Chapter 9 - The Spot That Broke Our Hearts
Three months after Grace’s surgery, six weeks after her last round of chemo, they walked into Mercy General for her first big follow-up PET/CT scan. The last three months had been a blur of radiation appointments—five days a week, for five weeks, that had left her skin red and raw, exhausted, and more blood work than either of them could count. But Grace’s hair was starting to grow back, soft and curly and brown, just like it had been when they first met. She was gaining weight, her energy coming back, and for the first time in months, they’d started to believe that maybe the cancer was really gone.
But Nathan was still a nervous wreck. He’d barely slept the night before, his mind running through every worst-case scenario, and he’d forgotten to eat breakfast, his stomach churning so bad he thought he’d throw up in the waiting room. Grace held his hand, her thumb rubbing slow circles over his knuckles, as they waited for the technician to call her name. “It’s gonna be fine,” she said, smiling at him. “I can feel it. No cancer. Nada. Zilch. We’re gonna go get tacos after this. The good ones in Dupont Circle. The ones with the mango salsa.”
He forced a smile, squeezing her hand. “Tacos sound great. But only if you let me get extra guac.”
The technician called her name a minute later, and Grace stood up, pressing a quick kiss to his lips. “Be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”
He sat in the waiting room for an hour, scrolling through his phone but not reading anything, his leg bouncing up and down so fast the chair shook. Rico texted him a photo of the Capitol Hill job site, the drywall finally up, the building starting to look like something, and Nathan smiled, typing back a quick Looks great. Good job, man. before locking his phone, staring at the ceiling.
Finally, the nurse called them back to Dr. Patel’s office—Grace’s oncologist, a kind woman with a bright pink streak in her hair who’d been with Grace since her diagnosis. They sat down across from her, Grace’s hand in Nathan’s, as Dr. Patel pulled up Grace’s scan on the computer screen, her face serious. Nathan’s heart stopped. He knew that face. He’d seen it before, on the day Grace was diagnosed.
“Grace, Nathan,” Dr. Patel said, turning the screen toward them. “The scan looks good overall. No signs of cancer in your pelvis, your abdomen, your lymph nodes. All the surgical sites are healing well. But…” She paused, pointing to a small white dot on the screen, in the upper right lobe of Grace’s lung. “There’s a 3-millimeter spot here. On your right lung.”
Grace’s hand tightened around Nathan’s so hard he thought she’d break his fingers. “What does that mean? Is it back?”
Dr. Patel held up her hand, her voice calm. “We don’t know. It’s very small—too small to biopsy with a needle right now. It could be scar tissue from the surgery, from the anesthesia, from a cold you had a few months back. It could be nothing. But it could also be a metastatic nodule. A small spot of the ovarian cancer that spread to your lung before we did the surgery.” She paused, looking at them both. “I want to do a repeat scan in four weeks. If it’s grown, we’ll do a surgical biopsy to remove it and test it. If it’s the same size or gone, we’ll just keep an eye on it. For now? We wait.”
The drive home was silent. Grace stared out the window, her face blank, not saying a word. Nathan didn’t know what to say. There was nothing to say. They’d been so close. So close to being able to breathe again, to start their future, and now this. A tiny white dot on a screen that could be nothing… or could be the end of everything.
They didn’t go for tacos. They went straight home, and Grace walked into the bedroom, closing the door softly behind her. Nathan heard her crying through the door, and he leaned against the wall outside, his own tears falling, not knowing what to do. He wanted to burst in there, hold her, tell her it was gonna be okay, but he didn’t know if it would be okay. He couldn’t lie to her. Not anymore.
For the next three days, Grace was quiet. She barely spoke, barely ate, spent most of her time lying in bed, staring at the wall. Nathan tried everything: made her favorite meals, put on their favorite movies, suggested walks around the block, but nothing worked. She was shutting down, retreating back into the shell she’d lived in for the year before he’d found out about the cancer, and he was terrified he’d lose her again, even if she was still physically there.
On the fourth night, he was lying in bed next to her, listening to her breathe, when he had an idea. He reached over, grabbed his phone, and booked a last-minute weekend at the small beach house in Delaware they’d rented for their first anniversary, the one with the big porch overlooking the Atlantic, the one where they’d stayed up all night talking about the kids they wanted, the life they’d build. He booked it for the next day, then set an alarm for 7 a.m., closed his eyes, and held Grace tight.
The next morning, he woke her up early, handing her a cup of coffee. “Pack a bag. We’re going out of town for the weekend.”
She frowned, rubbing her eyes. “What? Where? We have the scan in four weeks, I can’t—”
“We can,” he said, cutting her off, pulling her out of bed. “The doctor said to wait, right? So we’re gonna wait somewhere that isn’t this bedroom, staring at the walls. C’mon. I packed your favorite hoodie, your sweatpants, the book you’ve been trying to read. We’re leaving in 10 minutes.”
The drive to Delaware took two hours, Grace quiet most of the way, until they turned onto the coastal highway, and she saw the ocean. Her face softened, just a little, and she rolled the window down, letting the salt air blow in her face. “I haven’t been here since our first anniversary.”
“Exactly,” Nathan said, smiling, as he pulled into the driveway of the small, blue beach house, the same one they’d stayed in five years prior. “Figured we could use a reminder of all the good stuff we’ve got to fight for.”
They spent the weekend doing nothing: walking on the beach at sunrise, collecting seashells, eating fish tacos from the small shack down the road, sitting on the porch at night, wrapped in blankets, watching the waves crash. Slowly, Grace started to open up. On the second night, as they sat on the beach, watching the sunset paint the sky pink and purple, she leaned her head on his shoulder, her voice soft. “My biggest regret? That we never had kids. I always wanted a little girl. With your eyes. And your stubbornness. And your terrible sense of humor.” She laughed, a wet, shaky sound. “If this spot is cancer… I’ll never get that. I’ll never get to be a mom. We’ll never get that big house in the country with the dog and the porch swing.”
Nathan wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close, and kissed the top of her head. “We will get that. Even if the spot is cancer? We fight it. We do more chemo, more surgery, more radiation, whatever it takes. And if we can’t have a baby the old-fashioned way? We adopt. We do surrogacy. We foster. We do whatever we have to do to build that family. But none of that matters if we don’t have each other. Okay?” He tilted her chin up, so she had to look at him. “Whatever happens on that scan next week? We face it together. No more secrets. No more shutting down. No more running. We fight. Together. Always.”
May you like
Grace stared at him, her eyes wet, and nodded. “Together. Always.”
They made a pact that night, sitting in the sand, as the waves crashed around them: no matter what the results were, they’d keep going. They’d keep fighting. They’d keep choosing each other, every single day, no matter how hard it got. And when they drove home on Sunday night, Grace was laughing again, telling bad jokes, singing off-key to the radio, and for the first time all week, Nathan breathed. Whatever happened next? They’d face it together. And that was enough.
