She’d sat there so long her butt was numb. The battery of tests they’d ordered had soaked up nearly half of her day and she was becoming more and more annoyed as each moment went by. She had a gigantic list of things she needed to accomplish before the sun went down. These of course were all self-imposed chores, nothing spectacularly interesting, but none less, they were on the list and by God she would get them done even if it killed her.
Over achieving was nothing new to her. It was how she made herself feel worthy. It was also how she made everyone believe that doing everything she did was no big deal even though there were times when she would much rather have stayed in bed with a good book and a cup of tea.
More than just being tired of waiting, she was starting to feel little hints of anxiety rising up into her throat. Would the news be good or bad? Was her world about to get rocked or would they come out, pat her on the back, and tell her to come back in twenty years?
The last thing she wanted was to have a full on panic attack in the middle of the waiting room. She’d experience that once or twice before in public places and she knew the symptoms well. It was not a pretty sight! Her upper lip would start to tingle, as though it had fallen asleep, which it had, because there was no oxygen getting to it as her throat closed up. Then she would feel that horrible pressure, like someone was sitting on her chest and her heart would begin to beat like an out of control clock. Her eyes would start to flitter and she was sure that everyone around her could here the rasping sound of her trying to suck some air into her lungs.
“Do something to distract yourself girl, don’t fall apart here. Keep your game face on,” she told herself quietly.
She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. This was a trick she’d learned at her yoga class to help her calm down, to help balance her mind and body. It seemed to help a little, to slow her heart down to a reasonable rhythm, but her brain continued to rage about miserably with every conceivable bad thought she could imagine.
Today she didn’t want to have to be strong all by herself but she knew she would be. Why wasn’t someone there holding her hand? Where was her support system? But then she remembered. She’d always considered herself too strong to ask for this, from anyone, especially from her daughters.
She had always made it a point not to worry them, especially so after their father walked away from their ‘happy’ marriage. The girls were only six and four when he left, too young to understand the implications, yet old enough to be broken hearted at his sudden departure. He had completely rocked their world and hers.
There’d been no noticeable signs to warn her that that was coming. No lipstick on the caller, no phone ringing in the night, no odd expenditures on their credit cards. No signs at all—nothing. They had always gotten along well. They never seemed to exchange cross words, and they were both equally vested in bringing home the bacon. How could she not have seen it coming?
Perhaps she’d felt too comfortable, too secure, to notice the subtle changes that had transpired. Yes, he was working longer hours and making more business trips at the end, but she thought, because his business was growing, this was completely normal under those circumstances. Boy was she wrong!
***
She could remember the day he left as though it were only yesterday. She’d been at a meeting with her editor, trying to sort out the details of her next novel, and it had gone on longer than expected. She’d called Kurt to ask if he could pick up the girls from school and he had happily agreed. What she didn’t know was that this gave him the time he needed to bid the girls farewell.
As requested, he’d picked them up and taken them to McDonalds for their favorite treat, a Happy Meal. Both the girls were always tickled pink when they dug out the latest toy, something Stef always referred to as LPC, as in little plastic crap that she would forever be picking up off the floor. Sometime during that meal ‘daddy’ explained to them that he had to go away on a very, very, very long trip for his business, and that he wasn’t sure when he’d see them again. They were as always sad at that news, but they didn’t really understand the implications of what ‘very, very, very’ long was.
He brought them home, put their favorite video on and then went upstairs to pack his bags. The girls would glance casually at him as he brought down suitcase after suitcase, but they didn’t budge from the couch. They’d seen him do this a thousand times before so it was no biggie. When he had everything packed away in the car, he came back into the living room and kneeled on the floor in front of the girls.
“Come give Daddy a big hug,” he said stretching his arms out. Both girls flung themselves into his arms. They always loved it when he hugged them together.
“I love you two very much, always remember that okay?”
“We love you too daddy. Have a good time on your trip,” Becky said smiling at him.
He kissed them both on the cheek then released them from his embrace. Both girls saw that there were tears running down his cheeks.
“Why are you crying daddy?” Lily asked. She couldn’t remember ever seeing her dad cry before.
“I just have something in my eye,” was all he could manage to say at that point. “Bye girls.”
“Daddy, are you going to leave us here alone?” Becky asked.
“What?” he said thinking she must have figured it out, that he was about to abandon them, to parentally orphan them of a father.
“Are you leaving us here alone?”
“Oh…no, Kelly’s coming right now to stay with you until your mom gets home.”
