Reconciling Saints

Today I found out that a guy at work's wife has Breast cancer...
Inoperable... It's below the breast plate and wide spread in both of her breasts. They could take car of the ones in her breasts, but the one below the breast plate... they don't think there's much that they can do for her. The girls at work were talking about it and... well it seems technically that one should be able to do the mastectomy and then nuke the fuck out of the other one. Still... that's just guessing and we don't know the particulars.

We do know that it's stage 4.

On Monday, the guy at work had a mini-stroke... one can only guess because of everything going on and work, etc. His daughter, we were told, who is 17 was running back and forth from room to room. One were they held her father and another where her mother was.
...

That poor man... that poor girl!
Both of them ... but... but what about her???

- all I could think of was the song 24 by Jem and what I would do... if someone said... you're dying.

...and I try to remember that every day.

It was perhaps a day like every other day... and maybe it wasn't.

The only things that echoed in her head that day were the words that the doctor told her,
"I'd say you have a day, but I'm amazed you made it this far!"

or maybe that's just what she was wishing for all those around her, wishing that she was the only one that had to go.

she took it all in and decided she was going to kidnap her husband. But first! but first... there was time to savor a fine pinot noir and a cigarette.

"Thank god they passed the law to stop smoking indoors," she thought.

She tried to map it out all in her mind. What was she going to do? Get her husband, that much was sure. She remembered her promise to her friend that if either of them had to go... they would be there for the other with a good load of heroin. Why leave with all the pain?
"Still," she thought, "then I don't remember my last moments with him."
She rolled the taste around in her mouth, trying to remember the excellence of a good wine on the pallet. Then she decided that what was missing was music that would round this out. Thank god for iPods that allowed one to hold all of one's music collection on it! She'd never see home again, she pondered as she erased the thought of going back to pick up her favorites at home. This would do.

She arrived at Da5id's work not even slightly buzzed. It was either a miracle or just the too real shit she was going through that allowed for this. She told work that he had an emergency, that a close family member was going to die.
"Me," she thought.
"and him," she added as an after thought.

She didn't tell him anything, which he hated, until they got in the car.

"Where are we going?" he demanded.

"Airport," she said.

"You're leaving me?!" he asked incredulously.

If only he knew...

"Well, I shouldn't be alive now and we've have less than 24 hours, if that's what you mean," she said in her very cynical way with a smile playing around the corners, as it tends to do when she's being the biggest bitch.

He stared at her incredulously.

"I wish I was, to your unanswered question of 'is she joking'," she said and looked straight ahead towards the airport.

When they got to the counter, after a silence of what seemed to be an eternity, she handed him the passport and told the man at the counter, "two for London please."

She looked at him and hoped that he wouldn't waste any time.

"Look, it's simple," she explained "I have not long with you and I don't want to waste it. So we're going to London, where we spent some of our happiest times, where we always said we'd join our friends. We're meeting them at Gordon's at 9pm their time and I've asked London to secure us a table, so he's going to be getting there pretty early. On the way there, on the airplane, I don't want to do anything but enjoy the drinks and to stare at you and once we're there we're off to Gordon's... to a table that I've made London promise he'd get under one of the arches in the tunnel, big enough for us all, and I'm letting them all know. "

All he did was stare incredulously.

"All I want is to be surrounded by my friends, my family, moments before it hits me, however it hits, even if it's in the drunken after math when all I want to do is sleep. The airplane ride is perfect because all I want to do is stare at you and hold your hand for however long I have. We have."