seashoregirl 
Cooper Crazy
(7/9/05 11:06 pm)
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The Courage Within- Chapter 3
A week later…
After a very long run, Harley headed up the stairs to take a shower and then planned to go to the Angels’ office to try and get some work done. She was halfway up when the doorbell rang.
‘Damn’ Harley muttered to herself as she went to open the door and send whoever was on the other end back from where he had come.
“Look…whatever you are selling, I’m not interested”
“Harley, we need to talk. May I come in?” asked Alan Spaulding, who looked just about the worst that Harley had ever seen him. His face looked gaunt and thin and his eyes looked tired as if he hadn’t been sleeping very well.
“Fine Alan…have a seat” invited Harley, not really wanting to see Alan but knowing that this was a conversation that had to take place.
“Where is my grandson?”
“Well, let’s see…it’s 9 in the morning on a weekday. Are you insinuating that I’m a bad mother, who doesn’t take her child to school?” Harley snapped, furious at herself for letting Alan into her home so he could throw insults.
“No, Harley. I’m not insinuating that at all. I know that you are a good mother to Zach. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. These past few weeks have been very hard for me, and I just didn’t want Zach to overhear our conversation.”
“All right. Sorry for snapping. I just get very defensive about Zach. We do need to talk, but I’m going to go take a quick shower first. If you’d like, lie down and relax on the sofa while I’m upstairs.”
When Harley came down the stairs twenty minutes later, she found Alan asleep on the sofa with his coat and shoes removed. She walked over to him and shook his shoulder to awaken him.
“Alan…wake up”
“Ummmmm…sorry about falling asleep. I really didn’t mean to do that.”
“It’s ok. Can we please just get to the point?” asked an impatient Harley, who very much needed to hear any bit of information Alan had about Gus’s illness so she could figure out if and how to help him.
“Well, I assume that by now you’ve heard that Gus is sick.”
“Yeah…Buzz told me about a week ago. He had gone to see Alex at the prison, and she told him. But he didn’t tell me anything else. What kind of cancer? How long has Gus been sick?”
“He’s been sick for a few months. At first, I thought it was due to your breakup. Harley…you have to know that it destroyed him. When you didn’t listen to his apologies or explanations…he was devastated.”
“And how do you know all about this? Did he confide in you?” Harley was irate that Alan was going on and on about how Gus was devastated…what about her…she was devastated too.
“No, Harley…he did not. He would have nothing to do with me if he could help it. But from his few words, I could pick up his feelings. Now do you want to know about his illness or not?”
“Of course I do” was the terse reply.
“So he was very tired, excessively so, he lost his appetite, had abdominal pain, bone pain, indigestion, chills, fever, night sweats. But at first, he didn’t really let on how sick he was. And then one night, I got a call from the Springfield Inn that said my son was being taken to the hospital. He was dehydrated from not eating and drinking properly and had a very high fever.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Two weeks ago. The doctor on duty that night gave him IV fluids and something to reduce the fever, but still, they had to find out what was wrong with him. So he had a biopsy done and it said it was cancer…Non-Hodgkins lymphoma.”
As Alan was going over the details of what the oncologist said, Harley’s head began swimming. She had wanted to know all the details, but now that she did, it made the nightmare too real. Still despite all her fears, she had to ask one more question. “How is Gus coping with the diagnosis?”
Her heart broke with Alan’s answer, “it’s as if he’s given up. He has no fight in him. He seems to be waiting to die.”
 
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but I love it!!
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