Loved In Pieces (39 page)

He looked at me with sad eyes. “You’ve been on the drug longer than any. But how are you not sick? Chemo kills cells. Your immune system should be shot. You should be vulnerable to every virus around. I wish I knew what dosage
you were taking.”

I lost it. I
cried
hysterically, shaking, sobbing,
and
heaving. My psycho mom did this to me. I absolutely hated her!

I felt alone. Yeah, I ha
d
Manuel,
but I didn’t believe in a fairy tale happ
il
y-ever-after
.
I was never one to live in the future.
I saw best intentions as they were: decisions made with hope everything would turn out for the best.
I lived in the now, and had accepted long ago that the future was uncertain. I didn’t believe in promises.

Manuel had his arm around me. “We need to call her father. Can you please tell him what
you told us?”

“Yes,” the doctor agreed.

“Hey Tom,” Manuel said with
anger
in his voice. “Can you get Celia on the phone, conference call if she’s not there. This is important.” He waited
for a long minute. “Hi, Celia.
You’re
going to be talking with a doctor. Please write everything down. Get his name. This is serious and I need to take care of Marie now.”

Manuel handed his phone to the doctor and then scooped me up and held me
in his chair
while he listened to the conversation.

When the doctor hung up, he wrote his contact info and
some
notes on a piece of paper.

“Here is all of my contact information. I’d like to run tests on
you
tomorrow. I’m going to set
you
up as
[email protected]
.” He was typing on his computer. “Password?”

I answered
,
“
N10tions, capital N, number 10, lower case ‘t,’ ‘i,’’o,’ ‘n,’ ‘s’.
” I d
o
n’t know why I chose that password. It just seemed to fit. I felt hollow. I
had
been taking chemo for four years. What the hell?
!

“There,
you’re
set up. I just emailed you all my contact information and the FBI contact. I also CC’d him and your
dad
.”  He took the paper back from Manuel and wrote down my new email address and password.

“
I’m
so very sorry. But have hope. We’ve been working on a cure for
the cure
for f
our
years now and we are very close to solving the problem.”

I couldn’t speak. I stood up, but I couldn’t walk well. I stumbled and hit the wall after we left the doctor’s office. My head spun while Manuel helped me
walk to the car
.

Manuel was driving erratically. He tried to focus on the road but he struggled. I looked at him and saw that he was crying.

“I hate my mom! Hate her!” I
fumed
. I called
Michelle
’s cell. No answer. I called it again. No answer. I looked through my contact list. I called the director. No answer. I called him again. No answer. I started shaking.

“Shit.  No one is answering!” I yelled to Manuel.

He asked as calmly as he could possibly speak, “Who on crew is the farthest from the sound stage? He might have his phone on vibrate.”

I called
Michelle
’s assistant. “No answer.”

“Try texting,” he suggested.

I texted
Michelle
. “X
=
chemo.
S
o angry.
Do NOT come home.
P
sycho!”

I copied the text and pasted it into an e
mail. I knew her assistant read
her emails, but
at the moment
I didn’t care about following the rules. I pressed, “Send.”

“It’s done.
‘Mommy Dearest’
knows
…and so does her assistant
,” I whimpered.
“You and me finally together… I thought maybe we could just have a happily-ever-after. Serves me right to start believing in fairy tales.”

“Oh, don’t say that. We will have a good life to
gether. Don’t lose faith, Marie. Medicine is amazing now. You caught it in time, for sure. You’ll be okay.
” Manuel held my hand. He changed his voice to sound confident.
“I want to know everything about what you have. When we get back to your place, can I use your computer? And who’s this doctor
that was in that quack’s office
—
Jacques Lambert? I want to look him up.”

“
Sure
, yeah,
I d
on’t need to look anything up.” I added, “
I just want to sit in the hot tub. I hate her! I can’t believe she did this to me on purpose to give me some
shitty
career! What a bitch! And I thought she loved me? I feel… feel so
played, trapped…made
.”

I was absolutely certain that the doctor told the truth
.
I knew my symptoms would match the
hypo-
pituitary
-
whatever failure he mentioned. The weirdness about the last four years
,
Michelle
’s
overreaction
to me quitting
,
and her creepy guilt all finally fell into place. Yep, the evidence was beyond a reasonable doubt. I couldn’t talk anymore and was too mad to cry. Manuel held my hand and likewise said nothing.

Thank God Manuel was there for me. I
vomited
a couple of times, sick
f
om the shock that
Michelle
did this to me and from the realization that my life was incomplete.

It was
nighttime
. We were both lying on my bed, facing each other on our sides, holding hands with our arms bent at the elbows. He softly stro
ked
my hair. He knew I liked it off of my face and neck.

