The car jarred through a pothole. Addie cried out at the sharp spike of pain. She grabbed at the handle of the passenger door and breathed through the agony. Slow tempo: in, out, in, out. Goddamn. That had been a bad one, the worst since they had left the medical center an hour ago.

“Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I missed that one in the dark,” Tom said. “Should I pull over? Find a gas station?”

Addie brushed her sleeve over her teary eyes before turning to Tom. He was focused on driving, his gaze never straying from the highway. His strong hands gripped the steering wheel; his shoulders were rigid. He hated to drive in the rain, and it had been storming all day.

“No.” Her first word since they had walked out of the exam room. Addie glanced at the dashboard clock, but it mocked her with its display: too soon to re-dose her pain medication. “I’m fine. Keep going.” The jolt of pain was settling into the usual throbbing, like a single piano key being pounded, then stroked. Forte to mezzo forte to piano. She shifted on the thick pillow under her to find a more comfortable position. After two torturous months of hurting, she could endure the softer pain. “I just want to go home.”

Tom nodded, a small motion. “Do you want to talk about it?”

The appointment with the surgeon? “No. Not now.” Not ever, really. His jaw tightened, and she knew that he had more to say. “I’m in too much pain right now,” Addie said. She drew her arms over her chest. “We’ll discuss it tomorrow.”

Tom was quiet.

Thank goodness. Addie lay her head against the side window. The glass was cold against her cheek. “I guess we’ll have to cancel the wedding.” She managed a flat tone to cover the cymbals crashing together in her chest. Their wedding was in two months, and she had been planning it since Tom had proposed almost a year ago. “The honeymoon. Everything.”

Tom made a noise, a grunt that was a question. “Let’s get the test results before making any decisions. Maybe we won’t need to reschedule.”

Maybe? They both had sat in the surgeon’s office and heard what she had to say. The woman was certain of the diagnosis; it was stamped all over her face. Cancer. Addie had cancer.

“What happens next?” Addie had asked the surgeon. A biopsy to confirm the diagnosis, scans to check whether it had spread. Then chemotherapy and radiation. An ileostomy because the treatment would worsen her Crohn’s disease. “An ileostomy,” the doctor had explained, “that’s when you poop into a bag on your belly.” After that, sentences became a jumbled mess, like the discordant chords that her four-year-old daughter hammered out on their baby grand piano.

She couldn’t let Tom marry her. It wouldn’t be right. Addie would be flawed, and he would divorce her, just like her first husband did. “I didn’t sign up for a sick wife,” Josh had said as he shoved the divorce papers at her, when Charlotte wasn’t even a month old.

Their headlights glared against the rain-slicked road. Decaying barns and derelict billboards scrolled past her window. The car sped by a destination sign on the side of the highway: forty miles to Watertown. Forty miles to home.

---

 

“Addie, we’re here.”

The car was parked in their driveway, next to her mother’s station wagon. She groaned. The throbbing drummed out a steady beat.

Tom opened her door and reached for her arm. He held an umbrella that the wind threatened to tear from his grasp.

Addie withdrew from his touch. “No, I can get out myself.”

“Sorry,” he said, jerking back his hand as if she had slammed the car door on it. The wind blew the umbrella inside out.

She thought of apologizing, but the moment passed. Instead, she said, “Why don’t you check on the animals?” Tom would fret if he stayed; he didn’t like to see her in pain. “I’m fine on my own.”

Tom gave a lingering nod. He started toward the barn, his head bent and his shoulders hunched against the rain. The useless umbrella hung by his side.

Addie eased herself out of the car. There was a trick to it, to avoid the worst of the pain: small movements, slow movements. Tom couldn’t help with this. He wouldn’t mean to, but he’d just hurt her more.

It was a relief to stand after all that time in the car. She stretched her arms toward the sky where the clouds were cloaking the moon and stars. The wind sent stinging rain into her face. When upright, Addie almost forgot the throbbing. Almost—even with the pills, the pain was a held note that never ended.

She followed the gray flagstones to the front door, splashing through the puddles along the path. Her loose, black yoga pants billowed around her legs. The outdoor lamps burned a bright white, but the curtained windows were dark.

Her cold fingers fumbled with the key as she unlocked the door. Shivering, she stepped into the warm living room. The heat pump was murmuring. Charlotte’s little cartoon-character shoes were neatly stored in the pink cubby by the door. Addie kicked her soaked sneakers onto the doormat and dropped her purse and keys onto the hall table as if this were any other day.

Her mother was asleep on the overstuffed sofa. The multihued lights from the muted television played upon her lined face. Her arrhythmic snores resounded through the room. A blue-and-green afghan covered her legs.

Addie tried to sneak past her mother as if she were a curfew-tardy teenager again. A sudden, bright flash from the television caused her mother to stir, then wake.

