the breast tissue.”
My heart started to race. “Are they cancerous?”
“Calcifications are usually noncancerous, but I’d like to send you to a surgeon to have a breast biopsy to be sure.”
I’m dying. I knew it. Oh, stop, Scarlett.
“You said calcifications are usually noncancerous. What do they look like when they are?”
Dr. Johnson opened his desk drawer and pulled out a laminated sheet showing two types of calcifications. He pointed to the top image. “These are macro calcifications. They are large, round and well-defined and are more likely to be benign.” He then pointed to the bottom image. “These are micro calcifications, or tight clusters of tiny, irregularly shaped calcifications. Certain patterns might indicate cancer.”
I looked at the image on the laminated sheet of paper and then at the image on the computer screen. “Mine look like the bottom photo.” I started to tremble. I knew it. I had cancer.
“That’s why I’d like you to see a surgeon. Just to make sure they’re benign.”
I tried to stop the tears from coming, but it was no use. My face felt like it was on fire. All I could think about was dying.
Dr. Johnson handed me a tissue.
“So who do you recommend I see?”
“Dr. Edwards. He’s excellent and it’s who I’d want my wife to see if this was her mammogram.”
The next ten minutes were a blur. The nurse returned and asked me to come with her. We went into a small room and I sat while she called the surgeon’s office to schedule an appointment.
“You don’t have anything sooner?” I heard her ask. The nurse looked at me, covering the receiver with her hand. “The soonest they have is next Friday.”
I sighed. “But that’s a whole week away.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Ask them if they’ll call if someone cancels.”
I heard the nurse ask and then confirm the Friday appointment. She hung up and handed me a slip of paper with the doctor’s address on it. “Dr. Edwards is the best. You’ll be in good hands. Good luck.”
Good luck? It’s not like I’m going to play tennis with him! I don’t need luck; I need prayers. “Thanks”
The nurse showed me to the exit and as soon as I crawled into my car I broke down, the tears coming as fast as a waterfall that crashes onto jagged rocks below.
I called Shonna and in between sobs managed to mumble breast, biopsy and cancer.
“Calm down,” Shonna said. “We need to take this one step at a time. It might not be anything.”
“But it probably is. I’m probably dying. I’ll never get to see my kids marry or play with my grandchildren.”
“Scarlett, stop it. Stop it right now. I’m not trying to minimize this, but a lot of people have breast calcifications and they’re usually benign.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve never been like most people.”
We talked some more and I drove to Mom and Dad’s, wondering how I was going to keep a happy face the rest of the day. I wasn’t going to tell Mom and Dad. I didn’t want to worry them and feared they’d let it slip to the kids. I’d tell David and Tory if I needed to.
I’d already arranged to take the day off when I got the callback. My parents were moving to a retirement community and Mom had asked me to sort through boxes in the basement to see if there was anything I wanted to keep. I couldn’t imagine finding anything of value, but I promised Mom I’d look anyway.
I stared at the list I’d written when I was seventeen. Thirty-two years had passed since I scribbled my hopes and dreams on the white napkin and tucked it inside my high-school yearbook. A knot formed in my throat as I scanned the items. Marry Jake. Take a road trip with my bestie. Live in a big city. Overcome my fear of heights. Buy a sports car. Make lots of money. Own a boutique. I must’ve listed twenty things. My dreams had sparkled like bright stars in the night sky, waiting to be plucked one at time. What happened? Some stars had faded; others had long been forgotten, swallowed by life and its twists and turns. The things you never see coming when you’re seventeen.
A tear slid down my cheek, and I wiped it away with the back of my hand. I suppose there comes a time in everyone’s life when you realize you have fewer years ahead than behind you. And suddenly it becomes important to make sure that, when winter comes, you’ve lived the best life you could. Facing the possibility of having breast cancer only intensified my feelings and need to grasp hold of whatever time I had left.
And that’s when I decided I had to make some changes in my life. The kids were grown and each night I went to bed lonely in a house I’d once shared with Tory and David and their dad. Mike gave me the house as part of the divorce settlement along with the mini-van. We’d been married nineteen years and the last five were riddled with insults and angry outbursts. We fought all the time about everything and nothing. The kids. Work. Money. Even where we should go on vacation. The year we turned forty-two, we’d decided to call it quits. We both wanted to end our marriage before we hated each other. So, I got the house and the mini-van (he, by the way, had a sports car!) and he moved to a condo across town. We’re both still single and, to be honest, I haven’t met anyone in the past seven years who’s made me feel the way Mike once did.
I heard Mom’s voice but, from the musty corner of her basement, I couldn’t make out what she’d yelled. I walked over to the steps leading to the first floor. “Sorry, Mom. I couldn’t understand you.”
“I asked if you were hungry.”
I rubbed my stomach. “I’m starving.”
“Good. I made one of your favorites. Chicken corn soup.”
I smiled. “Just let me finish packing this box and I’ll be right up.”
I returned to the cardboard box with “Scarlett’s Stuff” scribbled on the top in black magic marker. I’d apparently stashed it down here when I was still in love with Jake, my high-school sweetheart. Besides the list, the box held other treasures from my high-school years. A program from my senior class play. The roses Jake gave me for our first Valentine’s Day (now a crisp bundle of tan petals tipped in Pepto-Bismol pink). My honor society certificate, encased in a black frame chipped at the corner. A photo of my best friend Shonna and I posing in our puffy-sleeved prom dresses. We couldn’t have looked more different. She was six foot and I was barely five. She had long chestnut hair and mine was long and strawberry blonde. She had brown eyes and I had green. And yet our friendship had lasted and, like fine wine, gotten better with age.
Besides the high-school mementos, I found a shoebox filled with items I’d made for Scarlett’s Shop. I laughed, remembering my pop-up store. I’d sell my homemade items at school, at home, anywhere I could display them and make money. Popsicle-stick picture frames. Painted rocks with magnets on the back. Clothespin caterpillars (think colorful pom-poms glued to a clothespin with googly eyes). I picked up a bookmark I’d made from a Christmas card Mom had saved. A wave of memories washed over me. I’d always wanted to own a boutique. It was another dream never realized.
I put all the items back in the dusty box and carried it upstairs.
Dad looked up from reading the newspaper. “I see you found something you wanted to keep.”
I placed the box in the corner of the dining room. “Yeah. I came across some stuff from high school. And my store, remember that?”
“Oh, my, yes,” Mom said. “You were always making stuff for that shop of yours. For a while there I was driving you to the craft store every