Free Me (bxb)

Part 4

School is finally out and Griffin is six now, and his mama is finally feeling good enough to go out to their favorite cafe in Tivoli. He and Mama are sitting side by side on the booth with the tear split down the middle while his daddy sits on the opposite of them, his nose still buried in his menu.

"Tim, you know you're going to get the Grand Slam, so why even bother reading that thing?" his mama said with a smile that looks like something Griffin would smile when he's poking fun at his friends. His daddy makes a grumble sort of noise, and his mama's fingers reach out to snag one of the pink sugar packets out of the holder and stuffs it into her jacket pocket before his daddy has the chance to look up and see. Griffin laughs, loud and gleeful, and he sees his daddy's eyes poke over the top of his menu, but a plump waitress is standing at their table before he can ask what he was laughing about.

"Bryony!" the dark-skinned waitress says in surprise when her dark eyes look up from her little notepad, but she sounds happy, and that makes Griffin happy. "Oh, it's been months since I've seen you. How are you feeling?"

"Better today," his mama says in reply with a kind smile, and Griffin has hope that she's finally getting over whatever she was sick with because her skin is less pale and her eyes are more bright. "Chemo does have its perks, I guess."

"You're still getting chemo?" the waitress asks, her eyebrows drawn and lips turned down into a frown, but Lukas misses it because he turns his attention to coloring on his coloring sheet that has the funny looking turkey on it. "I thought you'd finished."

"Yeah, I did, too," Bryony says, voice more tired and she swipes a hand through her hair so her bangs are out of her eyes. "But when I went for the check up, the doctor said that the tumor hadn't reduced in size at all. He hoped I would be able to go without the surgery, but it doesn't look like I'll be able to avoid it for much longer."

"The surgery would just be taking the tumor out, wouldn't it? I thought that was better than getting chemo or radiation."

"Ideally, yes. But my doctor said they just found the tumor too late and if I had gone into surgery first it would have been risky. They were hoping that chemo would reduce the size of it and keep the cancer out of my lymph nodes and spreading to other organs. It did keep it from spreading anywhere, but the size hasn't changed a bit. They'll have to perform the surgery anyway and if it's successful I'll have almost no breasts left."

"When the surgery is successful," Tim suddenly speaks up, and even Griffin jumps a little in surprise by the sternness in his voice.

"Tim," Bryony murmurs softly, eyes turning sad and hesitant, but Tim shakes his head and looks up at Nella, their waitress and long-time family friend. "Tim, you know what the doctor said."

"I also know that, that doctor is a blubbering idiot," Tim says angrily, roughly, and Bryony closes her eyes with another pound from her never-ending headache. "We should have gone through with the surgery before we agreed to do any kind of chemo or radiation. It was wasted time and only made you sicker."

"I'm not talking about this here," Bryony sharply says, and Griffin's eyes snap up to her in surprise, never having heard her talk so sternly before. She always talked slow and sweet and calm, anything but that left Griffin's skin crawling with unease. Her eyes turn to Nella, lips drawn into a firm line as she tells her that they all will be having their usual. Tensely, Nella jots it down on her notepad then hurries away towards the kitchens.

"Bryony-"

"No." Her voice is ringing with finality again and she tucks all the menus back into the sticky holder on the table. "If you want to talk about this we can later, but not here and certainly not in front of Griffin. Do not bring it up again."

The muscle in Tim's jaw twitches, but his mouth stays firmly shut and he takes a long sip of the black coffee he ordered as Bryony turns back down to her son and plays tic-tac-toe with him on his coloring sheet.

Tim stares at his son and wife sitting together in the torn booth together, and he wishes Bryony could understand he was just terrified of losing her and leaving him and Griffin all alone. Deep down he knows she knows that, and maybe she refuses to acknowledge that just as much as he refuses to acknowledge that his wife's days are dwindling down and without immediate help that actually worked she would eventually run out of them.

He secretly watches as Bryony and Griffin sneak more sugar packets, giggling all the while, and he hopes that the happiness and the sugar packets tucked away inside their pockets gives Bryony strength and adds months and years to her limited number of days.