The Girlfriend (The Boss) (4 page)

His word choice made a lump rise in my throat. The end of his days might be a lot sooner than I would like. “Um. Can you let me up?”

He slipped from me, and a gush of wet followed. More leaked out when I sat up, and I scrunched my face in embarrassment. “I think I just made a mess on your couch.”

“It was an accepted risk.” He pulled me to his side and reached for the cashmere throw on the back of the sofa, wrapping it around my shoulders. “One moment, it’s a bit chilly in here.”

When he stood, he pulled up his trousers, and I saw the wet smears from my body on the fabric. Fuck, that was hot. Probably less hot for the dry cleaner, though.

“Neil...” I didn’t know how to broach the leukemia subject in a tactful way. “This cancer... It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think any cancer is particularly good.” Neil stooped to turn on the gas fireplace, then came back to sit beside me. “But the oncologist I spoke with at Presbyterian told me that a man my age, in relatively good health— as I am— has a ninety percent chance of survival over five years.”

Holding in my sobs, my tears, hurt too much.

He watched me, wary. “Sophie?”

He put his arms around me and squeezed me tight. I felt awful for crying in front of him. I wasn’t the one who’d been told I had a ten percent chance of dying. I wasn’t the one looking at five more years of life on an
if
. It was selfish and stupid of me, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t be strong in that moment.

“Listen to me.” He took my face in his hands and looked into my eyes. “I am very fortunate. I can afford the very best doctors and treatments available. I have a far better chance of surviving than some patients. I am extremely lucky.”

“You have cancer! That’s not lucky!” I wasn’t mad at him, I was mad at the fact he was sick. He just happened to be the nearest convenient target to shout at.

He was entirely unfazed. He actually smiled. “On the contrary, I think I am quite lucky. I have you.”

Well, for the moment he had me. In just a few days he would be gone, out of New York, out of my life, at least in the physical sense. He would leave, Holli had left... I thought of my apartment, how much I had reveled in being alone earlier in the day, but how boring and quiet it had become. In England, Neil would have Emma, but she had a job. She couldn’t drop everything to tend to her father. Would he be just as lonely over there as I would be here?

It seemed like there was only one solution to both of our problems.

“Let me go to England with you.”

Had I said that out loud? I didn’t know if it was the stupidest, or the greatest thing my brain had spontaneously ambushed me with, but in the blink of an eye, it all made perfect sense. I didn’t have a job. Nothing was holding me in the city. I could leave for a while.

“I had hoped you would visit at some point while I was away,” he began, and I held a finger up to his lips to silence him.

“That’s not what I’m asking for. I want to go with you when you leave next week, and I want to stay with you while you’re undergoing treatment. You want to stand by me through this—“ I gestured to my stomach. “I want to help you, too. I wouldn’t be able to function knowing you were battling some deadly disease all the way across the ocean.”

“The situation is somewhat different. You’re going to be settled in a day. I’m going to be in the hospital for weeks, potentially,” he argued.

“That’s just another reason I want to go with you. You wanted commitment? There’s your commitment. I’m willing to move to a foreign country for you, because I can’t stand to be without you.” Tears rose up again, in my eyes and my voice. “I know you said you’d doubted us. But I don’t have any doubts now. I want to be with you. If you don’t want me to go with you, tell me. But don’t try to keep me away from you because you think you’re helping me. I need you.”

“This will put your job search on hold,” he reminded me.

“I can freelance. I’ve done it before.” But I shook my head. “You’re trying to talk me out of it. It was a bad idea.—”
 

“No!” he said quickly. “Not at all. Believe me, the prospect of staying all alone in my house in London, just filling up time being sick... it sounds incredibly lonely and awful. I’m just afraid that it’s too much for me to ask of you, to bring you along when things are going to be so... unpleasant.”

I knelt on the couch so we could be eye-to-eye, and I took his face in my hands. He looked at me warily, clearly unsure of what I would say or what he should do.

“I love you. It’s not too much to ask me to go through this with you. It’s too much to ask me to let you do it on your own.” I kissed him, bending my head to brush our lips together. One big hand came up my back, resting between my shoulder blades, pressing me closer to him. I smiled against his mouth. “You need me as much as I need you.”