Her mother squinted at Addie. “Sweetheart, you’re finally home.” Her brassy voice was too loud even when she whispered. She sat up on the sofa and grabbed for the afghan as it tumbled to the floor. “How did the appointment go? What did the specialist have to say? I was worried. Why didn’t you call me?”

Addie shushed her mother before she woke Charlotte. “Mom, it’s been a really long day. I’m tired and I don’t want to discuss it right now.”

With narrowed eyes, her mother scanned Addie’s face. “Oh, God. It’s bad, isn’t it?” Her fingers clenched the afghan.

“Mom, please.” Her shoulders collapsed, her arms fell to her sides. “Not tonight.” Addie couldn’t handle saying the terrible words tonight. Tomorrow she would be Addie-with-cancer. Not tonight.

Her mother pursed her lips. “I don’t understand why you can’t just tell me.” She folded the afghan in half and then into fourths, matching the corners.

“Because I want to take my pain pill. Because I’m tired. Because I want to go to sleep.” Because if she told her, that would make it true. Her head jerked; her jaw was clenched. If she relaxed, she’d start to cry and never stop. “Are those good enough reasons?”

Mom paused the folding. Her eyebrows rose. “Fine. It’ll keep until tomorrow.”

Addie sighed and ran her hand through her damp hair. Dammit, she hadn’t intended to snap at her mother; it wasn’t her mother she was mad at. “How was Charlotte?”

“Charlotte was a little angel.” Mom’s face softened. “We played and then had dinner. She fell asleep while I read to her.”

“Great.” Addie attempted a smile as a substitute for an apology. “Thanks for babysitting her today, Mom.” She did appreciate her mother’s help. She’d be lost without her. After the divorce, when Addie was too debilitated by the Crohn’s disease to cope, Mom had cared for both her and baby Charlotte. That was before Tom came into her life. “We’ll talk tomorrow. I promise.”

Behind Addie, the front door clicked open and shut. Tom, back from the barn.

Her mother stood from the couch, the afghan pressed against her belly. “Tom,” her mother said. She strode past Addie toward him.

“I’m going to eat,” Addie said. She walked away, toward the kitchen.

“Tom, what happened today? I know it’s bad, but she won’t tell me anything.” Addie overheard her mother from the hallway. “I’m scared.”

“Susan, I know,” Tom replied in his baritone. Two thuds—his shoes dropping to the floor. “She’ll tell you tomorrow. Please, let her rest tonight.”

---

 

The dim kitchen lit up when Addie opened the refrigerator door. Mom had made Charlotte’s favorite: chicken fingers and macaroni and cheese. A plastic-wrap-covered plate of the leftovers sat on a shelf for Tom to warm up for his dinner. That used to be Addie’s favorite meal when she was little. Addie pulled a glass container of white rice from the refrigerator. Now it made her sick.

The microwave hummed as the timer counted down. Three beeps rang out when it was done. She spooned the lukewarm food into her mouth. Chew. Swallow. Repeat. Food was sustenance, sometimes an enemy: she no longer noticed the taste.

She left the empty bowl and the spoon in the sink. Her mother had washed the dirty dishes from breakfast while she and Tom were out. The spilled oatmeal by the stove had been scrubbed away, the dishwasher unloaded. All the housework had fallen to her mother and Tom since the pain began.

Her pill bottles were in the cabinet by the refrigerator that Charlotte couldn’t reach. So many bottles. Addie filled a glass with filtered water. God, she’d love a beer. Something to make her forget today. But temporary oblivion wasn’t worth suffering through days of intestinal distress.

Addie arranged her evening pills on the counter like musical notes on a staff. There weren’t many since she wasn’t having a Crohn’s flare. Flares confined Addie to her bed and the adjoining bathroom. Diarrhea, nausea, severe cramping, extreme fatigue—“tummy trouble,” Charlotte called it when Mommy was too sick to play. Addie called it hell.

But she had been lucky: with medications and a restricted diet, the flares had become less frequent. Addie had returned to teaching music, to living. She was a mother, a daughter, a friend, a lover. Before this afternoon, she had planned to be a wife.

Addie added a round blue pill to the lineup. A new prescription, not for the Crohn’s disease but for pain. Cancer pain. Addie started with that one. Sip. Swallow. Repeat.

Until today, Addie thought that Crohn’s disease was the worst thing that could happen to her. She let out a bitter laugh, like the final chord of the final act in a tragic opera. Goddamned cancer.

---

 

Addie trailed her fingers along the smooth wall of the dark hallway, guiding herself to her bedroom. Lights flashed from the living room. Tom woke early for his teaching job at the local high school and didn’t usually watch TV this late. He was giving her space. She continued along the hallway to their bedroom.

