Good in a Crisis by Margaret Overton

Author:Margaret Overton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Chapter Twelve

Every time I go to a fiftieth birthday party, I bring the same gift—a funny card, and a copy of a humor piece by Steve Martin that appeared in the New Yorker in January 1998 called, “Changes in the Memory After Fifty.” It begins, “Riddle for the over-fifty set: 1. Place your car keys in your right hand. 2. With your left hand, call a friend and confirm a lunch or dinner date. 3. Hang up the phone. 4. Now look for your car keys.”

Neal’s fiftieth birthday party took place on October 29, 2005, in Northbrook, Illinois, at a remodeled ranch house on a large lot in a wooded part of town. Kate and Neal’s old friends hosted the party, and my assignment was to bring a dessert. I stopped at a gourmet grocery in town and picked up a white chocolate mousse cake and some wine, though I knew there would be dozens of desserts and plenty to drink. Most likely, Kate gave the same assignment to many of us. I found a parking spot on the street but sat in my car awhile before getting out and studied the keys in my hand.

I wished I still smoked.

Eventually I emerged from the car, crunched through the leaves to the front door, and let myself in. The house had already filled—at least one hundred people, all of Neal’s friends, his bicycling buddies, his dental partners, his neighborhood friends, our work friends, his friends from the school board, many of whom I’d never met.

Neal was recently diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor known as a multifocal glioblastoma multiforme.

Just six weeks earlier I’d walked into a movie theater with a friend when my cell phone rang.

“Honey,” Kate’s usually cheery voice sounded odd, filled with anxiety, “I need you to do me a favor.”

“Sure, anything.”

“I’m in Vegas with my cousins, you know, for my birthday. It seems that Neal had a seizure while riding his bike today on the Green Bay Trail. Paramedics took him to Highland Park Hospital. He’s in the ER. Would you go up there and see what’s going on? I’ll take the first plane I can get on, but it will probably be the red-eye.”

“Sure, Kate,” I said. “I’ll leave right now.”

I apologized to my friend and left her to see the movie alone.

My mind raced over potentially benign causes of seizures as I drove north.

Hayley and I met Neal and Kate’s cousin Derek at the hospital. An ER doc showed us the MRI, already completed by the time I arrived. The MRI demonstrated six lesions on the right side of Neal’s brain. Hayley and I immediately saw anxiety in each other’s eyes. We both knew what it meant. No benign scenario fit this picture. Neal, a dentist, also knew the MRI did not bode well. We could not reassure him. As much as we wanted to hope, we knew it was not going to turn out all right.

The next week Thomas—our neurosurgeon and friend—biopsied Neal’s brain and confirmed the diagnosis.

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