Coyotes Ever After (Colorado Coyotes #7)

Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

SEVEN MONTHS LATER

Colby

I know as soon as I walk into the doctor’s office. Not only is Dr. Harlan there, sitting behind his desk, but there are also three other people in the room. The white coats give them away as doctors, too.

“Mr. and Mrs. Harrison, good to see you again.” Dr. Harlan stands and comes around to the front of the desk to shake our hands.

He introduces Mila and me to the other three doctors, and I fake smile and shake their hands, too. As soon as Mila and I are seated in the two chairs in front of Dr. Harlan’s desk, she takes my hand. That’s not something she usually does, so I know she’s feeling the same trepidation I am.

“Well?” Mila gets right to it. “I hope you have a new treatment for my husband and we didn’t fly all the way back here just to hear you’re still working on it.”

My wife is a lot more pointed than I am, as usual, but in this case, I’m glad she’s getting right to the point. We’ve been to this hospital in London three times in the past two months. And that was after many visits to a specialist in Denver and a hospital in New York. Long COVID has taken over my fucking life. I’m too exhausted to get out of bed sometimes, and even when I force myself to, I feel like shit all the time.

Fatigue. Headaches. Brain fog. I have all the symptoms, and they’re only getting more severe. Mila has been relentless about seeking answers and treatment options, but there’s just not a lot of certainty among the medical community about long COVID.

“Mr. and Mrs. Harrison, we do appreciate you making the trip here, and we do want to begin treatment immediately. However, the diagnosis isn’t long COVID.”

Mila scoffs. “What do you mean? Colby was diagnosed with long COVID a year ago. We know he has it. We just haven’t been able to find a treatment that works.”

Dr. Harlan ignores her question and looks directly at me.

“The symptoms were consistent with long COVID, but Mr. Harrison, you, in fact, have a brain tumor.”

I stare at him, lightheaded. There’s no way he just said what I think he did.

“No, that can’t be right,” Mila argues. “Rest and hydration make him feel a lot better. That wouldn’t be true if he had...that. You need to run more tests.”

“I’ve had three colleagues review all the test results and Mr. Harrison’s medical records and they all agree with me.” Dr. Harlan’s tone isn’t defensive but apologetic.

I nod, my resentment over having long COVID now feeling like a cosmic joke. A brain tumor.

It tracks. Headaches, fatigue, confusion.

“Rest and hydration improved my symptoms,” I say.

Dr. Harlan nods.

“How bad is it? Give it to me straight, I want to know.”

Dr. Harlan looks at one of the other doctors, a middle-aged woman whose name I’ve already forgotten.

“We need to run more tests, including a biopsy. We’ll know more after that.”

My wife scoffs. “I need to know more now. How bad is it?”

Her tone is pissed off, but I know it’s really fear that’s driving her. I squeeze her hand gently.

“If you want my opinion,” the female doctor says, “and again, this is an opinion. I think we’ve caught this somewhere in between early and late. There are no signs it’s spread, and that’s good. We’ll get the testing done as quickly as possible, I assure you.”

“Now.” Mila’s voice wavers with emotion. “I told you money isn’t a factor and I meant that. We’ll write you a check right now. Just name the amount. I want the rest of the testing done immediately.”

“We can get everything done as soon as tomorrow,” the doctor says. “We’ll need a biopsy, more blood work, an MRI and a PET scan.”

I exhale heavily and then laugh. “It feels like I’m on a TV show, listening to you use all these medical terms with a British accent.”

Mila scowls at me, her lips parted like she wants to say something but can’t decide what.

“Mr. Harrison, I imagine you’re in shock right now,” one of the other doctors says.

She looks young—like fresh out of college. Maybe she was a child prodigy or something.

“What are you, an intern?” Mila demands angrily. “Who asked you to be here?”

“I’m thirty-one years old and I’m a neurologist.”

Dr. Harlan clears his throat. “Dr. Cordova is one of our top neurologists, actually.”

“Thirty-one?” I arch my brows. “Never would have guessed.”

“I get that a lot. I have a good skincare routine.”

“For fuck’s sake, can we stay on topic?” Mila snaps.

“Of course,” Dr. Harlan says. “Let’s review the scans so we can tell you what we do know about the tumor and what we still need to figure out.”

