Live Like You Were Dying Read Online Free Page A

appreciate it,” I said. “But that mill project is my baby. You know I want it done right.”
    â€œDone right or not done at all,” Jay said and tried to laugh. “You remember that one? That’s what you said the first time you pitched us to the mill and almost got sick from the smell of the place.” Jay laughed and ran his hand through his black hair, now tinged with gray, just as he had the day he convinced me to bypass college for a quicker payout.
    â€œYeah,” I said and reached for my coffee. Circling my finger around the warm edges of the cup, I debated how much more to share with this man who was both friend and boss. “You say you got another doctor’s appointment tomorrow?” Jay asked.
    I bit my bottom lip and grimaced, and then, fearing that I might seem weak, I chuckled. “They’re working me over, but good. I think they’ve got a beach house to pay off or something.”
    â€œMan, do what you need to do. Listen to the doctors.”
    â€œHuh . . . that’s just it. They don’t tell me much.” Laying out the details of the suspicious spot, I watched Jay frown and then shake his head. “What’re you going to do?” he asked.
    â€œI’m trying to figure it all out. Day by day, you know.” When he got up to leave, he reached over and patted my arm. “Let’s hope that oncologist you’re seeing will point you in the right direction.”
    Watching Jay back out of the driveway, I wanted to run out the door and tell him that it was all a joke to buy me some time off. But it wasn’t a joke, and Jay sensed it the same way he could sense a vulnerable competitor ready for the kill.
    The next afternoon, Heather and I waited in yet another doctor’s office in downtown Atlanta. Various images of my mama during her downward spiral from pancreatic cancer floated through my mind. Treatment after treatment had left my mama a shattered woman with a tumor that refused to be broken. The last time I visited her, she had just had a procedure that was supposed to dry up the cause of her ailments. All it did was speed up her departure from this world. “I haven’t felt the same since,” she said with chapped and weathered lips. Her chalk-white hands matched the color of the sheet where she lay. “I’m just tired . . . just plain tired.” The way she died haunted me as much as her appearance the last time I saw her. She was alone when she left this world. My father had slipped off so that he could catch up on some sleep. In the end he had disappointed her, and the bitterness that I felt toward him had taken root.
    The doctor walked through the door and sat across from us at her mahogany desk. She had horn-rimmed glasses and streaks of gray throughout the chestnut hair that she twirled around her finger as she reviewed my chart. “I’m also inclined to say monitor it,” she said, putting my file on her desk. “I’d give it another month or two and then return for a follow-up X-ray and CT scan. However . . .” She looked away toward the gray sky beyond her window and then back to my medical file. “If you’re inclined not to wait, there is a study that a colleague of mine is leading. It’s a trial for an experimental drug that increases the likelihood of . . .” Experimental was the only word I needed to hear to know it was time for me to leave. She might as well have put a collar around my neck and called me her pet guinea pig.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” Heather called out, running behind me in the hall.
    I passed a janitor slapping the floor with his wet mop. The elevator was now in full view. Heather hurried toward me, the tips of her heels clipping the floor like a military drumbeat meant for battle. All I could picture was the sight of my mother with cords snaking into her veins, spitting out the liquids that were referred to by code names. Experiments