Chapter 5: What Jess Had Been Carrying
Wednesday came gray and cold, the kind of morning that feels like it's holding its breath.
The university clinic smelled like floor wax and recycled air.
Tyler and I sat in the waiting room with paper cups of bad coffee and a folder Jess had put together — printed articles, a list of questions in her handwriting, tabs marking the pages she thought mattered most.
She'd stayed up to finish it.
She'd texted me at 1 a.m.
to say it was done.
The specialist's name was Dr.
Anita Reyes.
She came out to greet us herself, which I hadn't expected.
She shook Tyler's hand and then mine, and she looked at us the way doctors rarely do — like she understood that the two people in front of her were frightened and had been frightened for a while.
"Let's go through everything from the beginning," she said.
"Don't assume I've seen it.
Walk me through it like I haven't."
So Tyler did.
He talked for almost twenty minutes.
Dr.
Reyes asked questions, made notes, occasionally asked him to back up and clarify.
She never rushed him.
When he finished, she looked at Jess's folder.
"Your sister put this together?"
"Yes," I said.
She turned a few pages.
"She flagged the right things." She set it down and looked at Tyler.
"I want to run my own panel.
Some of what Dr.
Voss ordered is standard, but there are two markers he didn't test for that I'd want to see.
Can you give us a blood draw today?"
"Yes," Tyler said immediately.
"Good.
Results will take forty-eight hours.
I won't speculate before then, but I will tell you this — the presentation you're describing is consistent with several things, not all of them serious.
Voss's report drew a conclusion I'm not ready to draw yet."
Tyler's hand found mine under the table.
"So it might not be what he said," I said.
"It might not be," Dr.
Reyes said carefully.
"Or it might be, but a different stage or a different form.
I won't know until I have my own numbers." She looked at us both.
"What I can tell you is that you did the right thing coming here.
And whoever pushed you to get a second opinion did you a significant service."
"My sister," I said again.
Dr.
Reyes nodded.
"Thank her."
We were back in the car by noon.
Tyler drove.
I sat with the folder in my lap and watched the city go by.
"Forty-eight hours," he said.
"Forty-eight hours," I agreed.
We didn't say much else on the drive home.
But when we pulled into the driveway, he turned off the engine and sat for a moment.
"I keep thinking about how close I came to just going to that Thursday appointment," he said.
"Alone.
Without telling you any of it until after."
"But you didn't."
"Only because Jess pushed me."
"Then we both owe her."
He nodded.
We got out of the car.
Inside, I called Jess.
She picked up on the second ring.
"How did it go?"
"Good, I think.
She's running her own tests.
Forty-eight hours."
"Okay." A breath.
"Okay, that's good.
That's the right call."
"Jess." I sat down on the couch.
"You said there was still something you needed to tell me.
Last night, in your text."
A pause.
"I know."
"What is it?"
Another pause.
Longer.
"Can I come over tonight?"
"Of course.
Tell me now."
"I'd rather do it in person."
Something about the way she said it made me sit up straighter.
"Jess.
Is it something bad?"
"It's not bad," she said.
"It's just...
it changes some things.
About how I found out about Dr.
Voss.
About why I was looking in the first place."
"What do you mean, why you were looking?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"I wasn't just researching for Tyler," she said.
"I was researching because someone told me to look.
Someone who knew about Voss already."
May you like
My hand tightened on the phone.
"Who?"
