Life Happens (11 page)

Even Kaylie seemed impressed, sitting quietly on Dean’s lap.

The physician looked at each of them. “We need to move, but we don’t need to panic. Before I continue, do you have any questions?”

Mya, Dean and Millicent shook their heads, for theirs wasn’t a question they could say out loud.

Elle said, “Are you married, Doctor?”

Other than his Rolex, his only jewelry was a platinum wedding band that had flashed throughout the consultation. “Yes, I am.”

Elle glanced at Mya. “No sense introducing him to Suzette, then.”

Elle’s attempt at wry humor might have fooled the others, but it didn’t fool the doctor. “If I wasn’t married, I wouldn’t wear a wedding ring. I don’t lie. Period. If you have questions, ask. If I know the answer, I’ll tell you. If I don’t know, I’ll find someone who does. I expect the same level of honesty in return. Do we have a deal?”

He held her gaze for a long time. And then he held out his hand.

Mya couldn’t breathe as she waited for Elle to place her hand in the hand of the man who was going to save her life. Finally doing so, Elle said, “We have a deal. I’d like to speak with you privately, Doctor.”

Mya, Dean and Millicent all started to protest. Bryce Andrews quieted them all with one shake of his head.

Dean rose first. Settling Kaylie on his arm, he looked at Mya. She wanted to stay, but the stubborn shifting of his shoulders was too insistent to be argued with. As she left Elle alone with the doctor, Mya felt an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.

She really, really, really hated hospitals.

Mya heard her back door open. Recognizing the click of her mother’s footsteps, she said hello without turning.

“Any luck?” Millicent asked.

Dragging her gaze away from the nothingness beyond her kitchen window, Mya shook her head. Kaylie was asleep on Mya’s shoulder. The last she knew, Elle was napping, too.

After the private portion of her consultation yesterday, Elle had dropped another bombshell. With little inflection in her voice, she’d told them she’d decided not to undergo further treatment. She’d said it as she might have said she’d decided not to order takeout for supper.

“What do you mean?” Millicent had asked.

But Mya said, “For now, you mean.”

That wasn’t what Elle had meant at all.

“You have to continue treatment,” Millie had said.

Elle had fixed her eyes straight ahead.

“Tell her, Mya.”

Mya and her mother had wound up arguing with each other.

Finally, Dean had said, “You’ll die without treatment.”

“Yes, I know.” Evidently, Elle had asked Dr. Andrews for the statistics, percentages, time frames. And in that same quiet voice, she’d said, “Chances are, I’ll die either way. What difference does it make if I die from the cancer or if I die from the cure? What good is extending my life if I’m too sick to live it? It comes down to quality or quantity.”

No amount of arguing, cajoling or begging had budged her decision. Mya had barely slept last night. And when she did, she’d had nightmares. This morning she’d called Elle’s adoptive father. After explaining the situation to him, she’d handed the phone to Elle. Even the man who’d raised her, a man who’d won countless arguments in court hadn’t been successful in convincing her that she couldn’t give up. He wanted her on the next plane home. Elle wasn’t going to do that, either.

“What are you going to do?” Millicent asked Mya today.

Mya had thought of little else. Taking a deep breath, she said, “I’m going to talk to her again. And this time I’m not taking no for an answer.”

With shaking hands, she handed Kaylie into her mother’s waiting arms. Girded with her resolve, Mya marched down the hall and entered Elle’s room without knocking.

Elle was just waking up. If Elle didn’t appreciate the invasion of her privacy, she made no comment.

In a sudden revelation, Mya understood Elle’s tactics. Closing the door partway, she altered hers accordingly and pressed her advantage. “This bullshit you’re spouting about this being your life and your choice and your decision? You gave it a good run. Tomorrow, if not today, we’re going back to Dr. Andrews and you’re going to do whatever he says will give you the best chance of beating this thing. You owe me that much.”

Mya could practically see Elle’s hackles rising.

“What?” she said. “You think you don’t owe me anything? Well I’m sick of that attitude, missy. I gave you life, dammit.”

