Page 132 of Loving Wild

“Call them.”

“It’s Saturday,” she snaps.

“Your doctor doesn’t open Saturday?”

She tilts her head, glares at me and takes the phone.

I remain standing, sipping at my coffee as she makes the call.

“Hey, I’m after an appointment . . . Yeah, it’s Lauren Day . . . Oh, yeah, you might still have me down as East.”

Something else we need to get sorted. Getting her name changed everywhere officially.

“Oh, okay. What time is it now?” Her eyes come up to meet mine. “Yeah, okay, I can do that. Thanks, bye.”

She ends the call, throws her phone on the bed, and picks up her coffee.

“They’ve had a cancellation, I got in for ten-forty this morning.”

“Good. Drink your coffee and get showered. I’ll strip these sheets off.”

She studies me over the top of her cup.

“Gabe?”

“What?”

“You okay?” she asks, her voice still croaky but gentler than earlier. I sit down on the edge of the bed but turn sideways so I can look at her.

“About six years ago, Jess had the same thing happen as you. I don’t think she had a coil thing fitted, but cramping, spotting, bleeding when they had sex. She didn’t go to the docs straight away, then when she did, it wasn’t good.”

“Wasn’t good?”

I breathe deeply through my nose before continuing.

“Yours is probably exactly what you said it is and your thingo needs changing, hers wasn’t that. She ended up having a hysterectomy, her ovaries, everything had to go, then chemo, radiation. It was bad. She battled for two years before coming good.”

“Cancer? I had no idea,” she whispers.

“It’s not really something we talk about often. It was shit. Hard for all of us, but for Coop . . .. He’s old enough to remember watching my mum go through it all, so I can’t even begin to fucking imagine how he felt watching Jess go through that shit.”

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.

Leaning in, I kiss her on the mouth.

“I’ve lost my mum, I’ve lost my dad, I’ve been to the hospital more times in the last few months than I have in my entire life. I’m not taking a single chance with you and your health. Get showered,” I order with a tilt of my head towards the bathroom.

* * *

My heart has fallenand landed somewhere in the pit of my stomach as we wait for the radiologist to come back with someone ‘more senior than her’.

She wouldn’t tell us what she was seeing on the screen, not until she’d had a second opinion from that someone more senior than her.

The door opens and Rachael, our radiologist, comes through it with a woman wearing navy scrubs.

“Hey, I’m Trish. Don’t look so worried. I’m just going to double-check what’s going on here, then we’ll have you on your way.”

Alix, Lauren’s doctor, had sent us for an ultrasound when she couldn’t find the strings to her IUD. I have no idea what that actually means, but here we are.