The Hearts We Break (The Alphaletes Book 3), page 22
They both follow after Ross before I look to see Aaron sitting in a chair, his hand over his mouth, shaking his head.
“Like Mom?” Ezra asks, a tear running down his cheek before he swipes it away.
The vulnerability in his voice does something to me. Unlocks a memory, strikes a nerve. Reminds me of a dark day for both our families that has my resolve crumbling. My legs give out, and I buckle, mentally and physically. I drop to the ground, my back leaning against the hospital wall before I lean my arms over my bent knees and bury my head into them as I let it out.
My shoulders shake, my chest aches, and my throat burns as I let out every nasty, ugly feeling inside of me. I feel someone sitting down next to me, but I don’t bother to lift my head. I know it’s Seb. Wordlessly, he reaches out an arm wrapping it around my shoulders in a side hug that has me losing it all over again. I lean against him as my sobs get louder, uncaring of who hears or what anyone thinks.
“She’s stage three, Seb. The doctors looked scared. We haven’t even talked to an oncologist, and they got me thinking I’m gonna lose my girl.”
“Fuck,” Seb says, his head hitting the back of the wall as he closes his eyes tight and shakes his head.
“I can’t lose her. I can’t live a goddamn day without Scar. I won’t survive it.”
He opens his eyes and turns to me, squeezing my shoulder in a move that I know is meant to be reassuring as he looks at me seriously.
“You won’t lose her. Scar is a strong woman. She can fight it. She will fight it, and you’re gonna be by her side every step of the way. It’s gonna be hard, you know that. It’s gonna be ugly. But you have to be her support. She needs you to be strong, Slate.”
I nod as I wipe under my eyes again.
“I know. I know. I will. I just…what if-”
“Cut the shit,” he snaps, though his words hold no real heat. “Don’t play the what-if game, no one wins that one. Just like on the field, one down at a time until you reach the end zone.”
“Yeah,” I rasp as I look up to see Erica watching us, tears pouring down her face.
Slowly, I stand, and as soon as I do, she’s on me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders as she cries into me. I hold her tight, taking every ounce of comfort she is offering me before letting her go. I don’t see Ezra and Aaron, so they probably went off with Ross.
I asked Scar before I left the room if she wanted me to tell anyone, she told me that she couldn’t do it. That she needed me to do it, and how could I say no to that? Whatever she needs, I’ll do. Whatever she wants, she’ll get. Nothing matters anymore, not even a little bit. Only Scar. Always Scar.
When I finally make it back to Scar’s room, a woman is sitting across from her talking, and I kick myself for leaving her alone in the first place, even if she asked me to. I hurry over to Scar’s side, holding her hand in mine as I quickly introduce myself before listening to what she was saying.
“I’m Dr. Poehler, I’m an oncologist here at Seattle Memorial. I was just telling your girlfriend about our first steps. I’ve been able to look over your scans, and to be honest, I don’t like to sugarcoat things. Cancer is tough, but I’m tougher. We need to do biopsies on the tumors we found to know more, but I would guess this is a very aggressive cancer we are dealing with.”
I feel Scar’s hand squeeze mine a little tighter at that, and I try to ease her anxiety by brushing my thumb against her hand and bringing it to my lips as Dr. Poehler continues to speak.
“How long have you been experiencing symptoms?” she asks Scar.
“I didn’t notice any symptoms,” she says quietly.
Dr. Poehler nods sympathetically as she continues.
“Common symptoms can include nausea, unexplained pain in the abdomen, pain during sex, abdominal sensitivity-”
“Oh my god,” Scar says with watering eyes.
“What, baby?” I ask.
She looks at me, opening her mouth slowly as she speaks.
“I-I’ve had symptoms for a while. Months,” she says as she turns to face Dr. Poehler. “I thought I was just sore because Slater is, uh, bigger than I’m used to, but the soreness never went away. And the abdominal sensitivity, the other day in the park-”
It’s like a puzzle clicking together as I speak for her.