Addie started a bath to chase away the chill. The tumbling water sounded against the tub like a series of lively chord progressions.

She peeled off her clothes and threw them on the floor. The loose pants had become a necessity since the vaginal pain began two months ago. Anything to lessen the pain. Anything.

“It’s probably an infected cyst,” her gynecologist had said. Warm soaks and antibiotics, no big deal.

And then she had felt the lump. Addie monitored its growth in her hand mirror, and the pain worsened despite the antibiotics. Sex became impossible. Tom held her at night as she cried herself to sleep.

“It’s not an infected cyst,” the gynecologist had said at the follow-up visit. He was fixed on his computer screen although she tried to meet his eyes. “It might be related to your Crohn’s disease. You need to see a specialist in the city. A surgeon.”

Addie climbed into the tub. The plastic doughnut pillow protected her from the hard bottom. The water embraced her like the warm orange tones of a cello. Her fingers trailed over the water, making small, then bigger ripples on its surface.

But it wasn’t related to the Crohn’s disease, either.

“It’s an anal mass that’s causing the vaginal pain,” the surgeon at the medical center had said that afternoon. Addie had sat on her chair, still shaking from the pain of the invasive exam. She slid her hands between her knees. “We need to biopsy it in the OR, but it looks like cancer. Anal cancer.” Fluorescent lights buzzed in the background, the only noise in the room. Tom took her hand and didn’t let go, even when she tried to pull away.

Her palm slapped at the water in the tub. Droplets splashed onto her face like tears.

Cancer. Anal cancer. Addie had not uttered the words yet, not out loud. She choked at the thought of it.

The bathwater had turned ice cold. Deep furrows were etched into her fingertips. She stepped out of the draining tub and dried herself off, the towel skimming over her belly where the ileostomy would go. A part of her intestine, covered with a clear plastic bag. A tattooed blue dot marked the spot. “No one will know it’s there,” the surgeon had assured her. No one? Addie would know. And Tom. Tom, especially. Tom said it wouldn’t matter, but he shouldn’t have to put up with that.

The towel joined her discarded clothing on the tiled floor. Her fluffy robe, the one that Tom had given her for Christmas last year, waited on its hook. Her underpants were the big, ratty ones from her steroid-bloated days, the ones she used to wear with an adult diaper during her Crohn’s flares in case she couldn’t reach the toilet in time.

She floated through the familiar bedtime routine. Brush teeth. Wash face. Moisturize. In the mirror, wet with condensation, the features of her doppelgänger were indistinct, its expression lost. Put on nightgown. Go to bed.

The bedroom was dark, the only light arising from the digital clock on Tom’s bedside table. 10:30 p.m.—late for them to be up. The bedding was already turned down. He must have done it as she bathed.

Alone, Addie lay down on their large bed, her back to the closed door. The crisp sheets smelled of lavender. Her pillowcase scratched a dirge against her ear. Cancer. Anal cancer. She stared unseeing at the featureless wall.

“Cancer,” she forced out. Addie shuddered at the sound, harsh as a violin bow sawing over the wrong strings. “Anal cancer.”

---

 

The bedroom door opened. Tom. His stockinged feet shuffled in the thick carpet on the way to the bathroom. His bedtime noises were muffled by the door between them. A distant siren was a discordant counterpoint to the harmony of the running water. A bright flash burst from the bathroom before he switched off the light.

Addie anticipated and dreaded the moment that he joined her in their bed, both seeking and shunning his presence. Her breathing halted. The mattress shifted, creaking, as Tom adjusted his position beside her. He pulled up the comforter, and his movements stilled. Then, his big hand on her waist, gentle.

She breathed again, inhaling lavender and Tom.

“Addie,” Tom murmured, “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m scared, too. But I’ll still be here tomorrow morning.” His lips brushed over her bare shoulder. “And every morning after that. I promise.”

She closed her eyes, but a single tear escaped. It was a beautiful pledge, one she wanted him to keep. For her. For Charlotte. Cancer, though. Anal cancer.

Tom, though. He had already seen her sick, so sick, with the Crohn’s. Diapers, shit-stained clothing, God-awful bathroom smells, doctor appointments, last-minute canceled plans. Her illness hadn’t been pretty. Through the worst of it, he hadn’t walked away.

He wasn’t Josh. She had to trust that. She had known Tom for almost her entire life, from second grade to senior year of high school. He had been a good kid, an even better man. Addie had to trust that, too.

His eyes were open; hers, too.

Addie eased onto her side to face Tom. She curled into his broad chest and welcomed his enveloping arms.

“Tomorrow morning,” she whispered back. “And every morning afterward.”

Maria Wolfe lives and writes in northeast Ohio, where she also practiced as a surgeon. Her work has appeared in The Examined Life Journal and Coffin Bell. She is currently working on a novel.