“Manuel
, t
hank you for being here for me. I feel kind of selfish, though. All these traumas in just a few months:
media betrayal, Matthew, Byron
, quitting my career, getting pissed about my birthday, learning that
I’ve been on a chemo drug
, Michelle
deceiving
me. I feel like I’m not being fair to you. It must suck being my boyfriend.”

“No, no, no.” He shook his head and fought back tears. His eyes were wet. “I want to be here for you.” He put his hand on my cheek. “I have loved you my whole life and am finally your boyfriend. My dreams have come
true. There’
s not a possibility I’d leave you.”

I sighed, relieved. Being with him was so comforting, so nice. For at least a week I noticed feelings of desire move through my body when I was with him.  I felt warm and tingly. I was ready to make love.

I moved closer to him, wiped his tears and kiss
ed
his lips. “I’ve missed you,” I whispered and put my hand under his shirt onto his chest.

He gently pushed me away, back to where we were before. His eyes were on mine, searching for the right words to say. He shook his head and bit his trembling lips.

Feeling rejected, I pleaded.
“I can try again to be with you.
I
want you.”

“No, Angel, not now.” He looked at me soulfully, sadly.

I worried
,
“I don’t want you to reject me.
Please
?”

I
wept—
worried that he didn’t want me. Speaking the words out
loud that
Michelle
betrayed me so thoroughly
devastated
me.

I didn’t understand how I
avoided getting
sick while
I took a
medicine designed to kill my cells. I should
have
be
en
weak, with gray-toned skin and hair loss. Why would I
have
be
en
healthy while on chemo? I wondered how sick I would become now that I was not. What consequential tumor was growing in my body?

Not knowing if I might
have a side effect
from a drug developed to cure a
cancer I never had, having
‘
eternal youth
’
for an unknown amount of time, made me want to hurry up and start living immediately. I was healthy
at that moment
. That was all I knew. I didn’t know the future. I wanted to make love, eat brownies, graduate from high school. LIVE. I worried about how long I had to live.  Would I be able to get pregnant if I did live? Dr. Mark said I would start menstruating when I got off the
x
-nib. But he was a liar, a monster. Did he lie about me being able to have babies? What would life be like
,
always looking
like a teenager
? How full would my life be if I lived the rest of my life alone?

Manuel interrupted my thoughts. He murmured,
“Want you? Always.” He put his hands to his face and wiped his eyes. He held me. “
What you’ve gone through is always in the back of my mind: y
ou calling from the prick’s place
; w
anting to bust up his face when he felt no shame in the limo
; t
he look on your face when you heard the porno on your birthday
; s
eeing you in that movie, on
the swing, in that rape scene; wanting the media to leave you alone; k
nowing that Matthew
almost
… And now kno
wing what your mom did to you.
M
aking l
ove is not right today, not now
.
”

Manuel
wrapped himself around me and
spoke softly. “
I printed the symptoms of hypopituitarism for you to read. The chemo made your sex hormones shut down.
It was physically impossible for you to get turned on.
”
He sighed. “Good thing I ruined your birthday or you probably would have faked it to get me to leave you alone.”

I laughed. I would have.

“
Now that you’ve been off x-nib, you might find me more desirable because you finally can if you pituitary gland is releasing sex and growth hormones again.”

“So m
y heart wasn’t a diamond. My pituitary gland was.
Then why have I always felt so much love for you and not others?”

Manuel grinned, “Because you love me the most. I win.”

He
moved me and
looked into my eyes d
eeply, his sad eyes still wet.
“I think I should
call
you
Lia
instead of Marie from now on.” Manuel
kissed me softly
.
“I
’ll
love you forever,
Lia
. But I don’t want to go to hell for
doing it
with a beautiful angel.”

He whispered
a
prayer
,
“
Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here. Ever this day, be at my side, to light and guard, to rule, and guide. Amen.”

It was
a
sweet and special
prayer
. It united us.
I understood. It was an overwhelming situation. I wiped tears away from
my
cheeks.

I whispered,
“Best friends, then, who kiss and hold hands
; I like it.
So you’re the guardian and I’m the angel. We make quite a team.”

We both closed our eyes and let our tears
fall
, holding hands. I was emotionally spent.

He cuddled closer to me and I rested my forehead on his chest. He asked
,
“Can I take you to church with me
in the morning
? I
need
to go.”

“Okay.” I agreed, kissed his chest, and breathed in his relaxing pheromones.

I made some decisions as I let my body relax into sleep.
We
’d go to church in the morning. I would be strong for the medical tests. I would continue my life as I have, keep my routines, finish my finals, graduate
from high school
. I’d call Grandma May
to confirm my stay at her ranch
this summer. I’d go to my
house on Flathead Lake
. I’d do
“
Muse III
.”
Every day I would tell the
very few
people I loved that they were special.