“And then you gave me away.”

“Yes, I did. I was in labor for twenty-six excruciating hours. I breathed, I screamed, I begged and I cried. I thought I was going to die from the pain. Walking out of that hospital without you hurt more.”

“Grandma Millie says you never mentioned me again.”

“That’s right. I didn’t. I couldn’t. What would I have said? I wonder where you are? I wonder what you look like? I wonder if you’re happy? I wonder if you ever wished I could have been your mother? I wonder if you hate me? I didn’t have to say any of those things out loud. I felt them. Here.” She placed a fist to her chest, and then to her stomach.

“Oh, please.”

“You don’t believe me? You know something, Elle? I don’t really care what you believe. You want to hate me, you go for it. Hate me with everything you have. You turn that hatred into energy, and you use that energy to fight. I don’t really care what Dr. Andrews told you about your chances, percentages, risks. You know people who’ve died from the cure? At least they died fighting. You’re my daughter, dammit, and my daughter isn’t a quitter.”

“I’m not your daughter, and you’re not my mother.”

Tears ran down Mya’s cheeks. “So that’s what this is about. If you want to punish me for giving you up, find another way. For the record, I gave you up because I believed it was the best thing for you, your best chance for a good, happy life. I always knew I loved you, but I didn’t know how much until you came knocking on my front door. You came to me for a reason. And I’m not going to let you die. Do you understand?”

Elle’s face was dry, and as white as the curtains at the window behind her. Mya wished she would say something.

“I can’t watch you die, Elle.”

“If you want Kaylie and me to leave, we will.”

If she’d thought playing her trump card would sway Elle, she was wrong. Was there no way to get through to her?

Tears coursed down Mya’s cheeks.

She left the room, and nearly walked headlong into Dean.

Mya gasped, but Dean put his arms around her and held her, just held her until she stopped shaking. Over his shoulder, she saw that her living room was wall-to-wall Lakers. Some sat. Some stood. No one said a word. Not even the kids.

Through the roaring silence, a distinguished voice carried with quiet authority. “Mya,” Ruth Laker said. “Ask Elle to come out here.”

Mya couldn’t move. “I don’t…she’s already…I mean…”

“Don’t worry, we won’t hurt your baby girl,” Gretchen whispered.

“We have something to tell her,” Sylvia said.

“And I think she needs to hear it from us,” Grady said.

“From all of us,” three of the boys said at the same time.

Dean squeezed Mya’s hand. Until then, she hadn’t realized her hand was still in his. His blue eyes darkened with emotion, his expression one of immovable determination.

Together, they went to get their daughter.

Unlike Mya, who’d barged in a few minutes earlier, Dean knocked.

“Who is it?” Elle said, snide all the way.

Pushing the door open wide, Dean said, “There’s someone here to see you.”

Her eyes showed surprise. “Tell whoever it is I’m not up to company.”

“Get yourself up to it. They came a long way and they’re not leaving until they tell you why they’re here.”

“They?”

Elle looked terribly pale. Despite the tattoo encircling her arm and the one gracing her shoulder, despite the in-your-face stance, and despite the stubborn tilt of her chin, she was far more afraid than she wanted them to believe. In that instant, Mya was overcome with sweetness for this girl.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “It’s not the firing squad. It’s your family.”

Elle floundered. “The Lakers are
here?
”

Mya nodded.

And Elle said, “That’s worse than a firing squad.”

“If it’s any consolation, I agree.” Mya knew better than to attempt to smile. “You can either go to them, or they can come in here to you. Dean’s right. I get the feeling they won’t leave until they’ve had their say.”

“Oh, God.”

“Come,” Mya whispered. “You can lean on us.”

E
lle didn’t want to face Dean’s family today. Her knees were already shaking too much for that. She didn’t want to hear what they had to say. She’d made up her mind. It hadn’t been easy. But she’d done it. And she didn’t need any interfering relatives-by-default coming out of the woodwork, making this even more difficult.

She dreaded looking into each of their faces.

