What We Used To Know

“I’m sorry cat, but you just can’t come in with me. I’m sorry,” Addie whispered to the cat in a hushed tone while she closed the sliding glass door. The cat was sitting on the patio with her again the next morning, keeping her company while she ‘got some fresh air’, and Oliver had to watch her from the kitchen, knowing that he couldn’t do anything.

The cat stared at Addie and Oliver as they stood in the kitchen together, yearning to come in to the warmth, away from the cold of the outdoors. It meowed, rubbing against the frosty glass as Addie looked at it with sad eyes, turning away sharply to face Oliver.

“Why don’t you just let it in, love?” he questioned softly, feeling bad for the large, furry cat staring at them from outside.

Addie looked at him, then to the cat. “What if it belongs to somebody? I don’t want to let someone else’s cat in here. They might miss it!”

Oliver loved how Addie cared for this cat that didn’t seem to have a home. “Addie, I don’t think it would have stuck around here overnight if it belonged to somebody else. Just let it in. ‘S cold out there.”

And Addie loved how Oliver cared for this cat that wanted to belong to someone, to have a home. That cat found a home when it found Addie.

As the glass door slid open, it carefully stepped through the opening, scanning its new surroundings before entering the house completely. Both Oliver and Addie looked at it as the cat explored the kitchen, pawing around before giving their legs the once over with its body.

“Well as long as it’s going to be staying here should we give it a name?” Addie asked, looking up at Oliver as she bent down to pet the cat, only making it halfway before wincing in pain and deciding it was a bad idea to kneel.

“I dunno,” he said, looking at the cat intently to get a grasp on a good name for it. “What d’you think?”

“I’m thinking Coco,” she said, smiling as she settled for looking at the cat, ignoring that pain in her knee, like she got so good at doing.

“Coco? Really?” Oliver was skeptical of the name, looking at the cat again with his face a little distorted. “Addie, that thing must weigh like, twenty pounds. It doesn’t look much like a Coco. How ‘bout something a little more… fitting?”

She laughed, “So? I think Coco is a perfectly fitting name for this… Is it a boy or a girl?”

They both paused now, looking at the cat, trying to decide the gender. Addie looked towards Oliver for an answer.

He ran a hand through his hair, his eye catching hers as he looked around. “What? You think I would know?”

They both laughed, looking at the newest addition of their household, even if the gender of such addition was unknown. “Then Coco will be the unisex name for our boy-or-girl cat,” Addie said, laughing as she watched the cat move effortlessly from the kitchen into the dining room, exploring the new house it would live in.

The two were left in silence when the cat transitioned to a new room. It was a heavy silence between them, like it had been since they arrived. Addie wasn’t sure what to say, because she didn’t feel like saying anything at all, and Oliver wasn’t sure whether he should try to comfort her still, or talk to her about it. She fidgeted with her fingers, picking at a hangnail. Oliver stood there and stared at his feet.

Addie couldn’t find words to speak in order to tell Oliver what she needed, or how she felt. So she left it at silence. That was easier than trying to admit that she was scared to death about what would happen. And it was easy to say that Oliver felt equally the same. He was just as scared about what would happen, because if Addie lost her mother, he would lose Addie. There was no doubt that she wouldn’t be the same should something happen to her mother. They were both terrified.

She took a sidestep closer to Oliver, keeping it inconspicuous, or trying to. He took a step closer to her as well. He missed being close to her, being with her and holding her like he used to. She took another step. Their shoulders were touching. Oliver moved a little more, and Addie leaned her head onto his chest.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispered, listening to his heartbeat. It was steady, beat after beat coming, always on time. She wished something in her life could be as stable as that heartbeat.

In those three words they both knew exactly what she meant. She missed cuddling and kissing Oliver. Talking to him for hours on end about absolutely nothing. Reading their own books and laying on the same floor. She missed being with him in a different way other than just being in the same room with him. It was all different now after he had been on tour, giving in to a weakness no one knew about.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered back, leaning his head down onto hers.