“When I tickled you, and it hurt. It really hurt, didn’t it?”
She turns to me, biting her lip as she nods.
“A-and at the twin’s birthday party, I wasn’t feeling well. I got sick. Erica and Vi thought I was pregnant and made me take a pregnancy test. I thought it was just some bad sushi that we had though, when the test was negative.”
“You took a pregnancy test?” I ask, not quite sure why that is the piece that stuck out to me.
“It was negative,” she shrugs.
“I don’t care. I would have taken it with you.”
She gives me a weak smile as the doctor continues.
“Okay, I’ll make notes of this in your chart, and I will get you booked for surgery as soon as possible. We are typically booked out two to three weeks unless we can get a drop-out.”
“Sorry, did I miss this, what kind of surgery exactly? Surgery to take the tumors out?” I ask.
Dr. Poehler’s face tenses just slightly as she speaks to Scar.
“I think it’s best if we perform a total hysterectomy.”
“What?” Scar croaks.
“What’s that?” I ask, hating myself for being so fucking uneducated right now.
The doctor turns to me. “It’s where we remove the entire uterus and in Scarlett’s case, the cervix, ovaries, and fallopian tubes. From the scans alone, the cancer has already spread and leaving anything is leaving chance and I don’t like chance.”
“So, I’ll never be able to have kids?” Scarlett asks quietly.
The doctor flattens her mouth as she looks at her and shakes her head.
“You couldn’t carry them, no. Though we can save some eggs and have them frozen for you. We would just need to fertilize them before we had them frozen if that’s something you two are interested in.”
“Yes,” I say instantly. “We would like to have kids one day. So, it would still be biologically ours, just someone else would have to carry the baby?” I ask.
Poehler flicks a look at Scar before nodding.
“To put it simply, yes.”
I nod as I look to Scar. “That’s good, right?”
The look of utter devastation on her face tells me she is not seeing the upside right now, and to be honest, I’m struggling myself. But I have to stay positive for her, to stay strong. Does it make me sad that one day when we decide on kids, it won’t be as simple for us as having a little too much to drink and some messy car sex? Of course. But regardless of how they come into the world, I know that I want children with Scarlett, when all of this is behind us. I’ll pay for a dozen surrogates if that’s what she wants. We will have as many children as our hearts desire.
Fuck. Kids.
I can honestly say I feel zero hesitation when thinking this through, which should scare the shit out of me, but it only confirms what I already know. I want it all with Scar. Every beautiful, painful, ugly, wonderful thing about life. That’s why she can’t die, we have too much life to live. I’m not nearly done with her yet and she’s not allowed to be done with me.
“I’ll leave you two with some literature,” Poehler says as she hands me some pamphlets. “And I’ll have my office be in touch with you when we have an opening for surgery, if that’s the route you choose.”
“And if I don’t?” Scar asks, causing my head to whip to her at record speed.
“If you don’t want to do a hysterectomy,” Poehler speaks carefully, “and you only want to remove the tumors, we can. But the likelihood that more will return is very high, especially considering it has already spread.”
Scar doesn’t look scared like she did a minute ago. She looks almost determined.
“Maybe it won’t,” she says. “Maybe you can take them out, we can do chemo to kill the rest and that will be the end of it. More isn’t going to show up if I’m in chemo, right? I could keep my uterus. I could keep everything and-”
“I don’t recommend that course of treatment, Scarlett. Not if you want to live past Christmas.”
“She does,” I insert quickly. “We want to do whatever is going to give her the longest life possible, right, baby?”
Scar doesn’t look at me, just maintains eye contact with Poehler, who has yet to break eye contact with her. They stare at each other for several seconds before she sighs softly.
“This is a lot to take in for one day. Let me get your discharge papers going, and you two can go home and talk about it. I’m going to prescribe you something for the nausea as well as the pain if it flares up again. Scarlett, when you have made a decision, you give my team a call, and we will go from there.”
