Page 36 of Parallel

So I guess we’re going on a trip.

“Quinn!” my mother says excitedly when she answers the phone. “You must be psychic. I was just about to call. Nordstrom emailed to say they no longer have the heels I wanted you to get for the rehearsal dinner. So what do you think about getting the suede instead? I know you wanted patent leather, but I think they’d work and you’d probably get more use out of them.”

Her words are like small, repetitive drips of water into an empty metal sink. So meaningless. It’s shocking to me that a week ago I’d have been worried about patent leather versus suede. And now I’m so sad for her. I’m about to make her small worries seem as trivial as they are by dropping a big one in her lap.

“Mom,” I say softly. “I’ve got some bad news.”

By the time Jeff arrives, my tears have dried, but sadness weighs heavily in my stomach. My mother leaned on me so hard when my father died. Who will she have to lean on once I’m gone too? I gave her a best-case scenario instead of the worst, yet it was still the most difficult phone call I’ve ever made.

Jeff walks into the room with his carry-on in hand, looking weary and worse for wear. He presses a kiss to my forehead, drops into the chair that was Nick’s during the night. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. There wasn’t a single flight out and then we left late. So what happened?” he asks, gently pushing the hair back from my face. “I called again and again last night but you didn’t answer.”

Guilt delivers yet another tweak to my stomach. I begin to sweat and fling off the blankets. “I was sleeping a lot,” I lie. “But they did another MRI and it’s more serious than they thought.”

He stills. “I assumed it was just another migraine,” he says.

“Not exactly,” I tell him, so quiet it’s barely audible. “Jeff, I have a brain tumor.”

He turns as white as bleached paper. “What? But that scan the other day—”

“It was tiny then and there was no blood flow around it, so they thought it wasn’t growing. But it is growing. Quickly.”

His jaw swings open. “They found a tumor and you didn’t even mention it?”

I know he’s just upset and looking for a scapegoat, but I’m in no mood to be one. “You didn’t ask,” I reply. “I had to even remind you I’d had a test done.”

“I thought you’d tell me if there was a problem!” he shouts, jumping to his feet with his hands on the top of his head. “So, what? This guy missed it on the first MRI, so he had you take another and told you it was fine?”

“No,” I begin. “He ran a test to check blood flow and—” He reaches over in the middle of my explanation and hits the call button. “What are you doing?”

“I’m telling them you need another neurologist. This guy obviously has no idea what he’s doing.”

Irritation claws at me. There are so many things I’m irate about in this moment that I don’t know where to begin—the fact that he’s making decisions on my behalf, that he’s jumping to conclusions, that this moment has become about his distress instead of mine. For the last few years I’ve shielded him and carried the weight and made him feel like the center of the universe, but just once, I’d like to be the one who gets coddled. I lean forward and grab his arm. “Stop,” I hiss. “I don’t want another doctor. None of this is his fault.”

My words are meaningless to him. They don’t even seem to register. “I had a bad feeling about the guy from the moment we met him.”

The nurse who saw me and Nick together this morning enters and Jeff rounds on her. “I want a new neurologist for my fiancée. Immediately.”

I hate that he’s demanding things of her like she’s a servant. And I hate even more that he’s acting like his opinion is the one that matters here. “No,” I interject. “We don’t.”

Her gaze volleys between the two of us. Great. She probably thinks we’re in some love triangle now. “I’ll tell Dr. Reilly you need to see him.”

She walks out and I tug on Jeff’s hand. “Please stop this. Now. Nick hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“So he’s Nick now, huh?” Jeff asks. “I didn’t realize the two of you were suddenly pals.”

I groan, so appalled by his behavior I’m struggling to form words. “This is not about you! I’m the one with the brain tumor, so I’ll be the one who decides if I’m changing doctors. And you have no right to be making demands of the nurses on my behalf when I’m sitting right here, so don’t do it again.”

We are glaring at each other when Nick walks through the door, freshly showered. I have a memory of a time like this, a time when he came to my bedside and I pressed my lips to his neck, breathing him in. Keep kissing me like that, he said, and I’m going to climb into bed with you.

Except right now, there is nothing soft in his face. His sneer is barely restrained as he turns toward Jeff. “I understand you wanted to see me?”

“Yeah,” says Jeff. “I want to know how the hell you managed to miss the fact that my fiancée had a serious brain tumor on her first scan.”

“Jeff,” I hiss. “I already told you that’s not what happened.”

But he’s not listening to me. Neither of them are, really. They’ve already squared off, reminding me of gorillas in some nature documentary, on the cusp of battle. Jeff is not a small guy by any stretch of the imagination, but Nick is bigger, and the set of his shoulders right now seems threatening, intentionally so. “I didn’t miss anything,” he says between his teeth. “Her tumor is behaving in a way we haven’t seen before.”

“Well, I think a doctor with more experience might have noticed what you didn’t.”