Always: Broken Series Book Four (6 page)

We held each other, both of us crying. We had no idea what the future held, but I was sure of one thing – we were going to face it together.

S
cotty and I managed to
, somehow, get through the last few days without completely breaking down. I even convinced her that she had to act normal, for the good of everyone – Addison, me, Chloe, Olivia, even Jack. Not that I was having an easy time trying to act normally. I wasn’t. I didn’t let on, but I was thinking about Michelle, night and day, and silently obsessing that the same thing was going to happen to Addison.

But I had promised Scotty that we weren’t going to jump to any conclusions until Addy had her biopsy results. We had taken her in to get her biopsy, and we were now in Dr. Michaels’ office, waiting to speak with him. I tried to concentrate on anything at all that would take my mind off of what was going on, because I was afraid of breaking down and crying. That was the last thing that Addy and Scotty needed, so I sat and stared at a crystal vase that was on the far side of the good doctor’s office.

Finally, he came in. “Okay,” he said. “I got Addison’s biopsy results back.” He cleared his throat. “She has what we call an Osteosarcoma. This is a tumor that very commonly occurs in the knee and upper arm. In Addison’s case, of course, the tumor is on her knee. Now, I’d like to refer to you to an oncologist so that you can know better what the next steps are going to be. I would suggest that you give permission for Addison to have what is called a PET scan. This is a scan where there is a small amount of radioactive glucose that is injected into a vein, and it’s very effective to see if the cancer has spread through other organs in the body. If it hasn’t, and it’s localized, then we have a good chance to beat this with chemotherapy, radiation and surgery.”

I squeezed Scotty’s hand, and I saw that she was squeezing Addison’s hand. I swallowed hard. “Okay, go ahead and do that PET scan.”

“I need to get you in touch with a specialist,” he said. “And we can go from there.”

At that, he gave us a card for one Dr. Jensen, whose card indicated that he was an oncologist. “Thank you,” I said to Dr. Michaels. “We’ll call this Dr. Jensen right away.”

Then we left.

I
n the car
, Scotty made an appointment with Dr. Jensen, and Addison was in the backseat, not saying a word. I kept looking back at her, glancing in my rear-view mirror. I was looking for any kind of indication that she was about to fall apart. I didn’t get that from her, though. I got that she was thinking about what was going on.

“Addy,” I said to her. “What’s on your mind? What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing. I was just thinking about my soccer game. It’s tomorrow. I haven’t told the team yet. I haven’t even told my coach. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I hope that they let me play.”

“Of course they’ll let you play. Why wouldn’t they?”

Addison shrugged. “Dad, I don’t know. There might be some kind of liability. What if I broke my leg right there on the field? That might happen, you know. Then the coach will be in trouble. Or I’ll be in trouble for not saying anything.”

“Well, let them know that you have cancer, so that way there’s not a question if something should happen to you on the field. I'll have a talk with your coach. Hopefully there won’t be an issue with you being allowed on the field.”

Addison shrugged her shoulders and continued to look out the window. “I hate this. I hate this drip, drip, drip, drip of information. Just tell me what is going to happen, so I can deal with it.”

“Hey,” I said to her. “I know that you’re scared. But we’re going to do all that we can. We have to go through the process and do everything that the doctor says. We’ll have all the answers we need soon enough.”

What I didn’t want to tell her was that I was as scared as she was. I didn’t want to tell her that I was having nightmares about losing her. I’d wake up in a cold sweat, and Scotty would have to talk me down. The last thing I wanted was for her to see my fear, so I made sure that she never would.

We got home, and Addison immediately went to her room. Scotty went into the living room after pouring a glass of wine. She was drinking more than I liked, but I understood why. That was how she dealt with severe issues. I wouldn’t be worried about her drinking so much, except that alcoholism ran in her family. Her mother was still on the wagon, miraculously, but I think that Loretta white-knuckled it the whole way. Over the years, there were periods when Scotty drank a bit much, but I never said anything, because these periods were brief.

