Page 40 of Take Me Away, Cowboy

The room shut down, eyes either on Metcalf or the floor, the only sounds the persistent beeping of the heart rate monitor in the corner, the motor of the vent.

Metcalf cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, I was addressing Paige as a physician. She has cancer. Ovarian, but limited to one ovary. We need to go in surgically and remove it, today if possible since it’s the source of her bleeding as well. She won’t need anything else but a short round of targeted radiation at the point of injury just to be sure all cancerous cells are destroyed. It’s relatively simple, considering. It could have been a lot worse, Mr. Connors. A lot worse. If Paige hadn’t had the accident, it’s likely in her good health she wouldn’t have noticed the symptoms until it was too late to do anything about them.”

Alan’s shoulders shook as he succumbed to his own wave of emotions. Surprisingly, Paige didn’t feel like crying. She was still wrapping her head around the words.

Tumor.

Her ovary. Just one, thankfully.

Cancer.

Surgery.

Radiation.

“How long will I need to heal?” she asked.

Her real, more pressing question, was “can I ever leave here again? Escape this town where only bad things happen?” She didn’t dare phrase it that way, especially as she looked over at Owen, his eyes misty and his cheeks pale. He looked like the sick one. Her chest constricted with empathy for this stranger who’d made love to her not knowing he’d be stuck listening to this nonsense. She hoped he didn’t feel trapped, like he couldn’t leave her now that she had the “C” word.

“You’ll need to stay local for a few months while we get this under control, Paige.”

She closed her eyes again, willing away the image of a cell door closing on her, locking her in. She kept her eyes closed as she asked the next question, one that hadn’t occurred to her to need to ask until then.

“Can I still have children?”

It took not knowing if it would be possible to throw into harsh perspective whether or not she wanted them. She decided she most definitely did, an unfortunate decision to make as she stood at the edge of a precipice that might send her careening over an edge she couldn’t see yet.

“It’s possible, yes. Just less probable. We’ll have to remove the left ovary, but hopefully that will be it. The right looks healthy. For now. Our job will be making sure it stays that way.”

Paige nodded, unable to stop making that ludicrous and unhelpful gesture. What she really wanted to do was scream into her pillow, from the top of the mountain that had decided her fate the night before, at anyone who would listen. But watching her mother and father sob, her brother looking shocked and like he’d been gut-punched, she had to wait, to be strong. That washerjob just then. She was patient, not physician, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t do both.

“I want to see the scans,” she said.

The smell of antiseptic infiltrated her nostrils and she gagged. She couldn’t lose her composure. Not now.

Dr. Metcalf complied. He handed her the whole chart, which she took her time going through as her family watched on. Page by page of medical jargon that could have been summed up in half a paragraph.Patient hurt in accident. Found cancer in scans. Remove cancer or patient will become deceased.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Marge spoke up, her voice fragile and shaking. It broke Paige’s heart.

“You can keep her plied with healthy food while she recovers and make sure she doesn’t move around too much up to two weeks after the surgery. She’ll need a place to stay that she can have range of motion but constant care.”

“We can do all of that,” Alan chimed in.

He seemed better now that he had a sense of purpose. He sniffled, stood taller, which was tough enough for him on a good day. He was two inches shorter than his wife, and a full foot shorter than his son. Paige was the only one who made him look tall.

Thank god she had a tight-knit family that she could count on if shit hit the fan, which it most certainly had. But it didn’t mean she wasn’t nervous. She was a loner on purpose, and while she loved her mom, dad, and brother, she hadn’t spent more than a week with any of them since high school.

She was going to go nuts. Especially if she couldn’t run, hike, or do any of the things she loved about being home.

She thought of Aurelie’s mother just then. Emaciated, weak, in constant pain. Unable to do any of the things she loved the last year of her life. Yep. It was a crappy way to go.

Finished with the chart, Paige set it on her lap, observing the world already going on without her. Her mother and brother were in deep conversation about setting up a new room for her, her father taking notes as he talked to the doctor. Owen stood in the corner looking like a stricken puppy.

They spoke around her now, no longer to her. It was as if she’d become a project instead of a person, and that aggravated her more than anything she’d found in her chart, which she could science her way through.

“Guys?” she asked.

No one heard her. They kept on about her health before and after the accident, about who would care for her when, what the shifts should look like, what she could and should eat, how much PT she should get. Only Owen stood quietly watching her. He was the only one who saw her.

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