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It is not easy to keep this secret at work. My show team does not know. I want a space where I can be cancer free. I want a place where I can go and cancer doesn’t exist. I can focus on someone else’s war. But I can feel the tears well up during the commercial breaks, stinging like little needles threatening to bleed the tv make up down my cheeks. Blink. Just blink. Will starts chemo Monday. I read the pamphlet on side effects. I have the 24 hour emergency number to the clinic. They say that covering the news is like joining the army. A lifetime of boredom lived for the sheer moments of terror. It’s not even so much the cancer that scares me. It’s the wait. The wonder. The heartbreak of seeing him so sick, but so brave. He took care of me all our lives. Do I know how to take care of him? And how does that make him feel? When I ask, Will’s eyes go soft and he just leans forward and hugs me. I breathe him in. Do you know what it’s like to sit in a moment and inhale? I remember the games I would play as a child. How long can you hold your breath before your head aches for the relief of exhaling?

When the baby moves, she snuggles. There are no sharp kicks to the ribs, just a rolling movement. Once, she ran her foot across the top of my ribs—a slow, sliding effort, like a caress under my heart. I can’t imagine the life she will be born in to.