I made the decision not to say anything to her this time, either. I was also concerned with the fact that she wanted to take a leave of absence from work. We had been talking about this, at length, and Scotty seemed determined to do it. She reasoned that she couldn’t handle the stress at home and the stress at work. I tried to understand this, too, although it was difficult. For me, work was my lifeline. While I was immersed in my various projects, my mind wasn’t obsessively on Addison. If I didn’t have work, I would be going absolutely crazy. Plus, I felt like I was in control when I was at work. With Addison, I had no control at all.

I went into the living room to join Scotty. “Let’s order in for dinner, huh? The Chinese place around the corner?”

Scotty shook her head. “I’m so sorry, there’s no way I can eat right now.”

I bit my tongue. It was starting to worry me that Scotty wasn’t eating, yet she was drinking a lot. That couldn’t be good. It was bad enough that I wasn’t sleeping much, and Scotty wasn’t either. But I tried very hard to take care of myself, health-wise, because I knew that I needed to. If there was one thing that I hard learned over the years is that, when you’re under stress, you need to make sure that you take care of yourself.

“Honey, you need to eat.” I took her glass of wine away. “You can have this back when you share some Moo Goo Gai Pan with me. And not before.”

Scotty just shook her head. “I can’t eat. I’ll vomit. My stomach is in knots. Eating is the last thing that I can think about.”

I let out a breath. “Scotty, I don’t want to push you, but I feel that I need to. You’re taking a leave of absence from work, you’re drinking seemingly all the time, and you’re not eating. You’re going to turn into your mother, and that’s the last thing that I want to see.”

Scotty looked away. “So this is what it’s come down to? I hit below the belt when I said that your workaholicism might be responsible for Abrianna’s death, and now you’re accusing me of being like my mother.” She narrowed her eyes and got up to go to the kitchen. I followed her and watched as she poured herself a glass of whiskey, straight up. With a defiant look on her face, she drank down the entire glass and made herself another one.

“Scotty, I’m warning you…” I suddenly was having a problem not strangling her. Not literally of course, but I was feeling like Addison was not only out of control, but Scotty was too. That was hardly fair to me – I was essentially being asked to not only take control of Addison’s illness and her treatment, but also I was going to have to somehow keep Scotty from completely falling apart.

“You’re warning me what?” She downed the second drink and already started to slur her words. “What? Go ahead, tell me what’s on your mind. Dad.”

She’s baiting you, Nick. Don’t let her do it.
All my knock-down drag-out fights with Rielle flashed through my brain. I didn’t want to go there with Scotty, too.

Scotty was standing there, and she had her hands on her hips. She started to pour another drink and I knocked the bottle of whiskey out of her hands. “That’s enough. You’ve had enough.”

She shook her head. “You know, I never thought that I would say this. But I really understand why mom drank. I do. Life is just so shitty. So shitty. You have to do something to get through it.”

I went over to her and put my arms around her. She cried, but then she walked away from me. “Scotty, you can’t do this. You can’t completely fall apart like this. You have to be strong.”

“Strong.” She shook her head. “I’ve been strong my entire life. I’ve had to go through the worst nightmares that anybody can ever survive. I’ve had to fight for everything I have. And I’m tired, Nick. I’m tired of fighting. All I want to do is take this bottle of whiskey and get into bed. That’s all that I want to do. I’m just tired.”

I had the temptation to try to shake some sense into her. I wanted to yell and scream and somehow get her to face reality. But I couldn’t. I knew that if I did what I wanted to do, it would do nothing but push her even further away. “Scotty, maybe it’s time you started seeing Adele again.” Adele Holloway was Scotty’s shrink for many years. I credited Adele with getting Scotty to where she was finally able to face her past and get on with things.

Scotty just nodded. She looked like a little girl, standing there in the kitchen, tinier than ever. She always had a tendency to be as slight as a sparrow, and it was always a challenge for me to make sure that she ate enough to be truly healthy. Now, she had lost weight, and it showed. I went over to put my hands on her hips to bring her to me, and I could feel her bones.

“I’m tired, Nick. I’m really, really tired. I never thought that I could be this exhausted.”

“I know,” I said, putting my hand in her hair. I didn’t really know what more to say to her. I wanted to tell her how unfair it was that she apparently was going to put this whole thing on my shoulders, because she was checking out. At the same time, I knew that such accusations wouldn’t do any good. The only thing that would do any good at that point, maybe, was her straightening things out with her therapist. “Let me make you an appointment to see Adele,” I said, getting out my phone.

