Breakfast with Billie Holiday Ch. 03

To the reader,

This chapter was finished over a year ago, but just before I finished it I decided that I needed some time apart from it. In my life I have been unfortunate enough to lose many people that I dearly care for, and not too long ago someone very close to me passed away due to an aggressive cancer. Honestly, I just needed some to put a little distance between myself and this chapter because it hit too close to home. I hate giving advice, but I will tell you that if a loved one has cancer, you should spend as much time with them as you can. Pride and past be damned, be there for them as much as you can.

Heathen

~

'A sailboat in the moonlight
And you
Wouldn't that be heaven
A heaven just for two
A soft breeze on a June night and you
What a perfect setting
For letting dreams come true

A chance to sail away
To Sweetheart Bay
Beneath the stars that shine
A chance to drift
For you to lift
Your tender lips to mine
Some things dear
That I long for are few
Just give me a sailboat in the moonlight and you'

Chapter 3

I stood there baffled for a moment, as if the words didn't make sense to me. She took me by the hand and led me inside, taking me to the bathroom in our master bedroom. There were three pregnancy tests sitting neatly atop the toilet tank. She picked the first one up and held it high for me to see. There was a pink plus in the small white rectangle at the top.

"A pink plus means positive." She said curtly, setting the plastic wand aside and picking up the next. There were two red bands at the top of the second pregnancy test. "This one uses stripes, two for pregnant and one for not pregnant." And then lastly she set the second pregnancy test down and picked up the third. There was a green circle at the top. "And this one has a green circle for pregnant and a red circle for not pregnant."

"All three are positive." Was all I could think to say, still in disbelief.

"Yes they are." She said, and throttled me with a strong hug. "I'm going to the doctor to confirm tomorrow morning, and you're coming with me."

"Of course I am." I responded with a smile. "Of course I am."

It was in the weeks and months that followed that I learned many lessons about time. Time is an eccentric creature that has developed the keen ability to fool you with age. In the days that followed her pregnancy, time suddenly took on an elastic quality, days melting into minutes as we hurried about making arrangements. Entire weeks were lost to my memory as we rushed to take care of every conceivable detail and need, but at the same time there are moments that stand out in striking clarity to me; sitting on the sofa watching a movie, discussing baby names.

'Elise.' She said, her voice a velvety sigh. 'Her name's going to be Elise.' She was lying with her head in my lap while I tolerated one of many sappy 'chick flicks' that she loved so dearly. As a matter of fact, there is a memory hidden within that memory itself; long ago Virginia mused that if I tolerate her dreadfully predictable romance movies, I must indeed truly love her to endure such torture.

She was wearing a snug fitting blouse that night, and I noticed for the first time that her breasts were getting bigger. I found myself instantly aroused as I looked down at her generous cleavage spilling over her top. She felt me growing hard and before either one of us realized it, she was sitting atop me and her blouse was flying across the room. One of the many things I discovered about life during my time with Virginia was the joy of pregnant sex, which was quite wonderful. She always had a healthy appetite for sex, but in the days and weeks that followed, her sex drive turned into a ravenous hellion that tested the limits of my endurance. The slightest touch resulted in her cornering me in the kitchen or the bathroom, sliding down to her knees like a perverse siren, unzipping my pants and pulling me along helplessly toward the bed by my pride.

As fate would have it, though, our bliss was soon to be over. Late one night well into her second trimester, I was torn from a careless sleep by the sound of Virginia crying aloud. I fumbled across our dark bedroom and slapped at the light switch, only to a see a scene so disturbing that it is still vivid in my memory to this day. She was lying there in a tangled bunch of knotted sheets, her hands clutched between her legs and writhing in pain. The sheets were stained a sickening shade of angry red. 'Oh no, she's had a miscarriage' I thought to myself, although I didn't dare let myself say it out loud.

She let out a long, wailing cry that still haunts me now, and then she held a clutched hand up in front of her. Her fist was dark red, like an image from a militiaman's anti-government poster.

I knew as well, though, she had to be thinking the same thing. I am a firm believer that there are things in life that every person has to accept, as they immovable and unable to be changed. One of those things for me was realizing early on into our relationship that Virginia was a deeply intelligent woman, and I knew my intelligence would never match her own. She was a whip-smart gal, and that was all there was to it. I accepted and respected, often benefitting from her judgment. I accepted that no matter how quick on the draw I might be, she would always be two steps ahead. It was just in her nature to be keen.

"I'm losing the baby!" She heaved, barely able to speak.

"No you're not Honey." I told her, knowing I might be lying to her but feeling a need to say it just the same. "No we're not."

Hours later I was sitting in the lobby of the hospital, jumping at every sound. Each time a door opened I expected to see some atypical senior doctor type come walking out with a clipboard and a wary look on his face. Instead I was simply forced to wait. And wait.

After what seemed like sixteen centuries, a sheepish looking nurse found me in the hallway and ushered me back into the intensive care unit to Virginia's room. The doctor was waiting there for me, and to my dismay he looked just as I expected he would. When the nurse left the doctor wasted no time. For that I was grateful, although there was a definite sting that I felt when he described her condition in such cold, clinical terms. It wasn't that his bedside manner was bad; he was a very likeable fellow. It was just that everything he was telling me was the worst case scenario. One thing I must say that I was grateful for, though, was that he didn't give me any false hope. He had a large envelope with him, one so big that it could hold something the size of a small poster. He took several slides from it and hung them on an eye-level lighted board. When he snapped the light switch on, the bright white illuminated a terrible image, even to my untrained eyes.

