in there, if fear clouded her eyes. Or if she was staring at that small, tattooed pink patch of skin in the mirror. Did Claire’s brave front crumble in the privacy of that room?
Meg prayed not, as she went to the condo’s third bedroom, which was set up as an in-home office. Once, files and briefs and depositions had cluttered the glass desk. Now it was buried beneath medical books, memoirs, JAMA articles, and clinical trials literature. Every day, boxes from Barnes & Noble.com and Amazon arrived.
Meghann sat down at her desk. Her current reading material was a book on coping with cancer. It lay open to a chapter called “Don’t Stop Talking Just When You Need to Start.”
She read: This time of tragedy can be one of growth and opportunity, too. Not only for the patient, but for the family as well. It can be a time that draws you and your loved ones closer.
Meghann closed the book and reached for a JAMA article about the potential benefits of tamoxifen to shrink tumors.
She opened a yellow legal pad and began to take notes. She worked furiously, writing, writing. Hours later, when she looked up, Claire was standing in the doorway, smiling at her. “Why do I think you’re planning to do the surgery yourself?”
“I already know more about your condition than that first idiot we saw.”
Claire came into the room, carefully stepping over the empty Amazon boxes and the magazines that had been discarded. She stared down at the filled legal pads and inkless pens. “No wonder you’re the best lawyer in the city.”
“I research well. I’m really starting to understand your condition. I’ve made you a kind of abstract—a synopsis of everything I’ve read.”
“I think I better read it for myself, don’t you?”
“Some of it’s … hard.”
Claire reached for the standing file on the left side of the desk. In it was a manila file with the word Hope emblazoned in red ink on the notched label. She picked it up.
“Don’t,” Meg said. “I’ve just started.”
Claire opened the file. It was empty. She looked down at Meghann.
“This goes in it,” Meg said quickly, ripping several pages out of her notebook. “Tamoxifen.”
“Drugs?”
“There must be people who beat brain tumors,” Meghann said fiercely. “I’ll find every damn one and put their stories in there. That’s what the file is for.”
Claire leaned over, picked up a blank piece of paper. On it, she wrote her name, then she placed the paper in the file and returned the file to its stand.
Meg stared up at her sister in awe. “You’re really something. You know that?”
“We Sullivan girls are tough.”
“We had to be.”
Meg smiled. For the first time all day, she felt as if she could draw an easy breath. “You want to watch a movie?”
“Anything except Love Story.”
Meg started to rise.
The doorbell rang.
She frowned. “Who could that be?”
“You act like no one ever visits you.”
Meghann sidled past Claire and walked to the door. By the time she got there, the bell had rung another eight times. “Damn good doorman,” she muttered, opening the door.
Gina, Charlotte, and Karen stood clustered together.
“Where’s our girl?” Karen cried out.
Claire appeared and the screaming began. Karen and Charlotte surged forward, mumbling hello to Meghann, then enfolding Claire in their arms.