Life and Other Near-Death Experiences (14 page)

“Leaving,” he muttered.

“
Leaving?
What do you mean, leaving? You don’t even have any place to go.”

He’d already begun walking. “It’s called a hotel,” he called over his shoulder.

“And how are you going to get there?” I yelled, hands on my hips.

“With my two feet!”

But Paul
never
left, I thought as I watched him speed walk in the opposite direction.

“Paul!” I cried. “Come on! . . . Come back!”

He stopped and turned around, and for a split second, I thought he would change his mind. Then he hollered, “I’m going to give you a day to think about how incredibly stupid your little plan is. At that point, you and I will get on a plane and fly back to New York together.”

I shook my head. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Fine.” He turned back around and began walking toward the road.

“Paul!
Paul!
” I yelled, but he was already gone.

TWENTY-FIVE

I thought about calling Shiloh, but felt too dejected to have yet another conversation with someone who didn’t understand my stance on treatment. Instead, I took my horse pill of an antibiotic and proceeded to drink most of the remaining rum. When it became evident that no amount of alcohol was going to soothe the ache in my heart, I swallowed a sleeping pill and got into bed, still fully dressed.

I woke to the sound of pounding. It was dark out, and the glowing red numerals of the alarm clock informed me it was 5:43 in the morning.

Paul.

I bounded out of bed.

He stood at the door, still wearing the now-wrinkled button-down and thin wool pants he’d arrived in yesterday. His eyes were bloodshot, and his dark curls went every which way.

“You look about as hot as I feel right now,” I remarked.

He walked past me into the kitchen and flipped on the lights. “As bad as you feel, as a person with newfound knowledge of his sister’s cancer, I guarantee I’m feeling even more rotten.”

“Only one of us is dying,” I said, joining him in the kitchen.

He eyed me from the other side of the counter. “That’s inaccurate.”

“And how’s that?”

“You can’t die, Libby. You’re all I have left.”

“That’s not true. What about Charlie? The boys?”

He leaned forward, putting his elbows on the counter, and rubbed his eyes. Then he looked up at me. “You’re all of I have left of
Mom
. And don’t tell me I have Dad, too, because you know it’s not the same.”

“Oh.”

“So now that you see where I’m coming from, I have to ask again: Why would you do this?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I asked Paul to come with me into my bedroom. After locating
Y tu mama
, I grabbed my laptop off the dresser and climbed on the bed, motioning for Paul to sit next to me. I put my laptop between us and slid the disc into the computer.

“See?” I said after we’d finished the movie. “Now do you understand?”

Paul pushed himself up and turned so we were facing each other. “What I see, dear sister, is a woman in crisis who has managed to confuse real life with Spanish-language cinema. I mean, I understand your initial impulse to leave Chicago behind. I’ve heard the first couple weeks after a person is diagnosed can be surreal—that you don’t feel like yourself. But you’re not Luisa, Libby.”

“No,” I agreed. “I’m not. But I have a reason for all of this.”

“And what would that be?” he scoffed.

“Before Mom died, she asked me to take care of you,” I told him.

He and I both smiled at the ridiculousness of our mother’s request. “She did?”

“Absurd, I know,” I told him. “Mom dying is the single worst thing that ever happened to me. Even all these years later, I feel like there’s a big hole carved out of me. When the doctor told me that I had this terrible cancer, all I could think about was how I was going to put you and Dad through that again. I don’t want to draw it out and make you suffer longer than necessary.”

“Oh, Libs,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

I took his hand, so like my own—it was one of the few physical characteristics we shared. I examined his long, squared-off fingers, then turned his hand over. He, too, had a long lifeline running across his palm. “No, I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have kept you in the dark. But you’ve seemed so happy lately, and I didn’t want to spoil it.”

“I
am
happy lately. Life with Charlie and the boys is better than I could have expected. But keeping your pain from me is the exact opposite of taking care of me.” He pursed his lips. “I mean, who else is going to tell you you’re looking at this all wrong? Feel free to correct me here, but you don’t even know what stage your cancer is yet.”

I thought about what Dr. Sanders had told me, and the studies I’d read online. “I’m pretty sure the two stages of my cancer are diagnosis and dying.”

“But you don’t know that for sure.”

“No.”

