At least the left breast wasn’t filled with the same tender scar tissue. Gwen released the metal bar under the table, expecting to breeze through the rest of the exam.
While she kept her eyes closed, the same dance of Dr. Jesse’s fingers tapped across her left breast. Up, down, right, left. Sigh. Right, left. Right, left. Left. Left. Press. Squeeze. Crunch.
“Ow!” Gwen cried out, blasted with searing pain.
When Dr. Jesse’s warm hands left her body, Gwen opened her eyes. The surgeon had gone back to the counter and swiped through all of the films. There were so many. How does she keep track? One X-ray after another flew in front of the surgeon’s face.
“What is it?” Gwen asked.
With skilled precision, Dr. Jesse began stacking films against a back-lit X-ray illuminator. And then out of her pocket came a brass plated magnifying glass. In Dr. Sage’s office, blown up X-ray images on a seventeen-inch monitor showed Gwen the initial set of suspicious cells. Here was Dr.
Jesse, using a seventeenth century trinket.
She swore and starting sorting films again. “When did you originate?”
At the near end of the pile, Dr. Jesse gripped another film, and held it up to the illuminator. “There you are.”
From what Gwen could count, the next seven films or three and a half years’ worth went back up one by one and Dr. Jesse circled the same spot with a red marker.
“Yep, that was it. Damn it!”
“Dr. Jesse, you’re really scaring—”
“Get dressed.” She put her hand on Gwen’s thigh. In a commanding tone, she said, “And meet me in my office.”
Gwen swung her legs over the table and sat upright. “Dr. Jesse what did you feel?”
“A lump.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
wen sat alone in the cold room, shaking and confused. She couldn’t recall Dr. Jesse ever being Gso curt. In all these years, there had never been a look of worry on that beautiful face. Today?
Dr. Jesse turned into a warrior. Even the shade of her skin had changed. She seemed downright offended. Like an enemy had crawled into her foxhole while she’d been sleeping.
In an office that looked more like a chic Manhattan living room, Dr. Jesse sat at her desk. Gwen took a seat and the surgeon spun the monitor around for her to have a look. Thank God, a computer.
She feared leeches were next.
“Seven mammograms ago, Dr. Sage saw this.” Dr. Jesse pointed to a miniscule dot. Like photos in a kaleidoscope, subsequent films slid by. “You see this here?”
Gwen squinted. “Sort of.”
“It’s a calcification. Your breasts are filled with them. They’re more prevalent here.” She tapped her pen against a spidery web of white lines in the lower right quadrant of Gwen’s breast.
“Calcifications can turn into benign cysts.”
Gwen draped her body forward and her head almost hit the desk in relief. “So, all of that back there was just about a cyst?”
Dr. Jesse’s eyes shot back at her. “Except when they become problematic masses. When they’re in the calcification stage, see how unorganized the shape is?”
The group of cells resembled an amoeba. “Okay.”
“It will usually enlarge and then take its new shape. That’s why we missed it. It tricked us by keeping its unorganized shape right up until the critical moment of forming.”
“What do I do now?” Her worry kicked up all over again.
“I’m calling Dr. Sage.” The surgeon picked up the phone. “You’re getting a biopsy right now.”
Gwen took the referral from Sylvie with shaking hands, didn’t remember if she even paid the visit bill, then ambled around the corner to the hospital.
Slowing her usual brisk pace to a zombie stagger, Gwen entered the lobby full of anxiety and dread. Even the Starbucks cart with its fresh coffee aroma and tasty looking treats barely registered.
In Radiology, at the sign-in desk, she directed extra venom at the clipboard and that pen tethered by those damn dirty rubber bands.
In the locker room, where the usual frigid temperature sent goosebumps over her body, Gwen robotically removed her dress. The white and heather gray color-block shift dress had been the last in her size at Flagship, prompting the manager to discount it heavily just to get it off the sales floor.
Dr. Sage appeared in the waiting area moments later, to collect her. The leggy blonde must have worn short skirts and high heels every day, because Gwen had never seen her in anything else. “Dr.
Jesse said there’s something in the left breast for us to look at.”
Gwen stood. “How could something that went undetected in my last mammogram grow into something Dr. Jesse actually felt?”
“The mass grew since the last test,” Dr. Sage said with a regretful shrug.
“But wait, when a mass grows that big in such a short time—” Gwen clutched the doctor’s white sleeve.
“Let’s go have a look right now and see what we’re dealing with.” Dr. Sage set Gwen back under control.
“Wait!” The words she’d been stumbling over for two weeks easily spilled out of her mouth. “I’m pregnant.”
“Yes, Dr. Jesse mentioned that.” Dr. Sage pointed to the long cold hallway connecting the waiting lounge and the testing rooms. “We’ll do an ultrasound before the biopsy. Both rooms are being prepped right now.”
“I need a few minutes.” Gwen snatched her phone out of her work bag and dialed Andrew’s phone.
He picked up on the first ring, sounding frazzled. “Hey, can I call you back, I’m talking to the—”
“Andrew, I need you,” Gwen choked out.
“Where are you?” he asked in a deep serious tone.
“I’m at the hospital.” She’d hoped to find her ‘it’s no big deal’ voice and be strong, but Gwen didn’t possess anything but fear at the moment.
“Oh my God, what happened?”
“I was with my breast surgeon. I made the appointment this morning. I didn’t know...what being pregnant would mean for all of my...tests.” Gwen exhaled. “She felt something, Andrew. They want me to do a biopsy, right now.”
His silence suggested she sent him into a tailspin. After a full minute, he responded, “Wait for me in the lobby, I’ll walk up with you.”
“I’m already up here.” She dug deep to avoid a crack in her voice that would only fire up Andrew’s worst fears.
“Okay, honey.” There was rustling in the background. “I’m on my way. Gwen, wait!”
“I’m on the third floor.”
“No. I... Gwendolyn, I—”
“No. Don’t you dare say those words to me now.” She abruptly ended the call with clammy shaking fingers.
She still wasn’t sure his committing to her was out of obligation, she sure as shit didn’t want to hear ‘I love you’ out of pity.
The sonogram was brief, but painful, and Dr. Sage easily found the mass. Gwen stepped into the biopsy procedure room and made eye contact with the dreaded exam table.
Having gone through the biopsy procedure several times, Gwen answered the usual pre-procedure questions like a lifeless rag doll.