I called Adele, told her that Scotty had an emergency and needed to speak with her. I was able to make an appointment for Scotty to see Adele the next day.

“Okay,” I said, going over to Scotty. “I have an appointment for you. It’s all set for tomorrow at 3. Would you like me to go with you?”

“No. Somebody has to hold down the fort at work.” Scotty hung her head. “I thought my nightmares were behind me. When I married you and I had those three beautiful girls, I thought that my life would just keep going great. I thought that I slammed the door on all those things that ripped out my soul. Now this.”

I sighed. There were still no words. How could I possibly have words? I didn’t know, yet, what we were up against. All that was known was that our little girl had an Osteosarcoma. We didn’t know if the cancer had spread, or if she was going to lose her leg. We really didn’t know much. If I knew something, I could give Scotty some kind of encouragement. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to bullshit her, either. She would see right through that.

So, I did what I did best. I just held her and let her cry.

And kept her away from the alcohol.

For now.

N
ick was convinced
that I needed to see Adele. Maybe he was right. I didn’t really know. All that I knew was that my brain was completely confused and scrambled. When I woke up in the morning, any morning, it was as if there was a veil that was covering my mind. That was the only way to describe it. I was foggy and always exhausted, no matter how much sleep I got the previous night.

Nick didn’t help. I mean, he did, but he didn’t. I appreciated his strength, but he woke up in the middle of the night, almost every night, in a cold sweat. Even if I was able to sleep, when Nick did that, I would wake up as well. Then, I would end up not being able to get back to sleep. I would stare at the ceiling, counting the little popcorn mounds on it. Nick would be able to get right back to sleep, but I never could. My thoughts were obsessively on Addison. I could only think of her.

In the meantime, I could see myself slowly going under. Well, I wasn’t slowly going under – I was doing so rapidly. I felt as if I had been swept out to sea, so I was in the middle of the ocean with nowhere to go. I could tread water, but that would exhaust me, and I would end up going beneath the waves where I would either drown or be eaten by sharks. Right now, though, I was still treading water, but I knew that I wouldn’t be in a few days. All that I would need would be some enormous setbacks, and I would go under.

I was in bed with Nick, who was snoring next to me. I got out of the bed and softly crept down the hall. I surreptitiously opened Addison’s door, expecting to see her fast asleep. Instead, she was sitting up in bed, her laptop next to her. She appeared to be looking something up. She saw me and shut the laptop. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “I know I have a long day at school tomorrow.”

I took a deep breath and went into her room. It was a typical teenagers bedroom – there were pictures of her and her friends on her dresser, photos of the groups that she belonged to as they posed on ski slopes and spring breaks. On the walls were paintings that she made in art class. She was surprisingly good – she definitely didn’t get her artistic inclinations from me. While I could draw up a blueprint with precision, I never was able to paint. My creativity in my brain just didn’t work the way that it seemed to for artists. Her curtains were purple, which was her favorite color, but they seemed to clash just a bit with her walls, which were a different shade of purple than the curtains.

I pictured her the way that she was 10 years ago, and pictured this room the way that it looked then. I saw the canopy bed that she had loved so much. The canopy bed had long since been replaced by a regular bed with wooden posters - she felt that canopies were for babies. That made me sad. I saw the stuffed animals that were on that canopy bed – Mr. Wingle, which is what she named the teddy bear with the tuxedo; Mrs. Wingle, the little stuffed dog that was “married” to Mr. Wingle; and Maddy-Tattie, a little stuffed turtle. I saw all her little books that she was just learning to read –
Fun With Dick and Jane
, and
Winnie the Pooh.

Georgie and Gracie, the two pugs, were on the bed. They looked at me expectantly, their tiny curly tails wagging rapidly. Gracie got on her back, begging me to scratch her tummy. They brought me back into reality, which was that I was standing in the bedroom of my 15-year-old sick daughter – not standing in the room of my 5-year-old healthy child. As much as I wanted to pretend that these last few days hadn’t happened, I knew that they had.

