Page 83 of The Warmth of Our Closest Star

“I assume that once they got in there, they got nervous that they would do more damage by removing it—but that’s not what I’m seeing in the records I’ve received.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I wish that I did. That has always been my assumption, but I don’t think I have ever been told that explicitly.”

“Enzo,” he said, frowning again as though unsure if he should say what he was thinking, “I want to tell you something, but I don’t know if it will ease some of your lifelong concern over your tumor…or it will upset you further.”

Holding my hands out limply, I replied.

“What more could someone say that will make a lifelong medical condition worse?”

He blinked a few times, staring at me.

“There is no possible way that your tumor could have been removed by cutting into the side or top of your skull,” he said evenly. “They would have had to lift your whole brain out to get to it because of where it’s positioned. They…they should have known that. All of those surgeons should have known that.”

My mind went numb.

“I wondered how so many surgeons could have made the mistake of trying this method for surgically treating your tumor and I just couldn’t understand it,” he said. “It was bad medicine at best, negligence at worst. However, I noted that in your earliest medical records—that I have access to—that a doctor incorrectly indicated the position and location of your tumor.”

What does one say to that? If, after a lifetime of living with a tumor, you find out that it was due to one doctor’s incorrect notes, and then every doctor after not correcting those notes…what can you say?

I knew how I felt.

“I don’t have an answer for you as to why all of your doctors so far didn’t change the notes. Or realize the error from looking at all of your scans before opening your skull, but…here we are. All I can do is apologize for the lack of appropriate care you’ve received from my peers.”

I licked my lips. Willed my eyes dry.

“So, what now?” I said, trying to shrug; pretend I was unbothered.

I had to be unbothered. Fury would solve nothing; change nothing.

Dr. Bradley frowned deeply, his brow like a canyon.

“Are you happy with taking medication for the rest of your life, Enzo?” he asked.

My mouth opened to tell Dr. Bradley that the medication was fine. It kept me alive. Taking medication was simply the lot I’d been dealt in life. What other option was there now? That’s not what came out of my mouth, though.

“No,” I said, strongly emotional, though I controlled myself. “I hate the medication. Even the medication that doesn’t give me joint pain and headaches and nausea and sap all of my energy.”

Dr. Bradley watched me.

“I’m so exhausted with the medication,” I said. “I’m exhausted with worrying that one day I will have a seizure that kills me because I became careless with my medication routine. Or, I don’t know, a seizure that causes some type of brain damage so severe that I will be forced to live in a facility for the rest of my life. I’m…exhausted, Dr. Bradley.”

Somehow, I managed to not cry. Admitting that truth had made my eyes want to well up, but I had refused. I wouldn’t cry about my tumor ever again. Not if I could help it.

“I figured as much,” he said, giving a single nod. “I could be wrong, Enzo. Maybe I’m as useless as your other doctors seem to have been, but I think I’m right. A proper surgeon—an experienced, competent surgeon—should be able to remove your meningioma easily.”

I shrugged. “But they can’t.”

He nudged my knee. “None of your surgeons seem to have been what I would call experienced or competent.”

I stared at him.

“The fact that they’ve opened up your skull that many times tells me all I need to believe I’m right about that.”

Again, I had nothing helpful to say.

“So,” Dr. Bradley pushed against the floor with his feet, sending him sailing on the stool across the floor to the counter next to the door, “I have a neurosurgeon buddy who practices in Chicago—”

“I don’t know—”