Free The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) by Jo-Ann Mapson

crushed under the stag’s hoof. They saw his silhouette in the moonlight, the breath steaming from his nostrils. He leapt across the road so high it seemed like a trick. Why couldn’t that be her last memory of Doc instead of this?
    Alvin pulled the stethoscope out of his ears and hung it around his neck. “Your ticker is as strong as a horse’s. Open your mouth and stick out your tongue.”
    “No,” she said. “That feels too weird.”
    “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. Open.” Alvin peeked, typed some notes into her file, and then looked over at her. “Allegra, you can close your mouth now.”
    Allegra breathed a sigh of relief. “Won’t it be fun to talk and open a bottle of good wine instead of the rotgut we used to drink?” She winked. “Play your cards right, you never know. You might get a free breakfast out of it.”
    He took her left hand, rubbed it between his, which were warm and big and made her feel like a child. Then he looked into her eyes. “Allegra, you’re not going to be drinking alcohol for a while. In the early stages of leukemia like yours…”
    She heard nothing beyond four syllables that hung in the air the way the Spanish moss drifted in the fog and wind from the cypress trees on Seventeen Mile Drive in wealthy Carmel-by-the-Sea. Some people loved Spanish moss, but Allegra thought the moss looked like the hair of a dead man. “It’s a mistake,” she said. “I am the healthiest person I know. I eat right, I examine my breasts monthly, and I have my yearly tests at the Women’s Clinic—”
    “That’s why we repeated them.”
    “Run them a third time.”
    He took hold of her shoulders. “Allegra, listen to me. Leukemia’s not the death sentence it used to be. There are treatments—”
    “What? Chemotherapy? Poison myself so I can live long enough to feel horrible before I die? No way.” She was trembling.
    Alvin rolled his stool closer to her. He tore a page from the prescription pad he’d taken from his pocket, flipped it over, clicked his pen, and as if he was explaining to a child some troubling mathematical problem, began to draw Allegra a picture of her illness.
    The words swam right over her. Chronic, acute. Chronic was the good kind. With the right management, potentially a normal lifespan. Acute was when the cells didn’t mature. Untreated, worst-case scenario, it could mean she had as little as twelve weeks from this very moment to the funeral parlor. It was September. That meant she could last until Thanksgiving, but she’d miss Christmas. Last Christmas could have been her final holiday and she hadn’t appreciated it enough. Oh, God. She’d miss Lindsay’s thirteenth birthday party.
    Acute myelogenous—very bad. Chronic lymphocytic—good survival rates. Treatment would begin at once. This was the induction phase. They’d attempt to drive the disease into “a durable remission.” There would be chemotherapy. Way, way, way down the line, there was a minute possibility of a bone marrow transplant. Designer drugs. White blood cell count high, red blood cell count low. Alvin spin-doctored the horror of the whole thing by telling her how lucky she was to faint and end up in an E.R. that took a thorough look at its patients.
    “I’ve talked for far too long,” he said. “Surely you have questions.”
    “Not really.”
    He handed the paper to her and closed her fingers around it. “I know you’re reeling, Allegra. But early intervention gives us a chance to circle our wagons, to build out of your body and available drugs a kind of fortress against the attacker.”
    Adrenaline flooded her skin. Her ears felt hot, and the sides of things were going blurry. She’d never been a fainter and refused to faint again. Fainting had caused this whole problem. She opened her mouth, but no words came out, so she shut it and tried not to cry. Then, as if directly from her solar plexus, she blurted out, “I want Khan!”
    “Who’s Khan?”
    “My dog,”