“Okay, bye,” she said.
Little did she know that those would be the last words she ever spoke to him.
The doorbell rang announcing the babysitter’s arrival. He stood up then and went towards the door. He turned and looked at them one last time and nearly fell apart when he saw them blowing kisses his way.
“You both be good now.”
He opened the door, greeted Kelly, and then, without another look, he walked out of his home for the very last time.
An hour later Stef arrived home and was surprised to see Kelly sitting there with the girls.
“Where’s daddy?”
“He’s gone on a very, very, very long trip,” Lily said.
“Kelly?”
“He said something came up unexpectedly and he had to go out of town immediately and since he didn’t know what time you were coming back, he called me,” she said shrugging her shoulders in that ‘that’s all I know’ kind of gesture.
“Oh, okay, well I guess you can go now,” she said digging into her purse for some money.
After Kelly left, Stef went into the kitchen so she could call Kurt to find out why he didn’t let her know he was going away. In the past he’d always told her when he had to go away so she could schedule her life around his trips. Even though she worked from home, there were times, just like today, that she had to go into the city. She dialed his number and got his voice mail.
“Hey, what’s up? Why didn’t you call me and let me know you had to go somewhere? Call me back okay? Love you,” she said.
“Are you guys hungry,” she called out to the girls.
“No. Daddy took us to McDonalds.”
Good she thought. Now she would only have to make snacks later if they got hungry, and as it turned out, she didn’t even have to do that.
She tried Kurt’s cell again just before she went to bed but once again got his voice mail. This time she just hung up. She guessed he’d call her when he got to wherever he was going.
Two days passed before she talked to him. She had been worried out of her mind that something bad had happened to him because this was not his usual MO.
What she was about to find out however was that there was never going to be a usual MO ever again. Everything was about to change.
When her cell phone rang she snapped it up on the first ring. She could see it was him on the caller ID.
“What the hell Kurt, why did you wait so long to call me back, I’ve been going out of my mind worrying about you?” she yelled into the phone. “Where are you, and why didn’t you tell me you were going out of town?”
For the next thirty minutes or so Stef didn’t say a word, she just listened. He was gone for good, just like that! He had found someone else! Their life together was over. She could have the house, he’d said, as though that would make things right. He would try to see the girls when he could, but it would be difficult to do very often since he was relocating to Europe. He would leave her some money in their joint bank account, but would be taking the bulk of it for himself since she was still making money.
When she finally hung up the phone she was numb. The world had suddenly become black and white with grey clouds that threatened to open up at any minute surely with the sole intent of drowning her. In less than an hour her world came crumbling down as his words bounced around in her head trying to settle somewhere where they would make sense. How could she have not known?
She was too broken, too shocked, and still way too angry to say anything to the girls, so she locked her feeling up as tightly as she could and went on as if it were business as usual.
Two weeks had passed since Kurt dropped the bomb on her and she felt like she was going to explode. It was almost too embarrassing to tell anyone but she knew if she didn’t unload some of this anger she’d be in trouble. She’d fall and never get up and the girls needed their mother up and running, taking care of them, especially now. They were fatherless and they didn’t even know it yet. Worse, she had no idea how to tell them.
They had always seen her as ‘the can do mom’, a superwoman of sorts and she had never done anything to dispel the way they thought of her, so here she was, alone, like always, waiting for news that could irrevocably change her life; news that could irrevocably change their lives.
***
Cassie dropped Lily off at the day-care center as usual then headed off towards Becky’s elementary school. She could see Becky in her rear view mirror. She was so beautiful with her long dark tresses that always seemed to curl up like Twizzler sticks. She’d always wondered where this trait had come from since both her and Kurt’s hair was bone straight. They’d looked through photo albums in search of the curly culprit but never found one. They finally decided that it had just been a lucky fluke because it suited Becky’s personality just so.
She had tried all night to find the right words, the right tone to explain to her oldest daughter how their life was going to unfold now. How did you tell a child that their father was gone and was not coming back? It was impossible is what it was but she knew that the longer she put it off, the harder it would be.
By the time Stef’s courage arrived she was at Becky’s school. Becky grabbed her lunch off the seat next to her and unbuckled her seatbelt. Stef turned to her as usual so they could give each other a peck on the cheek.
“What would you say if we both played hooky today? We could go on a picnic or something, just you and me,” she spurted out without really thinking it through.
“Mom, I have to turn in my project today, remember?” Becky said.
