Once she's gone, I'm back under the covers. I wonder if I'm alive. My spirit, I realize, is as scarred as my body. At the end of the week, the silence that has wrapped itself around me is pushed away by loud voices. They're my own.
Pain drones right through the center of the wails.
It shapes itself from the hours waiting for pathology reports. The first time, when I hadn't heard for eight days, I dressed to go to work. I called the doctor's office when I had my Coat on. The nurse said the results had just come through and the doctor needed to talk to me. When I think of waiting and bad news now, I see myself in that navy wool coat sitting alone by the phone waiting to be told I had cancer.