“So it might not even be cancer?” Mila asks hopefully.

“We won’t be able to say conclusively until after the biopsy.”

It’s cancer. We get the diagnosis ten days later on a Zoom call in Mila’s home office.

She cries silently as the doctors discuss treatment options; I force myself to stay focused on what they’re saying even though I don’t want to be here right now.

I had a feeling, based on the body language and tones of the doctors at our last London appointment, that the biopsy would just be a confirmation of what they suspected.

“We’d like to start radiation immediately,” Dr. Harlan says.

Mila swipes her fingers over her cheeks, opening her mouth to say something but then closing it again.

“Sorry,” she says sheepishly. “I’ll let you talk.”

She’s so used to handling things, and she’s great at it. Run a professional hockey team and its full staff? She’s got it. Oversee the construction of our vacation home in Hawaii, making sure it stays on budget and on time? Not a problem. Make sure our daughters get to every lesson and practice on time while also making sure they get healthy meals and time with both parents every day? Yeah, she does that, too.

Mila is a leader. I’ve always let her run the things she wants to run because she’s never tried to run me. We have a partnership. Since retiring from hockey after we won the championship, I’ve tried to do more for the girls, but with being sick, it’s been hard.

No wonder—I have cancer. Part of me still can’t believe it, but another part of me has been ready to start fighting it since the day of our last appointment in London.

“Doc, we appreciate everything you and your colleagues have done, but now that we know what we’re dealing with, I’m planning to get treatment here at home. It wouldn’t be good for our family to travel there for it.”

“I understand. Ask your treatment team to reach out to me and I’ll send them all of the results. This is stage two, Mr. Harrison, and you’re young and otherwise healthy. Your chances of successful treatment are good. I encourage you to stay optimistic.”

“Thank you.”

Mila thanks him, too, and ends the call. She looks up at me from her chair and as soon as our eyes meet, she bursts into tears. I wrap my arms around her and hold her tightly, resting my cheek on her head.

She’s tough as nails, so she only cries for about thirty seconds before pulling back and taking a deep breath.

“Okay. So I’ll let Dr. Kent know how to request those records. You said they can start treatment right away, right?”

“Yeah, they fast-tracked me when you made that massive donation, which is wrong on so many levels.”

She shrugs. “We help them build a new wing on the medical school, they move up your appointment on the schedule. Seems like a good trade for them.”

I cup her cheeks and kiss her forehead. “I’m going to fight this, babe, with everything I’ve got.”

Tears well in her eyes. “I know. I’ll be right beside you.”

I kiss her lips lightly and smile. “I’ll probably look badass bald.”

Her tears spill over and she furrows her brows. “Fucking hell. I haven’t cried this much in my life. If it was anything else, anything but my family— you . Our family is my entire world, Colby.”

“I know it is, love. It’s mine, too.”

“What will we tell the girls?”

“The truth. But we’ll make it age appropriate. I don’t want to scare them.”

She nods. “What about everyone else? Do you want people to know?”

My shoulders tense as I imagine getting waves of thinking of you cards and social media messages with prayer hands emojis. Endless casserole deliveries. Maybe even floral arrangements.

Fuck that.

“No. I don’t want anyone but close family and friends to know.”

“Okay. I’ll come up with a plausible reason to take a leave of absence.”

I knit my brows together. “Keep working. I want us to keep living our regular lives.”

“There’s no way I’m going to work when you’re going through cancer treatment. We’re in this together, just like everything else.”

I nod, feeling profoundly grateful she’s my wife. The three best things that ever happened to me were Mila asking me to marry her so she wouldn’t get deported and the births of our daughters, Anastasia and Irina.

The girls are out with our nanny, Madison, now. The thought of trying to explain this news to them makes me physically ill. Anastasia is five; I think she’ll have some understanding of what it means that I’m sick. Irina is only three—she won’t get it.

It’s better that way, really. I’m supposed to be the one worrying about my kids, not the other way around. I just want to dig in and get my treatment started as soon as possible.

I thought hockey was my life until Mila and I got married. Now, my family is my life. I’ve retired and we finally have the time to travel for fun, spending weekends in, cooking and watching movies and taking vacations with my former teammates and their families.

I love my life, and I’m going to fight for it with everything I am.