Perfect Life by Jessica Shattuck

Author:Jessica Shattuck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2009-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

At lunchtime, Jenny drove over to Mass General to go to Jeremy’s doctor’s appointment. He was getting the results of a CT scan. She did not really feel worried about what these results might be—but all the same, she was not looking forward to the appointment.

Once in Dr. Frager’s office, though, it was clear immediately that the results were not good. She knew this immediately from the doctor’s solemn face, the manner in which he touched the pen in the breast pocket of his shirt—like a child fingering the edge of a beloved blankie for reassurance—as he began to speak. There was a tumor on Jeremy’s left kidney and another on his chest wall. A broader scan was in order—soon—as well as surgery to remove the tumors, which had the characteristics of renal cancer that had metastasized.

Jenny felt the blood rush from her head. She would have fainted if she had not been sitting down. She looked over at Jeremy with panic. He looked, actually, remarkably calm. The fear she had detected from him in the waiting room seemed, with the introduction of facts and information, to have given way to something both determined and resigned. His face was pale, but his jaw was set forcefully. “What…?” Jenny blurted out. “But you don’t know this is cancer, right?”

Both Jeremy and the doctor looked at her with, it seemed, a kind of apology.

“Until we have the pathology before us it is technically unknown, but I’m afraid research and experience suggest that a tumor on the kidney with these dimensions and characteristics is almost certainly some form of cancer, most likely renal, and the tumor on the lungs…” The doctor’s voice continued, gently but not reassuringly. Jenny could not really hear him for the rushing in her ears.

At some point in the midst of this, Jeremy reached over and put a hand at the back of her neck, lightly, smoothing his knuckles over the small bones of her spine. And the delicate intimacy of the gesture, the implicit reassurance, almost broke her. She was the one who should be reaching over to him, taking his cold hand in hers, pressing it comfortingly. How had she let it come to this? She could feel a ball of tears in the back of her throat that she had to swallow down, had to focus all her energy to repress, because if they came out she knew they would be ugly, horrible, primitive sounds—not so much tears as bellows and screams.

Jeremy’s odd composure continued. He asked questions. Jenny had no idea what they were. He talked about biopsies and metastases and stages—clearly there had been anticipation here. How else to explain his understanding of the exact difference between stage three and stage four renal cancer and the inutility of radiation treatment under these circumstances? Jenny was silent—dumbfounded by her own complete ignorance.

She stared at her husband—his thin, angular face and the shock of blond hair falling forward. He looked thin. How had she missed this?

“Jen,”

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