Chapter 4: Everything He Decided Alone
We stayed like that for a long time.
Ben with his face turned toward the window.
Me with my hands folded in my lap, working very hard to keep my breathing even.
The monitor beeped.
Someone walked past the door in soft-soled shoes.
Finally I said, "Tell me everything."
He turned back to me.
"Sarah—"
"From the beginning, Ben.
All of it.
Right now."
He closed his eyes briefly.
Then he began.
The headaches had started fourteen months ago.
Sharp.
Localized.
The kind a neurologist husband notices and files away and tells himself is stress.
He ordered his own MRI on a Thursday afternoon, read the results himself that Friday morning, and sat alone in this exact hospital for six hours before he called Arnold.
"Why Arnold?" I asked.
"Why not me?"
"Because I needed someone who could think clinically," he said.
"I couldn't think clinically about you.
I couldn't think at all about you."
"That wasn't your decision to make."
"I know."
"I am your wife, Ben."
"I know that too."
"You sat in this hospital for six hours and didn't call me." My voice was steady.
I was making it steady.
"You came home that night and had dinner with me and Lily and you didn't say one word."
He looked at the IV line in his arm.
"We had leftover pasta.
Lily told me about the bird she'd seen at recess.
You'd just gotten your hair cut and I told you it looked nice." He paused.
"I remember every detail of that dinner.
I've thought about it almost every day since."
"Because you were saying goodbye."
He didn't answer.
"Were you saying goodbye to us, Ben?"
"I was trying to figure out how not to," he said.
"That's not the same thing."
I stood up and walked to the window.
Chicago was doing what Chicago does in November — gray sky, gray lake, the wind pressing against the glass like it had somewhere it needed to be.
I pressed my fingertips against the cold pane.
"The missed anniversaries," I said.
"The nights you didn't come home.
Were those treatments?"
"Some of them.
Some were just—" He stopped.
"Some nights I drove to the lake and sat in the car.
I needed somewhere to be afraid that wasn't in front of you or Lily."
I kept my back to him.
"You were alone and afraid in a parking lot by the lake."
"Yes."
"While I was at home wondering what I'd done wrong."
The silence lasted a long time.
"Sarah, I'm—"
"Don't apologize again." I turned around.
"I need to understand, not be apologized to.
There's a difference." I came back to the chair.
I sat down.
I looked at him directly.
"What is the actual prognosis?"
He held my gaze.
"Honest answer?"
"The only answer."
"Dr.
Reyes believes the new protocol has a genuine chance.
It's aggressive and the side effects are significant, but two patients in the trial are showing real response." He paused.
"Statistically, glioblastoma at this stage—"
"I know what glioblastoma statistics say.
I've been married to a doctor for eleven years." I leaned forward slightly.
"What does Ben Mitchell believe?"
Something shifted in his face.
For the first time since I'd walked through that door, he looked less like a patient and more like the man I'd married.
"I believe I have more fight in me than the scan suggests," he said quietly.
"And I believe Dr.
Reyes is the right person to help me use it."
"Good," I said.
"Then that's where we start."
He reached across the tray table and covered my hand with his.
His palm was warm.
I turned my hand over and held on.
"Lily," I said after a moment.
"Tonight," he said.
"Together.
I want to be the one to tell her.
I want to be there."
"We'll tell her together," I said.
"And Ben — there are no more decisions you make alone.
About this.
About any of this.
That's not a request."
He nodded.
His jaw was tight.
I could see him working to hold himself together.
"Arnold said you've been consulting on your own case," I said.
"Helping design the protocol."
"Old habit." A ghost of something — not quite a smile, but close — crossed his face.
"Surgeon.
Can't help it."
I kept hold of his hand.
Outside, the gray lake sat where it always had.
Inside, the monitor beeped its steady, indifferent rhythm.
Then my phone buzzed on the tray table.
I glanced at the screen.
It was my mother.
She never called on a Tuesday afternoon.
We had a Sunday call schedule we'd kept for six years without breaking it.
My thumb hovered over the screen.
Something about the timing sat wrong in my stomach.
I answered it.
"Mom?
Is everything—"
"Sarah." Her voice was odd.
May you like
Careful.
"Is Ben with you right now?"
