Chapter 7

1993

Slightly more than a year after Don's apparent cure, they discovered a new lump in his left armpit.

"It's not cancer, right?" I was hopeful, even though I knew there were lymph nodes in the armpit, and that a lump there could mean Hodgkin's again. "I mean, they irradiated there, so it wouldn't be cancer..."

"Actually," he said, "the doctor says this lump was just outside the radiation field, so yeah, it could be cancer. They're going to do a biopsy."

His voice was as calm as ever. Don wasn't one to freak out, at least not visibly. If he was freaking out, he kept it hidden inside, so as not to worry me.

I gnawed my nails, incapable of being as calm as he was. I wasn't terribly anxious about him dying, since Hodgkin's has a good cure rate. Even so, the possibility of him dying from a recurrence always weighed on me.

Furthermore, we'd been trying to get pregnant for a couple of months, and I was aware that if he had to have chemo, we'd have to give up trying to get pregnant for a while-- and that it might very well mean no children at all. They'd warned us that the typical chemo regime often left men sterile.

A biopsy meant yet another minor surgical procedure. The doctor made a small incision under his arm and removed the lump. And then... we waited.

A few days later I went to lunch with some friends in my office. As I drove back into the parking lot, I saw Don standing next to his car, waiting for me.

He was working as a consultant in Georgia, and I'd expected him to have left town earlier in the morning, so I was surprised to see him. I got out of the car and walked toward him, my heart pounding nervously.

"Hey," I said. "What's up?"

"They called me with the results of the biopsy," he said. As usual, when he couldn't quite manage calmness, he took refuge in clipped, terse sentences. "It's Hodgkin's again. They want to do chemo."

I looked up at him, pain clenching in my chest. I didn't want him to have to suffer that way again, and besides, I wanted a baby. But more than a baby, I wanted a live husband. And based on what the doctor had told him, chemo was really our only option at this point.

I stood on tiptoe and put my arms around his shoulders. He stood stiffly for a moment, then his arms went around my waist, and he buried his face in my shoulder. The first sob I'd ever heard from him since this whole nightmare began tore its way out of his throat.

"I want children," he whispered between sobs. "It's all I've ever wanted. I just... want... to have... kids."

"We can still have kids," I assured him, stroking his dark hair and choking back tears of my own. "Somehow we'll have kids. If we can't have them the usual way, we'll adopt. We'll manage to have kids, okay?"

He shook his head against my shoulder and cried harder, and grief filled me. Not grief for myself, but for him. He'd been stoic throughout this whole thing, because he wasn't afraid of pain, or even of dying. He was simply afraid of not being able to have children. Since I'd known him, his greatest desire had been to have a quiet suburban existence and a yard full of kids.

And now it looked like he might never have any kids at all.

*****

December, 2006

I met Don in the garage as he got out of the car, a few nights after we knew for sure that he had lung cancer.

"I need to talk to you," I said. "I found some stuff on the internet..."

We'd developed a habit of going upstairs and hanging out in our bedroom after he got home. The toddler was generally still down for his nap at that point, and the other kids could take care of themselves. We usually stretched out on the bed, snuggled together, and moped, sometimes blinking back tears, sometimes talking, sometimes silent. But the jokes and laughter that had once punctuated our conversation were gone. We didn't have much left to laugh about.

"Okay," he said, and followed me upstairs to our bedroom.

"Look," I said once the door closed behind him, "this stuff is kind of scary. Maybe you'd rather not know?"

He narrowed his eyes at me: Silly girl, don't you know me better than that? "Show me," he said.

I led him to the computer and showed him the article I'd found, which said that forty percent of lung cancer patients with pleural effusions died within three months, and that eighty percent were dead within six months. I knew better than to believe anything I read on the internet, but I'd found similar figures on other sites, and I told him so.

He stared at the screen for a long moment.

"Well," he said, his voice very soft and calm. "I guess that's it, then."

He got up without another word and walked over to the bed and stretched out, putting an arm over his eyes. I followed him, worried by his silence, and sat down next to him on the bed, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Suddenly he burst into sobs.

"I just..." His voice was choked with pain and anger. "I just want to live to see my children grow up! That's all I ever wanted!"

I put my arms around him and put my head on his shoulder. "I know," I whispered. "I'm sorry."

He sobbed, and I held him, trying to be the strong one, the person he could lean on.

Once again, I realized, he was crying not because he was afraid for himself. He wasn't crying because he was afraid of the pain he was likely to experience, or from fear of death.

He was crying simply because he wanted to be there for his four children... and almost certainly wouldn't be.

Read Chapter 8 here.