Without another word, she walks out of the room. The woman could honestly work on her bedside manner. Fucking hell.
“You’re not actually thinking of only having her take the tumors, are you?” I ask.
Scar finally looks at me, her normally glowing kaleidoscope eyes hardened and dim as she speaks.
“I am. It’s my body, Slater, and I’ll choose what happens to it.”
“Fuck that,” I snap. “It’s the love of my life’s body, and right now, you’re not in the right frame of mind to be making decisions for her.”
She scoffs. “You act like I’m two different people.”
“You are right now, because the love of my life wouldn’t be so willing to gamble with her life like this. She is analytical, rational, and would make the best decision to provide the highest quality of life for the longest.”
Scar doesn’t respond, she just stares at me. The hardened mask she’s trying to wear begins to slip before her mouth slowly parts, her face twisting in pain as she lets out the most haunting cry I’ve ever heard. It breaks something inside me and the only thing I know to do in this moment is to hold her. Seb’s right. This is going to be hard, and painful. So fucking painful. But we will make it out the other side, and we will be stronger for it.
God I fucking hope so.
Scarlett
It’s been two weeks to the day since I was rushed to the hospital. Two weeks since the life I thought I was living, the future I thought I was planning, shattered apart.
I feel numb, like I’m floating through a dream. Nothing feels real, and everything seems hard. I’m grateful the oncologist prescribed me the anti-nausea meds because if I didn’t have them, I’m not sure how my esophagus would be holding up, and I wish I were joking. I’m sick constantly, and in two weeks, I’m already losing weight quickly because of it. I can’t tell if the meds are working or not, honestly, but if they are, I’d hate to see what I’d look like without them.
After I was discharged, I was swarmed in the waiting room by everyone. Slater warned me they were all here and told me he’d tell everyone to go home if I needed time, but I knew they needed to see me. It was the same way I felt when my mom got sick. I needed to see her, touch her. Reassure myself that she was alive and well. Or at least, as well as she could be. Until she wasn’t.
There were many tears shed, mainly by all of them that day. I think I was in too much shock after the initial wave of it all. Probably still am, if I’m honest. My dad held me for so long, tears pouring down his face. It was only the second time I ever saw him cry, the first being the day mom died.
My brothers both held me, promised it would be okay and they would be there for me, and I loved them for it, but a bitter part of me wanted to tell them they shouldn’t make promises they can’t keep.
Slater’s parents were a little less emotional. Don’t get me wrong, Alison was crying, but being a cancer survivor herself, she gave me words of encouragement rather than false promises, which I appreciated.
Erica cried. A lot. And Seb gave me the most sympathetic look I’ve ever seen on the man’s face. It was honestly a sight to behold, but I wasn’t really in the mood to properly enjoy it, unfortunately.
Since then, I’ve gotten calls and flowers from Collin and his wife, Declan and Vi, a few guys from the team, and even Trevor somehow got a hold of my number (probably from Erica) and sent me a text message. It said something like, “cancer sucks, but I know for a fact you suck better.” Slater was furious when he read it, but it kinda made me laugh so I liked it.
Obviously, Aberton reached out to me about my job and told me that it was mine when I was better. I thought he was being a little optimistic with the whole “when” part, but that’s just me. Slater told me that he was going to sit out the rest of the season to be with me, but I reminded him we are already well into the season and there was no point in him paying hundreds of thousands in fines when I’m literally sitting down. He didn’t agree. It’s one of the things we’ve disagreed on the most, next to whether or not I should have the hysterectomy.
I know I should, I’m not a doctor, but I have enough of a medical background to know where everyone else is coming from, doctors and family alike. I realize I’m being unreasonable. But I’m only twenty seven. Twenty seven. I’m supposed to have years. Years to decide about when to have kids, how many to have, and how I’ll have them. If I’m honest with myself, I’ve finally admitted to myself that I wish I already had them.
