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Audra - Dying For Life

By Carol J Nelson

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A Life Changer

Audra Knight paused on the sidewalk before Chandler’s Grove Medical Center. Despite the sun heating her face, she shivered, and it wasn’t from the air conditioning in the doctor’s office. The icy hand of fear had grabbed her by the throat the moment Dr. Rhonda said she needed to do a biopsy.
Dr. Rhonda smiled when she reassured her it probably wasn’t cancer, but fear wasn’t rational. It shuddered down Audra’s spine and callously whispered, “Remember what happened to your mother. Remember your grandmother.”
Her stomach contracted into a rigid ball that nearly nauseated her as her heels clacked across the parking lot. She slid behind the wheel of her Ford Focus and closed her eyes. This couldn’t be happening. Fumbling the phone from her purse, her fingers trembled as she tapped her sister’s name on her cell. “Do–do you have a minute?” she asked Laney when she answered.
“Well, I am kind of busy right now. Is it important?”
Of course, it’s important! she wanted to yell into the phone. She shook her head. “It can wait. I’ll call you back later,” she murmured. She slid her phone into her purse and backed out. She never has time. I wonder if she even realizes how much I still need her. She pulled onto Fifth Avenue. She’d stop at Tamina’s instead.
In less than ten minutes, Audra rapped on Tamina York’s first-floor apartment door. Her eyes were stinging from held-back tears when the familiar blue door with a crooked number two swung open.
Tamina’s usually easygoing smile faded, and she just stood there while her black mascara-enhanced lashes blinked. “Girlfriend! What’s wrong? She thrust her hand forward. “You look like you’re in shock.”
“I am, and I’m scared.” Audra grasped Tamina’s offered hand and lurched into the apartment. “I just came from Dr. Rhonda’s—I think something bad’s going to happen.”
Tamina didn’t say anything but opened her arms, and Audra sagged into her comforting embrace. A tear slid down her cheek as she rested her head on Tamina’s shoulder. She couldn’t say anything else yet, either.
“You’re trembling! Come on and sit down.” Tamina perched on the edge of the white faux-leather couch and faced Audra at the other end. “If you saw Dr. Rhonda, it has to be a female problem. Before I left on vacation, you told me you’d finally started your period after four months. What happened?”
Audra crossed her arms around herself and faced blankly ahead. “It never stopped. After two weeks, I called Dr. Rhonda, but it took another week before I could get in—and it’s still going.” She blinked back tears as she stared into Tamina’s warm-brown face. “Dr. Rhonda wants to do a biopsy as soon as possible, and that’s just turned me to jelly.”
“Are you afraid it’ll be like your mother?”
“Well, yeah. I was only twelve when she told me she had cancer, and I vividly remember standing beside her hospital bed. She looked so terribly ill… It was hard to comprehend that was really my mother. Her image will be engraved in my memory forever.” Her hands fell limply into her lap and she leaned her head against the back of the couch. “The same thing happened to my grandmother, but I don’t remember it. For over twenty years, I’ve been living knowing I’m at risk and suddenly the Big C could become a reality. To tell you the truth, I’m terrified.”
“Have you told your sister?”
“I called, but she was too busy to talk.”
Tamina reached over and squeezed Audra’s hand. “I wish she would have had time. I don’t even want to think of something bad happening to you.”
Audra jerked herself upright. “You don’t understand—it could! And I have all these what ifs. We go back to work in two days, and school starts next Wednesday. What if I get too sick to teach? What if I have to quit? My mother and grandmother both had husbands to support them when they got ill. I don’t. And what if something happens to me, what will happen to little Rosa? Her great-grandmother’s old, and what if something happens to her? Who will be there to help Rosa grow up?”
Tamina squeezed Audra’s knee. “Whoa, slow down! I know this has given you a jolt, but, number one, you haven’t had the biopsy done yet. It may not be as bad as you fear. Number two, medicine has advanced a long way since your mother and grandmother went through it. Number three, no matter what happens to you, I’ll be here to stand with you through it. And number four, I promise that, if anything really bad should happen, I’ll look after Rosa myself.”
Audra’s head fell to the back of the couch, again, and she closed her eyes. “Thank you, Dr. Tamina. As usual, you’re right on target.” She let out a long sigh. “Getting hysterical won’t help the situation, but I guess a biopsy to look for possible cancer was just too up-close and personal—I’m not handling it very well, am I?” She leaned forward and propped her elbows on her knees. “I don’t have a choice. It’s gotta be done, ready or not, but I can’t bear to talk about it anymore. It’s too depressing.”