Stef had been so wrapped up in her personal nightmare she’d completely forgotten that today was the day Becky would present her ‘first official book’ to her classmates. Together they’d worked hard on it over the past few months, tweaking and rewriting so that Stef’s ‘voice’ would not be present. It had turned out so wonderful even Stef had been impressed with her daughter’s natural ability with stringing words and ideas together. She was confidant that this would win her daughter an A in class.
“Your so right. Today’s the day,” she said. “You go knock ‘em dead okay?”
“I love you,” Becky said as she leaned forward to kiss her mom.
“I love you too!” she replied.
***
She hated waiting rooms. They were dull and poorly lit and she always felt that everyone there was simply a whiner that needed to be reassured by someone in a white coat that all was well. Most of the people around her didn’t look sick at all, but then again, neither did she.
Trying for any kind of distraction she scanned the office. The chairs were old and worn, the lamps were straight out of the 1950’s and she couldn’t help but notice that the walls were draped with some kind of prehistoric wallpaper that had long since outlived its beauty. Now it just looked dirty to her. She decided that it was probably a pale shade of blue at one time, but years of stale sickly air had sucked its brilliance out. If she’d had a bucket of soapy water and a rag she probably would have taken it on rather that sit there like a log. That’s when she noticed the dingy old flowers that had been shoved into and old dime-store glass vase like it didn’t matter. Who used fake flowers anymore anyway? What was the point of that? This was a bloody doctors office. They would be raking in the big bucks and it really pissed her off that they couldn’t spring for one bloody live plant to put some oxygen back into the room. It seemed like a no-brainer to her and it would have been a pleasant distraction from the smell emanating from behind the glass window where Nurse Ratchet was sitting picking at her nails.
She’d flipped through every magazine and realized that some of them were old enough to be new again. The fashions they were showing were already years old, but because the young designers today were so uncreative, they stole all these old ideas and made them new again. They she considered cheaters. Spineless creative types that had to follow a leader rather than start a new trend all on their own. Hell, she could take most of what was in her closet, alter it just slightly, and she’d be just as trendy as those skinny little bitches on the cover of the current magazines.
Yes, she was getting angry not only for the wait, but because all this extra time that was passing made her anxiety gush up from her stomach in the form of fowl bile that was lodging itself smack dab in the middle of her throat. She was becoming a human Kilauea ready to let the lava flow. She finally had to get up and get a glass of water just to help her swallow. Where the hell was this doctor? What could he possibly be doing to take so long?
Just as that thought passed from her brain to her lips in the form of an out loud whisper, the door opened and a young nurse called her name.
“Mrs. Casson, come on in,” she said casually as though she was inviting her in for tea.
The young nurse with her perky little ponytail had an odd expression on her face. It wasn’t a smile, nor was it a frown. Stef, being ever the observer, recognized that what she was seeing was apprehension. This girl knew something and she didn’t.
“So,” Stef said hoping the nurse would dispel all her fears by telling her that everything was all right, that she’d be out of there lickety split, but that never happened. Instead she told Stef to get up on the table then turned and left the room.
Being a writer was a curse and a blessing. Her curiosity was always aroused. She spied her file sitting there on the counter next to the sink. Should she she wondered? Would she understand what she was looking at? But like much of life, timing was everything. Just as she was just about to hop down off the table to sneak a peek the door sprung open and the young doctor she had seen earlier came waltzing in.
“Hello Mrs. Casson, please sit.”
He opened her file and flipped through a few pages refreshing his mind with what they’d discovered from her tests.
“Now, I don’t want to alarm you, but we found some things we should discuss.”
“What kind of things?” she said.
“Well, it’s not good news I’m sorry to say but it certainly explains some things.”
Stef drew in a breath afraid that if she didn’t she would throw up the bile lump that seemed to jump forward a few inches when he mentioned bad news.
“Your tests revealed that you have a certain set of cells in your brain that may be a sign of early on-set alzheimer's disease,” he said as he closed the file. He pulled up the little stool, sat down, and then rolled close enough to her to rest his hand on her knee.
For the briefest of moments she thought that his hand felt pretty good on her now bare knee. It felt warm and soft, and when she looked down at it she couldn’t help but notice how taut his skin was, how the veins didn’t protrude like they did on hers, but then his words hit her brain at velocity speed. He had hit her with an F-Bomb. She felt lightheaded, like she was on a train and the conductor has suddenly lost control.
