One morning a few weeks after surgery, I waved my children off to school and thought I should either revise my novel or send out some queries or start a new novel, but instead I sat by the window and stared at the split rail fence and counted knots. My body was knitting itself back together and I was regaining my energy, but inside, I felt numb, paralyzed, utterly confused about who I was. I didn’t recognize the skin that covered the flesh that harbored my tainted cells. I didn’t know how to be me.

Moans swell between Mike’s erratic snores and the flash of the red digital bars reconfiguring time . . . How many times had I already been up? At her bassinet two steps from our bed? Pressing my head beside hers, …

I wake to the sound of my raspy-voiced neighbor flirting with the post-op nurse, “Make mine a double, darlin’.” “A double what?” the nurse says and giggles and flips her stiff blond bangs out of her eyes and dust particles …

With my breast smashed on a tray like a slab of meat, soon to be anesthetized and sliced open, excised and cauterized, sent to pathology, I wonder, why hadn’t I seized the opportunity, why had I hesitated, cared what others thought, held back, not celebrated every goddamned nanosecond of my life?

“I’m thinking of getting rid of the time bombs,” I say and cup my breasts. “Then we’ll throw a Goodbye Breasts party,” my friend says, wiping a clump of mascara from my cheek. “And if you lose your hair, I’m shaving my head in solidarity,” she says and hugs me and I’m ashamed and relieved that I underestimated the depth of our friendship.

I was watching Oprah, waiting for the results from my core biopsy and the final From Frumpy to Fabulous unveiling of the housewife from Kalamazoo when cancer barged into my family room saying sorry sorry sorry you have ductal carcinoma in situ. But cancer didn’t mean sorry. It meant, fuck you and your smug belief that you deserve to be lucky.