I Gave It All Back to My Sister, Even My Husband novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Eleven Weeks

Cassandra refuses treatment in a rented room, and Gavin is in the waiting room.

The room I found cost four hundred dollars a month and sat above a frame shop.

It had a narrow bed, a sink and a window that faced a brick wall.

I paid the first month in cash from the last of my own savings, because everything else I owned now belonged to my sister.

The shopkeeper downstairs handed me the key and asked no questions.

That night I set my paint box on the sill and my brushes in a mug.

I lay on the mattress with the light off, listening to the radiator knock.

My phone lit up beside me.

It was Willa, and she had written me a long message with three hearts at the end.

She was so sorry about the room, and she was so scared I would do something rash, and would I please come home so we could fix it as sisters.

She added that Gavin had not slept and did not know where I was.

I read it twice and turned the phone face down.

I did not answer.

I did not cry either.

Ten weeks, if the doctor had been generous.

The next morning I took two buses to the oncology clinic on the east side.

The waiting room smelled of floor cleaner and old coffee.

A woman across from me was knitting a hat, and I looked at her hands for a long time.

"Ms. Rowe?" a nurse called.

The oncologist was the same tired man who had given me the news two days before.

He had my scans up on the screen, a gray cloud against a gray background.

"I want to start treatment this week," he said. "Palliative chemotherapy won't cure this, but it can give you more time."

"How much more?"

"Perhaps a few months. Perhaps less."

"And how will I feel?"

He didn't lie to me, and I liked him for it.

"Sick. Weak. You might not be able to work."

I thought of the green paint on my wrist.

"I paint," I said. "Most days it's the only thing I do."

"Ms. Rowe."

"If I take the chemo, I lose the hands. If I don't, I lose the time, but I keep the hands."

"That is a very hard choice."

"It isn't hard," I said. "I'm declining."

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

"I can't make you. I'd like you to talk to someone. A family member."

"I don't have one who would listen."

He tapped his keyboard and frowned at the screen.

"The contact number on your file is a Gavin Aldercott. Your husband?"

My stomach dropped.

I had filled in that form three years ago, on the first day I ever sat in a doctor's office as Mrs. Aldercott.

"It's out of date," I said. "Please remove it."

"I'll flag it. But I should tell you, we rang that number this morning to confirm your visit after you didn't answer your phone."

"You called him?"

"The assistant did. It's the usual procedure."

I stood up so fast the chair scraped.

"Did you tell him why?"

"No. She only said the clinic. I wouldn't release your diagnosis to anyone without your consent."

My shoulders came down.

"Thank you."

"But Ms. Rowe," the doctor said, "when someone is given a number like yours, the people who love them usually want to know."

"Nobody loves me enough for that," I said. "It's fine. It's simpler."

I signed the form declining treatment and picked up my bag.

The doctor shook my hand across the desk, and I walked back into the hall.

I was almost at the exit when I saw the chairs by the window.

Gavin sat in the last one, still in yesterday's suit.

He had not slept. His tie was off and stuffed in his pocket, his hair was a mess, and a paper cup of coffee sat untouched between his shoes.

He was looking at the sign over the door beside him.

It read Oncology.

I stopped walking.

He looked up and saw me.

Neither of us said anything for what felt like a very long time.

His eyes went to my face, then to the folder in my hand, then back to the sign.

"The clinic called me," Gavin said.

His voice was careful and strange.

"At six this morning. They wanted to confirm an appointment for Cassandra Rowe." He stood slowly. "They wouldn't say what it was for."

"Gavin."

"I thought it was a mistake. I drove here to tell them it was a mistake."

"It isn't," I said.

"Who is it for?"

I had spent three years learning how to lie to this man.

I opened my mouth, and nothing came.

He took one step toward me.

"Cassandra," he said. "Who has cancer?"

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