“Possibly more.” He leaned back just slightly to look at me. “And that scares me, Sophie. It seems selfish to ask you to give up your entire life to be with me. And I’m almost fifty years old. I don’t want to steal your youth. I don’t want you to wake up one day and realize your life could have been better without me.”

“Never going to happen.” I kissed him again. His hand moved from my back, into my hair, holding my face to his. With his other arm around my waist, he jerked me into his lap.

We spent the rest of the night on the couch together in front of the fire, me a mess of hormones and sadness, him supportive and wonderful despite the fact he was the one who might die.

Later, after Neil had fallen asleep, his chest rising and falling evenly under my cheek, I considered five years, and what that would mean. Neil would be forty-nine in just a few months. In five years, he would be fifty-four. I would be twenty-nine or thirty.

Was I going to be... well, not widowed, because we weren’t married. But was I going to be a grieving girlfriend at that point?

In his sleep, Neil put his arms around me, one hand splaying possessively across my lower abdomen.

Oh, shit.

I thought of his first reaction to the ultrasound, and the way he’d looked immediately to Emma’s photos on the wall. It was obvious that a part of him wanted to keep this baby, but I didn’t. Plus, he was sick. We had no idea what the future was going to be like for us.

Better a grieving girlfriend than a grieving single mom
, I reminded myself. If he was having reservations, he would be too supportive to voice them. I would just pretend not to notice those reservations, and do the right thing for both of us.

CHAPTER THREE

When Neil had said money could move mountains, he wasn’t kidding. At eight AM on Saturday morning, we were at Dr. Nora Jacobson’s office in an Upper West Side medical building. The doctor didn’t usually see patients on a Saturday, so there was one mountain moved, already.

Neil and I sat across from Dr. Jacobson at her sleek glass-and-steel desk. She was a very kind woman I estimated to be in her late forties or good-looking early fifties, and her blonde bob was immaculately highlighted. She smiled easily as she showed me a smartly printed table comparing the two different methods of termination from which I could choose.

“I really feel that at your gestational age, a surgical abortion would be best,” she explained, tapping the paper with the end of her pen. “We’ll put you under light sedation, then numb your cervix with an injection of local anesthetic—”
 

“Nope. Nope, I don’t want to hear about it, I just want it done.”
 
I shook my head. The idea of a needle going anywhere near my vagina just... urgh. “I want you to give me the minimum information required by law. Possibly less.”

“Sophie has been suffering from morning sickness,” Neil explained hesitantly. “And she’s squeamish about medical procedures. Perhaps you could keep the descriptions vague?”

“Of course.” Dr. Jacobson nodded in sympathy. “We’ll dilate your cervix and use a vacuum catheter to remove the product of conception. That’s really all there is to it.”

Neil shifted in his chair.

“And we can do this today? Here?” I chewed my lip as she nodded. “Is it going to hurt?”

She gave me a mild, non-specific answer. “We do our best to keep you comfortable during the procedure. Most women experience some bleeding and cramping afterward. I’ve heard it likened to heavy period, but some patients only have light spotting. If you can take a day off from work—”
 

“That’s not a problem,” I said dryly, and I didn’t look at Neil. Although the loss of my job wasn’t his fault, I wasn’t quite ready to let go of bitter, unemployment related humor. “Is there anything else I should know?”

“I’ll send you home with a prescription for antibiotics and some after care instructions. We’ll go over those before you leave today, as well.”

“And I can stay with her during the...?” Neil asked. He’d tried to appear super chilled out all morning, but I noticed his left knee bouncing every now and then. I assumed it was a combination of concern for me, and the internal conflict he’d tried so hard to hide.

“Absolutely,” Dr. Jacobson assured us. She looked from Neil to me and back again. “Do you have any other questions?”

I hated when people asked me if I had more questions. It makes it so all of my questions immediately leave my mind. “None right now, but can I ask later?”

“Sure. You’re going to go off with one of my nurses for a quick medical history and physical exam, and you can ask her anything you might remember. And you’ll see me again before you’re good and drugged.” Dr. Jacobson smiled before turning her attention to Neil. “And all I need now from you is—”
 

Neil reached into his jacket and pulled out a checkbook. “Thank you again for seeing us on such short notice.”