“Excuse me?” she says because she doesn’t know what else to say.
“There’s a genetic link I think. You said your mother suffered from Alzheimer’s correct?”
“Well…yes…but…”
Over achieving was nothing new to her. It was how she made herself feel worthy. It was also how she made everyone believe that doing everything she did was no big deal even though there were times when she would much rather have stayed in bed with a good book and a cup of tea.
More than just being tired of waiting, she was starting to feel little hints of anxiety rising up into her throat. Would the news be good or bad? Was her world about to get rocked or would they come out, pat her on the back, and tell her to come back in twenty years?
The last thing she wanted was to have a full on panic attack in the middle of the waiting room. She’d experience that once or twice before in public places and she knew the symptoms well. It was not a pretty sight! Her upper lip would start to tingle, as though it had fallen asleep, which it had, because there was no oxygen getting to it as her throat closed up. Then she would feel that horrible pressure, like someone was sitting on her chest and her heart would begin to beat like an out of control clock. Her eyes would start to flitter and she was sure that everyone around her could here the rasping sound of her trying to suck some air into her lungs.
“Do something to distract yourself girl, don’t fall apart here. Keep your game face on,” she told herself quietly.
She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. This was a trick she’d learned at her yoga class to help her calm down, to help balance her mind and body. It seemed to help a little, to slow her heart down to a reasonable rhythm, but her brain continued to rage about miserably with every conceivable bad thought she could imagine.
Today she didn’t want to have to be strong all by herself but she knew she would be. Why wasn’t someone there holding her hand? Where was her support system? But then she remembered. She’d always considered herself too strong to ask for this, from anyone, especially from her daughters.
She had always made it a point not to worry them, especially so after their father walked away from their ‘happy’ marriage. The girls were only six and four when he left, too young to understand the implications, yet old enough to be broken hearted at his sudden departure. He had completely rocked their world and hers.
There’d been no noticeable signs to warn her that that was coming. No lipstick on the caller, no phone ringing in the night, no odd expenditures on their credit cards. No signs at all—nothing. They had always gotten along well. They never seemed to exchange cross words, and they were both equally vested in bringing home the bacon. How could she not have seen it coming?
Perhaps she’d felt too comfortable, too secure, to notice the subtle changes that had transpired. Yes, he was working longer hours and making more business trips at the end, but she thought, because his business was growing, this was completely normal under those circumstances. Boy was she wrong!
***
She could remember the day he left as though it were only yesterday. She’d been at a meeting with her editor, trying to sort out the details of her next novel, and it had gone on longer than expected. She’d called Kurt to ask if he could pick up the girls from school and he had happily agreed. What she didn’t know was that this gave him the time he needed to bid the girls farewell.
As requested, he’d picked them up and taken them to McDonalds for their favorite treat, a Happy Meal. Both the girls were always tickled pink when they dug out the latest toy, something Stef always referred to as LPC, as in little plastic crap that she would forever be picking up off the floor. Sometime during that meal ‘daddy’ explained to them that he had to go away on a very, very, very long trip for his business, and that he wasn’t sure when he’d see them again. They were as always sad at that news, but they didn’t really understand the implications of what ‘very, very, very’ long was.
He brought them home, put their favorite video on and then went upstairs to pack his bags. The girls would glance casually at him as he brought down suitcase after suitcase, but they didn’t budge from the couch. They’d seen him do this a thousand times before so it was no biggie. When he had everything packed away in the car, he came back into the living room and kneeled on the floor in front of the girls.
“Come give Daddy a big hug,” he said stretching his arms out. Both girls flung themselves into his arms. They always loved it when he hugged them together.
“I love you two very much, always remember that okay?”
“We love you too daddy. Have a good time on your trip,” Becky said smiling at him.
He kissed them both on the cheek then released them from his embrace. Both girls saw that there were tears running down his cheeks.
“Why are you crying daddy?” Lily asked. She couldn’t remember ever seeing her dad cry before.
“I just have something in my eye,” was all he could manage to say at that point. “Bye girls.”
“Daddy, are you going to leave us here alone?” Becky asked.
“What?” he said thinking she must have figured it out, that he was about to abandon them, to parentally orphan them of a father.
“Are you leaving us here alone?”
“Oh…no, Kelly’s coming right now to stay with you until your mom gets home.”
“Okay, bye,” she said.
Little did she know that those would be the last words she ever spoke to him.
