Short Story Sundays: Vol 3. Part 1.

Scattered Pictures

Adrian Duffey was sure she'd heard her doctor wrong. She immediately started to perspire and in turn immediately began to feel embarrassed and self-conscious that she had done so. She'd heard her husband say something that sounded like muffled noise coming out of a bull horn. She looked at him when he talked but saw an outline of his face. She looked again at the doctor whose faced also looked foreign and blurry. She blinked furiously then closed her eyes, squeezed them shut and opened them again. That was better. She looked around again. Her husband was still there but Dr. Gresham was no longer in sight. She took this time to invoice the items in his office. 

This was a different doctors visit. Gone were the sterile rooms of annual exams with boxes of gauze on top of boxes of plastic gloves on top of boxes of over-sized Q-tips. There were no educational posters of the female reproductive parts, no gallons of hand-sanitizers or bright orange warning labels above trash receptacles. Instead there was a warm inviting office with a couch and two comfortable desk chairs--the latter where Adrian and her husband, Troy were now seated. The office walls were painted a warm blue--not too dark or gray--but just enough white in its tint to remain calm and warm. Accents of black, white and greens could also be found in the room. Degrees upon degrees were hung on the wall. But it was the picture of Dr. Gresham, his wife and their four children that Adrian solely focused her eyes on. She squinted and cursed herself for not bringing her glasses. She had a heavy astigmatism in her left eye that required her to wear her glasses daily. However, if she'd admitted it, she was too vain to wear them consistently. She fanned herself, still hot and perspiring. She felt her husband's hands on her shoulders, shaking her to present time.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," she said, breathless. 

"Are you okay?" Troy asked.

"Um, I don't know," Adrian answered.

Dr. Gresham walked back in the office at that moment. He had a glass of water in his hands and extended that hand out to Adrian. Silence hovered and Adrian looked at Dr. Gresham, then at the water, then back at him.

"Is that for me?" she asked.

"Yes, you asked for water," Dr. Gresham answered.

She swallowed, further embarrassed. She shook her head as if to confirm that she now remembered. But she didn't. She still took a long swig or two from the glass. She also noticed there were two ice cubes in the glass, exactly as she prefers her water.

I wonder if I told him that too.

Dr. Patrick Gresham along with his wife Janese were Adrian's gynecologists since she was 19 - the age in which she became sexual active. They had seen her birth control options, HIV testing and even a hiatus of three years when she became abstinent before marrying her husband. Two years ago she was back in her office asking again about best methods for birth control once she and her new husband had decided to postpone having children until they were married a few years. 

Dr. Janese followed behind her husband not too far afterwards. She had a few folders in her hands--one of which had Adrian's name on it. Dr. Janese hugged her and whispered in her ear: We'll get through this together. Adrian was still not sure she'd her Dr. Patrick the first time, still oblivious to this news. But Janese's pseudo-condolence that was offered to her almost confirmed what she thought she heard him say. 

Janese started to talk first this time. Adrian only heard buzz words to which she could not speak out loud. 

'What did you just say?" Adrian interrupted her mid-sentence.

"Me?" Dr. Janese said.

"No, no. Dr. Patrick what did you say? Before you stepped out to get my water. What did you just say?" Adrian's voice was a loud crescendo by the time she ended her statement. 

"Adrian you didn't hear Dr. Patrick at all?" That was Troy. Adrian sighed in irritation.

"I know what I think he said Troy. I just want to be sure," she was loud now. 

"Again, doctor. What did you say!?"

Dr. Patrick was visibly shaken and it was him that swallowed this time. He was certain he would only have to repeat this news to Adrian just once. He had practiced it many times in his mind--even role-played with Janese because he knew it would be hard. But only once did he want to have to say it aloud. Speaking things into the air gave things life. Although he was Adrian's doctor, he was also her friend. And wanted this news to die from the first time her lab results came in. In fact, he sent them back three times. The fourth time Janese insisted he not send them back again. It was Janese who'd called them for an office appointment after hours. But Patrick wanted to be the one who spoke the news to her.

"It's ovarian cancer Adrian. The cramping  and vomiting you thought were morning sickness it is actually being caused by cancer. You have a few--well--four small tumors protruding your ability to be fertile."

Dr. Patrick leaned back in his seat, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Adrian's face was sterile, a look of shock he was sure. He looked at Troy who was looking at Adrian. Janese was also looking at Adrian. Patrick marinated in the silence, grateful for a break in busy air. Adrian sipped more water, first slowly then taking another long drink. She shook her head, slowly.

"That's what I thought you said doctor." 

Adrian put her hand over her mouth, still shaking her head. She touched her fingers to her lips, rubbing her top lip back and forth, back and forth, still shaking her head. 

"Yea, that's what I thought you said," she repeated. 

There was a break in her voice and Adrian felt like she might cry. 

Nope, not today.

Adrian got up and walked out and around the corner of the office. The first bathroom she came to she went in. She looked herself in the mirror. She laughed out loud at her appearance. It was the same as it was before she came in this afternoon. And the same as it was this morning and the evening before and the days and years before that. She did an inventory of herself. Her wide and bright eyes, light brown, from her mother's side. She smiled and zeroed in on her small dimple and the small cluster of freckles that collected below her eyes. She touched her neck then her right arm. Then she touched her belly, above her abdomen. Funny, she thought she'd be rubbing her belly for the polar opposite reason as she was now. Adrian was too young for such a diagnosis. Fit and 32 years old, she had been robbed, she'd thought. Robbed of her future--immediate and otherwise. No smoking, a slim list of sexual partners, occasional alcohol and with the exception of her and her husband, had always, always used protection. Then the anger rose in her chest and she felt flustered again. She felt her brow sweating and Adrian thought to herself how sweating was probably going to be a mainstay for her for--awhile.

Without thought, her fist met aggressively with the glass that used to be the mirror. Now, she looked different. The glass made her face torn and her vision skewed. 

Now, I looked like cancer.