Page 114 of Fake Love

“No? No to what?” I ask her.

“No to the biopsy. I don’t want to know. Not right now at least. We can find out when I get my surgery to remove the other three.”

I can tell by her tone that her decision is set and she won't be changing her mind, but that doesn’t mean I wont try.

“But you can find out now. What if it is cancerous and it grows quicker than the other and you’re not here for the surgery?”

“Then I won’t be here for the surgery.” She says, and I swear my stomach goes into knots just hearing those words come out of her mouth.

“Ma.” I try to argue but she stops me.

“No, Maddox. You asked what I wanted to do and that’s it. If I don’t make it to the surgery, then fine, I don’t make it. But I’m not going to stop my life waiting for those test results to come back and neither are you.”

Every single emotion that I felt when she was first diagnosed comes rushing back in.

Anger, fear, sadness all find small crevasse inside of my body and make themselves right at home.

I feel like I can’t control myself right now, like I need to find an escape.

Giving my mom a nod, I stand up and without another look at the three other people in the room, I do something I haven’t done since she was brought here.

I leave.

33

Jennifer

The phone continues to ring until it reaches voicemail.

Not once in the forty-five times that I have dialed the number has it been any different.

I can’t help but wonder if a phone can overheat by receiving a lot of calls in a short period of time.

I don’t know, but if that is the case or not, Maddox hasn’t answered any one of my calls or even Nora’s.

No texts, no calls, nothing. It's as if the second he left the hospital, he shut off his phone.

I understand why he left, I do. Nora’s decision to not get a biopsy and see if this new tumor was cancerous was a hard one to swallow. I’ve only known the woman for a few months and I was pissed when she said no, but it was her decision.

He’s scared to lose his mom and her deciding not to find out if the tumor is cancerous probably makes him think that he’ll lose her a lot sooner.

But if she didn’t want to do it, then she didn’t want to do it. From the online search I did while they were getting her ready for discharge, I found that its not a small thing to do. They would have to cut into her skull to be able to get a sample.

Nora probably had to go through that once already at the start of all of this and didn’t want to do it again.

I wouldn’t either.

But her making that choice doesn’t warrant her only son walking out because of it.

Yet he did.

And now he doesn’t answer his phone and I have no idea where he is.

It’s been a few hours since he left the hospital room. In that time, Nora got discharged and was able to go home. Thank god, I had the keys to the car Maddox keeps here because we wouldn’t have a way home.

Now she’s sitting in the living room looking at a blank screen all the while I’m trying to get a hold of her son.

My current phone call, number forty-six I think, continues to ring for a few more seconds before it goes to voicemail.

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