And in those two words, he apologized for everything he had done to her. Addie forgave him the minute he came home from Japan, but they both knew what he was sorry for. He was sorry for things not being how they used to. He was sorry for his addiction that he wouldn’t dream of telling Addie about, because that would give him another reason to apologize when she fell apart after hearing it. They may both know the truth, but it was never something to be said aloud. Maybe this apology now could suffice for not telling her.

“I’m so scared--” Addie was interrupted by her phone vibrating loudly on the kitchen counter. Her second confession was cut short by a phone call, for which she was not sure to be grateful for or not. Oliver knew she was scared though. She didn’t have to tell him for it to be apparent.

The number was not recognizable, but Addie hoped it was her mother’s hospital trying to get a hold of her, to let her know that her mother had woken up and was going to be fine.

But the accent on the other line gave it all away.

“Is this miss Addie Kaston?” the voice said, somewhat cheery in its British accent.

“Yes, it is,” she replied, hoping that she knew who it was.

“This is the St. John’s hospital calling about your test results from January the third.” Sigh of relief. After one full month of waiting, there were to be answers.

“Yes,” Addie said with a tinge of hope in her voice, hoping that the answers to this problem were only a few words away.

“And we’ve faxed these results over to your nearest medical doctor at the Legacy hospital. You can go in any time today to see a doctor who will discuss this with you and give you more information.”

That relief was no longer there as Addie learned she had to wait just hours more in order to find out what was going on inside of her. And the ‘more information’ part didn’t exactly sound right to her, as any simple answer to a problem shouldn’t need more information. This only made her nervous as she hung up the phone and lied to Oliver, telling him that she needed to go in for a check up.

The worst part was that this was going to be at the same place her mother was. She feared going in to see her. What if this was the last time she saw her? Addie wanted to remember her mother full of life and caring for her, once they have moved to the States. She didn’t want the image of her mother laying there, teetering between life and death burned into her brain forever.

So she showered, leaving Oliver downstairs in silence as he acquainted himself with Coco the cat.

“Right now, you make her happier than I can,” Oliver muttered to Coco, keeping his voice low and his hands soft on its fur. “And you ‘aven’t even known her for a day yet.”

Oliver could only smirk at his jealousy of the cat. Addie paid it more attention in the past twelve hours than she had him. This of course was upsetting, but he knew it was just Addie. And it was jus the result of Oliver ignoring her for a month. But he was hoping to change that, starting yesterday. He knew Addie wasn’t mad at him, but he felt like it would have been easier if she was. He could beg then, grovel for forgiveness and love as he proclaimed what a mistake he made. When he had to do it like this, it was hard, because she wasn’t showing much emotion either way as he tried to passively make up for what he had done.

Addie called a cab to go to the hospital, shaking the entire ride there. She would be in the same building as her mother, getting news that she anticipated wouldn’t be good. The entire stay in Springfield was doomed to be a horrible one, but that was determined when Addie got a phone call alerting her that her mother was in a coma.

The doctor was cool and collected when he met Addie, keeping it professional as he always did. This was his job, of course. Delivering the painful news to people on the hour was just a downside of his job, but it had to be done. And it made it even harder when he had to give news like this to someone so young, but it didn’t mean that telling her could be avoided.

Disease didn’t discriminate by age.

“You have what is called an osteosarcoma. It’s the most common form of bone cancer, and it’s developed around your knee. From the x-rays, it appears to be metastasizing elsewhere, looking like it’s going into your spine, where it could potentially spread into your lungs.” The way he spoke so effortlessly and smoothly made Addie question whether this doctor in fact had a soul or not. You can’t tell someone that they essentially could die from this cancer without even breaking eye contact and still have a soul.

“In most cases, between sixty and eighty percent of patients were able to be cured if the cancer had not spread beyond the tumor. Unfortunately, Miss Kaston, you are not most cases.”

Addie’s world shattered to something less than dust upon hearing those words.

