I worked nights and nursed my husband through cancer — the week he was declared cancer-free, he asked me for a divorce, but after he walked away, his doctor pulled me aside and said, « There’s something you should know. »
Then Griffin walked away down the hospital corridor, leaving me sitting there in that plastic waiting room chair, completely devastated. I don’t know how long I stayed frozen there, trying to make sense of a sentence that refused to settle into anything logical.
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That’s when Dr. Alderman, his oncologist, approached me quietly, glancing once toward the hallway where Griffin had disappeared before pulling a chair over to sit across from me directly.
Her expression was unusually serious, considerably heavier than the relieved warmth she’d worn less than an hour earlier delivering his clean scan results.
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« There’s something you should know, » she said. « I need you to understand I’m telling you this against strict protocol, and I’m only doing it because I don’t think Griffin is making this decision with complete information in front of him. »
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« What kind of information? » I asked, my voice barely working.
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« When we first diagnosed Griffin’s cancer, » Dr. Alderman said, « the presentation was unusual enough for his age that standard practice required genetic testing, to check for underlying hereditary syndromes that might explain it. That testing takes considerably longer to process than the initial cancer treatment itself, so results only came back three weeks ago. »
