Page 91 of Missing Chord

“Changed my flight.” He gestured up the aisle. “They only had one first class left, but I figured someone in your row would swap with me.”

“You’re nuts. And what about the stuff you left with Pete?”

“He’ll ship it to me.” His grin faded. “Are you not happy to see me?”

“Not happy?” I grabbed his shirt collar and hauled him close for a big kiss. “I’m fucking ecstatic.” My cheeks ached from my wide smile. “I was just angsting about how life was temporarily crap, and here you are.”

“Here I am.” He buckled his seatbelt, then took my hand, lacing our fingers together. “You can keep me calm for takeoff.”

“You’re a nervous flyer?”

“Not yet. But I might become one if you don’t hold my hand.”

The woman beside me had been staring and now she said, “Are you Griffin Marsh?”

“Sure am. Good to meet you.”

She chuckled. “That dude in the suit is going to be so bummed he agreed to swap. Can I get a selfie?”

“Sure. Lee, lean in.” Griffin took her phone and held it at arm’s length, getting a photo of himself, me, and her, our faces close together. “There you go.”

“Putting it right up onInstagram.” She tapped on her keyboard. “Me, Griffin Marsh, and…” She glanced at me. “Are you Griffin’s boyfriend?”

I looked down at where our hands were still clasped together and didn’t even try to tame my broad grin. “Yeah, that’s who I am.”

“He’s a nurse practitioner,” Griffin said. “Super smart, keeps his nursing home running, the best guy you could ever meet. And also—” He raised our hands and kissed my thumb. “—my boyfriend.”

Chapter 23

Griffin

I sat in the chair in the ENT doctor’s office, trying not to squirm as I waited. Beside me, Lee radiated calm but he’d been nervous-babbling on the way to this appointment, so I figured he just had a good game face. If I took his hand, his palm would probably be as sweaty as mine. Still, I was ten times better with him there than on my own.

The doctor came in and sat at her desk. “Okay, here’s the plan. Griffin, as you know, I planned to do an endoscopic biopsy of your mass in a week. However, that new discomfort you’re noting is because the mass has become bigger. That could just be because you traumatized a benign polyp further.” She frowned at me. I’d confessed to Rocktoberfest and she’d called it ill-advised, which was kinder than what Lee had called it.

Still, even now, I couldn’t regret having gone. The money was in the bank, my sales were trending upward, and I’d reconnected with Pete and the band. And Lee said he’d gained a deeper understanding of what music meant to me. So sure, if I’d fucked myself over, I’d be sorry. But as long as there was hope not, Rocktoberfest had been awesome.

“You have a different plan?” Lee asked the doctor.

“I want to do an excisional biopsy.” She turned to me. “That’s where we take out the whole mass and send it infor histopathology, instead of just samples. There are several advantages. It removes the mass before more growth happens. If it’s benign, we may be done with surgery. We get better results on identifying tumors. Sometimes the scope biopsy samples come out too small for complete diagnosis. We can get some lymph node aspirates while we’re at it, to look for spread.”

“What are the disadvantages?” I asked.

“Mainly that scope biopsies let that next surgery be more complete. This way, we may have to come back a second time. And sometimes a second cancer surgery, working around the scars and healing of the first, is messier. More likely to miss tissue we should remove, more likely to permanently damage your voice.”

“Oh.” I turned to Lee. “What do you think?”

The doctor said, “I wouldn’t be offering this if I didn’t think there are ninety percent odds of it being benign. I’m hopeful it can be a one and done.”

“I’d go for it,” Lee told me. “But it’s your call.”

I swallowed past the annoying thickness in my throat. I wanted the damned thing gone. “Let’s do it.”

The doctor pulled up her calendar app on the computer screen. “I can’t do it on the fifteenth. That was an office slot. But I had a cancellation on Monday the eighteenth. That work for you?”

“That’s fine,” I agreed, noting it down.

“We’ll send you all the presurgical info. You’ll need bloodwork the week before. Someone will call you Friday with pre-op directions.” She closed out of her screen and stood. “Griffin? Think good thoughts. Your voice is a gift and I’m going to doeverything I can to preserve it. Be gentle as possible on your throat— use low normal tones when necessary, not whispering— and I’ll see you on the eighteenth.”

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