Page 71 of Bro Code

“Hey, so Manman has an appointment today but I’m gonna be at work.” Chloé pulled on the cigarette again, squinting at him, then blew the smoke up. “So I was thinking maybe you could take her?”

“Dad can’t do it?”

She tilted her head like that wasn’t the point. Sighing, Louis nodded.

That afternoon, he drove Manman out to the clinic across the island in the janky old Jeep they’d been driving since Louis was a kid. The clinic was small and informal – a million miles from the crowded ER he’d been in with Riley a couple of days ago. A single waiting room with the doors open to the outside and a few folding chairs assembled around the edge of the room.

Dr. Leseur was a tall woman with a quiet voice, big earrings, and gray hair cut very close to her head. Louis and his mother sat across her desk while she showed Louis x-rays of his mother’s lungs and bones. She spread a lot of papers out and explained that the standard treatments would be covered by insurance, but there were other costs they should be prepared for, and more options available if they wanted to pursue extended care. Chloé hadn’t been sure what they could afford. Louis told her to do whatever was necessary. Extended treatment, diet plan, everything; the best. He would pay for it.

“Good,” said Dr. Leseur. “Then, with the right lifestyle changes, I think we can plan for at least five more years. Maybe eight.”

Louis was reading down the treatment plan and felt his eyes stick halfway down the page. His stomach fell. Suddenly, he wasn’t reading, he was just staring through the words.

Five years?

He looked up. “Well that’s…no, but what about the extended treatments?”

Dr. Leseur nodded. “That’s with treatment.”

“Right, but I mean all of them.”

She glanced at his mother. “That’s all of them. That’s everything we can do. That’s the timeline.”

Louis stared. He’d known this was terminal. Chloé had only said it aloud once, and they’d never repeated it since, but the shadow had been at the edge of every conversation. He’d been managing not to look at it. When he thought about Manman having cancer, he thought about the cost and logistics – organizing care and how busy he’d be and whether they could afford it. When the shadow crept in, he pushed it back by telling himself there would be a way around that.

That wasn’t actually going to happen.

Now he was sitting face-to-face with it. In front of a doctor who’d just put a number on it. An irrefutable deadline. An end.

His chest began to squeeze. Dr. Leseur was looking at him sympathetically, and he went for a smile to show her everything was totally fine.

“Okay!” he said. “Good. Well that’s–” His throat was closing. He’d said to do the best they could do. And the best they could do was five years. Maybe eight.

He started to cry.

It caught him completely off guard. He hadn’t expected to cry about this. He didn’t have warm, fuzzy feelings for Manman. She never took his side, she didn’t call him. He’d come back to the island for Chloé.

But he’d spent the last ten years thinking somewhere in the back of his mind that there would always be time to repair their relationship. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t been back to visit, he and Manman would get around to talking eventually, and maybe he and Papa would even patch things up at some point. Some day. Maybe. It didn’t matter right now — he was busy, and there was always time for that later.

So maybe it was just shock. To hear it stated so plainly that, actually, there wasn’t infinite time. Not for Manman or anyone. She had five years, maybe eight. And then she’d just be…gone.

He’d already missed four Christmases.

Manman got up from the chair beside him and he felt her big arms around him and smelled her familiar smell. He scrubbed his face on the back of his hand. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I'm crying–”

Manman didn’t say anything. She stroked his hair, and Louis put his arms around her without really meaning to, and just held onto her and cried.

In the car outside afterward, they put their seatbelts on and sat in silence. Manman didn’t seem upset. It was as though she’d been prepared to hear it.

“Did you know already?” said Louis.

She nodded. “When we came last week, she told us there were options, and she gave us the timelines. Chloé said she needed to talk to you about the money. So we’ve had a little time to think about it. Of the best and worst.”

So Chloé had known. That was probably why she’d asked him to come. He pulled the keys from his pocket. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She sighed and put on her seatbelt. “Chloé thought it would be best for you to hear it from the doctor. She said she didn’t think you would hear it from her.”

“What? Why?”