Until Angels Close My Eyes (3 page)

“I didn’t know.” Sherry’s brown eyes filled with concern. “Is he going to be all right?”

“I don’t know yet. He’s going through some tests.”

“That’s too bad. When you find out what’s wrong, will you tell me?”

Leah agreed. “As for the game, I’ll let you know if I decide to go.”

Sherry looked pleased. “It’s not just because everybody’s going that I want to go,” she confided. “It’s because of Dave Simmons.” Her eyes took on a soft look. “I think he’s so gorgeous.”

Dave was Johnson High’s primary football star. Leah thought him conceited, vain and even cruel. One boy had been sent to the hospital after Dave had crushed him during a game. The next day, Dave had
bragged about it. “You really like him?” Leah asked.

Sherry nodded. “Of course, he’ll never notice me, but it’s nice to dream.”

“I know what you mean,” Leah said, thinking of Ethan.

“You’ve got a guy?”

“He doesn’t live around here.”

“A long-distance romance …”

Leah chuckled over Sherry’s dreamy expression. “Actually, he’s Amish.”

Sherry’s jaw dropped. “Are you kidding? The Amish keep to themselves. How’d you even find each other?”

“It’s a long story.” Leah realized she’d said more than she’d meant to. “Listen, I’ve got to run.” She waved goodbye and hurried out to her car in the student parking lot. The October air smelled crisp and clean, and the sky was a brilliant blue. Yet she felt sad and lonely. Mentioning Ethan had only made her miss him more. She had no idea when she’d see him again. Still, he had promised he would come see her. And Ethan always kept his word. Right now, his promise was the only bright spot in her life.

———

When Leah got to Neil’s hospital room, her mother was there, as was Neil’s oncologist, Dr. Nguyen. She was a young, petite Asian woman with black hair held against the nape of her neck by an eye-catching silver barrette.

Neil said, “Doctor, this is my daughter, Leah.”

His introduction surprised Leah. He’d called her his daughter.

Dr. Nguyen smiled an acknowledgment. “I’ve just been going over your father’s test results.”

Leah caught Neil’s eye. The transition had been made. Without ceremony, she’d officially passed from “step” into daughter status. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. At the moment, she didn’t have time to dwell on it, because Dr. Nguyen was continuing to talk.

“There is evidence of cancer in your liver, Mr. Dutton.”

The words fell like heavy weights. Leah’s mother cried, “No!” Leah felt sick to her stomach.

“Everything points to it—abdominal bloating, the tenderness in that area when I
examined you, your jaundice, plus the radioisotope scan and the needle biopsy. The pathologist’s report shows a clear grouping of cancerous cells.”

“I don’t believe it!” Leah’s mother blurted out.

“I wouldn’t make this up, Mrs. Dutton,” the doctor said.

Neil took his wife’s hand. “It’ll be all right, Roberta.”

Leah saw tears fill her mother’s eyes and her knuckles grow white as she gripped the bed rail. Her mother said, “But they took out his bad kidney years ago. How could he have cancer in his liver now?”

“Some maverick cells escaped surgery and chemo. It happens. The cells get into the bloodstream, travel down the portal vein and metastasize in the liver. They can lie dormant, then activate.”

Neil cleared his throat. “All right. That’s the worst of it. What are we going to do about it?”

“Chemotherapy is the standard treatment procedure.”

Neil winced. “It didn’t work before. How about radiation?”

“Unfortunately, radiation is very destructive to liver cells and not very harmful to liver cancer cells.”

“What about surgery?” Leah’s mother asked.

“Not an option in Neil’s case.”

“I hate chemo,” Neil said sullenly.

Dr. Nguyen put her hand on Neil’s arm. “We
have
made improvements in the drugs since you went through it before. The side effects can be much less horrific. I’m going to do a minor surgical procedure to insert a shunt into your abdomen. You’ll wear an infusion pump and the chemo will be administered automatically, in small amounts, twenty-four hours a day.”

“When do I start?”

“I want to begin treatment at once.”

“Will it work this time?” Roberta’s question sounded hostile and accusatory, as if Dr. Nguyen was somehow to blame for Neil’s diagnosis.

“Second chemo protocols aren’t always as successful as the first,” Dr. Nguyen said cautiously. “But it’s still your best hope.”

Leah let her words sink in. By the time
she grasped the full meaning, Dr. Nguyen was talking again. “I’m scheduling you for surgery tomorrow morning. I’ll get the shunt in and get you regulated. You should be headed home in a couple of days.”

“Then what?”

“Then we wait it out, keep testing you for progress and see what happens.”

Leah, Neil and her mother all looked into each other’s eyes. No one asked the obvious:
“What happens if it doesn’t work?”

