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SAM TRIES TO GIVE me the medical explanation of what is happening with Brigid and why.

But Sam keeps going, talking about an advanced stage of the cancer that started in Brigid’s lymph nodes. The doctors at the Meier Clinic and her oncologists here believed they had it under control after chemotherapy, and that she was in remission.

Only now, according to Sam Wylie, the cancer has spread to her lungs.

Literally.

Brigid stands suddenly, saying she doesn’t want to be here any longer, she’s already heard this once. I watch my sister make her way through the lunch crowd, not looking back until she’s out the door and out on Main Street.

“Is it terminal?” I ask Sam. “And please don’t tell me we’re all terminal, I’m in no mood to play that particular game today.”

“I’m not going to lie to you, Jane,” Sam says. “This is bad.”

“How bad?” I shake my head, almost in disbelief. “Are you telling me that I have a better shot at beating this than she does? Goddamn, Sam, she was supposed to be in remission.”

“We’ve had this conversation about cancer before,” she says. “No one is ever really in the clear, no matter how much you love them. But in my opinion? Yes, you do have a much better shot of beating your cancer at this point than she does hers.”

I feel the air come out of me and then my throat closes, as if it’s just slammed shut.

And then I am looking all the way across the front room at Van’s, across the busy, noisy lunch crowd, and see Brigid standing at the window, her nose pressed against it, like she’s staring in at a normal world that doesn’t include her and might never again.

Before she walks away.

I want to run after her, except I don’t know what I’d say.

“This is so not fair,” I say to Dr. Sam Wylie.

“I run into a lot of that in my line of work,” she says.