“Exactly. So, come on then. Let’s see it.”

“See what?” I said, already lifting my shirt so he could look at the battlefield that was my stomach.

He regarded the wound for a few seconds, then pulled my shirt back down and looked at me. “You’re going to be okay.”

I snorted. “Paul Ross, human MRI.”

He waved off my skepticism. “Now’s not a good time for you to die. It’s as simple as that.”

“I’m sorry that my disease comes at an inconvenient time for you.”

“I didn’t say it was inconvenient. It’s implausible.”

“
Now
who’s Pollyanna?”

“Stop it, Libs. Just—all I’m asking is that you consider doing this for me, okay?”

“Treatment?”

“Yes. Wherever you want. New York, Chicago, Puerto Rico—it doesn’t matter. With any doctor or hospital you want. I’ll cover anything your insurance doesn’t.”

After my unceremonious exit from work, I was fairly certain I no longer had insurance, which was why I had paid for the doctor’s visit in Vieques with my debit card. I thought it was best not to mention this to Paul for the time being. “You sound like Shiloh,” I told him.

“He’s not so bad.”

I thought for a few minutes. Then I said, “I planned to be here for a month, and I want to stick to that. I still have to finalize the apartment sale. Then—and not a second sooner—I will see a doctor and reconsider my options. Okay?”

Paul managed a small smile. “And come spend time with Charlie, the boys, and me?”

“This is assuming I’m not in the hospital.”

“Perfect.” He hugged me. “Spoiler alert!”

“What is it?” I asked warily.

“Everything’s going to be fine, Libby,” he said, hugging me again. “I just know it.”

“Right,” I said. “Just fine.” I hated to lie to my brother yet again, but there he was, sliding down my old rainbow, and I didn’t have it in me to push him off.

Paul was not one for
good enough
. No, he preferred to change his banking passwords by the week, triple-check his zipper after leaving the bathroom, and grill a steak past the point at which a person could expect to bite into it without accidentally dislodging a dental crown—just in case. So I was not surprised when he continued to press me about my illness despite my telling him I would consider my options. “You have to tell Dad, you know,” he shouted. We were sitting at the bow of a gleaming white boat that Shiloh had chartered so the three of us could take a day trip to Culebra, one of the small islands we had seen flying in.

“I know,” I yelled. The wind was high and the ocean spray splattered against our faces, making it hard to hold a conversation. Not that this was of any consequence to Paul.

“Soon!” he yelled. “Preferably in person.”

“I know,” I said, not bothering to raise my voice this time.

The boat slapped against a large wave, and I hugged my life preserver tight to my torso, dubious about its ability to do its eponymous duty. The boat hit the surf again, and I put my hand on a metal safety rail to steady myself, then yanked it back when I realized how silly I was being. Cancer or shark bite, what did it matter? Death was death.

Of course, it wasn’t,
I admitted to myself as I watched Shiloh chat animatedly with the boat’s captain. The whole idea behind this lark was to avoid a sudden and surprising end, to retain some semblance of control as the big hole in the sky closed in on me. But as diagnosis day slipped farther into the past, it seemed as if I were aiming less for a graceful exit and more for a lurching reentry.

Paul was having reentry thoughts of his own. His questioning resumed as soon as we’d docked in the shallow water off one of Culebra’s beaches. “Have you started thinking about what you’ll do after treatment?” he asked as we trudged through the glittering sand behind Shiloh, who was searching for a shady spot where we could sit and have lunch.

I squinted at him from behind my sunglasses. “What do you mean?”

“You have a chance to start over. I’m not saying you have to come to New York, though I think it would be smart. But either way, you could do something different. Even without a recommendation from Jackie, you’ve got a great résumé and you’re brilliant, if I do say so myself. You choose an industry, I’ll make a call to a contact, and you’ll have a job the next day. You would make a great producer or event planner. Hell, become a feline behavior consultant if you’re so inclined. You can do anything you want. Anything! How exciting is that?”

I supposed it was exciting in the abstract. As it pertained to my actual life, the idea of starting over made me want to go spear fishing for my own eyeballs. “Maybe,” I said.

“Libby, will you give me a hand?” Shiloh asked as he attempted to spread a thin cotton blanket under a tree.