“Not at all,” the doctor said, but I knew Neil was paying her well enough for coming in on a Saturday the week before the holidays. “The clinics get really bogged down at this time of the year.”

I thought about the prospect of visiting my family, my very Catholic family, many of whom drove cars with “It’s a child, not a choice!” bumper stickers. Knowing I was planning to abort brought me a little clarity. No wonder there was a pre-Christmas rush.

There was a knock at the door, and a slim young brunette woman in pastel pink scrubs stuck her head in. “Are we ready to get prepped?”

I went with the nurse, Julie, who took me to change into a gown, while Neil and Dr. Jacobson finished up the money end of things. Neil came into the room as she was taking my blood pressure, and just in time for her to put in the IV they would later hook up for anesthetic.

“I’m not going to be like, paralyzed but awake and feeling the whole thing, right?” I asked as Julie swabbed the back of my hand with a medicated pad.

“Good lord, you’re grim,” Neil said with a nervous laugh.

Julie smiled. “It’s pretty heavy sedation. You shouldn’t feel a thing.”
 

 
I tried to be really brave about the IV, but I loathe needles. I kept my eyes shut tight until I felt the tape go on.

Dr. Jacobson came in and looked surprised that Julie had gotten so far. “We’re really speeding along.”

“It’s a lot quicker when you’ve only got the one patient,” Julie said, marking something off on my chart. I wondered if she was getting overtime pay to be here.

“The faster the better,” I said. “You can give me the loopy drugs any time now.”

Dr. Jacobson nodded. “Then let’s get you into the operating room.”

When I looked over at Neil, he was chewing his thumbnail.

My heart hurt.

He has cancer. And you don’t want a baby. Don’t do something stupid, Scaife.

Okay, my brain made the point better than I ever could. I looked over at him, smiled reassuringly, and said, “Ready?”

“Yes.” He dropped his hand guiltily. “If you are?”

We followed the nurse to the OR, and Neil took my hand in his as we walked down the hallway. His palms were clammy. I thought about what he’d said about his cancer diagnosis, how he was glad I hadn’t been there, because he would have been more worried about how I was handling things. I could completely understand that now.

The table in the windowless room wasn’t like an operating table on TV shows, but more like an exam table, covered with a narrow sheet and an absorbent pad instead of paper. Neil helped steady me as I climbed up and lay back. He leaned over me while Julie stretched a surgical drape across my stomach.

He pressed his lips to my forehead and reached behind him to pull up a chair. “I’ll be right here, the entire time.”

“Thank you.” I closed my eyes. My stomach was a riot of nerves. I was trying to be calm and strong, but I was fucking terrified. At least this was way less scary than childbirth.

I looked over at Neil, and he gave me a closed-lip smile. He took my hand and squeezed it.

“Okay, Sophie,” Dr. Jacobson said, seating herself on a stool. “Julie is going to administer the sedation, and then we’ll get your feet up.”

Whatever sedative they gave me, it was effective, and fast. I’m not exactly sure how my feet got into the stirrups, but I did feel a weird second of panic once I was there. I’ve always hated that part of doctor visits, the feeling of being completely exposed and vulnerable. With the drugs working in my system, I no longer felt calm and sure of my decision, but paranoid and freaked out.

“Neil?” I asked, and I sounded drunk.

“Right here.” He lifted my hand to his lips.

“Just relax, Sophie,” Dr. Jacobson said mildly, and her lack of concern calmed me. She sounded so blasé, it made me feel like this wasn’t a big deal after all.

“Here’s the speculum,” she said, just an instant before the plastic touched me. My stomach turned over.

“I think I’m going to throw up,” I mumbled, and in a blink Julie was there with an emesis basin. But I didn’t throw up after all. Embarrassed, I slurred, “Sorry, I’m just nervous.”

“That’s okay, sometimes the drugs can make you a little sick to your stomach, too. You wouldn’t be the first person to throw up in the office,” Julie assured me. She handed the basin to Neil, and he took it with his free hand and held it in his lap.