They hadn’t left her a suitable choice. She could go out to them, or they would come in here to her. Some choice.

She was nineteen. Did they think she liked what she was facing? Did they think this was the first time she’d faced it? They didn’t know her. And they had no right to question her decision or her right to make it.

One look around Mya’s living room was all it took for her to know they weren’t going to let that stop them. Six of them had squeezed onto Mya’s sofa like sardines. Others were perched on the arms of overstuffed chairs, the foot-stool and the rocker.

Since the moment Elle had met them, they’d never been able to sit still or be quiet, and yet today every last
one of them watched her in waiting silence. Even her cat was looking at her, although he did so from Grady’s arms. The traitor.

Ruth Laker had said Elle was bashful. If she could have done so without proving the old woman right, she would have hidden.

Mya stood on one side of her, Dean on the other. She’d explained her reasons to both of them. She’d told them how awful the first round of treatments had been, how sick the chemotherapy had made her. The antinausea drugs hadn’t helped, and she’d been too weak to pick up her own crying newborn baby. Losing her hair had been dreadful. Even her eyebrows had fallen out. She’d been so ill she hadn’t been able to walk across the room. And it had all been for nothing. Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was a sniveling weasel of a cancer that was damned difficult to cure. Hell, it was next to impossible. The most a person could hope for was a long remission. She’d already been in and out of remission twice. She’d told Mya and Dean that maybe not everyone was born to grow old. And they’d told the rest of the family, which made them traitors, too.

“What do you want?” she asked, trembling more than she would have liked.

Cole unwedged himself from the others on the sofa. Finding his feet, he struck that cocksure, feet-spread-apart-hips-forward-shoulders-back pose of a guy begging for trouble. “Lakers don’t give up.”

“I guess that cinches it, then. I’m not a Laker.”

Gretchen stood next. Pushing her glasses up her nose, she said, “You’re acting like a Laker.”

“She’s acting like a horse’s—ow.” Cole rubbed his ribs where they’d been duly poked by his aunt’s bony elbow.

Greg, Brad and Mike stood in unison, inching forward as if a large hand was pressed to their backs. The oldest of them went first. “It’s going to be hard,” Greg said. “The treatment and stuff. Don’t think we don’t know that.”

Brad said, “We’ll all help. We’ll bring you Popsicles, and sit with you to help you through. And I’ll tell you everything I know about the ocean.”

Michael went last. “We’ll help ya take care of Kaylie, too. She already loves us.”

Did they think she didn’t know that?

She felt drained, hollow, already lifeless. And this wasn’t helping. Millicent entered the room, Kaylie sound asleep on her shoulder. Elle’s eyes burned dryly at the sight of her precious baby so angelic in sleep. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the smallest Laker cousin took three giant steps toward Elle, counting as he did so.

For crying out loud. Not only was the entire thing scripted, it had been choreographed, too.

And yet there was nothing rehearsed about the way Dougie tipped his head all the way back in order to look up at her. There was nothing artificial in the way his eyes widened with innocence and emotion. “I’m gonna get my
finger poked and maybe other places, too,” he said shyly. “Mama says it’ll pro’bly hurt, but not real bad and it’s okay if I cry but I’m gonna try not to. If my blood matches your blood, you can have some of my mone-barrow.”

For once, the older brothers and cousins didn’t correct him.

Elle shook with the effort to remain stoic.

Finally, Ruth Laker’s voice quavered from the far corner. “That clears it up quite neatly, doesn’t it, Elle?”

As far as Elle was concerned, the only thing clear was that this family fought dirty. The kids stepped aside, awarding her a clear view of the matriarch of the clan. It was as if the blind woman knew Elle was looking back at her.

“It doesn’t matter who raised you,” Ruth said. “It doesn’t matter what your last name is. You’re family. And we don’t let family down. We don’t let family choose the easy way out. And we don’t let family die if we can help it. I guess you’re just going to have to deal with that.”

“We love you, Elle,” Sylvia said. “Every last one of us.”

“We always have,” her husband said quietly.

“Without ever knowing you.”

