Five Years

“I bet you don't even know the time,” my sister sighed as I glanced at my watch.

“The surgeon said four hours, tops,” I fretted. “It's been over seven now. That's never good.”

My sister's reply was cut short by Dr. Andersen's entrance. His bright blue scrubs and copper-colored hair glowed in the harsh florescent light of the waiting room. He shook our hands, then perched on the edge of the seat next to me.

“Well, I have some good news,” he exclaimed. “We were able to resect the tumor from the tongue and the edges look clean. I pulled that salivary gland and a nerve that didn't look so pretty good. I got all the lymph nodes from the left side of the neck, no problem. If the pathology on those is clean, we may be in good shape. I had to do a tracheotomy because Darryl has a deviated septum, so we admitted him to ICU. You'll be able to go up in a minute.”

I looked down at my hands, and tried to fit all the information in. In the past four days, we had gone from my fiance being perfectly healthy to waking up in an ICU recovering from stage 3 oral cancer.

I looked up and asked, “So, what now?”

Dr. Andersen sighed and looked me in the eye. “You know this was a recurrence and it had spread,” he said. “Oral and throat cancers have a mortality rate of over 50% at five years. So, what I'm saying is, I can give you five years.”

Every muscle in my body went still. My mind raced through pictures of my life with Darryl.

Then, as if from a distance, I heard my voice say simply:

“I can do five years.”

Word count: 299