Free Reunion by Karen Kingsbury

arrive. By the end of the evening, they would all know the truth of
    her diagnosis: that she would be having a double mastectomy on Monday morning.
    hot water ran down her frame. Elizabeth reached for a washcloth, her favorite one, a thick, soft white cotton cloth she’d bought in New York City last December as part of a set. She intended to enjoy her last shower before surgery.
    The soap was new also. A fragrant lilac bar she’d gotten as a gift for Christmas. Funny how she had let it sit, unopened, on the sink all these weeks. Too busy to open it and use it, plain green soap did the job just fine.
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    REUNION
    She rubbed the soap into the washcloth, and the lather filled her senses. She set the bar down and slowly worked the sudsy cloth across her chest.
    She brought her right elbow up over her head, and her breast lifted to where it had been before children and time had taken its toll. No, they weren’t much by the world’s standards, but they were hers, a part of her. The part that had so often been the source of passion between her and John, the part that had brought nourishment and comfort to each of her five kids. The part that had filled out a sweater or a dress or a bathing suit.
    Even after her first bout with cancer, she had taken her breasts for granted.
    Every time she looked in the mirror they were there, giving her a feminine shape and softening her thin frame.
    She shifted the soapy cloth to her right hand and raised her left elbow over her head. Tomorrow they’d be gone, the part of her that had made her feel like a woman. She studied them, will ing it all to be a mistake somehow. They didn’t look diseased, did they?
    The surgery would be brutal, barbaric. A surgeon’s scalpel would press to her sides, leaving grotesque scars and mutated shallow valleys where once lay the curves of her chest. Was that all the further they’d come in cancer research? It was the twenty-first century and still the best option for cancer was to cut it out?
    Elizabeth ran the cloth over her chest and willed herself not to cry. Of course cancer treatment had progressed. They had new medications now, treatments that ten years ago wouldn’t have been an option. It was those types of treatments, and medica tions like the one Elizabeth had been taking, that had probably kept the cancer away for so long.
    She finished washing the rest of herself. She thought about how strange it would be not to have her breasts, to move about without the gentle weight of her chest as part of her being.
    Again she looked at herself and wondered. How would John see her after the surgery? Of course he’d told her a number of times that it wouldn’t matter; after all their years together his
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    kingsbury , smalley
    love went far deeper than her looks, her figure. But still.., he’d loved that part of her, hadn’t he? And now, even if she wore prosthetics, he would know they were gone, the same way she would know it.
    If only she could stay here in the shower, hot water running over her body, her figure still whole and complete. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the pounding stream. For a long while she let it wash over her face.
    She wasn’t sure, but she thought maybe she was crying.
    Maybe mixed in with the water flowing down around her still-curvy body were more of her tears. They certainly came without warning since the diagnosis.
    Time was getting away from her. She shampooed her hair and wondered if she’d have any of it left after the chemotherapy. It still thick, still dark and shiny the way it had been when she was a teenager.
    Some gray had worked its way into her temples near her forehead, but for the most part it was still dark. Elizabeth thought about God, the Lord and Savior she’d spent her lifetime worshiping. Being a believer meant there’d be times like
    this; wasn’t that what she’d learned over the years? Times nothing made sense and all she could do was dig her fingers into her faith and hold on for dear