“But now that we do know you, we love you even more.”

“I guess you’re going to have to deal with that, too.”

Elle lost track of who said what.

By now they were all standing. Nobody said anything more. Not another word. Not even goodbye.

They left to the sound of shuffling feet and muffled breaths. Dean and Mya went outside with them, and Millie walked into the bedroom with Kaylie. The room was empty. And yet it was as if a part of each of them remained.

Casper wound around Elle’s ankles. She scooped him up despite the fact that he was a traitor. Pressing her cheek to his soft fur, she felt it, the welling up, the hot throat and aching chest. She squeezed her eyes shut, holding it in. But it was stronger, squeezing past her tight lids, past her hot throat and aching chest, past all her defenses.

Casper purred. And Elle cried like a baby.

Dean and Mya strode as far as the top porch step.

The boys ambled forlornly toward the vehicles at the curb. Using her white cane, their grandmother followed slowly, her eldest son guiding her. “I’m very proud of all of you,” she said.

“Think we got through her thick skull?” Cole asked, his attitude typical for a sixteen-year-old boy still grounded for what his mother called stupidity and his father called worse things.

“Time will tell,” Ruth answered.

For four and a half years, Mya had known that Dean’s father was gone. She’d attended his funeral on the island, and yet it felt unnatural to see Ruth without Tom. Life went on. It was a fact, but instead of taking comfort in it,
Mya shivered. She didn’t want her life to go on without Elle.

“Cold?” Dean asked.

She hugged her arms close to her body but said nothing, watching Dean’s family prepare to leave. It took two vans to hold them all. When the doors were closed, she said, “You aren’t going with them?”

“Not yet.”

Mya didn’t know what Dean was thinking, but she was pretty sure she knew what he was feeling. She felt it, too. They’d broken each other’s hearts when they were kids. There was a place inside each of them that hadn’t gotten over it. They’d loved. They’d lost. They’d gone on. And now suddenly they were back where they’d started, older, wiser, but every bit as unsure. They’d been given a second chance to know their daughter. And now life was snatching it away and was trying to take her with it. Mya dreaded this thing they faced.

“Let’s go see if we got through to her,” Dean said.

“What if we didn’t?”

“You get the blanket, I’ll get the rope.”

It hurt to smile. “You know we can’t force her, Dean.”

“Yeah, I know.”

And that scared them both more than either was prepared to admit out loud.

Elle was waiting for them inside. Tears had left tracks on her face. But she wasn’t crying anymore.

Mya could feel her anger. She literally shook with it, resentment and animosity sparking off her like a shorted electrical circuit.

“I used to fantasize about you two. Can you believe that?”

Mya had hoped. She’d wondered. But no, she hadn’t known. Together, she and Dean eased closer.

“You’re monsters.” Elle said it so loud the cat jumped down. “That’s what you are. Every one of you.”

“Even Dougie?” Dean asked.

She sniffled. “He was put up to it. But it’s only a matter of time. He’s a Laker, after all.” She held up one hand in a halting gesture. “Don’t say it. My name is Eleanor Renee Fletcher. I’ve never been more glad of anything in my entire life.”

“Are you going to let Dougie get poked and cry for nothing?” Dean asked.

Mya gasped. Dean always had known how to go for the jugular.

Elle glared at him. “That’s dirty.”

“Are you?”

“This sucks.” She spun around. When she faced them again, fresh tears wet her cheeks.

“It’s liable to get worse before it gets better,” Dean said. “But what Mya said before, about waiting nineteen years to lose you. I can’t bear it, Elle.”

“I made up my mind, dammit. Damn all of you.”

“You know what I think?” Dean asked. “I think you have a lot of fight left in you.”

Elle took a shaky breath. Fresh tears began to fall. She didn’t know why she was crying. She was just so mad! She thought about the needles and the poison and the hair loss and the vomiting and the chills and the weakness. And the dying.

She thought about Kaylie.

