Page 54 of Who’s Playing You (In The Nick of Time #1)

SCOTTIE ANDERSON

A s I sat in the hospital waiting room of the Women’s Breast Imaging Center, clutching the hospital gown to cover the dreaded front opening, I could feel every beat of my heart.

This was my worst nightmare.

My biggest fear.

The possibility - the real possibility - of breast cancer.

And I had a really real possibility of developing it.

My birth mother had done a number of things for me, the biggest solid she’d done was to leave a rather detailed medical history to accompany me through life, a life she wouldn’t be a part of.

Yeahhh, that’s right. Not only was I adopted but I was also an orphan.

My mom had arranged the adoption as well and picked, as best she could, a family for me. A family that desperately wanted a child.

My adoptive parents had been nice enough people and had treated me well - enough.

But it was always blatantly obvious that I was an adopted child.

Unlike their “real” first child, which came a year and a half after they adopted me.

Followed in quick succession with two other kids within three years of their first “real” child.

I guess I’d been what they’d needed to fix their fertility issues, apparently that was a thing, too. There were quite a few instances of people not being able to conceive, only to adopt and then miraculously conceive their own biological children. In some cases it was something to do with stress.

But it was all fine.

I grew up in a somewhat rural area, one that was real wholesome. My adoptive family was pretty wholesome too. My parents weren’t rich, but I never went without. I got a good education, and ultimately got a full scholarship to my dream college. And when I went off to college, I’d met Nat.

By then my adoptive parents felt like they were off the hook with me, besides they had their hands full with three teenagers.

Their “real” kids. So the longer I was away, the more distance grew in our relationship, ultimately leading to barely a Christmas card come my junior year of college. And the reason that I was on my own.

By then, Nat’s invitations to come home with her for holidays and breaks felt all the more like a gift. Not that I ever told her any of this.

I never shared - with anyone - my story. My mother, my adoptive parents. I shared none of it.

The only way to know my story was if you grew up in the same town as me, and went to school with me. Otherwise, and to everyone else, I had no past before age eighteen.

So Nat’s invitations to go home with her - that gift of kindness and friendship she bestowed upon me - was something I appreciated more than she could ever know.

But what was more of a gift though was that she, and her family, never treated me like a charity case.

But that didn’t dilute the feeling that I often felt like one.

Having grown up knowing I was an orphan who was adopted, I grew up feeling rejected and unwanted. So that “trauma”, as my one and only therapist labeled it, was also perhaps why I understood Nat better than most.

But my “trauma” wasn’t as bad, per se, not in comparison to Nat’s and many others.

You see, my birth mother hadn’t willingly given me up.

Breast cancer took her from me when I was barely six months old.

So I guess in some regard, at least we’d had that time together, not that I remember any of it.

But she’d documented all of it, and those pictures came with me. They showed me that I had been loved.

She hadn’t chosen to leave me or to give me up, but she was taken. Somehow that lessened my trauma when it came to abandonment.

Likewise what accompanied me was a detailed medical history.

My mother had a falling out with her parents when she’d gotten pregnant with me. Well, that’s a nice way of saying that they kicked her out of their lives, with nothing to show for most of her life except the last name she got from them.

And the guy who got her pregnant? Of course he didn’t step up. Because come to find out, he was a liar and a cheat.

He was a liar because he’d both lied to my mother as well as his wife .

He’d told my mother that he was as single as a Pringle when they started dating.

Meanwhile he played the loving, doting and faithful husband with his wife.

And so yeah, the cheat part of him being a liar and a cheat was him cheating on his wife.

So of course when my mother fell ill, he wasn’t an option. He’d denied paternity anyway, as well as all responsibility. Financial and otherwise.

My mother had done what she needed to do though. And when she was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was pregnant with me, she denied treatment, because she didn’t want to abort the fetus to save her own life. Instead, she carried me full term.

By the time I was born, it was too late for her to get treatment.

That’s when, supposedly, she thoroughly lived every moment that she had with me, while searching for an adoptive family to give me what she couldn’t.

She had no one else in her life, and that’s why she’d been forced to choose adoption.

But in some ways, her picking the family had made her feel like she had some say in it all, a say in my future and safety.

And that part of my reality, my history, was always brought to the forefront of my mind every six months when I had to come to get a mammogram and ultrasound to try to prevent what happened to her, happening to me.

I was grateful for these tests, that I was able to come in for early screenings - something I had begun doing as soon as I turned eighteen. But I also hated them, because they reminded me that the only real person who had cared for me was taken from me.

So as I sat clutching my hospital gown that covered the top half of my body, kept company by three other women in similar gowns, all of whom were over fifty mind you, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

The mammogram had gone per the usual: uncomfortable. The ultrasound had also gone per the usual with warm gooey liquid squirted on my breasts, only to be fondled by that ultrasound wand, while a tech eagerly moved it all around every square millimeters of my breasts and areolas.

Now was the thing I hated most: waiting for the doctor and technician to review everything.

“Scottie? You can come back now,” Rosalie, the ultrasound tech called from the open doorway. She led me back to the ultrasound room.

“Ok so, we reviewed everything and as you know, with your breast density and family history, we always have to get extra images. This time around we had those concern areas on your right breast, and that’s what the doctor wanted us to specifically ultrasound.”

“Yep, yep,” I nodded and replied in a clipped way while pulling on the thread of the gown.

“The extra images assuage the doctor’s concerns about those specific areas, it’s just the breast density and tissue. But behind them, with the ultrasound we were able to confirm that you’ve got a couple of small cysts.”

I took in a sharp inhale of breath and my eyes went wide. Oh my God! This is how it starts! My inner voice was panicking.

“Scottie, it’s okay! Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.

So you do have two small cysts behind your nipple and the ultrasound showed us all that we needed to see.

They are liquid-filled and so it’s nothing to worry about.

Totally normal. You are clear and good to go until your next check up!

” She smiled at me and when she saw I wasn’t quite breathing she continued, “This is good news. Breathe. Everything is normal.” She smiled again.

“You’re sure?!”

“Yes. As you know, because you’ve regularly been getting these for over a decade, breast density always plays tricks on us.

But the density had slightly changed from your last scans so we wanted to be thorough.

But this is all normal. Go home, have a glass of wine or tea or whatever it is you drink to calm yourself, and enjoy your life! You’re doing great.”

I begrudgingly gave her a smile as I allowed my shoulders to sink in relief.

I was healthy.

The scans were clean.

No cancer.

“Ok thank you.”

She patted my shoulder, “I’ll walk you back where you can change and I’ll let Marge know to set up your next appointment for six months out. Okay?”

“Yes, okay thank you.”

“Have a great weekend, Scottie,” she said as she opened the door for me that led back to the changing rooms.

A clean bill of health. Phew .

Well, at least until the next round of scans. Then I could do this all over again.