Free The Wisdom of Evil by Scarlet Black Page A

here tonight.”
    She didn’t argue with him. By the time she dared to lay back down, he’d fallen asleep in the chair. The bed still held the awful icy chill. Finally, sometime before morning, she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

Ch apter 9
     
    As soon as Mickey and Olivia left for school in the morning—after convincing Mickey to go—Glory headed back to the hospital. She’d sworn Mickey to secrecy regarding the previous night’s events. She wouldn’t tell Michael any of what had happened.
    Joan was sitting up in bed, Dr. Marshall at her side. He held a set of x-rays and a clipboard with Joan’s chart attached.  She seemed much better. Color had come back into her face and her eyes had lost that glassy look.
    Glory couldn’t help but try to get a better glimpse at those x-rays. What she saw made her feel ill! My God, the chest cavity was completely shaded in swirl of translucent white! She wasn’t a doctor, but she’d seen this type of x-ray at the animal hospital. On a normal chest x-ray, the bones would be displayed in black, the background a gray-white in color. This one revealed no black, just that ominous white!
    M ichael looked so tired and worried. But she knew he hadn’t seen those x-rays yet. He might be the strong, silent type, but she could read him like a book. If he’d seen them, he’d be afraid, just as she was.
    “I’d like to speak to Joan in private, if you don’t mind,” Dr. Marshall said to Glory and Michael.
    “Of course . We’ll just…go down an’ get some coffee and wait outside in the visitors lounge,” Michael said.
    Michael drank his coffee like it was going out of style. Glory had none for fear she’d throw it up. They were the only ones in visitor’s lounge at this early morning hour.
    They sat side by side, noting the time on the clock. The hands appeared frozen as the minutes ticked by and they sat helplessly waiting.
    Those minutes turned to an hour. At last, Joan’s doctor ushered them into the room.
    Her back was to them. They could tell by the way her body shook, her slumped shoulders, that she was crying. An older woman in a starched white lab coat knelt beside her holding her hand.
    The disturbing x-ray Glory had only glimpsed earlier was illuminated on the monitor screen, the eerie mass of white stating that which she already knew to be true.
    The older woman introduced herself as Dr. Belin. She was a specialist brought in to look at the x-rays and confirm Joan’s primary physician’s diagnosis.
    “Let’s go outside and talk about your mom’s condition,” she said to Michael.
    “No ,” Joan replied. She stopped crying and sat up straight. “I’ll tell them,” she said. “And then you can speak to them afterwards.”
    T here was a look of unmasked dread on Michael’s face. Not one to sugar-coat her words, she told them right out. “I have lung cancer.”
    The room began to spin. Glory felt as if she couldn’t breathe. All the color evaporated from Michael’s face as he fell into a chair, his head in his hands, covering his face as he wept. Her Michael, who never cried, was sobbing like a child.
    Joan did n’t speak.
    Wiping away his tears, he got up, touched his mom’s shoulder gently , and left the room. After he left, Glory sat next to her on the bed and hugged her close, feeling her special warmth. She looked deep into Joan’s eyes and whispered fiercely, “Don’t you leave me. Please…don’t leave me here without you!” Damn God for doing this to this wonderful woman ! Glory thought.
    “You know me , Glory. I’m not giving up, so don’t you give up either. Go to Michael; he needs you and I need…some time alone to think.”
    She found Michael with Dr. Belin. He was nodding as she explained to him that Joan had stage four small cell lung cancer —the worst type. There wasn’t any operation to remove this cancer and it spread aggressively.
    “How long?” Michael asked.
    “Eight months with chemotherapy and radiation