No matter how much she said it, or how quickly, the terror of that moment would always be with her.
She watched Isandro for his reaction, but he was unmoving, impassive. She recognised shock. Feeling claustrophobic, Rowan stood and walked back to the window, crossing her arms. It was easier to move, to not be so close, under such scrutiny.
‘They wanted me to start an aggressive cycle of chemotherapy straight away, but I refused.’ She heard Isandro stand behind her and turned around.
He was shaking his head. ‘Why did you refuse?’
It was almost a relief to have him react. ‘Because it could have harmed the baby. There was a risk of premature labour … malformity. There was no way I was going to put him at risk. I wouldn’t do it then and I wouldn’t do it now, if I had to choose again.’
‘But …’ Isandro turned away and paced back and forth. He couldn’t even begin to articulate a coherent response. His brain, normally able to function at a level that left most people in the dust, now refused to operate.
‘Just let me finish. I know … I know it’s a lot.’
He stood facing her again, a raw intensity in his eyes.
‘Because I refused to have the chemotherapy I knew I was severely reducing my chances of survival. But …’ She shrugged. ‘The most important thing was delivering Zac safely. That was all I cared about.’
‘To the detriment of your own health?’ He was incredulous.
Rowan nodded. ‘And in case you’re worried there was never any risk to Zac from my diagnosis. Not then, not now …’
Isandro looked grim, but Rowan continued. ‘They wanted to start me on chemo straight after Zac was delivered, and I knew what was likely to be involved—how invasive it was going to be, how debilitating, with no guarantee of any success. Even so, Professor Villiers asked me to go to his specialist clinic in France. He was interested in my case as this type of cancer in pregnancy is rare.’
Rowan rubbed her hands up and down her arms. ‘My own mother died of breast cancer when I was five. I remembered her treatment, the pain, the degradation … I didn’t want to put Zac through bonding with me even for a short time, only to have me … taken away from him. I knew he’d be safe with you. You were so happy at the thought of a son …’
She reached out and held onto the back of the chair again like a lifeline.
‘I meant it when I told you that I hadn’t ever expected to see you or Zac again. I truly didn’t have any hope for the future. The doctors warned me that it would most likely have spread too far, too fast. Going to France was somewhere for me to go … to be …’
To die.
The unspoken words hung in the air.
‘So what happened?’ Isandro asked flatly.
Rowan knew that the last thing he’d have expected was to be faced with having to feel any kind of sympathy for her. So she made her words as clipped and impersonal as possible, hiding the acute pain of what she’d endured.
‘They started me on the chemotherapy anyway, but as they had expected it didn’t precipitate a remission. It was too late.’ Self-consciously she touched her hair. ‘This … my hair fell out. And the scar you noticed … it was from an intravenous line for fluids.’
Isandro was still unmoving. It made something contract protectively inside Rowan. But she went on. She had to.
‘The only other possible option we hadn’t explored was a bone marrow transplant. That’s because it can’t happen without a donor match. As all my close family were dead it was more or less ruled out, and time was running out …’
She crossed her arms tight across her chest, locked in the memories. ‘But a few weeks after I arrived a perfect match became available within the clinic itself. It was from one of the registered voluntary bone marrow donors who happened to be related to a patient … however, it was going to be an extremely risky operation.’
‘Why didn’t you contact me then, if there was a chance?’ Isandro’s voice was unbearably harsh, and Rowan flinched slightly as it brought her back into the room. She looked at him unswervingly.
‘Because even at this point there was only a fifty-fifty chance. Less. You with all your money and influence could not have improved on that. And after a bone marrow transplant you’re kept in isolation for up to a month, possibly longer, very prone to infections. Visitors are kept to a minimum.’
She paled. ‘I contracted at least three infections. Even if the transplant is successful, and you survive the infections, there’s every chance the new marrow could be rejected by the body months down the line. Don’t you see?’ she beseeched him. ‘What would have been the point?’ Her voice cracked ominously but she forged ahead, ‘I hadn’t expected to survive that far, and I couldn’t have borne not being able to see Zac, being separated by two doors in a quarantine area …’