I sat down on the bed with her and cleared away the hair from her eyes. She was getting so pretty – her dark hair had grown out so that it grazed her shoulders, and her blue eyes were piercing and crystalline, just like her father’s. She was slender and small-boned, just like me. She had a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, which often happened when she got out into the sun a bit too much.

“Honey, would you like to not go to school tomorrow? I could take you into the city, like when you were little. We could do lunch and do the Met and just do the town. We haven’t done that in awhile. There’s some good movies coming out that I’d love to see – movies that I think that you’d like too.”

“Mom, I appreciate it, but no. I need for things to be as normal as possible. I mean, I know that I’m going to have to miss a lot of school. Well, hopefully not a lot of school, but I’m going to have to miss some days. But I don’t want to miss school if I don’t have to.”

I smiled at my oh-so-serious daughter. “You’re pretty amazing. Most kids would jump at the chance to miss as much school as possible.”

“Like you did, mom? When you lived in that car?” She stared at me, and I felt that she was looking just a little bit lost. “I know that you really had to bust your ass when you got back into school after that. I’m probably going to have to do the same if I end up missing as much school as I think.”

“I did have to bust my rear.” I still didn’t want to cuss around Addison, even to say the word “ass.” Nick didn’t have a problem with that, of course – he said every word in the book around them, and never tried to cover up his language. But I still felt that Addison needed a role model, so I tried to be that for her.

It was then that I came to an epiphany. Addison needed a role model. I had always tried to give her that. She saw me juggling work responsibilities and familial concerns, all while keeping it all together. I had brought her into work as often as I could, and I always tried to encourage her to follow her paths and her dreams, no matter what they were. She admired me. She admired what I did.

I was letting her down. By giving up on life, drinking all the time, not eating and refusing to work, I was letting her down. She needed me to be strong. She needed that not just because she needed my support, but she also needed to see that being strong meant that you handled life’s adversity. You took all the awful things that fate had in store and you dealt with them.

“Mom,” she said, putting her hand on my knee. “Are you okay? You’re just staring at the wall.”

“I am.” I tousled her hair. “I just realized how dumb I’ve been. How selfish. I need to become better, healthier and less tired. I need to do all that for you. I need to find a way to be strong. You need that from me. You don’t need me to be scared and lost and timid and tired.”

She smiled. “You’re fine, mom. Really. I mean, I’d like for you to talk to me more than you have, but it’s okay if you don’t.”

“How did you get so mature? I remember when you were just a little tiny baby, crawling around here with a pacifier in your mouth. Now, here you are, being more grown-up about this whole thing than your mother.”

“Mom, it’s going to be okay. You’re obviously more worried than I am, because, you know, if I don’t get through this, you’re going to have to live without me. But I obviously won’t have anything else to worry about at that point.” She looked sad, and her words were devastating to me. I couldn’t handle the fact that her mind was going there – dying at the age of 15. Before she ever had the chance to really live.

“But baby, don’t think like that. You’re going to get through this. You are.”

“I know. I guess. But, mom, what if the cancer has spread? I’ve been reading about this disease, and it might be in my lungs. What then? What then mom? We have to look at these possibilities.”

Her words were cutting me to the core, but I tried not to let her know it. She probably already thought of me as being a basket case, and I didn’t blame her. “Honey, we’ll find out soon enough. In the meantime, I think that I need to go back to bed. And you do, too. Seven AM always comes so early.” She always woke up at 7 AM, and got the bus at 7:45. She was able to eat and get ready for school in record time, much faster than I ever did when I was her age.

She nodded her head and closed her laptop. “Okay, mom. Well, goodnight.”

I kissed her forehead, suppressing the sob that was forming in my throat. “Night.”

I tiptoed back into my bed, and snuggled up to Nick. He groaned lightly, which told me that he wasn’t quite asleep, but probably not quite awake, either. It comforted me to feel the warmth of his skin against mine. I said a silent word of thanks for him. If it weren’t for him, I probably would have completely fallen apart. As it was, I was going to have to consciously try to go on with my life in a normal way. I was going to have to go to Addison’s doctor’s appointments, of course, but, the rest of the time, I was going to go to work.

I finally realized that the best way to help Addy was to get my shit together.

And that was exactly what I was going to do.