For some reason, she saw her mother’s face in her mind. She wondered if her mom had known, in that last millisecond before the crash, that she was going to die. Elle envied her that kind of death. Instantaneous. Complete. Irrevocable. Hers wouldn’t be that way. She would linger.

She closed her eyes and tried to imagine oblivion. Instead, she pictured all the Laker kids having their blood drawn. For her. And her eyes wouldn’t stay closed. They automatically focused on Dean and Mya. Neither looked as if they’d slept. In fact they both looked like hell. There were bags under their eyes and their expressions were pinched. Elle took no pleasure in that. It occurred to her that she hadn’t thought this through as thoroughly as she should have.

She knew more than she wanted to know about non-
Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The success rate for extended remissions was far less than for the Hodgkin’s variety. For some reason, the immune systems of people with the non-Hodgkin’s form stopped recognizing the disease as the enemy, and therefore stopped defending the body against it, allowing the cancer cells to multiply and spread. Except in rare instances, the only cure was a stem cell or bone marrow transplant. Elle had seen those up close. As far as she was concerned, transplantation was more brutal and grotesque than the cancer itself.

“I didn’t come here to hurt you, you know,” she said.

She could hear Millicent talking to Kaylie in the bedroom. She appreciated all the help, and yet she wondered if she should have left well enough alone and stayed away.

But what about Kaylie? Her baby needed a family.

And what did Elle need?

Dean took a deliberate step toward her. As if realizing she wouldn’t be receptive to being touched, he turned and headed for the door.

“You’re leaving?” Mya spoke for the first time, and there was panic in her voice.

“I have an appointment to have my blood tested, too.” He looked at Elle. “I know you didn’t come here to hurt us. But you didn’t come here to die, either. Did you.” It wasn’t a question. He made that abundantly clear.

She covered her eyes with her hands, slowly raking her fingers down her face. “No.” She said it so softly they
couldn’t possibly have heard. Putting more voice into it, she said, “I didn’t come here to die. You win.”

He and Mya looked at her before they looked at each other. Another time she would have given them credit because they didn’t gloat.

“
You’re
going to win, Elle,” Dean said. “And we’re going to help you do it.”

At first she thought he was going to leave it at that, but he did an about-face. Crossing the room in four long strides, he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off the floor, the way a dad would lift his little girl. He didn’t swing her around. This wasn’t that kind of occasion. He just held her. And Elle held on for dear life.

Sniffling, she buried her face in his neck. He was warm and fit and earthy, and when she breathed, she thought she could smell the ocean. “Mya told me you were a bully.”

“I did not!”

Her dignity restored, Elle waited until her feet touched the ground to say, “You should have, because he is.”

Dean’s grin sneaked up on Elle, closing her throat and bringing fresh tears to her eyes. “Tell everyone thanks.”

“Tell them yourself.”

Elle glanced at Mya, who shook her head. “You’re right. He is a bully. And full of himself. Remind me to tell you what he did to win a fight in the eighth grade.”

She wound up giving Mya a tentative smile. And it concerned her.

Elle hadn’t planned to feel so strongly about these people whose passion had created her. It had been easier when she’d disliked them, blamed them, resented them. “Why can’t life ever be easy?” she asked.

“Hell if I know,” Dean said.

Mya answered over her shoulder at the doorway. “I don’t think it’s easy for anybody. From the moment we’re conceived, life happens. And we spend the rest of our days trying to figure out why. When it comes right down to it, every one of us holds on.” She paused. “For dear life. I’ll be right back.”

Dean was already down the steps when Mya stepped onto the porch. She closed the door behind her and said, “That was a close one.”

He looked back at her, slowly raking his fingers through his hair. “She’s our daughter, all right.”

Something unspoken passed between their gazes. Too choked with emotion to voice any of the things she was feeling, she said, “One battle down, a thousand to go.”

He nodded, and she swore he wanted to scale those steps and haul her into his arms, to somehow rejoice in this small, magnificent achievement. He wound up looking at her long and hard. Dean had trouble with words. He always had. So he talked around them or did without them.

“I’d better be going. Wish me luck.”

“Good luck.”