Audra twisted toward her friend. She’d been so focused on herself she hadn’t noticed Tamina’s freshly cut pixie hairdo, the brush of apricot blush across her smooth-as-silk brown cheekbones, or the glow of her largest hoop earrings. Audra eyed her white leggings and black, bronze, and white cold-shoulder tunic. Her platform sandals lay on the turquoise rug beneath the glass and chrome coffee table. A paper plate of cookie crumbs and an open magazine occupied the glass-topped end table.
“You’re looking good. Been out shopping?”
Tamina rolled her eyes. “No. I had to go downtown and pick my dad up and take him home. He spent overnight in jail for disorderly conduct. He looked awful—so thin. I don’t think he’s eating. Still chain-smoking, though. He complained of a pain in his stomach, too.”
Audra’s eyebrows knit. “What landed him in jail?”
Tamina grimaced. “He got in a scuffle downtown, and a policeman just happened to be nearby. If he’d kept his mouth shut, he wouldn’t have been in trouble—but he had to mouth off to the officer. I tell you I’ve never seen anyone so stubborn.”
“Oh? My father would have been right up there tied for first place.”
“Yeah, but your dad’s dead. You don’t have to deal with it.”
“Touché.” Audra planted her elbows back on her knees and rested her chin in her hands. “Yuck. Speaking of him brings up memories nearly as bad as my mother’s cancer, and just as depressing.”
“Well, aren’t we a pair? Come on into the kitchen. I cooked a chicken breast and boiled a couple of eggs. Let’s build salads and drown our troubles with a glass of chocolate milk.”
After they ate, Audra went home. She closed her living-room drapes and flopped onto the couch on her stomach. Tamina always made her laugh, but today her humor had merely been a Band-Aid. She was exhausted from the emotional upheaval. She closed her eyes and was on the verge of drifting into sleep when a picture formed in her mind like a surreal painting. The Big C had shattered her, and disjointed fragments of her body were scattered across a bizarre, jagged background of her mother in a hospital bed and her father wearing his perpetual frown. Slashing right through the middle was a giant, black question mark. She jolted up, jerking away from the unsettling mental image. Life had suddenly changed, and the only thing she knew was that fear was going to be her biggest enemy.
She pushed up from the couch and went to the kitchen. She gritted her teeth as she punched in her sister’s phone number. I wish I hadn’t told her I’d call her back. She forced a smile when Laney answered—a smile Laney couldn’t see. “Oh, hi, are you still busy?”
Laney let out a long breath. “I’ve gone from busy to fuming. Amanda told me she was going shopping but spent the whole day with this kid named Ross. Andy and I have been uncomfortable since she met him, and we’ve told her that.” She sucked in a fresh breath as if to give herself courage to continue.
“Andy told her she can’t see him anymore because he’s afraid he’s going to get her in trouble, and for the first time, Amanda threw it in his face that he isn’t her father and she didn’t have to listen to him.” Silence captured the line for a moment. “Well, I blew up and got in her face. Now she’s not speaking to either one of us.” She fell quiet again, and all Audra heard were her faint whispers of breath. “I’m scared for her, Audie. She’s only sixteen, and I’m afraid she’s going to make the same mistakes I did, and I can’t bear to think of it.”
Audra blinked at Laney’s outburst. “Oh, Laney, don’t even say that! It reminds me too much of you and Father. It’s like stirring up muddy water,” she blurted out, and resentment against her father rose up so suddenly she felt choked. She had to wait a moment before she could speak. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, but things could have been so different if he hadn’t gotten bitter—”
“I know, but I don’t want to talk about it,” Laney said in a voice so low Audra barely heard her.
Audra continued holding the phone to her ear but remained silent. Her sister wouldn’t talk, and once again, she felt pushed aside and out of her sister’s life. She probably won’t want to talk about my doctor visit, either, but I guess it can wait. “Well, I’d better let you go.”
She hung up and went into the next room and sat at her piano. She played Handel’s “Largo” because that’s what was open, but it left her feeling lonely. That had been her mother’s favorite piece to play, and hearing it brought her to the verge of tears again. Her fingers stilled before the last notes, and she lowered her face into her hands. I don’t want to face cancer. I don’t want to deal with a dysfunctional family. I want everything to be like when Mom was with us.

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