The doorbell rang announcing the babysitter’s arrival. He stood up then and went towards the door. He turned and looked at them one last time and nearly fell apart when he saw them blowing kisses his way.
“You both be good now.”
He opened the door, greeted Kelly, and then, without another look, he walked out of his home for the very last time.
An hour later Stef arrived home and was surprised to see Kelly sitting there with the girls.
“Where’s daddy?”
“He’s gone on a very, very, very long trip,” Lily said.
“Kelly?”
“He said something came up unexpectedly and he had to go out of town immediately and since he didn’t know what time you were coming back, he called me,” she said shrugging her shoulders in that ‘that’s all I know’ kind of gesture.
“Oh, okay, well I guess you can go now,” she said digging into her purse for some money.
After Kelly left, Stef went into the kitchen so she could call Kurt to find out why he didn’t let her know he was going away. In the past he’d always told her when he had to go away so she could schedule her life around his trips. Even though she worked from home, there were times, just like today, that she had to go into the city. She dialed his number and got his voice mail.
“Hey, what’s up? Why didn’t you call me and let me know you had to go somewhere? Call me back okay? Love you,” she said.
“Are you guys hungry,” she called out to the girls.
“No. Daddy took us to McDonalds.”
Good she thought. Now she would only have to make snacks later if they got hungry, and as it turned out, she didn’t even have to do that.
She tried Kurt’s cell again just before she went to bed but once again got his voice mail. This time she just hung up. She guessed he’d call her when he got to wherever he was going.
Two days passed before she talked to him. She had been worried out of her mind that something bad had happened to him because this was not his usual MO.
What she was about to find out however was that there was never going to be a usual MO ever again. Everything was about to change.
When her cell phone rang she snapped it up on the first ring. She could see it was him on the caller ID.
“What the hell Kurt, why did you wait so long to call me back, I’ve been going out of my mind worrying about you?” she yelled into the phone. “Where are you, and why didn’t you tell me you were going out of town?”
For the next thirty minutes or so Stef didn’t say a word, she just listened. He was gone for good, just like that! He had found someone else! Their life together was over. She could have the house, he’d said, as though that would make things right. He would try to see the girls when he could, but it would be difficult to do very often since he was relocating to Europe. He would leave her some money in their joint bank account, but would be taking the bulk of it for himself since she was still making money.
When she finally hung up the phone she was numb. The world had suddenly become black and white with grey clouds that threatened to open up at any minute surely with the sole intent of drowning her. In less than an hour her world came crumbling down as his words bounced around in her head trying to settle somewhere where they would make sense. How could she have not known?
She was too broken, too shocked, and still way too angry to say anything to the girls, so she locked her feeling up as tightly as she could and went on as if it were business as usual.
Two weeks had passed since Kurt dropped the bomb on her and she felt like she was going to explode. It was almost too embarrassing to tell anyone but she knew if she didn’t unload some of this anger she’d be in trouble. She’d fall and never get up and the girls needed their mother up and running, taking care of them, especially now. They were fatherless and they didn’t even know it yet. Worse, she had no idea how to tell them.
They had always seen her as ‘the can do mom’, a superwoman of sorts and she had never done anything to dispel the way they thought of her, so here she was, alone, like always, waiting for news that could irrevocably change her life; news that could irrevocably change their lives.
***
Cassie dropped Lily off at the day-care center as usual then headed off towards Becky’s elementary school. She could see Becky in her rear view mirror. She was so beautiful with her long dark tresses that always seemed to curl up like Twizzler sticks. She’d always wondered where this trait had come from since both her and Kurt’s hair was bone straight. They’d looked through photo albums in search of the curly culprit but never found one. They finally decided that it had just been a lucky fluke because it suited Becky’s personality just so.
She had tried all night to find the right words, the right tone to explain to her oldest daughter how their life was going to unfold now. How did you tell a child that their father was gone and was not coming back? It was impossible is what it was but she knew that the longer she put it off, the harder it would be.
By the time Stef’s courage arrived she was at Becky’s school. Becky grabbed her lunch off the seat next to her and unbuckled her seatbelt. Stef turned to her as usual so they could give each other a peck on the cheek.
“What would you say if we both played hooky today? We could go on a picnic or something, just you and me,” she spurted out without really thinking it through.
“Mom, I have to turn in my project today, remember?” Becky said.
