The Whitney Chronicles

“Yes, dear, and she said she was having a light supper beforehand, so don’t start snacking now.”

Dad’s face relaxed considerably. I wasn’t sure if his improved mood was the result of Mom’s finding the money or the thought of pie on the horizon, but I was happy for him either way.

October 17

Kim’s clinic isn’t far from the office. It sits near a man-made pond, and the lawns are manicured to perfection. I’ve heard a great plastic surgeon has offices here. She won’t admit it, but I think Mitzi has already started getting things lifted and tucked. I know for sure that Betty has. No one’s eyebrows should ride that high on a person’s forehead. If she were bald, she could just let them grow and comb them backward for hair. And Betty has this continually surprised look that makes her look like a wide-eyed kid at the circus.

I was so busy looking at the artwork on the walls (original, I think) and the cherry-wood furnishings that looked a thousand percent better than anything in my living room, that it took me a moment to realize Kim’s name had been called. She took my sleeve in her hand and tugged frantically.

“Kim, I can’t go in with you!”

“I’m not going if you don’t,” she said, and she meant it. “Listen, Whitney, I can’t do this alone.”

“Kurt should be with you.”

“If this is serious, he’ll get plenty of chances.”

If the tables were turned, I’d want someone there with me. Someone other than my mother, I think. Unless I could get her to quit reading medical books. If a side effect of a medication is shortness of breath or growing hair on one’s chest, Mom’s sure she has it. She pores over health magazines and reads medical thrillers voraciously. Being healthy as the proverbial horse, I’ve been such a disappointment to her—not an appendix scar or a root canal or even a mild case of acid reflux.

And she’s nothing compared to my grandmother, who grieved for months when Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey went off the air. (Never saw ’em, never had to—anyone over fifty can give you the lowdown, especially in my family.) She ultimately came out of her depression long enough to find other medical shows on TV—now we all know enough never to call her during E.R.

“Okay,” I said. “Although I don’t know that I’ll be much help.”

“Just your being with me is all the help I need,” Kim assured me. “That and prayer.”

“I can handle that.”

The doctor’s office was as warm and inviting as the waiting room. Dr. Chase Andrews, Internal Medicine, said the sign on the door. Inside, there were huge banks of cherry-wood cabinets to hide those unsightly files and models of human organs that came apart like puzzle pieces for demonstration purposes. There were no body charts on the walls delineating the veins, arteries, bones and muscles either. Nice as this place was, I decided Kim’s doctor probably used a PowerPoint presentation on a big-screen TV if a patient needed to be educated. And there was classical music coming from hidden speakers. How much did this guy charge, anyway? Kim said he was the best. Maybe he was giving her a deal, having been a friend of Kurt’s and all.

Kim perched on the edge of her seat, lifted her heels and began that annoying little bounce that nervous people often do. I walked behind her to massage the knots from her shoulders. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. “Everything will be all right” was not necessarily true and we both knew it.

Kim and I have a deal—no prevarication. We trust each other for complete honesty, the truth and nothing but the truth. What a liberating concept that is! I know there’s at least one person on the planet who will tell me if I have a streak of bed-head running down the back of my scalp or bad breath. After all, how can you fix things you don’t know about?

The door whispered open so quietly that I didn’t realize at first that the doctor had entered the room. It wasn’t until I saw him from the corner of my eye that I knew we were no longer alone.

Dr. Andrews stretched out his hand to Kim. “Hello, Mrs. Easton, I’m Chase Andrews. I’m glad we finally get to meet. Your husband is a great guy.”

“He says the same about you,” Kim ventured, her shoulders relaxing.

When he turned to me, I felt my legs turn into Gummi Bears. It was the dazzling man from the hall yesterday. This was Kim’s doctor? I felt immediately better. Just looking at him could probably cure a dozen diseases. His sandy hair was shot with gold, and as I looked down at the floor to break his mesmerizing gaze, I noticed that in his finely crafted leather slip-ons, he wore Mickey Mouse socks.

The doctor moved to a cabinet to the left of his desk and opened a set of double doors that revealed a backlit display. From the top of his desk, he took an envelope containing Kim’s films and clamped them to the screen. Not her most attractive angle, I thought wildly. I was losing my mind. Maybe I’d feel better without it.

“This is your right breast and this is your left,” Dr. Dreamboat said. “As you notice, there is a considerable difference in the tissue between the two. If you’ll look right here…” He used his pen as a pointer and circled a spot on the X ray that looked alarmingly out of place. Before he said another word, I knew Kim was in trouble. Dr. Andrews’s words jumbled together as I focused my full attention on the spot to which he was pointing.

“…rather large…doesn’t appear to be a cyst…biopsy will tell us for sure…think it should be done right away…tomorrow…any questions?”

Questions? All I had was questions! I looked at Kim. She had a stunned look on her face and was curling her shoulders forward into a fetal position.

Dr. Andrews moved around the burnished cherry desk and angled one hip against it until he was half sitting, half standing in front of her. His posture was relaxed and somehow comforting. He gave off waves of “I am competent. I’ll help you. You’re safe with me.”

I wondered how he did it. He must have learned it somewhere other than medical school, because if it could be taught, it would be a required class. The muscles in my own shoulders relaxed when I saw Kim shift in her chair.

“Do you think it’s…?”

“It could be,” he answered, without her having to say the word, “but it looks well contained, which is a good sign.” He looked at Kim with so much compassion and understanding that I felt tears forming in my own eyes.

“Maybe we should wait and see….” Kim grasped at straws.

“We could,” he agreed pleasantly, “but the reality is, it’s here. Why not take care of it? Get on with whatever we need to do and be done with it. You have a life to live—why waste time worrying about something we can do something about right now?”

I saw Kim lift her chin and square her shoulders.

You have a life to live…. She did. She knew it, I knew it and the doctor knew it. This was a hurdle she had to move past, but Dr. Andrews was the man to help her.

I looked at him and knew immediately that he’d chosen his words with intention. He was confident that he could do what needed to be done. His competence and assurance enveloped both of us and radiated optimism and peace right into our cells.

While he and Kim were going over the details of the next step, I called Betty and told her that I’d be late and Kim wouldn’t be coming in today. Then I called Kurt and left a message suggesting he meet us.

It was after two o’clock by the time I got back to the office, and it was like walking into a tree full of vultures, hunched with anticipation, sharp eyes scanning my face for clues, hungry for every detail. Mitzi, of course, was the most vulture-like of the batch. Bryan hung back to see if whatever I had to say would be of interest to him or if he’d have to disappear into the men’s room until it blew over.

Betty jumped to her feet when I walked in, but I held up a hand. “I’ll be back in a minute, I have to see Harry.”

He was, as usual, riveted to his computer screen. There were pencils behind both ears and one even stuck into his Chia Pet “do.” He’d rolled up his sleeves, loosened his tie and filled the candy dish by his mouse with Hot Tamales. That meant Harry was doing some serious work—he never ate Hot Tamales unless the project was really important. There were usually jelly beans in the dish, unless he’d had an easy day and had dug into his enormous stash of dried-up Peeps left over from Easter. I can’t explain why he loved those sugary, pastel-colored marshmallow chicks, but he did. He sent me out to gather up all I could find right after the holiday and made them last most of a year. I guess that was how we’d come up with the terminology for the tranquil days when Harry was out of the office—that was “a Peep kind of day.”