May 16, 2029 · 3:13 p.m.
The nurse opened the door and smiled at Patricia Allen.
“Dr. Knowles will see you in his office.”
Pat stopped.
His office?
Robert noticed it too.
They followed the nurse down the hallway. She opened the door, motioned them inside and told them Dr. Knowles would be with them shortly.
Pat remained standing.
“Why his office?”
“Pat.”
“I’m asking why his office.”
“Maybe he wants to talk.”
“We always talk.”
Robert sat in one of the two chairs in front of the desk.
Pat didn't move.
“The last time he brought us in here was seven years ago.”
Robert looked at her.
He knew exactly what she meant.
“That doesn't mean anything.”
“It meant something then.”
“That was seven years ago.”
“It's the same office.”
“It's an office, Pat.”
“The same desk.”
Robert looked at the desk.
“I'm pretty sure that's a different desk.”
Pat stared at him.
“That’s not funny.”
“It wasn't particularly funny when I thought of it.”
She walked to the window, looked out for a moment and then returned to the chair beside him.
Robert reached for her hand.
She pulled it away.
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Hold my hand like you know something.”
“I know exactly what you know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Pat.”
“The scan was last Thursday. They called Friday. The biopsy was Monday. Now it’s Wednesday afternoon and instead of putting us in an examination room, they put us in his office.”
Robert looked at his watch.
“They put us in his office three minutes ago.”
“And he isn’t here.”
“He’s an oncologist. Maybe he’s with a patient.”
“I’m a patient.”
Robert leaned back in the chair.
“Until he walks through that door and tells us something is wrong,” Robert said, “nothing is wrong.”
Pat turned toward him.
“That’s not how cancer works, Robert.”
“No. But it’s how the next two minutes work.”
For the first time that afternoon, Pat almost smiled.
Almost.
The door opened.
Dr. Knowles came in carrying a folder.
He closed the door behind him and sat down.
Pat reached for Robert’s hand.
This time she held it.
Dr. Knowles looked first at Pat and then at Robert.
“The biopsy confirms that the breast cancer has returned.”
Nobody spoke.
Pat's fingers tightened around Robert's.
Robert stared at the doctor.
“How?”
Dr. Knowles paused.
“Cancer cells can remain dormant for years. Sometimes much longer. There was nothing in your follow-up that suggested this was happening until we saw the change on the imaging.”
“But you said she was in remission.”
“She was.”
“You said the scans were clear.”
“They were.”
“So how does something go from clear to this?”
“Robert.”
Pat said his name quietly.
He stopped.
Dr. Knowles let the question hang for a moment.
“The important thing now is that we know it's there, and we have treatment options we didn't have when Pat was first diagnosed.”
Pat finally spoke.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I don't want you leaving here thinking that we're back where we were seven years ago. We're not. Treatments have improved. We know more about your cancer than we did then. There are newer therapies available to us.”
“Can you cure it?”
The room went quiet again.
Dr. Knowles leaned forward.
“I think we have good options for treating it. But I don't want to use a word today that I may have to take back later.”
Pat nodded.
Robert didn't.
“What do we do?”
“We run some additional tests. Then we'll sit down and go through the treatment choices.”
“When?”
“We can start this week.”
“Who's the best person?”
“For what?”
“For this cancer.”
“Robert—”
“Who's the best person in the country for this?”
Dr. Knowles looked at him.
“There are several excellent centers.”
“Then give me the names.”
“I will.”
“I don't care where they are.”
“I understand.”
“No, I mean it. New York. Houston. California. I don't care.”
Pat squeezed his hand.
“Robert.”
He looked at her.
She was crying.
Not much.
Just enough that he stopped talking.
Dr. Knowles pushed a box of tissues across the desk.
Pat took one.
Robert didn't.
He was still holding her hand.
* * *
January 8, 2032 · 7:42 p.m.
The cancer had not taken Pat Allen’s life.
It had taken three years.
Not all at once.
A week here. A month there. A treatment. A scan. Another opinion. Another scan.
There had been deductibles and copayments, medications their insurance didn’t completely cover, trips to specialists, hotel rooms, missed work and things they had simply paid for because, at the time, fighting with an insurance company had seemed less important than getting Pat well.
Insurance had paid most of the medical bills.
Most was not all.
But the money wasn’t the only reason Robert and Pat were still working.
Cancer had changed the way they looked at the number they had once called enough.
Before the recurrence, their plan had been simple.
Robert would retire at sixty-seven.
Pat would retire at sixty-six.
