Page 42 of Holiday Wedding
I send him a mischievous wink. “I thought it suited you because you’re big, like a bear.” I grow serious, crossing my arms on the table. “We both get an honest say in which cake we like without influencing each other. I think we should speak our favorite out loud on the count of three.”
Dean nods sagely. “Good idea. One…two…three.”
Together, we both yell out, “chocolate with eggnog.” We stare at each other in open-mouthed shock.
“Really?” My voice is small. “We want the same one?”
“We do.” Dean smiles at me, amusement dancing in his expression. He moves into my personal space. “You have a bit of frosting…” His rough thumb comes out to gently swipe across my lower lip, skin dragging on skin, and I forget to breathe. I let out a soft exhale, not breaking eye contact. Dean’s pupils dilate. At the same time, we both lean forward, closing the distance between us.
It’s not until she speaks that I realize Laura has reentered the room. We jump back from each other when she calls out a cheerful, “What did you decide?”
“Chocolate,” I say.
“With eggnog,” Dean adds.
14
Monday, December 16
8 days until the wedding
Gwen
Iwipe damp palms on my thighs, hoping no one’ll notice. My heart beats fast, like I’ve just run a race rather than sat in this stuffy hotel ballroom for the past three hours, listening to lectures on chemotherapy regimens. Helen is next to me, bathed in the pale glow of the projector from the front of the room.
When I walked into the conference on the first day, she had been sitting quietly by herself, with her eyes downcast and her fingers nervously twining in her lap. I had called her name and almost laughed at the expression of surprise on her face.
When I asked if she would like to sit with me, Helen hesitated and said, “Are you sure? I don’t want to be a bother.” It had taken a fair amount of convincing to get her to move to the front row with me, but eventually, after some thought, she agreed. That’s when I first learned that Helen doesn’t do anything willy-nilly. She’s cautious, a bit of an overthinker, carefully assessing each situation.
I turn to her and admit, “I’m scared. What if the microphone stops working but I don’t realize it, so I talk for the whole hour without anyone being able to hear me? What if I go over my time limit, and I don’t get to finish my presentation? What if there’s spinach in my teeth, but no one has the guts totell me, and the audience doesn’t hear a word I say because they’re too busy staring at my mouth?” I spew out all of my worst fears in under a minute.
Helen holds up her hand, stopping me before I can spiral further. Calmly, she says, “Your teeth are fine. Your microphone just got checked by the sound crew and it works. Remember, we set the timer on your watch. Put it next to your laptop so you don’t go over your limit. You won’t make a mistake. You practiced this for me at the lunch break, and it was flawless.”
“Okay. Okay.” I nod like I heard her, when in reality I only absorbed half of what she just said.
Helen sighs indulgently. “It’ll be great, Gwen.”
Soon, it’s my turn to walk up to the stage. As I make my way through the crowd, murmuring “Excuse me” when people pull in their chairs to let me pass, I could swear I hear Caleb’s name being spoken by several different voices. When I stop and look up, no one is talking. It must be my imagination, just me wishing he was here for moral support. I reach the podium and place my watch next to the laptop waiting there for me. A click of the button on the side starts my timer.
“Hello.” I smile at the crowd, feigning confidence. “My name is Gwen Wright.” A murmur spreads through the audience, one I don’t remember hearing when other doctors presented this morning.
The room is full, with no seats left. Some doctors stand along the walls.
Strange.
It wasn’t standing room only for the other lectures.
After the rumble of the crowd dies down, I continue, projecting my voice loud and steady. “The fight against cancer is very personal to me. Eleven years ago, my father passed away from colon cancer at the age of 45. I was in high school at the time. I vowed then to become a doctor and to do anything I could to stop this devastating disease.”
My heart pounds as I focus on the people in front of me. Helen is there, smiling encouragingly. I also see the head of our Oncology Department, whom I’ve worked with closely while developing my project. A couple of doctors from Manhattan are scattered in the audience.
My adrenaline spikes. There’s an urge to perform, to not let them down.If I mess this up, everyone at home will find out. It was bad when the truth about me and Caleb came out—the whispers and stares in the hospital hallways. It’ll be worse if they’re talking about me because I failed here today.
I swallow nervously and move the cursor on my screen, highlighting slides that discuss the stages of colon cancer. “As we all know, colon cancer is the third most common cause of cancer deaths. Early detection is key for improving a patient’s chance of survival, which is why in medical school, and now in my ER residency, I developed a protocol for screening.”
“All patients over the age of 45 who come into our Emergency Room are offered a free test. We use stool samples to determine if the patient has cancer. The test is cheap, easy to administer, and noninvasive. It scans for specific biomarkers in the stool, including methylation markers and fecal hemoglobin. If a patient is positive, then colonoscopy is used for confirmation.”
“I tested over 16,000 ER patients and found 139 subjects who tested positive for cancer. Consistent with known colon cancer incidence, half of the positive cases were in women and half were in men. Colon cancer is on the rise in patients younger than 55, with this group accounting for one-third of the deaths. This was true in our patient population as well. I’m most proud of the fact that the majority of positive patients in my study had early disease, which predicts a five-year survival of over 90 percent.”
