Step One

She wasn’t sure what made her touch it that evening, maybe the fabric of her pajamas tickled her skin, maybe it was instinct. She brushed her fingers over the side of her breast and felt it immediately.  It was wrong.  Everything about it was wrong.

Her first reaction was to pull her hand away.  She clenched and unclenched her fists. This can’t be right. She felt it again.  Her stomach knotted.  It was big. They always ask you to describe how big you think it is compared to various nuts.  Nuts of all things! Is it the size of an almond, a peanut…?  This was a walnut. Definitely a walnut. “What the hell is a walnut doing inside my breast?” she thought.

She couldn’t hide this discovery from him.  He happened to have been watching her when she first felt it.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know… I…I feel something weird.”

“Let me feel.”

She guided his fingers to the spot. The gesture was unnecessary.  He could have found it easily on his own.

“Hmm.” He frowned. She was searching his face for reassurance and he knew it so he quickly softened his eyes and smiled at her.

“Probably just another cyst. Since you’ve lost a little weight it’s probably just easier to feel a cyst when you get one now.”

“Yeah. Probably.”

She didn’t look convinced though and he pulled her towards him and wrapped his arms around her.

“It’s time to take your own advice,” he said, “you are always telling everyone else that there is no sense worrying about things when there may be nothing at all to worry about. Don’t go there until you really have something to worry about. Put it right out of your mind.”

But she couldn’t put it out of her mind.  She cuddled up to him in the pitch black of their bedroom and allowed her mind to go there.  Her mother had survived breast cancer.  Maybe it was her turn to battle the demon.  She could feel tears threatening to spill onto his chest but she willed them away.  She didn’t want him to know how scared she was because then he would be scared and she really needed him to believe it was all going to be fine, and then convince her of it too.

They laid wide eyed in the dark and allowed their imaginations to take them through various scenarios, each one scaring them both wider and wider awake.

The next morning she was up early and made herself busy around the house.  She caught herself checking her watch every five minutes until finally she knew the office would be open.  She called her doctor and made an appointment. Step one.