Chapter 3: Colliding Fronts
I stepped out of the examination room into the bustling, sterile hallway, closing the heavy wooden door firmly behind me. I pressed the green answer button and lifted the phone to my ear.
He bypassed any semblance of a standard greeting. “Rebecca, you are making a colossal, humiliating mistake.”
“What mistake?” I asked, my voice deadly quiet.
“Letting these opportunistic doctors frighten Grace over something completely harmless,” Daniel spat, the irritation vibrating through the speaker. “You are indulging her theatrics.”
“Daniel,” I said, leaning my head back against the cool cinderblock wall. “They found a mass. A large one.”
The line went dead silent. I could hear the faint, rhythmic sound of his blinker clicking in the background. He was driving.
“They… they mentioned something like that might be a possibility before,” he finally muttered, his tone shifting defensively. “But it wasn’t confirmed. It was just a guess.”
A sickening wave of nausea washed over me. “You knew? You knew they suspected a tumor, and they recommended further imaging?”
He exhaled loudly, a wet, aggrieved sigh. “Rebecca, I had massive work responsibilities that week. We were in the middle of a major quarterly review. We simply couldn’t afford to spend every single day running back and forth to hospitals for every little ache and pain.”
“Grace has been in excruciating agony for weeks, Daniel.”
“She is always complaining about something!” he exploded. “If it’s not a headache, it’s her stomach. She wants attention!”
For the first time in our seventeen-year marriage, I did not attempt to soothe him. I did not soften my edges to accommodate his rage.
“Stop,” I commanded.
The authority in my voice must have shocked him, because he actually stopped mid-rant.
“Do not ever call our daughter an attention-seeker again,” I said, spacing my words out like measured drops of poison. “She is terrified. She is hurting. And right now, she is receiving the medical care you actively denied her.”
Daniel’s voice hardened into a familiar, punishing block of ice. “I am her father, Rebecca.”
“And I am her mother,” I fired back. “And right now, I am staying right here to fix what you broke.”
I ended the call. My hands were violently shaking, the adrenaline flooding my system, but beneath the physical tremors, my mind felt terrifyingly lucid. There would be ample time to confront Daniel later. Right now, my daughter was sitting on an examination table, waiting for the verdict on her own body.
