Page 73 of Look on the Bright Side

Though Lark had tried not to work on the palliative care floor of the hospital, she’d done a shift or two when it couldn’t be avoided. Some of the patients were there for simple pain relief during treatment for their illness. Some were there on hospice, which meant they’d been diagnosed with six months or less to live and had decided not to try to seek a cure for their disease…they were just there for comfort as their lives wound down.

“Are you saying Justin qualifies for hospice?” she asked, her voice a squeak.

“Absolutely not,” Justin said sharply. “I’m fighting this. Leukemia can be cured. Right, Lark? Don’t you agree?” There was terror underlying his words, and he needed her to agree. To believe.

She looked into those dark blue eyes. “Um…I—I obviously want you to live forever, honey. But you…I…I—I want you to be okay. To be…yourself.”

“See? We’re all on the same page.”

What Lark wanted to say was that she didn’t want him to writhe and scream out in pain, or have him endure the vomiting and diarrhea from chemo, the weight falling off him till he was skeletal…and then not make it. If there was a guarantee that this would cure him, different story. She’d put him through hell and back if he’d end up healthy.

Whole decades of her future shifted and slid and evaporated in front of her. Their three children—two girls and a boy. A lovely home on the Cape. The weddings of her siblings. Becoming Uncle Justin and Auntie Lark. Their tenth anniversary. Hosting dinner parties. Justin opening his own firm. Their twenty-fifth class reunion. Their kids’ graduations. Becoming parents-in-law. Having grandchildren.

Life without Justin? The idea was obscene. Impossible. She’d loved him since she was five. Five years old. That saying—two halves of a whole? They actually were. No one, not even Addie, loved her as much as Justin did. He had been her first friend, the boy who was nice, who’d keep the mean kids from picking on her for being shy. When he’d gotten sick the first time, he had given her a purpose in life, a mission that transcended being a Smith kid or a twin or a simple adolescent girl. She’d been needed. And she needed him, too. Forever. Till death, when they were both old.

But the odds were not in their favor. They were, in fact, overwhelmingly stacked against them. She wanted him to be comfortable and happy, not spending the rest of his life—oh, God!—the rest of his life in and out of the hospital for tests and infusions and more tests and infections and side effect management. She didn’t want him to die because fluid filled his lungs, drowning him in place, or because the chemo made him so weak that his beautiful, kind, thoughtful heart would no longer beat.

Please let this be a dream, she prayed. Please let me wake up.

Dr.Kothari had said something. She’d missed it. She was already screwing up.

“There’s got to be better treatments out there than when I was a kid,” Justin said.

“I’ve read about the monoclonal antibodies cocktail,” Lark said, surprising herself by pulling out that information. “That and radiation, it can be a game changer. Right?”

“She’s so smart,” Justin said. “Hasn’t even started med school.” He looked at her and smiled.

“Yes, of course, there’s always reason to be hopeful,” Dr.Kothari said. “Treatment can be pretty grueling, Justin, and hospice is—”

“No. Nope. We’re going for it. It’s the 2004 Pennant, game four, bottom of the ninth, and I’m the Red Sox, okay?” He smiled and squeezed Lark’s hand.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Dr.Kothari said.

Lark forced a smile. “He means we’re gonna win. Even when it seems like we’re not.” Yes. Yes. That was the attitude. Because if Justin thought he could beat this, how could she be the one to doubt him?

“Ah,” said Dr.Kothari. “Baseball. Got it, and I will look that up, Justin. All right, then.”

He told them where to go next, how to get their parking validated (seriously? Did that matter right now?) and shook both their hands.

Lark deliberately left her purse on the floor, so when they went into the waiting room, she said, “Shoot. Forgot my bag,” and went back in and closed the door behind her. Dr.Kothari looked up.

“If he was your son,” she said quietly, “what would you recommend?”

Dr.Kothari’s eyes grew shiny. “We all die, Lark,” he said quietly. “The last months of our lives can matter as much as all the months that came before.”

She stared at him, then nodded and rejoined the Deans.

Justin’s blood was drawn, an emergency CAT scan was done, and the Deans took them out to lunch, getting a table far away from other diners. Justin’s fever had passed quickly; he was ravenous and an oddly light mood settled over the three Deans.

“You’re as strong as a Clydesdale,” Heather said. “If you lined up a hundred people with this, you’re the obvious choice to beat it.”

“And you’re getting married,” Theo said. “If that’s not something to live for, what is, right, Justin? You can’t leave this beautiful girl!”

“I have no intention of it,” he said, kissing her hand where the diamond ring glittered.

At the end of the meal, Heather said, “Okay, we all had a huge shock, but now we have a game plan. We’ll get through this.”

“Absolutely,” Theo said.

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