Healed by My Second Chance

Chapter 17 — Melody

The oncology wing had its own smell: disinfectant layered over a medicinal undertone that even the air freshener couldn't hide. Jen's mouth tightened as soon as we stepped inside.

"It's not as bad as it looks," she said, though I hadn't asked.

We'd left the twins with Grace, who ran the flower shop two doors down from the café. She had four grown grandchildren scattered across three states and complained about missing them in the same breath she used to volunteer for babysitting duty. She waved off my nervous instructions with the confidence of a woman who'd done this more times than she could count.

I trusted her. Even so, I fought the urge to turn around twice on the drive to the hospital.

Everyone in the waiting room seemed to sit the same way—still and careful, saving their energy for a fight bigger than plastic chairs and old magazines. What scared me most was how naturally Jen joined them. She already knew the posture. She already knew how to wait as if this were just another ordinary day.

Across from us, a woman worked on a crossword with a determination that had little to do with the puzzle. A man near the window checked his phone every few seconds, then locked it again without appearing to read anything.

Dr. Ferris was younger than I'd expected. She was brisk but kind, with the practiced steadiness of someone who had spent years delivering news nobody wanted to hear. Jen's scans were already up on the screen by the time we sat down, dark shapes against grey that meant nothing to me and apparently everything to her.

"The mass in your left lung has grown since the last scan," Dr. Ferris said without preamble. "We're looking at non-small cell lung cancer, stage IIIA. The nearby lymph nodes are involved, which is what puts it at stage three, but as far as we can tell, the tumor is still confined to your chest. IIIA is at the more treatable end of stage three. We'll start with chemotherapy to try to shrink it, then reassess and see whether surgery is an option. That's the good news, if you want to call it that."

"And if I don't want to call it that?" Jen asked. Her voice was as dry as ever, though her hands had gone still in her lap.

"Then I'll give you the honest version. It's serious. It's treatable, but it's serious, and I'd be doing you a disservice if I let you leave here believing otherwise." Dr. Ferris folded her hands on the desk, meeting Jen's directness with her own. "Treatment is going to be hard on you. I won't pretend it isn't."

I tried to follow every term—stage three, lymph nodes, reassess—but all I really heard was serious and hard. The words doctors used when they weren't ready to say anything worse.

"What are the odds?" I asked, because someone had to, and Jen clearly wasn't going to.

Dr. Ferris studied me for a moment, gauging how much I truly wanted to know.

"Five-year survival for stage IIIA sits somewhere in the mid-thirties as a rough average, though it varies considerably depending on how the cancer responds to treatment and whether surgery becomes possible. I want to be honest with both of you. I think you'd rather hear the real range than a comforting one. But statistics cover a lot of different cases. They aren't predictions about any one person. I've had patients beat worse odds, and I've had patients with better odds who didn't make it. Jen's overall health apart from the cancer gives her a real advantage going into treatment. It won't decide everything on its own, but it matters."

Thirty-something percent, give or take.

The number ran through my head the entire drive home, never settling into anything I could understand. Jen drove, as she had on the way there. This time her hands were steady on the wheel instead of white-knuckled. She watched the same low buildings and empty fields we'd passed a hundred times, her jaw set in the determined line I'd seen the night she drove me to the hospital to deliver the twins.

"You're quiet," she said when we were about halfway home.

"I'm doing math I don't want to be doing."

"Don't." Her voice was gentle by Jen's standards, which still made it fairly blunt. "Whatever the number is, it isn't zero. I intend to be difficult about which side of it I land on."

I had to bite back a laugh. The impulse felt wrong, but I needed it anyway. "You would."

"Damn right I would." She reached over and patted my knee once, brief and businesslike. Over the better part of a year, I'd learned that those quick, practical touches were how Jen said I love you without ever using the words. "Chemo starts next week. I'll need someone running the café full-time while I'm laid up on the bad days."

"You know I will."

"I know." She watched the road in silence for a moment. "I've been thinking about something else too. Something I probably should've brought up a while ago, if I'm honest."

"What's that?"

"The café." She said it carefully, giving each word more weight than the subject usually carried. "I want to start teaching you how the business actually runs. Not just the register and the storage room. The books, the suppliers, all of it, top to bottom. Whatever happens with this"—she gestured vaguely at herself—"I want to know that place is in good hands. Yours."

My throat tightened around the answer.

Her tone was practical, almost matter-of-fact, but I could hear what lay underneath it. Jen was putting her affairs in order, and I wasn't ready to respond to the thing she hadn't quite said.

"Okay," I managed. It wasn't enough, but it was all I had. "Teach me."

Jen gave one satisfied nod and turned her attention back to the road. The conversation had settled something important between us. It hadn't changed the diagnosis or the odds. It had only made sure that whatever came next, she wouldn't leave the café's future to chance.

I looked out the window and thought about survival statistics, Jen's stubbornness, and a small café with a broken jukebox that had somehow become the only home I'd ever chosen for myself. Leo and Miles were waiting for us at Grace's flower shop, too young to understand any of this. For once, I was grateful for how little they knew.

I wasn't ready to lose the café. I wasn't ready to lose her.

Somewhere along that empty highway, I decided I wasn't going to let either happen without a fight.