Leah went home alone, leaving her mother and Neil to have dinner together in his hospital room. They had asked her to stay, but she excused herself, saying she had homework. In truth, she couldn’t stand hanging around the hospital one more minute.

At home, she brought in the mail and found a letter from Ethan. Eagerly she tore open the envelope.

Leah finished reading the letter through tear-filled eyes. The ache within her was so real she was certain it would ooze through her skin and onto the paper. She reread the letter, then pressed it against her cheek, imagining the paper in Ethan’s hands, touching his skin.

Leah had returned from the summer believing that with Rebekah’s death, the worst
was over, that there was no place to go but up. But now Neil had been diagnosed with liver cancer and her mother was falling apart. Leah and Ethan were miles away from each other. She still had to face future checkups for her own health—which, she now realized, was a total unknown.

What about me? Leah wondered. Will I get sick again too?

Like Neil, Leah had convinced herself that cancer was behind her—that either Gabriella had made it disappear or the chemo treatments had succeeded. Like Neil, Leah thought she was home free. But Neil’s cancer had returned like an evil ghost. And now he had to begin his fight against it all over again.

Leah vowed to help him however she could. They were comrades in a battle against a mutual enemy. She’d lost her real father without ever knowing him. She didn’t want to lose this one.

L
eah didn’t think twice. The next morning, the day of Neil’s minor surgery, she missed school and sat with her mother in the waiting area. She wished the two of them could be anyplace else. “He’ll be fine,” Roberta insisted. “Neil has the constitution of a much younger man. This won’t keep him down for long.” Her mother’s forced cheerfulness got on Leah’s nerves. Roberta was the picture of health. She didn’t know what it felt like to be shattered by the three words
You have cancer.

“I just want him to be okay,” Leah said with emotion. “It isn’t fair he has to go through this twice.”

“No, it isn’t,” her mother agreed. “But then, when has it ever been fair?”

Neil needed several more days in the hospital after the surgery, but by the end of the week he was sent home to recuperate. He wore sensors, wires, and tubing that controlled the constant flow of chemotherapy drugs into his body. A special belt around his waist held a small black monitoring device that resembled an overgrown pager. It beeped if a line clogged.

“How’s your stepfather doing?” Sherry asked Leah after school a few weeks later. They were putting their books in their lockers.

“He’s hanging in there. He sleeps a lot, and he’s sick to his stomach, but his doctor says he’ll gradually adjust and then he’ll feel better.”

“It’s so awful that he’s got cancer. It’s such a scary disease.”

Leah thought,
You don’t know the half of it,
but said, “Neil can handle it.”

“Are you going to the Harvest Ball?” Sherry changed the subject. Next to the prom, the Harvest Ball was the biggest event of the high-school year.

“I don’t think so.” Leah shut her locker and twirled the combination lock. “I really don’t want to.”

“Is it because of that guy you told me about? The Amish one?”

“Even if Ethan weren’t in my life, there’s still nobody I’d like to go with.” Leah had gotten only two more letters from Ethan. She made excuses for him to herself—that he was busy with farmwork and exhausted by day’s end—but she couldn’t get Martha Dewberry out of her mind. Martha had all but told Leah last summer that once she was out of the picture, Ethan would come back to Martha, the Amish girl his parents wanted him to marry. Leah hoped it wasn’t true, but she and Ethan were so far apart and weren’t getting any closer.

“I’d give anything to be asked,” Sherry said with a sigh.

“Maybe someone will ask you.”

“Right. And maybe there really is a Santa Claus.”

“Stop putting yourself down. You’re a great person, Sherry. A guy would be lucky to go out with you.”

“If only boys thought like girls instead of boys,” Sherry said. “I know I’m not pretty.” She gave Leah a wistful smile. “Anyway, it’s nice of you to say that, Leah.”

By the time Leah got to the parking lot, most of the cars were gone. Her red convertible sat by itself in the sunlight. She was about to get inside when she heard someone call her name. She turned to see Dave Simmons coming toward her.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Leah saw Dave’s car sitting near the back of the parking lot. Several of his football buddies were lounging against it. “What is it?” she asked.

Dave’s neck was as thick as a bull’s, his hands as large as ham hocks. His head was shaved except for a brown tuft on top. Because of his sheer size, he reminded Leah of Jonah Dewberry, Ethan’s friend whom she hadn’t liked too much.

Dave glanced over at his friends. “I want to ask you to the Harvest Ball.”

Leah stared at him blankly.

“You haven’t been asked yet, have you?”

Leah shook her head, trying to assemble her thoughts. “I hadn’t planned on going,” she finally said.

Dave grinned. “Then plan on going with me.”