Masterpiece in Progress by Smith, TL (snow like ashes txt) 📕

a constant, always helping with Paige and supporting me emotionally.  I truly cared about our friendship.

So, it came as a complete shock to me when one night, after watching movies (James Garner, Space Cowboys) as he was leaving, he tried to kiss me.  Now, he had massaged my shoulders for as long as we’d been friends, but nothing like this had ever happened.  He and my friend had broken up a year prior and I know that had hurt him.  But we helped each other through our collective broken hearts.

I pushed him out my door and locked it.  Not because I was afraid of him, but because I didn’t know what I wanted.  But I couldn’t lose him.  I needed his friendship.

I hadn’t been with ANYONE other than Jerry and even though we were divorced, it still felt like cheating.

I talked to Kenny through the door and told him all of this.  He convinced me to let him in so we could talk.

And I let him in.

We talked for hours.  I was so afraid that if we went here, I would wind up losing him too and I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk that.  I valued our friendship so much.

I told him everything.  Even the ugly stuff.  He told me he loved me, and I knew he did.

When he went to kiss me again, I didn’t push him away.  And then he loved me in a way I had never experienced.

He was gentle, loving, and deliberate in showing me his feelings.  And this was what intimacy was supposed to be.

He was a nurse and when he could, he would come to Norman to spend time with me.  I worked at the restaurant after my office job.  He would get off work (clear up in North OKC) and drive down to the restaurant to eat dinner.  Leave me tip, even though I told him not to and then he’d go to my house and wait for me.

The first time he did this, I came home to find Jackson Browne playing, a movie ready to go, candles lit so my house smelled great, and a hot bath run.  He washed my back for me and then washed my hair.

And he was so incredibly patient with me.  Even when I was diagnosed with invasive cancer.  Of the vulva.

Chapter 21

Cancer Rears Its Ugly Head Again

I had a place on my vulva that I’d had for years, but suddenly, it was catching on my fingernail when I would wipe and that hurt.  I made an appointment with my OB/GYN to have it removed.  My doctor did it right there in the office and told me it was nothing to worry about.

I had nearly forgotten about it when I got the phone call and it was the doctor, not the nurse.  I asked why he was calling and not the nurse.  He said, “Terri, it is cancer and it’s invasive.”  “I have set up an appointment for you with a Gynecologist/Oncologist next week.”

It was so fast, and I was scared after the shock had worn off.  All the what ifs went through my mind.  What would happen to Paige?  Who would love her like me?  Will my vagina look normal?

And as crazy as this sounds, I wanted Jerry to reassure me that is was going to be okay,(any time I had been through something BIG he was the person I clung to) but he wouldn’t take my calls, wouldn’t return them, and told my friend, “that’s too bad for her.”  All those years together and not even cancer could make him show empathy toward me.  Why did I expect otherwise?

And through it all, Kenny continued to be a big part of our lives.  Paige resented our relationship at first.  One because he was older than me (people would ask if he was my dad when we went out) and two, because he wasn’t her dad.  But he wasn’t trying to be.  And he wasn’t THAT much older than me, he just had grey hair already and I clearly looked young (okay, my attempt at humor).

In all fairness, he had done more as a father figure with Paige than Jerry ever did.

I had my surgery to remove the superficially invasive squamous cell carcinoma.  Radical, partial, vulvectomy and my friend Tia went with me.  I didn’t want Kenny there.  It was about a week before Thanksgiving.  My niece and her husband drove all the way from Arkansas to pick Paige and I up because I couldn’t drive.  But I was in horrible pain and felt lousy.  I didn’t tell anyone. (If I don’t address it, it doesn’t exist, right?)

When I got home, it got worse.  My incision (they took a large chunk 1” deep) had become infected and ruptured.  The oncologist wanted to admit me, but I begged him not to, I couldn’t leave Paige alone or with her dad and E.  The oncologist agreed to send me home and ordered home health for me.  The home health nurse taught Paige how to pack my open incision.  They couldn’t sew it back up, so they had to let it close itself from the inside out.  Fun times right?  Not even remotely.

Kenny (in typical nurse fashion) was determined to take care of it but I absolutely refused.  He was my boyfriend and I did NOT want him to see my vagina looking like that.  Is it that crazy?  Vain?  I mean, that’s already an area you don’t just want to show anyway, but certainly not like this.

But he listened to my concerns and abided by my wishes, even if the nurse instinct in him told him not to.  I bet he called 10 times a day to make sure I had taken my antibiotics, had I eaten, was I resting.  He may as well have been the doctor at that point.  But that