They had saved. They had retirement accounts. They owned their home. They had Social Security.
They weren’t rich.
They didn’t need to be.
On paper, the plan worked.
Then Pat’s cancer came back.
The recurrence didn’t destroy their retirement.
It moved it.
First by a year.
Then another.
Now Robert was sixty-nine.
Pat was sixty-eight.
Both were still working.
They had two grown children and three grandchildren. Their daughter lived nearby with two of the grandchildren. Their son lived farther away with a family of his own and one child they saw whenever schedules allowed.
Retirement, in Pat’s mind, had never meant doing nothing. It meant having more time for all of them while she still felt well enough to use it.
* * *
For most of their lives, Social Security had been something that appeared on their pay stubs.
Over the past year, it had become something they watched on television.
Robert had been following the fight over Social Security for months.
Pat followed.
She knew when congressional committees were meeting because Robert told her. She knew which proposals he thought were ridiculous because he told the television. She knew when negotiations had broken down because Robert would walk into the kitchen and announce that Washington was full of idiots.
Pat generally responded the same way.
“Which ones?”
“All of them.”
That evening, they were watching the news when the anchor returned to a story that had become increasingly difficult for either of them to ignore.
Pat reached for the remote and muted the television.
“Eighty-four percent.”
Robert was sitting at the dining-room table with his laptop.
He opened their retirement plan and changed their expected Social Security benefits to 84 percent.
“Five thousand eight hundred and eighty.”
Pat did the subtraction.
“So we lose eleven hundred and twenty dollars a month.”
“Thirteen thousand four hundred and forty a year,” Robert said.
Robert closed the laptop.
“They can’t do this.”
“Apparently they can.”
“We paid into it for forty-five years.”
“I know.”
“Every paycheck.”
“I know.”
“Every single paycheck.”
“Robert.”
“It’s not welfare. It’s not something they decided to give us. They took the money.”
“I know.”
“And now they’re telling us they don’t have it?”
Pat looked at him.
“Getting angry isn’t going to put it back.”
“It might make me feel better.”
“It usually does.”
That stopped him.
For a moment.
Then Pat looked again at the laptop.
“What does this do to our plan?”
Robert opened the laptop again.
“We’d be okay,” he said. “But we’d have less margin.”
He moved the cursor to his planned retirement age.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to see what happens if I wait another year.”
He changed 69 to 70.
The spreadsheet recalculated.
Pat saw it immediately.
“You just added another year.”
“It gives us more room.”
“You added another year.”
Robert stared at the screen.
Three years earlier, cancer had taken the first one.
Now Washington might take another.
“I’m trying to make the plan work,” he said.
Pat pulled out the chair beside him and sat down.
For several seconds neither of them spoke.
Then she reached over and changed the number back to 69.
Robert looked at her.
“What are you doing?”
“Putting it back.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t particularly funny the first time,” Pat said.
Robert looked at her, then smiled.
“Okay. I deserved that.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“We don’t know what Congress is going to do.”
“No.”
“We don’t know whether they’re actually going to cut anything.”
“No.”
“And we don’t know how many good years we have left.”
“I don’t want to keep telling the grandchildren ‘next year’ because a spreadsheet says we should wait.”
Robert’s smile disappeared.
“I’m afraid too,” Robert said.
She turned toward him.
It was not something Robert Allen said very often.
“Of what?”
He looked at the spreadsheet.
“Of getting it wrong.”
Pat waited.
“We retire and something happens. Your cancer comes back. The market drops. They cut Social Security. We live too long.”
Pat smiled slightly.
“You’re afraid we’ll live too long?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
“I spent forty-five years making sure we'd be ready.”
“We are ready.”
“You don't know that.”
“Neither do you.”
Robert looked at her.
Pat reached over and closed the laptop.
“Maybe that’s the problem.”
“What is?”
“We keep waiting until we know.”
“Know what?”
“That we have enough. That I’m healthy enough. That the market is safe enough. That Washington has fixed Social Security. That nothing bad is going to happen.”
“That sounds reasonable to me.”
Pat shook her head and stood.
Robert looked at the closed laptop.
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying leave it at sixty-nine.”
“And if they cut our benefits?”
“Then we’ll figure it out.”
“That’s your financial plan?”
“No.”
Pat picked up the remote and turned the sound back on.
“That’s my life plan.”
The anchor was still talking about Washington.
Robert looked at the laptop.
Then at Pat.
Then back at the television.
For the first time in months, he didn't reopen the laptop.