Stef had been so wrapped up in her personal nightmare she’d completely forgotten that today was the day Becky would present her ‘first official book’ to her classmates. Together they’d worked hard on it over the past few months, tweaking and rewriting so that Stef’s ‘voice’ would not be present. It had turned out so wonderful even Stef had been impressed with her daughter’s natural ability with stringing words and ideas together. She was confidant that this would win her daughter an A in class.
“Your so right. Today’s the day,” she said. “You go knock ‘em dead okay?”
“I love you,” Becky said as she leaned forward to kiss her mom.
“I love you too!” she replied.
***
She hated waiting rooms. They were dull and poorly lit and she always felt that everyone there was simply a whiner that needed to be reassured by someone in a white coat that all was well. Most of the people around her didn’t look sick at all, but then again, neither did she.
Trying for any kind of distraction she scanned the office. The chairs were old and worn, the lamps were straight out of the 1950’s and she couldn’t help but notice that the walls were draped with some kind of prehistoric wallpaper that had long since outlived its beauty. Now it just looked dirty to her. She decided that it was probably a pale shade of blue at one time, but years of stale sickly air had sucked its brilliance out. If she’d had a bucket of soapy water and a rag she probably would have taken it on rather that sit there like a log. That’s when she noticed the dingy old flowers that had been shoved into and old dime-store glass vase like it didn’t matter. Who used fake flowers anymore anyway? What was the point of that? This was a bloody doctors office. They would be raking in the big bucks and it really pissed her off that they couldn’t spring for one bloody live plant to put some oxygen back into the room. It seemed like a no-brainer to her and it would have been a pleasant distraction from the smell emanating from behind the glass window where Nurse Ratchet was sitting picking at her nails.
She’d flipped through every magazine and realized that some of them were old enough to be new again. The fashions they were showing were already years old, but because the young designers today were so uncreative, they stole all these old ideas and made them new again. They she considered cheaters. Spineless creative types that had to follow a leader rather than start a new trend all on their own. Hell, she could take most of what was in her closet, alter it just slightly, and she’d be just as trendy as those skinny little bitches on the cover of the current magazines.
Yes, she was getting angry not only for the wait, but because all this extra time that was passing made her anxiety gush up from her stomach in the form of fowl bile that was lodging itself smack dab in the middle of her throat. She was becoming a human Kilauea ready to let the lava flow. She finally had to get up and get a glass of water just to help her swallow. Where the hell was this doctor? What could he possibly be doing to take so long?
Just as that thought passed from her brain to her lips in the form of an out loud whisper, the door opened and a young nurse called her name.
“Mrs. Casson, come on in,” she said casually as though she was inviting her in for tea.
The young nurse with her perky little ponytail had an odd expression on her face. It wasn’t a smile, nor was it a frown. Stef, being ever the observer, recognized that what she was seeing was apprehension. This girl knew something and she didn’t.
“So,” Stef said hoping the nurse would dispel all her fears by telling her that everything was all right, that she’d be out of there lickety split, but that never happened. Instead she told Stef to get up on the table then turned and left the room.
Being a writer was a curse and a blessing. Her curiosity was always aroused. She spied her file sitting there on the counter next to the sink. Should she she wondered? Would she understand what she was looking at? But like much of life, timing was everything. Just as she was just about to hop down off the table to sneak a peek the door sprung open and the young doctor she had seen earlier came waltzing in.
“Hello Mrs. Casson, please sit.”
He opened her file and flipped through a few pages refreshing his mind with what they’d discovered from her tests.
“Now, I don’t want to alarm you, but we found some things we should discuss.”
“What kind of things?” she said.
“Well, it’s not good news I’m sorry to say but it certainly explains some things.”
Stef drew in a breath afraid that if she didn’t she would throw up the bile lump that seemed to jump forward a few inches when he mentioned bad news.
“Your tests revealed that you have a certain set of cells in your brain that may be a sign of early on-set alzheimer's disease,” he said as he closed the file. He pulled up the little stool, sat down, and then rolled close enough to her to rest his hand on her knee.
For the briefest of moments she thought that his hand felt pretty good on her now bare knee. It felt warm and soft, and when she looked down at it she couldn’t help but notice how taut his skin was, how the veins didn’t protrude like they did on hers, but then his words hit her brain at velocity speed. He had hit her with an F-Bomb. She felt lightheaded, like she was on a train and the conductor has suddenly lost control.
“Excuse me?” she says because she doesn’t know what else to say.
“There’s a genetic link I think. You said your mother suffered from Alzheimer’s correct?”
“Well…yes…but…”
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