It was dark when Stuart slipped away the next morning.  Julia stayed under the covers.  The night didn’t seem to want to give way to light.  In fact, it seemed like it had been dark forever and winter had just officially begun.  Julia finally drug herself from the bed to the living room.  She plugged in the tree and just sat looking at it for a few moments.  It was a pretty tree…despite the pasty white lights.

She didn’t feel great.  But then, she never seemed to feel like herself anymore.  She had lost track of what was the disease itself, what was her body struggling to heal from surgery, what were the side effects of the meds, and what was in her head as the side effect of the side effects.

One year ago, she would not have dreamed that she would hear the word “cancer” come out of a doctor’s mouth directed at her.  When she had been snapping selfies in Paris and London, it had not seemed possible that in a matter of weeks, her world would come crashing down.

First, there had been the disappointment of being sent to nowhere, New York instead of Hawaii, as they had expected.  She had anticipated leaving her job, friends, family, and church, but thought she was about to exchange it all for a few years in a vacation paradise.  Oh, how she hated it when things didn’t go as planned. 

It wasn’t quite so difficult for Stuart because it meant being united with his best friend, Eric, whom he had gone to school with at West Point.  Eric was soon deployed though, leaving just Olivia and their three kids nearby and they were busy with school activities.

Then, there had been the crushing blow of going to the doctor with what she thought was morning sickness and finding out that (after a forever long series of tests), that it was actually an estrogen-fed cancer that was going to rob her of her dream of motherhood. 

Life had never been the same since that moment.   Her body, they told her, would heal.  But her soul? She was sure her soul would never be whole again.

Here, away from everyone she loved and all the places that made her feel comfortable, she had sunk into a very great darkness.  The harsh New York winter had only seemed to this southern girl like a dramatic finale to the dreams dying inside of her.

Most days she managed to put dinner of some kind on the table.  That was about the extent of her daily agenda as her desire to go out, to meet people, and to build a life in Watertown seemed futile (past the effort that it took to manage her diagnosis, of course).  Cancer, it seemed, was a full-time job.

Stuart seemed to be home less and less and their interactions were less and less enjoyable.  She couldn’t blame him.  The medicines had wreaked havoc with her emotions.  Truth be told, she didn’t want to be around herself.  But in this, she had no choice.

The door bell rang.  Julia hesitated for a moment.  It was 10:00 am but she was still un-showered and without makeup.  Her sweats hung on her like a flag of surrender.  That was one good thing that came of all this—she had lost the stubborn pounds that her early thirties and Chandra’s cooking had delivered.

Julia decided to answer it, but by the time she got there, there was just a basket of goodies on the front porch.  The deliverer was getting back into her mini van—it was the XO’s wife.  Julia recognized her minivan from up the street, even though it was seldom there.  Carrie—Julia was pretty sure that was her name—was into everything it seemed.  Everyone liked her and was a little in awe of her.  She had stopped by and introduced herself right after Stuart and Julia had moved on base.  She had brought them dinner, in fact.

Carrie had put her number in Julia’s phone “in case she needed anything” but Julia had never used it, until now.  “Thanks for the goodies!”  she texted.

“You’re welcome!”  Carrie texted back immediately.  “Sorry I couldn’t stay.  I had a sleeping baby in the car.”

A sleeping baby.

Julia’s eyes filled with tears again.  Something she had always wanted.  Something she would never have.  It was so unfair.  It was too much.  This maddening cancer was the destruction of every plan she ever made.  Every hope she ever held. 

The tears began to fall.  Again.  Not silently.  Not slipping down her cheeks.  When Julia cried, she ugly cried. She cried in throbs and torrents.  She cried until she was red and swollen.  Her eyes got fuzzy.  Her head hurt.  She felt sicker than the sick that she usually felt.

And this had been the story of her life day after day for the past several months. 

The flights to Boston to visit the specialist there had added up quickly.  By the time they booked hotels and rental cars, the credit card balance had run up and showed no signs of coming down any time soon.  With Julia not working, it seemed like they were in a financial downward spiral.  Stuart told her not to worry about it, but she did.  Every day, every dime, she worried.  This was not the way it was supposed to be.

The phone rang.  It was Stuart. 

“Hello.”  Julia did her best to take the tears out of her voice, but there was no hiding them.

“Julia?”  Stuart sounded discouraged and Julia felt bad.  “Just checking on you.”

“I-I’m fine,”  Julia choked into the phone.  Fooling no one.

“I wanted to make sure you remembered I wouldn’t be home until late tonight.”

“Yes.”

“Anything I can do for you?”

Julia knew she would cry if she tried to answer…she weighed her options.  Cry.  Say nothing.  Hang up.  There were no good options.

Stuart waited a moment and then his frustration came out.  “I’m trying, Julia.  What do you want me to do?”

“There’s nothing you can do.”  Julia’s voice had more of an edge than she wanted.  She was trying to communicate that she understood and didn’t expect him to fix it.  But he took it as an insult.  A reminder that he was powerless against this mess cancer had made of their life together.

Stuart did what Julia wished she had done and said goodbye and hung up.

Then she cried again.

Her phone buzzed again but she didn’t check it right away.  It may be Stuart, still angry and trying to vent his frustration.  She didn’t feel like she could take it.  Or, perhaps he was sorry and begging her forgiveness.  She wasn’t ready to give it.

Stuart was right.  He was trying.  His mom was trying.  His friends were trying.  Several of their wives had periodically checked on her and even asked if they could come sit with her.  Eric’s wife, Olivia, had dropped by a few times but she and her cute children were a bit much at this moment.  Especially while the pain of childlessness was so raw.  

She suspected Stuart was somehow behind Carrie’s attempted visit.  He was pushing her to try to make some friends.  But for just a moment more, as trapped as she felt in her pain and aloneness, she couldn’t bear to step outside of it.  

The first year of marriage would have been challenging anyway.  Julia hadn’t known that Stuart woke up in the middle of the night and blew his nose like a foghorn.  Or that he loaded the dishwasher wrong.  Or that his method of matching and storing socks was entirely incompatible with hers.   He couldn’t say no to a request for money—a story only told by their joint account and credit card bill.  And he didn’t like some of her favorite recipes…a preference he had managed to hide during all of those dinners on the fifth floor.

But now that the hormone blocker had completely robbed her of her connection with common sense, those small things were driving a wedge and they seemed to be drifting further and further.  Especially when it seemed that there would never be a baby to tie them together.

Her phone buzzed again.  Julia checked it this time.  It was Carrie.

“Is there any chance you’re free this evening?”  was the first, unanswered text.

Then, “I hate to bother you, but it’s Rick’s birthday and I bought tickets to a Christmas concert a month ago.  Our sitter just cancelled on me because she is sick and I can’t seem to find anyone else this close to Christmas.”

Julia’s first impulse was a quick no.  But the longer she thought about it, the more she softened to the idea.  Stuart would not be home.  There was no need to cook dinner and no one to share it with if she did.  Carrie was always doing things for others—Julia knew that much.  She also knew that Carrie’s own kids were grown and gone.  Among the hundreds of other things she did, she took in foster kids.  That sleeping baby would have been one of those. She loved babies. Why not sit in Carrie’s house with a baby instead of here alone?

“Sure.”  She texted back.  “What time?”