The forty-eight hours before Allison’s repeat blood test stretched longer than the two weeks that had come before them.
Every ordinary thing became a distraction we pretended not to need.
Mateo developed a habit of falling asleep only after being walked around the kitchen island several times. I learned that exactly six slow laps usually worked. Five left him suspicious. Seven made him wake again as if I had overplayed my hand.
Allison watched from the couch with a blanket over her legs.
“Six.”
“I know.”
“You’re at five.”
“I can count.”
“You skipped the corner.”
“That does not invalidate the lap.”
“It absolutely does.”
Mateo opened one eye.
We both froze.
Then Allison whispered, “You ruined it.”
“I did not.”
He yawned and went back to sleep.
I smiled at her.
For ten seconds, the tumor marker did not exist.
Then her phone lit up on the coffee table.
Both of us looked.
Not the hospital.
Just an advertisement.
Allison exhaled.
“I hate that my entire nervous system lives inside my ringtone now.”
I put Mateo in the bassinet.
“Want me to turn notifications off?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly.
She hated waiting.
She hated the possibility of missing something more.
At the lab the next morning, Allison barely spoke.
The technician tied the band around her arm.
“You’ve got good veins,” she said.
Allison gave a tired smile.
“I’ve been told.”
Blood filled the tubes.
One.
Two.
Three.
So much of illness seemed to be waiting for liquids to tell you something about yourself.
On the way home, Allison stared out the window.
“What if it’s higher again?”
“I don’t know.”
“What if chemo isn’t working?”
“We’ll ask Dr. Mehta.”
“What if she changes everything?”
“I don’t know.”
She turned toward me.
“You’re really committed to that answer now.”
“It’s been useful.”
She almost smiled.
Then she looked out the window again.
At home, Rachel was waiting with coffee.
Teresa had Mateo.
The arrangement had become increasingly normal.
That was one of the strangest parts of treatment: extraordinary circumstances rapidly turned into schedules.
Rachel handed Allison a cup.
“Decaf.”
“You’re a terrible person.”
“Your stomach hates real coffee right now.”
“My soul doesn’t.”
“Your soul can wait.”
Allison sat.
Rachel looked at me.
“Results?”
“Not yet.”
They both fell quiet.
Nobody tried to fill the room.
That mattered.
An hour passed.
Then another.
At noon, Allison opened the hospital portal.
Nothing.
At twelve seventeen, again.
Nothing.
At twelve forty-two, she opened it.
The new result appeared.
I saw her face before I saw the number.
“What?”
She stared.
“It dropped.”
Rachel stood.
“How much?”
Allison told her.
Rachel looked at me.
That meant nothing to me.
Her expression told me it was significant.
“That’s good.”
Allison kept staring.
“Really good?”
“Really encouraging.”
Not cured.
Not safe.
Encouraging.
We had all learned the vocabulary by then.
Allison laughed once.
Then pressed both hands over her mouth.
Tears came.
I moved toward her.
She stood before I reached her and hugged me.
Hard.
Harder than she had since before Mateo’s birth.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then she pulled away.
“I know it doesn’t mean everything.”
“I know.”
“It can still change.”
“I know.”
“But it dropped.”
“Yes.”
She smiled through tears.
“It dropped.”
Rachel cried too.
Then her phone rang.
Teresa.
Rachel looked at Allison.
“Can I tell her?”
Allison nodded.
Rachel answered.
“It dropped.”
There was a pause.
Then Teresa’s voice became loud enough that we all heard her crying.
Allison laughed.
“Tell Mom she’s not allowed to make this about her.”
Rachel repeated it.
Teresa apparently called Allison something unprintable.
For the first time since diagnosis, relief entered the house without immediately being chased out by another emergency.
We let it stay.
That afternoon, Teresa brought Mateo home with cupcakes.
Allison looked at the box.
“What are those?”
“Cupcakes.”
“I can see that.”
“We’re celebrating.”
“What?”
“The number.”
Allison hesitated.
I watched her.
She wanted to protect herself.
Celebrating meant admitting she hoped.
