Dear John(87)
He grew quiet, and I knew he would say no more about it. In time, he drifted off to sleep, and I sat there watching him, my mind curiously blank.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you yesterday,” Savannah said to me an hour later. When she and Alan had returned to the room to find Tim sleeping, she’d motioned for me to follow her downstairs to the cafeteria. “I was surprised to see you, and I knew I should have said something, but every time I tried, I just couldn’t.”
Two cups of tea were on the table, since neither of us felt like eating. Savannah lifted her cup and set it back down again.
“It had just been one of those days, you know? I’d spent hours in the hospital, and the nurses kept giving me those pitiful looks and . . . well, they just feel like they’re killing me little by little. I know that sounds ridiculous considering what Tim is going through, but it’s so hard to watch him get sick. I hate it. I know I have to be there to support him, and the thing is, I want to be there, but it’s always worse than I expect. He was so sick after his treatment yesterday that I thought he was dying. He couldn’t stop vomiting, and when nothing else would come up, he just kept dry heaving. Every five or ten minutes, he’d start to moan and move around the bed trying to prevent it, but there was nothing he could do. I’d hold him and comfort him, but I can’t even begin to describe how helpless it made me feel.” She lifted her bag of tea in and out of the water. “It’s like that every time,” she said.
I fiddled with the handle of my cup. “I wish I knew what to say.”
“There’s nothing you can say, and I know that. That’s why I’m talking to you. Because I know that you can handle it. I don’t really have anyone else. None of my friends can even relate to what I’m going through. My mom and dad have been great . . . kind of. I know they’d do anything that I ask, and they’re always offering to help, and Mom brings over our meals, but every time she drops off the food, she’s just a bundle of nerves. She’s always on the verge of crying. It’s like she’s terrified of saying or doing anything wrong, so when she’s trying to help, it’s like I have to support her, too, instead of the other way around. Added to everything else, it’s almost too much sometimes. I hate to say that about her because she’s doing her best and she’s my mom and I love her, but I just wish she’d be stronger, you know?”
Remembering her mother, I nodded. “How about your dad?”
“The same, but in a different way. He avoids the topic. He doesn’t want to talk about it at all. When we’re together, he talks about the ranch or my job—anything but Tim. It’s like he’s trying to make up for Mom’s incessant worrying, but he never asks what’s been going on or how I’m holding up.” She shook her head. “And then there’s Alan. Tim’s so good with him, and I like to think I’m getting better with him, but still . . . there are times when he starts hurting himself or breaking things, and I just end up crying because I don’t know what to do. Don’t get me wrong—I try, but I’m not Tim, and we both know it.”
Her eyes held mine for a moment before I looked away. I took a sip of tea, trying to imagine what her life was like now.
“Did Tim tell you what’s going on? With his melanoma?”
“A little,” I said. “Not enough to know the whole story. He told me he found a mole and that it was bleeding. He put it off for a while, then finally went to see a doctor.”
She nodded. “It’s one of those crazy things, isn’t it? I mean, if Tim spent a lot of time in the sun, maybe I could have understood it. But it was on the back of his leg. You know him—can you imagine him in Bermuda shorts? He’s hardly ever worn shorts, even at the beach, and he’s always the one who nagged us about wearing sunscreen. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he’s careful about what he eats. But for whatever reason, he got melanoma. They cut out the area around the mole, and because of its size, they took out eighteen of his lymph nodes. Out of the eighteen, one was positive for melanoma. He started interferon—that’s the standard treatment, and it lasts a full year—and we tried to stay optimistic. But then things started going wrong. First with the interferon, and then a few weeks after surgery, he got cellulitis near the groin incision.”
When I frowned, she caught herself.
“Sorry. I’m just so used to talking to doctors these days. Cellulitis is a skin infection, and Tim’s was pretty serious. He spent ten days in the intensive care unit for that. I thought I was going to lose him, but he’s a fighter, you know? He got through it and continued with his treatment, but last month we found cancerous lesions near the site of his original melanoma. That, of course, meant another round of surgery, but even worse, it meant that the interferon probably wasn’t working as well as it could. So he got a PET scan and an MRI, and sure enough, they found some cancerous cells in his lung.”