Page 43 of Woman on the Verge

Death within one year.

One case per million population.

Merry, who quite clearly hadn’t googled, said, “What are our treatment options?”

The doctor said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Larson, but there’s no treatment.”

“No treatment?” She sounded personally offended. “What do you mean no treatment?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Larson. There are no known treatments for this.”

“What about golf? Can I play golf?” Dad asked.

Nobody answered him. It was silent. I checked my phone to make sure the call hadn’t dropped. It hadn’t.

I remembered with a start that I had children and they were here at the playground. I looked up, half expecting them to be gone, kidnapped. Already I had come to see tragedy everywhere. But there they were, Grace playing with the perfectly coiffed girls and Liv sitting by herself, playing with something she had likely found on the ground. I figured if it was anything dangerous, the annoying mom would come fetch me.

“Can he come home, then?” Merry finally asked.

“Yes,” the doctor said. “I have some recommendations for hospice care and—”

“We don’t need that right now, thank you,” Merry said. I could picture her waving off Dr. Lee, her hands swatting at the air.

My dad didn’t say anything. I wondered if the wordhospicehad registered with him at all. Perhaps it had for a split second, and then it was gone. Perhaps that was a blessing.

“Nicole, I have to go,” Merry said abruptly.

“Mer, wait. We should talk—”

She hung up. I texted her immediately.

Call me.

She responded:

I need to get him out of this place. Will call when we are home.

I had a hard time picturing Merry as capable of handling the logistics of signing him out of the hospital and getting him to the car. My dad was the one who handled all that life stuff.

Are you ok?

Such a stupid question, in retrospect.

Of course I’m notOk. They’ve given up on him.

I started typing a response that included an explanation of why they weren’t “giving up.” I started to tell her that this was a terrible disease. Then I deleted all that and just wrote:

I love you. Call me later

I heard the shipwreck mom call to her girls that it was time to leave, and of course they came right to her like well-trained poodles. She gave me a wave-from-a-distance, and then they piled into their Range Rover. I walked back to the playground. Grace was pouting because her “friends” had left. Liv was still playing with something on the ground.

“Look what me found, Mommy,” she said, her eyes full of wonder.

It was some kind of purple plastic object. She put it in her mouth.

“Okay, Liv, let’s not put weird things from the ground in our mouths.”

I went to take it from her, and that’s when I realized it was a tampon applicator. I instinctively threw it into the bushes with a yelp.