Hope meant having something else to lose.
Rachel seemed to understand.
“You’re allowed to eat cake without declaring victory.”
Allison looked at her.
“That should be on a greeting card.”
“I’ll patent it.”
We ate cupcakes.
Mateo slept through his own family celebration.
Later, Allison stood at the sink washing frosting from her fingers.
I walked past carrying bottles.
She said, “Daniel.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you still want another child?”
I stopped.
The question had been sitting somewhere between us since surgery.
“I don’t know.”
She turned.
“You used to.”
“I used to assume we had unlimited time to decide.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.”
I put the bottles down.
“Yes. I think I did.”
“Did?”
“I don’t know what I want now.”
Her expression tightened.
“Because I have cancer?”
“Because everything changed.”
She looked away.
I heard the danger in my own answer.
“It’s not because I think you’re damaged.”
Her head snapped back.
“I didn’t say that.”
“I know.”
“You thought I was thinking it.”
“Yes.”
She crossed her arms.
“Do you?”
“No.”
The answer came easily.
But something remained unresolved.
She saw it.
“What are you not saying?”
I took a breath.
“I don’t want us making another child into proof that cancer didn’t take something.”
Her face changed.
I continued carefully.
“If we want another baby someday, I want it to be because we want that child. Not because we’re trying to defeat what happened.”
Allison looked at me for a long time.
“That was annoyingly reasonable.”
“I’m having a good month.”
She smiled faintly.
Then her eyes filled.
“I don’t even know if I’ll be able to.”
“I know.”
“They preserved everything, but chemo could still affect fertility.”
“I know.”
“What if I can’t?”
I waited.
“I don’t know.”
She turned toward the sink.
“That answer again.”
“Yes.”
I moved closer.
“But I know it wouldn’t change what I think of you.”
“That sounds easy to say.”
“Probably.”
She looked at me.
“So say the hard part.”
I thought.
The hard part was not a sentence I had rehearsed.
“If we can’t have another child, I’ll grieve it with you.”
She said nothing.
“I won’t pretend it doesn’t matter because we have Mateo.”
Her shoulders lowered.
“I won’t tell you to be grateful.”
She nodded.
“And I won’t make you reassure me that one child is enough.”
Her eyes filled.
“That’s the part.”
I understood.
She had spent years carrying both her pain and everyone else’s demand that she not appear ungrateful.
One child.
One surviving ovary.
One falling tumor marker.
People always wanted gratitude to tidy grief into something socially acceptable.
Allison dried her hands.
“I think I want another.”
The words were quiet.
Not certainty.
Desire.
I nodded.
“Okay.”
“I don’t want to decide now.”
“We don’t have to.”
“I don’t want to even talk about it for a while.”
“Then we won’t.”
She smiled faintly.
“You’re getting good at not turning conversations into contracts.”
“Therapy is expensive. I’m trying to get value.”
She laughed.
That evening, my mother came over.
She brought lasagna and immediately apologized.
“I know you said no casseroles.”
Allison looked at the baking dish.
“Lasagna is not a casserole.”
My mother looked relieved.
“I’ve raised two sons. I understand the importance of technical distinctions.”
My father did not come.
He had not spoken to me since our argument.
My mother mentioned him once.
“He’s sulking.”
Allison looked at me.
“Are you going to call him?”
“Eventually.”
My mother smiled.
“Good.”
I stared at her.
“You want me to?”
“I want you to talk when you can talk without trying to win.”
That sounded wiser than most advice she had ever given me.
“Where was this when I was sixteen?”
“Under twenty years of exhaustion.”
Fair.
After dinner, my mother asked whether she could feed Mateo.
Allison said yes.
I watched my mother hold him.
She had held me that way once.
That thought had become strange lately.
Parents existed in our minds as finished people.
It was easy to forget they had once been terrified beginners too.
My mother looked at me.
“You were fussier.”
“Lies.”
“You screamed every evening from six to nine.”
“All three hours?”
“Your father used to take long showers.”
The joke landed differently now.
She saw it.
Her smile faded.
“He didn’t know what to do.”
