Cloud Nine

‘Only when I touch the scar.’

‘Numbness? Tingling?’

‘No.’

‘No more seizures?’ he asked, reading.

‘Not since July.’ Sarah closed her eyes, saying a prayer. She hated seizures. She had had three, including the one that alerted her that something was wrong. Nine months before, she had been perfectly healthy, running seven miles a day, training to run in her first marathon. One day she woke up on the floor of her shower. The hot water had run out. She couldn’t remember getting in, and she didn’t know how long she had been lying there. It took all her strength to crawl to the phone and dial 911.

At first they thought she had had a stroke. She couldn’t move, could barely talk. Her limbs felt heavy, and she had double vision. Cardiologists swarmed around her, hooking her up to heart monitors, ordering EKGs, CT scans, and EEGs. The EEG revealed seizure activity, and the heart doctors had handed Sarah over to the neurosurgery department for further tests. Within a day, they had found the brain tumor.

‘Okay,’ he said, laying down her chart. He leaned close to look into her eyes. She smelled his spicy fragrance and smiled.

‘If I had a boyfriend, I’d want to buy him that cologne,’ she said.

‘Sit up straight and close your eyes,’ he said without smiling back. ‘Hold your arms straight out in front.’

She did as she was told, knew he was watching to see whether she could keep her arms and hands steady.

‘Now hold them straight out to the sides.’

Like wings, she thought, like a plane flying to Maine.

‘Touch your nose with your left index finger. Now your right. Eyes closed! Very good.’

Sarah felt like a small child being tested by the school nurse. With her eyes closed, smelling Dr Goodacre’s familiar scent, she felt safe. She had first come to him for a second opinion. The first doctor, at a small hospital across town, had told her she had osteogenic sarcoma, the most deadly tumor possible. He had suggested that treatment would only prolong the inevitable, that even with surgery she would have only ten weeks to live. He had suggested she go to Paris, eat her favorite foods, say good-bye to the people she loved. Telling her this, he had held her hand. He was elderly and respected, and he had spoken in sonorous tones of regret.

He had sent her home. In shock, thinking of Paris and Mike and death ten weeks away, Sarah had curled into a ball. Was this what her mother had gone through? Crying, Sarah had prayed to her. Weak and sick, she had needed the visiting nurse to check on her. Meg Ferguson had come to call. Six days into her death sentence, Mike had left for Maine. Ten days into it, pouring her terrors out to Meg, Sarah had listened to Meg’s compassionate, logical reason: Get a second opinion.

A second opinion: the light in the dark, the hope after total despair. Suddenly Sarah saw with total clarity that she wasn’t ready to accept the prognosis. Her mother had been too isolated on the island to fight her disease, but Sarah wasn’t. Sarah was a mother, her son had run away to Maine, she didn’t want to go to Paris, she couldn’t be dying of a brain tumor. She couldn’t – could not – die just then. Sarah could not. She could almost hear her mother begging her to fight. And so Meg had gotten Dr Goodacre’s name and number. And Sarah had called him.

‘I’m thinking about taking a trip,’ she said to Dr Goodacre now.

‘You are?’ he asked, examining the back of her head.

‘To Maine. To see my son.’

‘Ah,’ he said, probing her scar. Her tumor had been located in the meninges, the lining between the skull and the brain. It had clung to the sinus nerve, making it a challenge to remove surgically without paralyzing or killing Sarah. But Dr Goodacre had done an amazing job: he had gotten ninety-nine percent of it out. To get inside, he had cut a large flap in her scalp. U-shaped, it looked like a big red smile on the back of her head.

‘Remember I told you about him?’ she asked. ‘Mike? He left for Maine right about the time I met you?’

‘At college?’ the doctor asked, squinting at the incision.

‘No, to live with my father.’ Sarah closed her eyes. She tried not to feel hurt. Just because Dr Goodacre meant so much to her, why should he remember the mundane details of her life? With all his patients, that would be impossible. But just knowing she had thought the word ‘mundane’ in connection with Mike made her feel worse, and she drew inward.

‘Are you asking me if you should go?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘I see no reason why not,’ he said. He leaned against a low cabinet, and for the first time since entering the exam room, he really looked at her: into her eyes, as if she were a whole person, not just a collection of parts to study and assess. ‘Have you asked Dr Boswell?’

‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘Should I?’ Dr Boswell was her oncologist. While she was very important to Sarah’s care, had administered two courses of chemotherapy and overseen the radiation treatment, Dr Goodacre was the One. He was the one who had identified her tumor as large-cell lymphoma, eminently less deadly than osteogenic sarcoma, offering her the possibility of long-term recovery. He was the one in whom Sarah had placed her faith, to whom she entrusted her hopes and fears.

‘I’ll have Vicky give her a call,’ Dr Goodacre said, making a note on Sarah’s chart. ‘If she has no objection, neither do I.’

‘Really?’ Sarah asked.

‘You know the road we face, Sarah. You’ve done everything we’ve asked of you, and you’ve responded well.’

‘I just don’t want a recurrence,’ she said, shivering. Did that sound dumb? Did anyone want a recurrence?

‘I know. We can’t predict … your tumor was very difficultly situated, and it is rather aggressive for a large-cell lym–’ He cut himself off. The look on his face said it all. Dr Goodacre gave Sarah credit for her intelligence and powers of intuition, and he didn’t have to spell it all out. She might survive and she might not. Sarah knew the anguish of cancer: She had watched her own mother die in bed on Elk Island. She had watched her father wither and almost disappear with grief.

‘I’d like to see my son,’ she said quietly, without emotion. ‘I’d like to go home.’

He nodded. ‘Be alert,’ he said. ‘If you have any symptoms of numbness or tingling, you should call me immediately. But I see no reason for you not to go.’

‘Thank you,’ Sarah said, glowing as if she had just won a race.

‘I’ll see you back here in a month,’ Dr Goodacre said as sternly as ever. Preparing to leave, on to the next case, his hand was on the doorknob.

‘Dr Goodacre,’ Sarah asked, needing to summon up a little courage. She had never asked him anything personal. ‘How’s your father?’ The last time she was there, she had heard Vicky saying his father had had a heart attack.

‘Better,’ Dr Goodacre said, pausing. He gave Sarah a curious look, as if he wondered how she knew to ask. ‘But he lives in Florida, and I can’t be with him. It falls to my older brother to look after him.’

‘Does your brother do a good job?’ Sarah asked.

‘He’s an angel!’ Dr Goodacre said with passion. He broke into a grin, staring straight into Sarah’s eyes. Full of intensity, he looked at the ceiling, then back at Sarah. She understood how it felt to love someone far away, to worry yourself sick about him, to trust his care to another human being. In a way, Dr Goodacre’s brother was looking out for him – Dr Goodacre – too.

‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘That you have such a wonderful brother.’

‘I wish everyone had someone like him,’ he said.

Sarah had never seen the doctor this way, and she nodded. He lingered for a moment, then walked away. The door closed softly behind him.

Alone in the room, Sarah closed her eyes. She felt her heart beating fast. Her exercises calmed her, so she held her arms out straight in front. Then out to the side again, like before. Sarah had never had a brother like the doctor’s, had never had an angel in her life. But then she thought of Will Burke holding her at the fair, flying her home.

Taking her to see Mike.

Will drove up the long driveway. The road up Windemere Hill zigzagged through a forest of pin oaks and white pines. Snow had fallen the previous night, and the branches drooped low. At the top, the drive opened onto a wide, snow-covered lawn lined with white-capped boxwood hedges. It was late Friday afternoon, and he was there to pick up his daughter.

Julian’s imposing stone mansion lorded over the wintry scene. Two old Ferraris were parked in the turnaround, and a Porsche 356 was visible in the carriage house. Will parked his car, trying not to feel resentful that one guy should have all this, and Alice and Susan too.

Expecting Susan, he was surprised to see Alice walk out the front door. The sight of her made him catch his breath. She was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, with her creamy skin and wide, almond-shaped blue eyes, silky golden hair, a shapely, feminine figure. She walked through the snow in short black boots.

She was wearing sleek gray workout clothes, revealing her body. In the fifteen years since their daughter’s birth, she had never stopped trying to obliterate the slight roundness left in her tummy. Unable to help himself, Will checked to see if it was still there: It was.

‘She asked me to tell you she’ll be a few minutes late,’ Alice said hurriedly, her arms folded in front of her, her breath making white clouds.