The slides looked like an angry Rorschach in bright white and varying shades of black. There was a large tumor just above her right ovary and three smaller growths clustered together around the left. Another amorphous mass was sitting at the base of her spine. I stood there, reeling on my feet a little bit as he described her diagnosis. Some of his words were lost to me, while others seemed to float through the air and settle into my brain like some hellish wind-born poison. 'Ruptured cysts', 'Epithelial' and 'carcinoma' crept into my ears and tickled me with a childish horror that I couldn't escape. 'Metastasis' and 'malignant' reverberated in my mind, like a damning echo that wouldn't die away. I felt as if all of the warmth in my body had left me, and thought to myself 'It can't get any worse.'

"This area is of particular concern." The doctor said, and there was a worry in his voice that I could detect despite his perfectly clinical tone.

He placed another slide on the board, one that showed an enlarged image of the fetus. I hate to think of myself saying the word. Yes it was a fetus, but it was not just a fetus, it was our child. It was our baby, and most importantly it was the child that Virginia had lived for, for so long. It was the one thing I wanted to give her more than anything in the world. He pointed out a mass of grayish black at the base of the baby's neck. From the center of the mass a tentacle-like gray strand stretched down onto the spine, like a sinister blind worm creeping its way along the baby's back.

"Mr. Forehand I have to be honest with you. This is not good." He said, and then the world turned gray before my eyes.

The next thing I knew, I was looking up at the ceiling, trying to figure out just exactly what the hell had happened. I passed out and fell flat on my back. I would have never thought that the spoken word could have such an effect on me, but upon hearing of just how sick my beloved Virginia was, the grief and worry got the better of me.

In the weeks that followed, time took on that surreal elastic quality again, only it was the polar opposite of the careless and hopeful bliss we lived with at first. There were days that seemed to be a blur of gray linoleum floors and sterile white walls, punctuated by slow-motion moments where I found myself sitting beside her hospital bed holding her hand as she cried. Weeks were lost in a haze, yet brief moments would jump out to startle me like a shriek in a haunted house. I had days where I felt my resolve was good and I honestly believed that I was strong enough to carry Virginia through it all, and just when I convinced myself that my strength wasn't a bastard child of foolish hope, time would slow to a crawl again and we would be faced with yet another crushing blow.

Sickly words surrounded me and touched my heart with an icy finger, making it impossible to sleep or stop worrying. 'it has spread to the lymph nodes' they whispered to me, merciless. Cold and alien words like 'malignant fetal musculoskeletal sarcoma' drifted in and out of my consciousness while I sat in waiting room after waiting room, lobby after lobby over what seemed like a span of a thousand years.

Watching her waste away was what hurt me the most. I knew I had reached a point where I could no longer hide my fear, and she could see it in my eyes. I considered myself to be a wily and tough person who could survive anything, but sitting there in yet another hospital room holding her withered hands while I told her one polite lie after another had reduced me to a sickened mess. Even at my best and strongest I could never lie to her, and she knew it.

"We're going to lose the baby, aren't we?" She asked me, her voice barely a hush.

"Yes. But I'm not going to lose you." I told her, hoping with all my heart that I was right.

I can say with honesty that I haven't had many shameful moments in my life, but I must confess that for many days I lived with a damning hope that we would only lose the baby and not the both of them. I felt ashamed and embarrassed for secretly hoping for such a thing, but knowing that the baby was beyond saving , I had to cling to the thought of being able to save her at least. At the time I thought such a feeling was the worst thing I had ever lived to endure, and I would soon learn that I was wrong.

Time took on another surreal leap and three weeks went by in a blistering flash. I felt a cold, wet prick at the nape of my neck that shook my senses into clarity, and I found myself standing in a cold drizzling rain as I watched two caskets being slowly lowered into the Earth, one large and one small. I remember people holding me, hands touching me and voices floating in and out of the gray cloud I was existing in, but most of what had happened was gone to me.

She was gone, and Elise was gone with her.

Six months passed by, and in that time I believe that I collapsed into myself in a way, living in an autonomous state of bare-essential existence. I couldn't recall the last time I had spoken to another person or interacted with anyone, but apparently I had at some point since there was still food in my refrigerator and gas in my car. One bright morning I found myself sitting in the sun room with a mug of coffee, the sun stabbing at my eyes painfully. The sunlight was striking and glinting off of the wind chimes hanging around me and it seemed impossible to escape. Something about it threw me into a childish fit of rage. I snatched them all down and stuffed them into an ammo can, slamming the lid like a jilted lover leaving someone behind. I sat there crying for a long time, crying until I felt I had cried all of my energy and life away. I had never felt so tired in my life, so completely defeated. I felt that I was broken.

It would be weeks before I remembered seeing or speaking to another person, and quite frankly I was completely removed of any desire to see anyone. Dusk was settling and the sun was just below the water on the horizon, and there I was again, nursing a cup of coffee in the sun room. I heard a knock at my door, and immediately I had a strange notion; it sounded fearful, if there were such a thing. It sounded like the knock of someone who was terribly afraid to knock. For a moment I was uncertain I had heard anything at all; my mind had taken to playing cruel tricks on me, and then I heard the fearful knock again.

"Goddammitall." I sighed and stood to answer the door.

I had every intention of opening the door and barking "I don't have any wind chimes to sell." and closing the door before the person there could respond. Yet when I opened my door I found myself speechless for a moment. I had no desire to see another human being for the rest of my natural life, or at least I had convinced myself of that, yet standing there at my door was a young woman looking up at me with big brown eyes, full of fear and worry. At that moment I couldn't see anything else in the world but her eyes, and they were beautiful to me.

To Be Continued