“He could have learned.”
“Yes.”
No defense.
No rewrite.
Just yes.
Later, after she left, I called my father.
He answered on the fourth ring.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
Silence.
I almost started with an apology.
Then decided not to apologize for the wrong thing.
“I was rude.”
He said nothing.
“I shouldn’t have talked to you like I’d suddenly figured out your whole marriage.”
“That’s true.”
“But I meant what I said.”
He sighed.
“Of course you did.”
“Mom was tired.”
“I know.”
The answer surprised me.
“You knew?”
“I’m not an idiot.”
I sat down.
“Then why didn’t you do more?”
He went quiet.
When he answered, the irritation was gone.
“I thought working was doing more.”
I understood that.
Not because it excused anything.
Because it was familiar.
He continued.
“My father never changed a diaper in his life.”
“That doesn’t make you exceptional.”
“I know that now.”
I was not prepared for that.
He sighed.
“Your mother and I have been talking.”
“About what?”
“Things I apparently should’ve understood thirty years ago.”
A small smile came despite myself.
“How’s that going?”
“Badly.”
“Sounds normal.”
He laughed once.
Then asked about Allison.
I gave him the tumor marker result.
He started to say, “That’s great.”
Then corrected.
“That’s encouraging, right?”
I smiled.
“Yeah.”
“Encouraging.”
Progress could sound like one changed word.
The next several days were kinder.
Allison’s appetite improved.
Her energy returned enough that she could walk around the block.
She held Mateo more.
She pumped the remaining stored milk away in the freezer but stopped looking at it every time she opened the door.
The countdown to the second infusion began.
Three days.
Then two.
The night before, Allison became quiet.
I knew better than to ask repeatedly what was wrong.
Around ten, she came into the nursery while I was folding clothes.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
“Did you ever wish I’d left?”
I stopped folding.
“Before all this?”
“Yes.”
The answer mattered too much for instinct.
I thought.
“No.”
She watched me.
“Never?”
“I wished the fighting would stop.”
“That isn’t the same.”
“I know.”
“I sometimes wished I could be single for one day.”
That hurt.
She looked guilty.
“I don’t mean I wanted another person.”
“I know.”
“I wanted one day where nobody needed anything from me.”
I sat beside her.
“Did you ever get one?”
She smiled sadly.
“No.”
That answer told the truth of our marriage better than almost anything else.
I picked up a tiny sleeper.
“I think I thought you were better at carrying things.”
“I was.”
“That doesn’t mean it was fair.”
“No.”
She looked toward Mateo.
“I’m afraid treatment will end and I’ll become good at carrying things again.”
I understood.
Illness had made her limits visible.
What happened when she became capable again?
“I need you to stop me.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“When I start doing everything.”
“That’s complicated.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to police you.”
She thought.
“Then don’t stop me.”
I waited.
“Notice.”
That word again.
“Ask why I’m taking something on.”
“Okay.”
“And if the answer is because nobody else noticed, then fix that.”
“Okay.”
She nodded.
“That's what I need.”
The next morning, we returned to the infusion center.
Second cycle.
Same chairs.
Same smells.
Same clear tubing.
Different Allison.
Still afraid.
But no longer confronting the unknown.
She knew some of what would happen.
That helped.
It also made the dread more specific.
As Carmen connected the line, Allison looked at me.
“One down.”
“One down.”
“And after today?”
“Two down.”
She took a breath.
“Okay.”
The chemotherapy started.
She closed her eyes.
I held her hand.
Across the room, an older woman laughed at something on television.
Someone opened a bag of chips.
A nurse adjusted an IV pole.
Life continued.
Allison squeezed my fingers.
I looked at her.
She whispered, “I want to get to the part after this.”
“I know.”
I did too.
But neither of us knew yet what that part would require.
Click here to continue reading: PART 18: The Second Infusion Hit Harder Than the First, and Daniel Finally Learned That Being Needed Did Not Mean Being Allowed Everywhere
Four Hours After Bringing My Wife Home, One Careless Question Revealed What I Had Refused to See
Part 17 of 35