“The cancer has metastasized into your spine as I mentioned earlier,” he spoked softly now, looking up towards her with eyes that said he really hated this part of his job. “Miss Kaston, this has reached a stage that chemo only has a twenty-five percent chance of making a dent. I’m so, so sorry to inform you of all of this, especially when I have just received news that your mother is staying in our intensive care unit.”

Addie had her quivering chin in hand, sitting at the table Doctor Oswald instructed her to sit at when they walked into his office. She didn’t want to come here in the first place, and she certainly wished she didn’t know of what was really wrong with her now. It was all better before she had any answers; when she could just make up her own.

“So there’s nothing we can do?” she asked quietly, her voice cracking from tears heating up in her eyes. They fought to spill over, to grieve for everything she had lost, and what she was going to potentially lose.

“We can attempt chemotherapy, but I don’t recommend it unless your insurance would be willing to pay for all costs. Just in case it’s… unsuccessful.”

“I’m completely blindsided,” Addie admitted, stating how she truly felt. It was how she felt since she got the phone call about her mother. Everything was so unplanned, and so unseen. But that had essentially been Addie’s entire life; everything that happened was never planned, and always happened at the worst times. Maybe her timing was always destined to be off, and cut short from what she deserved.

“My deepest sympathies are with you, Miss Kaston. But the thing with a cancer like osteosarcoma is that it primarily affects younger people, which of course is heartbreaking to everyone affected by it. From what we gathered from the x-rays, this tumor has been growing for around a year. It developed quickly in these last few months, and that would be the pain you have been experiencing since December, correct?” Addie nodded. “At the rate it has been growing, and will continue to grow and spread, the outcome is of course not going to be bright. But we want you to know that patients who are affected with this cancer usually do not end up dying with large amounts of pain.”

Well that’s great. I won’t die with a lot of pain. Just the emotional kind that they can’t prescribe anything for.

The realization that something was really wrong with Addie sent her into disarray as she left the office. She couldn’t bring herself to think about her mother, who was resting somewhere in that hospital. Would she make a visit? It could be her last chance to see her mother. Would her mother die? Who would go first? If Addie died, would her mother still be in a coma? Would she know her daughter had died?

Tears streaked her cheeks during the cab ride home, and Addie sat on the steps outside of her mother’s house. She couldn’t bring herself to open the door and step inside knowing what she did now. The nurse in the office gave her a myriad of pamphlets explaining about making the last league of your life matter and that there is always hope, no matter the situation.

The situation was that Addie had cancer, her mother was in a coma, and she just wanted things to feel right.

She sat there for twenty minutes before she heard the door open behind her. It creaked softly as Oliver closed it. He stooped down, taking a seat next to Addie on the concrete steps. They were covered in snow, but neither of them cared. The emotion in the air that Addie radiated was enough to numb them both up.

“That wasn’t just a check up, was it?” he questioned softly, his voice barely audible above the wind that was picking up.

Addie burst into a sob, tears falling from her eyes rapidly. She buried her face into his shoulder, leaning on him with her diseased body. Her shoulders shook and her face was soaked in tears. And she sat there and cried on Oliver, crying for her mother, for herself, and for the lack of life she feared was approaching. She cried for Oliver, knowing that what she had to tell him was going to ruin him, too. This wasn’t the type of thing that could only affect one person.

He had his left arm around her, softly holding her into him. His other was holding her hand in his lap. Her fingers were limp though, as she didn’t hold enough strength in her to do anything but cry at the moment.

So Oliver sat on the snowy, icy steps with his girlfriend, hoping that what she would tell him wasn’t going to be too bad. But he could tell easily from this, that it was not going to be in any way good. So he braced himself, trying to build up that mental strength he needed to have in order to make it appear that he was strong. He had to be strong for Addie, because who else was going to be strong for her?

“I have a cancer called osteosarcoma in my knee,” she said through a snotty nose and swollen throat, “and it’s probably going to kill me.”