Page 51 of Four Weekends and a Funeral

“Where do you have to go?” he asks from his perch.

I pull on my boring, one-sided black coat. “I have a doctor’s appointment.”

“On a Sunday?”

“Is that a problem?” My tone slices, but I don’t have the energy to dull its hard edge.

“Is this about the name in my phone?”

My cheeks flush. Thank god I’m not looking at him. I don’t need my face giving me away, and I don’t want to see his either. I don’t need the confirmation of how one-sided my feelings are.

But the anxiety building up my spine—that feeling that my brain will peel away from my body if I don’t get out—isn’t just about him. It’s about me. Sam. Everything.

It’s like you’re pretending to be someone else.

I shake it off. “I don’t know what you mean, but I’ll be back later.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He sounds more casual than rude, but it still cuts.

I open my mouth to say something—apologize?—but I roll my lips between my teeth and walk out the door.

—

One Sunday per month, Dr.Steinberg sees post-mastectomy patients like me for routine checkups. She says it’s to allow flexibility for her patients’ schedules, but I suspect we’re merely an excuse to get out of attending travel hockey tournaments with her husband and two sons. She confirms my theory by waxing poetic on the transcendent silence of an empty house.

Seated on the exam table, I open my gown at the front and watch Dr.Steinberg grope my right breast clinically. Like most breast cancer–adjacent spaces, the room’s decor falls on the pink spectrum somewhere between baby and millennial.

I feel the pressure of her touch on my breastbone and the sharp chill of the clinic air on my exposed arms and stomach. She moves over to my left and repeats the process, her face as vacant as always. I focus on the wall behind her, my attention drifting between an aggressively inoffensive watercolor and a mammogram infographic.

Dr.Steinberg stands as I close my gown. “Everything feels good. Scars look good.” Dr.Steinberg doesn’t do small talk, but that’s never bothered me. I like my clinicians clinical. She rolls across the vinyl floor in her desk chair, and her brows curve inward at the text on her computer screen. “Do you have a plan for the ovarian risk? I can provide a referral.”

“I’m seeing someone at Fairview. I’m getting regular ultrasounds for now until I decide what to do with them.”

She rises and offers a nod, like she’s checking off a mental bulleted list of bedside manners, as she makes her way to the door. “Good. See you in a year.”

I put my clothes back on and walk out of the clinic without looking at anyone. My mom prefers me to call right after my appointments, but I don’t feel up for it. Instead, I punch out a dismissive text.

12:45 PM

Alison:

Went great. Phone dying. Call you later.

When I press send—and toss the fully charged lie on the passenger seat—my eyes snag on the sign planted between my car and the navy minivan beside me.

The yearly exam is not what I dread. It’s parking in the spaces reserved for patients of the breast cancer clinic, knowing I should have gotten cancer but probably won’t because of an unlucky break for my mom. It’s knowing my doctor will ask me about my ovaries and I won’t have an answer. It’s having to call my family and talk BRCA. Again.

I turn my key in the ignition, and the speakers blare “The Christmas Shoes”—the worst and most manipulative holiday song ever written. It’s the final insult. I look in my rearview mirror, grab the headrest of the passenger seat, and step on the gas.

Before I have time to react, my car lurches forward, up over the curb and into a snowbank. I slam on the brake and look down at the gearshift to find confirmation that the car’s in drive, not reverse.

My Subaru rests on the mound of snow piled directly in front of my former parking spot. I try to reverse, but my car bellows into the snow like a beached whale. I turn off my engine and dramatically rest my head on the steering wheel like a Christmas movie heroine at her lowest point. And yet, a Christmas tree farmer doesn’t save me. Chelsea does.

•••

I’m not the only one making snowy road mistakes today, but I suspect mine was the most preventable. Chelsea’s uncle Ricky can tow my car to his nearby shop. Since I’m not one of the poor souls blocking traffic or trapped in a ditch, I’m placed at the end of the queue. I definitely won’t make it back to Adam today.

I walk back to the doctor’s office lobby, pulling my glove off to text him.

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