Chapter 7: language of horror, dressed up in radiology

Friday morning, the air was different. Stiller. Thicker. Like it knew.

There are days you don’t forget, not because they shine, but because they crack open the floor beneath your life.

I already knew we weren’t getting out of the woods. Not by a long shot.

Because I wasn’t listening to the words.

I was watching their faces.

Friday morning was grey. Of course it was. The kind of sky that forgets it’s morning. I hadn’t really slept. I was in the same clothes from yesterday, breastfeeding Evelyn in a chair that only half reclined, in a room that was never meant to be home.

Midday, I was told there was going to be a meeting. They’d seen something. And they were ready to talk. John’s flight from L.A. was scheduled to land at 4:15 p.m. My meeting was at noon. I was going to have to do this part alone.

And the meeting—God, the meeting.

I sat in a plastic chair, rocking the stroller back and forth like it was my job. Like if I kept moving it, the world wouldn’t tip over. Evelyn was quiet in the stroller. My dad sat beside me in that tiny room where you’re told bad things.

I remember everything about the room. The rectangular table. The fluorescent lights. The neurologist—Dr. Erick Sell-Marucco—who had, all week, offered me a kind of softly couched reassurance. “It’s probably post-infectious,” he kept saying. “I’d say 90%. Antibiotics will help. These things can resolve.”

And then there was Dr. David McAuley, the neurosurgeon. My main character in this sea of grey. He sat differently. He didn’t fidget. He studied. He absorbed. He watched me as much as the scans. And he told the truth.

He looked at me. Really looked. And he said, once again:

“This is real.”

That was it. Not a drawn-out explanation. Just those words.

And suddenly everything—the pizza, the wine, the Disneyland call, the hoping, the walking, the silent crying—collapsed into this singular recognition. That it was never going to be the 90%. That it had always been the 10%. That this wasn’t going away with antibiotics.

The MRI from the day prior—November 8—showed asymmetric thickening and enlargement of the right superior colliculus, increased mass effect on the aqueduct, elevated choline, and a myoinositol peak. The radiologist didn’t call it cancer. But they didn’t rule it out either. They said it “could represent a glioma” .

The findings were discussed with both Dr. Sell and Dr. McAuley. That’s in the report. But I already knew who I believed.

It hadn’t been an infection. It had grown. There was mass effect. Effacement of the posterior aspect of the third ventricle. Signal change. Contrast uptake. The language of horror, dressed up in radiology.

“It’s a tumour,” Dr. McAuley said.

That was the moment.

And like clockwork, John sent me a message from the plane’s wifi.

“What is it?”

My thumbs moved before my heart could catch up.

“Brain tumour,” I wrote back.

The neurologist tried to stop me. “Maybe don’t tell him over text,” he said.

“Too late.”

John was on the plane. Somewhere above Colorado. He’d paid for Wi-Fi. Because we both knew. We both knew today was the day. He read the text, excused himself, and cried in the airplane bathroom. Then he sat back down and held it together for Emma. Six years old. Excited. Unaware that a bomb had just gone off back home.

I was still in the conference room. Still rocking the stroller. Still not crying.

Somewhere in that time, I stopped crying so much.

The doctors said they wanted to keep Evelyn admitted. That meant me too. They would move us to a long-stay room. They wanted to start another pulse of steroids. Five days. Aggressive. Just in case it could be tamed. Just in case this wasn’t what it looked like. But by now, we all knew what it looked like.

The next room was smaller. Hotter. The cot closer to the monitor. There was another baby and mother sharing the room. Her baby wasn’t eating enough. They’d be out in a few days after the baby gained weight.

And me? I couldn’t tell if Evelyn looked better or worse anymore. I just knew she was still here. That I still had her. That was all I could hold onto.

John arrived that night.

He found me in the chair. Still nursing. Still dressed like a woman who hadn’t gone home in a week. He didn’t speak for a while. He just sat beside me. Leaned over. Put his face against my shoulder. I felt his breath shake.

That’s when he told me.

“This is how I know there’s no God,” he said. “You don’t make a baby this perfect and stick a fucking tumour in her head.”

And I didn’t correct him. Because what could I say?

The God we were praying to hadn’t shown up. The odds we were promised didn’t hold. The hope we’d bought had expired. And here we were. In a hospital room, trying to believe in something else.

So we built our own religion. One made of baby-sized syringes and IV poles. One made of walks down hospital corridors at 4 a.m. with a baby strapped to your chest, trying to get to the MRI fasting deadline without breastfeeding. One made of text messages from 38,000 feet. Of crying in airplanes. Of watching fireworks on FaceTime from a place you might never return to.

And still, we stayed.

Still, we held her.

Still, we fought.

There would be more tests. There would be more doctors. There would be more things to grieve. But that day—the Friday—we crossed a line.

From maybe to definitely.

From hope to treatment.

From innocence to awareness.

It’s strange how quiet that line is. No bells. No alarms. Just a sentence. A scan. A knowing. And then a new life.

One you didn’t ask for. But one you’re going to live anyway.

Because there is no other option.

Because this is real.

Friday was the day the air changed.

Friday was the day I stopped hoping for the easy answer.

Friday was the day I learned what it means when a doctor looks at you and chooses not to comfort, but to respect you—with the truth.

And that truth became the line between my old life and the new one.