Chapter 6: Thursday
I didn't sleep well on Wednesday night.
I made coffee before it was light outside and sat at the kitchen table and thought about Clara at nine years old, and Clara at seventeen, and the scan results that were sitting in a computer somewhere in that hospital waiting to be read by a doctor who would then have to find the right words.
Julian came downstairs at six-thirty.
He saw me at the table and stopped.
"You're up early," he said.
"Couldn't sleep."
He poured himself a glass of water and sat across from me.
He was still in the clothes he'd worn the day before — he'd come home late and I hadn't heard him until nearly midnight.
"The scan results are today," he said.
I looked at him.
"Diane told you?"
"Clara told me.
Last night, after you left." He turned the glass slowly in his hands.
"She said she wasn't scared.
But she said it the way people say things when they're trying to make it true."
"How are you doing with all of it?"
He thought about that seriously, the way he always did when I asked him something real.
"I don't know how to help," he said.
"I keep showing up because that's the only thing I know how to do.
But I don't know if it's enough."
"Julian." I waited until he looked at me.
"It is enough.
It's more than enough."
He nodded, but I could see he didn't entirely believe me yet.
That was all right.
Some things have to be lived before they can be believed.
We got to the hospital at nine.
Diane was already there, in the same recliner, with a coffee cup that looked like it had been there since early morning.
Clara was awake, sitting up, wearing a yellow knitted hat that one of the nurses had apparently given her.
It should have looked strange.
It looked exactly right.
"Nice hat," Julian said.
"I know," Clara said.
"I'm basically a fashion icon now."
He sat beside her.
She leaned into him slightly, just her shoulder against his arm, and he didn't make anything of it.
The doctor came in at ten-forty.
Her name was Dr.
Reyes.
She was calm and direct, the kind of doctor who tells you the truth without making it feel like a weapon.
She pulled a chair around and sat facing Clara, which I noticed — she didn't stand over her.
"The scan shows a measurable response," she said.
"The primary mass has reduced by approximately twenty-two percent."
Diane made a sound that wasn't quite a word.
"That's a meaningful result at this stage of treatment," Dr.
Reyes continued.
"It tells us the protocol is working.
We stay the course.
We scan again in six weeks."
Clara stared at her.
"So it's working."
"It's working."
Clara turned to Julian.
He was already looking at her.
She pressed her lips together hard.
Her eyes filled.
She blinked once, twice, and then the tears came anyway, and she didn't try to stop them.
Julian put his arm around her and she turned into him and cried — really cried, the kind that shakes the shoulders, the kind that has been held in for weeks.
He held her and didn't say anything.
He didn't tell her it was okay.
He didn't tell her to breathe.
He just held her.
Diane had both hands over her face.
I looked at Dr.
Reyes.
She was giving the room a moment.
She had done this before — known when to be a doctor and when to just be a person in the room who understood what was happening.
After a while, Clara pulled back and wiped her face with the back of her hand.
"Sorry," she said.
"Don't," Julian said quietly.
She laughed — a wet, unsteady laugh — and leaned her forehead against his shoulder for just a moment.
Then her phone lit up on the bedside table.
She glanced at it.
Her expression changed.
It was a message from her father.
She read it.
She didn't say what it said.
She set the phone face-down on the blanket.
"He wants to visit tomorrow," she said.
"He says he'd like to try."
The room waited.
"What do you want?" Diane asked.
Clara looked at the ceiling for a moment.
Then she said: "I want to hear what he has to say.
And then I want to decide." She looked at her mother.
"Is that okay?"
"It's your call," Diane said.
"It has always been your call."
Clara nodded slowly.
Then she picked the phone back up and typed a short reply.
May you like
None of us asked what she wrote.
But she set the phone down and reached for Julian's hand, and whatever she had decided, she had decided it herself.