One day, I can get a surrogate to carry my baby. It will still be genetically mine. I know that, and I know that I would love them with all my heart. But it breaks me that I won’t be able to do the one thing a woman is supposed to be able to do. I won’t be able to feel my baby grow inside me, feel them move for the first time, feel them have hiccups inside me. I won’t be able to read a book to it or sing songs so that it’s comforted by my voice when it’s born. It seems so trivial in the grand scheme of living or dying, but for some reason to me, I can’t shake the reminder of all that I’m about to lose.
I say about to because I am currently in a hospital gown waiting to be taken to the back for my hysterectomy. Though I wanted to dig my heels in, Slater got on his knees and begged me to go through with it, that he needed me to live. I knew in that moment I needed to do what was best for me long term, I knew I needed to do whatever would buy me more time.
They are going to harvest my eggs and freeze them for me so that I can use them when I’m ready. Slater already provided them with his “contribution”, as he liked to call it. It was shocking to me how quickly he agreed, practically insisted on using his sperm. I told him if he wasn’t comfortable taking that step that I could use a donor, to which I received the dirtiest look of my life.
“That means the baby will be half you and half me. What if we aren’t together anymore and I decide I want a baby? You’re okay with that?”
He looks at me like I’ve grown a second head as he tilts to the side slightly.
“Bubbles, in what fucked up universe are you imagining that you and I exist in the same time and aren’t together? Wait, scratch that. I don’t want to know because whatever it is, I don’t want it. There is no question if we will or will not be together down the road. I’m wherever you are, always.”
“How are you feeling, baby?” Slater asks, shaking me out of my thoughts.
I turn to him, squeezing his hand tighter as I speak.
“Scared,” I admit truthfully.
“Don’t be,” he says simply as he brushes some hair out of my face. “It’ll be done easy peasy, and then, we can get you set up in bed. I have all of your favorite snacks waiting for you and the entire One Tree Hill box set with our names on it.”
“My name,” I correct. “You have a game tomorrow in Cincinnati. And let’s be honest, all of that might go to waste if I don’t make it out of this-”
“I swear to god, Scar, don’t you dare finish that sentence,” he says with an aggravated breath. “First off, you know that I’m not playing tomorrow, and Coach understands. Second, you know what the doctor said, you have to stay positive. You can’t go into surgery with a negative mindset. It can be dangerous.”
“I’m just-”
“Scared,” he interrupts, not guessing the correct word I was going to use but hitting the nail on the head at the same time. “I know you are, Bubbles. I’m ready to tear this whole hospital apart with the nerves bouncing around in me, but I’m not worried about the surgery not going successfully.”
“Why is that?” I ask.
“Because we have way too much life to live still, and I intend to savor every moment with you.”
Tears spring to my eyes for the first time in days. I thought I was past this emotional side of things, but I guess it hits in waves. Though right now all I can think about is how much I love this man.
I slip my arm around the back of his neck and bring him closer to me, pressing his lips to mine as we lose ourselves in each other. Unfortunately, breaking us apart is a knock at the door. A nurse steps inside with a wheelchair before giving me a small smile. Slater clings to me for a second longer, like he isn’t ready to let go. Like he isn’t nearly as confident as he wants me to believe before he finally releases me.
“You promised me I would never have to live without you, Bubbles. You promised. So I need you to fight, okay?”
My heart aches at his words, at the desperation in his voice. I know he needs me to fight, but I’m just so freaking scared. Still, I have to try. I muster a small smile before I nod softly.
“I love you.”
He smiles at me, shaking his head like words aren’t enough before he speaks.
“I love you too. So fucking much.”
Slowly, I stand, only wobbling for a moment before I’m able to take the few steps into the wheelchair. The nurse slowly starts wheeling me out of the room and into the hall when I turn to see Slater still sitting in the same place, watching on as if he’s frozen. Our eyes don’t lose contact until the door shuts behind us. The thunk sends a rush straight through my chest, forcing me to take a steadying breath as we pass through the ‘staff only’ doors, knowing I’m about to take the first step in what’s sure to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
