Page 22 of Escape to the Sun

She nodded her head inside, where the crates were stacked and waiting. “Take a look.”

Ash didn’t immediately get up. Instead, he finished the beer Sherri had handed back, taking his time to savor it before slowly setting it down next to him. “You’re sure?”

Sherri nodded.

The crates were typical, nondescript wooden boxes. The only indication Ash had that he wasn’t going to like what was inside was the knowledge that he picked them up from the medical center in Bocas Town. He may have put it off as normal medical supplies for the B&B, except for the fact that he’d just spent the last few hours carrying them up the hill where Sherri planned to be on her own.

He picked up a nearby hammer and readied to pry the lid off the first box, but stopped himself. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me something first?”

She looked older and more worn-down than he’d ever seen her when she shook her head.

Ash didn’t handle bad news well. He avoided it, choosing to live his life as one ongoing good time, which was the entire reason he’d moved to Panama in the first place. Bad things didn’t happen in paradise. But he knew as he pried the first board, and then the second, from the top of the crate, that his perfectly planned good time was about to come to some sort of end. And short of dropping the hammer and heading back down the hill, he wasn’t going to be able to avoid it.

He could have done it a whole lot faster, but when he finally had the boards off and stacked neatly on the floor next to him, Ash reached in and pushed the packing material aside to expose long, stainless-steel tubes. He dug further, finding a wheeled base, and a long, stainless-steel hook. He pulled a piece of the contraption out and turned around, a question on his face.

“What is…”

“An IV stand.”

He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to know.

He already knew.

“I’m sick, Ash.”

He knew.

He’d known for a long time. She’d slowed down. She looked frail. Smaller somehow. Her eyes were clouded; the life that was usually there had dimmed.

Ash nodded and turned back to the crates. Without speaking, he opened the rest of them before he slowly looked through the contents: saline bags, needles, pills, and boxes containing carefully packaged vials. Judging by the warning labels on the packages, whatever they were, they were some pretty intense drugs.

Sherri didn’t say a word while Ash completed his investigation. When he was finished, he got up, went inside and got two more beers before he returned to the porch. He handed one to Sherri and sat next to her.

“Cancer,” was all she said. “Second time.”

Ash nodded in acknowledgment. There was nothing to say.

Cancer.

Cancer killed people. It killed people when they were receiving the best possible care in the world, in a state-of-the-art hospital with professional doctors and nurses administering the treatment.

Sherri was alone, in a jungle in the middle of a third world country and from everything he could see, it looked as if she planned on treating herself.

He shook his head, tipped his bottle back and drank deep and long before he wiped his mouth with his arm.

“Why?”

“I’ve been through it before, Ash. I have leukemia. The doctors told me I’d have to take the medication for the rest of my life and I didn’t think I would have to.” She shrugged casually. “It’s fine, because I’m going to beat it again. It’s very treatable and I know what to do.”

“You need a doctor.” He looked straight ahead, unable to meet her eyes.

“What I need is to be surrounded by life and love.”

“You’re going to die.”

“Maybe. But if I’m going to die, I’m going to do it on my own terms.”

Her voice finally shook, and Ash was out of his chair, kneeling in front of the woman who’d become more than a friend to him in the last few years. She was family. She was his only family.

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