Read Online Anna In-Between by Elizabeth Nunez - Free Book Online

the sweet bread. When she is done, he broaches the subject of his wife. “What do we do now?” The space between his eyebrows folds, the canals deepen.
    “She should come back with me to the States,” Anna says.
    John Sinclair puts down his cup and rubs his eyes. “She won’t do that.” He slides his hands down the sides of his face.
    “There are doctors who can treat her there,” Anna says. “There are good hospitals in the States.”
    He shakes his head. “She’s afraid.”
    “It doesn’t look good, Daddy. I think the cancer has advanced pretty far. It’s in her lymph nodes too. And the blood.” She lowers her eyes as she says this, trying hard to hold back the accusation on the tip of her tongue. He saw the blood on his vest and he didn’t do anything, he didn’t say anything.
    “She won’t go.”
    “Breast cancer does not have to be a death sentence,” Anna says, struggling to keep her voice even.
    “She saw her mother suffer.”
    “There are new medicines, better surgeries …”
    “That’s not it,” he says.
    “Then what is it?”
    “She wants to be treated here.”
    “They can’t help her here,” Anna says.
    “Your mother won’t go anywhere else. She says we have good doctors here.”
    “There are better doctors in the States.”
    “Your mother has faith in our doctors here.”
    “I’m not saying the doctors here are bad,” Anna says, “but they are not familiar with the latest research.”
    “Your mother does not think so.”
    “And even if they have kept up with the research, you know the conditions of the hospitals here, Daddy. They use newspapers instead of sheets, for God’s sake.”
    “We can bring sheets to the hospital.”
    “Patients are left in the corridors on gurneys for days.
    They don’t have beds!”
    “I can arrange that.”
    He is speaking to her in the patronizing tone of a manager subduing an overly anxious new employee.
    Anna glares at him wild-eyed. “You don’t mean to let her have surgery here?”
    “Your mother says we have the best oncologists here,” he says.
    “Oh God!” Anna buries her head in her hands.
    Her father reaches out and winds his fingers around her wrist. “She’ll be all right, Anna. Don’t worry so much.”
    It is more than Anna can take. She pushes away his hand and bounds out of her chair. The words that earlier had trembled at the tip of her tongue come flying out of her mouth. “You are responsible!” she shouts out at him. “You let it go this far. You and your mumbo-jumbo about privacy.”
    “Anna, Anna,” John Sinclair says soothingly.
    “If you cared, if you really cared, you would have done something.”
    “I love your mother.”
    “Love her and you do nothing? You tell me something about privacy, respecting her privacy? Were you planning to respect her privacy until she died?”
    “Your mother and I have no secrets from each other.”
    “No secrets? What do you call her not telling you about her tumor? What do you call your saying nothing? I mean, how do two people sleep next to each other, night after night, for more than forty years, and one of them not say a word about a tumor he can clearly see bulging from his wife’s breast? And the blood? Oh, Daddy, how could you?”
    “Clearly bulging? It was not clearly bulging to me as you seem to say, Anna.”
    “I saw it, Daddy. Even a half-blind man would have seen it.”
    “Your mother knew I saw it,” he says softly.
    Yes, that was what her mother had implied. “It’s time we faced this,” she said. As if she had planned this all alone. As if the plan was first prayers in the darkness of her bathroom, and when prayers did not yield the results she hoped for, then time to get the aid of her husband, time for both of them to confront what they already know.
    “Your mother is modest,” her father says. He brings his cup to his lips. The steam rises and shades his eyes.
    “Modest?” Anna’s tone is biting. She will not camouflage her anger. He