Free Before I Go by Colleen Oakley

at 10 P.M. on a Monday night. That’s what his brain does. It’s always working, figuring things out. His brain is the reason he won first place at the Science of Veterinary Medicine Research Symposium the last three years in a row. His brain is good at numbers, and reasoning, and calculations. My brain, apparently, is good at growing tumors.
    As I ponder how to respond, I suddenly remember the cock /caulk miscommunication and I tell him the story.
    He laughs, as I knew he would.
    Then I tell him the other stuff Dr. Saunders said in one long breath. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I don’t breathe at all as I speak. He stops laughing.
    And besides the stunned silence, our home fills with the scent of seared flesh burning. I forgot about the steaks.

five
    I WAKE UP AT 2:58 A.M. with a mouthful of cotton and an intense stabbing pain behind my right eye.
    Water. I need water.
    I get out of bed and grope my way to the kitchen in the darkness, feeling for the refrigerator handle in the dark. When I open the door, the bright light momentarily blinds me.
    I squint and the throbbing in my head gets worse.
    Stupid vodka. I drank two more glasses while Jack had me repeat everything Dr. Saunders said verbatim three times. Jack has never encountered a puzzle that he couldn’t crack, so I knew he was just trying to get all the pieces of the equation so he could solve for y .
    “Well, of course you’ll do the surgery,” he said, more to himself than to me. “And the chemo. What did he say about the clinical trials again? Which specific ones?”
    When I started slurring my words in response, Jack finally stopped talking and opened his arms to me on the couch. I crawled into them, laid my head on his chest, and closed my eyes. He smelled like a raccoon.
    I chug an entire glass of water and then refill my glass with theplastic pitcher from the fridge. I put it back on the top shelf, and then let go of the door. It slowly closes with a thhwwuck .
    Even though it’s drafty in the kitchen, and I’m only wearing a long T-shirt and underwear, I’m unbearably hot. The floor beckons me like a pool on a hot summer day and I let my body sink into a puddle. I stretch out and lay my cheek against the cold tile.
    Salmon. That’s the color the real estate agent called it. “Very authentic to Spanish design,” she said. “It’s not Saltillo, but it’s a good imitation.” Jack laughed when we got back to our apartment that night. “The kitchen is pink,” he said. “We’re buying a house with a pink kitchen.”
    Moonlight filters through the windows above the sink. I stare at the dark crevice beneath the cabinets where dirt and old cereal flakes and wisps of Benny’s hair accumulate until I banish them with my broom once a week. I spy an orange Froot Loop. Jack must have dropped it at breakfast this morning.
    Orange. I gingerly touch the back of my head where Dr. Saunders says an orange-sized tumor sits. Maybe he said an orange Froot Loop and I just didn’t hear him. Or maybe that’s what he meant to say and he accidentally left off the words “Froot Loop.” I might be able to believe that I have a tumor the size of a cereal O, but a piece of fruit? It’s unbelievable. And I don’t say that lightly. I think the word unbelievable is overused. People say “That’s unbelievable!” for things that really aren’t. Like Skype. My mom thinks it’s unbelievable that you can see someone across the world in real time as you’re talking to them. “It’s just like in the Jetsons!” she typed to me in an email when she discovered the video chat system four years after everyone else in the country. But Skype was really just the next logical step in the advancement of technology. It wasn’t implausible, or something that came out of the blue.
    Me with a tumor the size of citrus and cancer all over my body? That’s the very definition of unbelievable.
    Far-fetched.
    Preposterous.
    Unreal.
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