Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 118733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 594(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 594(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
“And I have the worst kind?”
Dr. Hughes nodded. “The next steps would be to perform a craniotomy and then start you on radiation or chemotherapy. The oncologist will talk to you more about that.”
“Will a craniotomy fix this?” Palmer waved her hand in the air as her throat began to close and tears threatened to spill over. She had a headache—that was what had started all this, and when she went to the doctor, he’d prescribed pills. If he’d ordered further testing, maybe . . .
“It may help,” Dr. Hughes said honestly. She sat down and cleared her throat. “I really wanted to give you better news, Palmer. Glioblastoma is terminal at any grade, but a grade four . . .” Dr. Hughes trailed off.
Palmer nodded and let her tears flow. “How long?” she croaked out.
“Six months, maybe a year, depending on surgery and chemotherapy.”
“Are there risks with the surgery?”
“Yes, there are risks.”
Palmer looked toward the window. “I’d like to be alone now.”
Dr. Hughes stood. “Can I call someone for you?”
“There’s no one.”
“I understand needing time to process, but you shouldn’t do it alone. Is there a friend or coworker we can call?” Dr. Hughes placed a soothing hand on Palmer’s leg and gave her a sad smile.
Palmer shook her head and saw pity mixed with sympathy in Dr. Hughes’s eyes. She rolled onto her side and whispered, “I have no one.”
“I’m going to have the patient advocate come in and speak with you, Palmer. I’ll be back later to discuss how we’re going to move forward.” Dr. Hughes touched Palmer’s foot in what she probably considered a soothing gesture. Palmer wanted to pull her foot away. She wanted to kick and scream at Dr. Hughes, even though she was only the bearer of bad news. It wasn’t her fault Palmer had a tumor growing—it was Palmer’s own. She’d ignored the signs, and now she was faced with knowing she was going to die alone.
She heard the door close and let out a wail. How could the world be so cruel to not want her? First as a child, then a teen, and now an adult. What had she done to earn this sort of treatment?
Treatment. Something she wouldn’t do. There was no way she could do this alone. She had no one to drive her to appointments, help her when she couldn’t help herself. Palmer had to work. Her job was the only source of life she had. She couldn’t count on her coworkers to be there for her because they had their own lives. What would she do, hire a live-in nurse? No, that wouldn’t work.
Besides, what was the point? If she was going to die, why bother with any treatment at all? If she was going to be sick, vomiting, and losing her hair, why bother? If the surgeon was going to have to cut her head open, why should Palmer live with a scar, to maybe live six months?
No one had cared enough to find or adopt Palmer; she wasn’t going to care now. She had nothing to prove to anyone. She wasn’t strong or brave. She was alone and always had been. That was exactly how she wanted to die.
SEVEN
After two days off, Kent was happy to be back at work. He loved his job and the crew he worked with, and he genuinely loved helping people. It was the terrible accidents, the ones where he couldn’t save someone, that tore him up. Thankfully, since leaving the army, those accidents were few and far between, but they happened, and each day Kent went into work, he prepared for the worst but expected the best.
Every call he went on had purpose. At least that was what he told himself. Case in point, he and Damian were currently at the mall, having responded to someone fainting. Only when they reached the sufferer did they discover she’d only fainted because her fiancé had proposed.
“This was a call for BLS,” Damian said on their way back to their rig. “Now I have to file paperwork on someone who passed out because her boyfriend of ten years finally proposed.”
“Don’t sound so heartless.” Kent laughed.
“When are you proposing to Maeve?”
Kent grew silent for a moment and then sighed heavily. Ever since he’d sent the text, asking about her parents, Maeve had been aloof and had every excuse under the sun she could come up with for not coming over. “Not even on my radar.”
“Why not? You’ve been together for a year now, right? And doesn’t she stay at your place all the time?”
Kent shrugged. “Something’s up. I can’t pinpoint what, but our relationship feels off. It doesn’t help that she lied to me the other day and I called her out on it. Now, it seems like she’s avoiding me.” Lately, Maeve’s behavior had seemed odd to him. When they’d first started dating, she was at his place all the time, mostly because she lived with her parents. But recently, she only came over the night before Kent had to go back to work. He’d go a full day off without seeing her, and it bothered him. He didn’t want to think she had grown tired of him, but it was a possibility.