I gave him a grateful look, then grabbed a corner of the blanket to pull it smooth. Paul took it from my hand. “Here, let me,” he said.

“I’m not an invalid, you know,” I said, placing one of my sandals on the blanket’s edge to help secure it.

He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t say you were. I just want you to take it easy.”

I sat down on the blanket and took out a bottle of sparkling water from the picnic basket Shiloh had packed. “I’m in the middle of the Caribbean with some of my favorite people, and there’s not a thing in the world that I have to do right now. If this isn’t taking it easy, then I don’t know what is.”

Paul pressed on. “Naturally, everything depends on where you go for treatment. I did a little research last night.”

“Of course you did.”

He was sweating even more than I was, and he pulled off his polo, then carefully folded it and placed it in the canvas tote he had brought. “And if our roles were reversed, would you just sit there and do nothing?”

“No.”

“
Ding ding ding!
We have a neural connection!”

I snatched a plastic knife from the picnic basket we’d packed. “Shall I use this on you?”

He ignored me. “The Mayo Clinic is doing a second-phase clinical trial that sounds really promising. And there’s a doctor at Columbia who has written several papers on T-cell lymphomas.”

“One thing at a time,” Shiloh said, putting an arm around me.

Paul frowned at him, and I could see his wheels turning, taking in how this practical stranger was being protective of his sister.

Paul must have decided Shiloh’s angle was a good one, because after a minute he said, “You’re right. One thing at a time.”

After lunch we took a trio of kayaks out. The sea was still, and Shiloh and Paul easily paddled several hundred yards out, but I lingered near the shore. I had agreed to treatment, yet couldn’t envision it; when I tried to picture myself propped up in a pastel pleather recliner, the steady drip of an IV unloading into my veins, it was my mother’s face, not my own, that stared back at me.

I shook my head, then looked down at the sea, trying to encourage my mind’s eye to envision some positive aspect of my post-Vieques existence, but the glassy green water held no inspiration. The fact that I could not visualize the alleged next phase of my life felt like further proof that Paul’s reasoning was wishful thinking.

I wasn’t sure how long I had been floating there when Paul circled back around. “Have you spoken to Tom about your health?” he asked as the nose of his kayak gently bumped the side of my own.

“No,” I said, watching a school of silvery minnows pass between us, then disappear into darker depths.

“Do you plan to?”

“No. But if you want to invite him to my funeral, I guess you can. I would prefer that you seat him at the back.”

Paul grimaced. “I really wish you’d stop talking like that.”

“Sorry.”

His kayak began drifting backward, and he lifted his oar and latched it to the side of my boat, linking us together. “Do you miss him?”

I shook my head. “Not at all.”

I don’t,
I told myself, but this was not even remotely true. I missed the way Tom pulled me into him at night, our bodies curved against each other like Russian nesting dolls. I missed how he would tuck a stray curl behind my ear while he was in the middle of talking to me. I missed the feeling of belonging to him, and believing that he, too, belonged to me.

“You’ll love again,” said Paul.

“Maybe,” I said, looking over my shoulder at Shiloh, who was paddling in the distance.

“Is it weird?” Paul asked. “Being with someone else so soon? Not that I think it’s a bad thing, but . . . you two seem awfully cozy. I hope it doesn’t make things harder for you.”

“It won’t.”

He gave me a look.

“What?”

“Careful, Libs,” he said, looking again at Shiloh. “I like the guy, but he’s not worth your life.”

“Trust me, he would be the first to agree with you. Despite his ‘one thing at a time’ shtick, he’s constantly on me about getting out of here and going to see a specialist.”

“Huh,” said Paul, in a way that said he was unconvinced. “Anyway, enough about Shiloh. The only person we need to focus on right now, Libs, is you.”

On the boat ride back, Shiloh put his arm gently around my waist, and I laid my head on his shoulder, which is how we remained until we arrived at the marina in Vieques.
Maybe Shiloh is clouding my vision,
I thought. Maybe I should never have gone to dinner with him; then I wouldn’t have fallen for him, and Paul couldn’t have contacted him to find me, and I would’ve had more time to plan my final days without interference. This was all possible, but as the boat bumped up against the dock, dislodging my torso from Shiloh’s, I felt oddly grateful that it hadn’t worked out any other way.