“Can the tumor hear us?”
“No,” he said.
“Good. I don’t want it to know we found it.”
The biopsy was scheduled for the following morning.
After the doctors left, Eric approached Daniel in the hallway.
“I will contact your school.”
“That isn’t enough,” Daniel said.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Tell them you accused me without evidence. Use those exact words.”
Eric’s jaw tightened.
“You weren’t the one who got that test result.”
“No. I was just the person you decided to destroy with it.”
From her bed, Sophie called both men into the room.
They stood on opposite sides of her.
“I don’t care which one of you wins,” she said. “I don’t care who Mom loves more or who gets more weekends.”
Eric lowered his eyes.
Sophie held out her hands.
“I need both of you to stop fighting long enough to help me.”
Daniel took one hand.
After a long pause, Eric took the other.
The next morning, orderlies arrived to take Sophie to surgery. She handed me her stuffed rabbit, then looked toward the three adults gathered beside her bed.
“If I wake up and you’re fighting again, I’m asking the nurses to remove all of you.”
It was the first time any of us had laughed since the pregnancy test.
Then the doors closed behind her.
The rabbit remained in my arms.
And we waited to learn the name of the thing growing inside my daughter.
CHAPTER SIX
What the Test Had Really Found
The biopsy lasted three hours.
Daniel paced the waiting room. Eric sat beneath the television with his elbows on his knees. Neither man spoke.
When the neurosurgeon finally appeared, I knew Sophie was alive because he was walking instead of running.
“The procedure went as planned,” he said. “She is awake.”
My legs nearly gave way.
“Did you remove the tumor?”
“Removing it now would risk damaging structures involved in vision and hormone regulation. Today’s goal was diagnosis.”
We were allowed to see Sophie one at a time. She was sleepy and pale, with a small bandage hidden near her hairline.
Her first question was not about the surgery.
“Did Daniel’s school let him come back?”
Daniel smiled, but his eyes filled.
“Not yet.”
“Dad?”
Eric stood behind me.
“I called the superintendent,” he said. “I told her there was no pregnancy and no evidence Daniel had harmed you.”
“Did you tell her you were wrong?”
Eric hesitated.
“Yes.”
Sophie closed her eyes again.
“Good.”
The pathology report arrived two days later.
Dr. Shah gathered us in a conference room and wrote the diagnosis on a whiteboard: an hCG-secreting intracranial germ cell tumor.
The words looked less frightening than the MRI image. They were not.
“The tumor produced the hormone that caused Sophie’s positive pregnancy tests,” Dr. Shah explained. “It also disrupted the part of her brain that regulates thirst and development.”
Daniel leaned forward.
“Is it cancer?”
“Yes.”
