E-mail from: tlindsey@lanl.gov

E-mail to: http://www.westvirginia.net/~sigley/bio/bio_TLindsey.htm

Subject: Bio

My name is Tom Lindsey. I am twenty-seven years old. In June of this year, I was diagnosed with cancer.

Cancer is an ugly word. Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Stage IV, High-Grade, Aggressive ... those words aren’t any better. But at least they are more accurate descriptors of this alien thing that is killing me. I am married, no children, two cats.

My doctors tell me that my diagnosis is not typical but not unbeatable. They are terrible liars.

I know they are lying because I see the truth in her eyes, her glorious, unearthly eyes.

Through it all, she has stayed at my side. I never thought, when I first fell in love with her, that she would be the one left to pick up the pieces. I never thought about this at all, to tell you the truth. Hell, I’m *twenty-seven*. Twenty-seven-year-olds don’t die from cancer. They worry about college debts and building careers and getting married and having kids. They don’t think about tomorrow unless it’s filled with promise and excitement.

When you’re twenty-seven, tomorrow isn’t a big deal. It’s what happens after today, and maybe you’ll have to pay your cable bill or maybe go grocery shopping, but in all likelihood those things can probably wait until the day after tomorrow. Because there’s always another tomorrow after tomorrow when you’re twenty-seven.

Unless, of course, you’re like me, and your doctors tell you after ignoring your complaints for three months that your biopsy came back, and the lump on your neck is malignant. And they really want to admit you to the hospital, like, *yesterday* because they need to figure out the *staging* of your disease. Because while they were ignoring you for three months, it has spread -- *metastasized* -- so that you now have tumors throughout your abdomen, on your aorta, around your colon, and strangling your kidneys. Gee, no wonder your back hurt, you think if you’re me. Guess it wasn’t premature arthritis after all that pain in your shoulder, you think if you’re me.

Sorry. Sometimes I get a little carried away.

It all started with what I thought was a sore throat back in April. I had been feeling listless for a while before the sore throat, and I’d even been losing weight, but I just thought it was a cold coming on. A really bad cold. So when I felt the rawness in my throat and the aches and pains in my back and chest, I thought it was finally the cold I had been expecting and thought nothing more about it. I took echinacea. When the fevers started, I just thought my cold was getting worse. And when I started having night sweats, I just thought it was a hell of a bad cold.

But I couldn’t explain away the itching as part of the cold. I’d never heard of an itchy cold before. But I still didn’t think it was a big deal. Remember -- I’m in my twenties. I thought I was invincible.

When the cold didn’t go away four weeks later, I went to the doctor. He listened, was very sympathetic, and told me that I had cold. Told me essentially to take two aspirin and *not* call him in the morning.

A couple of weeks later, when I still had my "cold" and had just started feeling this stabbing pain on the left side of my neck, I went to see my doctor again. He told me that I had sprained my shoulder and that I should stop lifting heavy things on the job. I told him I worked with computers in a lab. He shrugged and told me to try some arthritis cream and sent me on my way again.

A couple of weeks after that, when I still had my "cold" with all its fevers and night sweats, and I still had the pain near my neck and in my back despite the arthritis cream, I realized that my fatigue was getting worse. I was always tired no matter how much I slept. I went to see four other doctors. They all said the same thing. They said, obviously I was overworked. What was obvious to *me* was that they all thought I was a hypochondriac.

Anyway, I took their advice and took a couple of weeks off work. I left Los Alamos and went home to Roswell to get to know my girlfriend’s family better. Claudia and I weren’t married then. I knew her family still had reservations about me, even though Claudia and I had been serious since our senior year of college. (Well, actually since before that, but that’s a whole other story -- trust me. And I probably should explain that Claudia and I had actually been having a long distance relationship for most of the six years since our last year of college; for the first four years of our being back together, she was at school in Massachusetts, and I was working at the national laboratory in Los Alamos. So we were really only on to our second year of really seeing each other when this all happened.)

Anyway, I thought some extra time with Claudia’s family might help me win them over.

A week and a half into my vacation, I was still not feeling "right," and I was trying to hide my symptoms from Claudia and her parents. But I learned it’s hard to hide things from a bunch of medically-inclined folks. (I should also explain that Claudia is a veterinarian; her dad is a pediatrician; her mom is a molecular biologist; and even her brother, who is only eleven, shows every sign of following in the family’s healer footsteps.)

As I was saying, it’s hard to hide symptoms like mine -- exhaustion, itchiness, feverishness, weight loss -- from a bunch of doctors who care about you. Because I really think that her family *was* beginning to care about me during that vacation. I remember thinking that I was finally winning them over. I had had quite a few heart-to-heart talks with her dad, and we were actually hitting it off (which was really important because I knew he was the one with most of the reservations about Claudia and me). And I continued to get along with her mom, who I’d always gotten along with mainly because she is a lot like Claudia.

And Claudia’s brother is amazing. Sharp as a tack and funny, even though he’s pretty quiet a lot of the time.

Things were going really well with Claudia’s family in general, even her extended family. Her cousin Nicole and her brand-new husband Jamie didn’t break my kneecaps (not that I was actually worried, but it *was* something Nikki had threatened to do after Claudia and I broke up the first time back in high school). Nicole’s twin brothers didn’t beat me up either (which was something *they’d* threatened around the same time as Nikki’s threat, in response to the same event).

Claudia’s other cousins seemed almost welcoming (I had always figured them to be the less volatile members of the family). Her aunts and uncles seemed okay. Her grandparents seemed okay. Everything seemed okay.

Until the night before the last day of my vacation, the night before I was supposed to go back to Los Alamos. Then things weren’t okay.

There was this big dinner thing at Claudia’s parents’ house that night. Her whole family was there. I think it was Claudia’s grandparents’ -- her dad’s parents’ -- anniversary, but I can’t really remember.

What I do remember about that dinner was how good it felt to be included in Claudia’s family, like I really belonged around that dinner table, sitting between her and her brother, joking around with her new cousin-in-law Jamie, talking seriously about computers with her Uncle Alex.

What I don’t remember is anything after my collapse.

Apparently I collapsed on Claudia. Just keeled over when I was reaching for some salt or something, practically knocking her soup bowl into her lap. Let me tell you, that was a dinner to remember.

Except I don’t remember it.

I woke up in the hospital, after blood tests and a CAT scan and tissue samples, with my mind completely and blessedly blank. Claudia was sitting beside me, holding my hand that wasn’t attached to a blood drip.

I could see tear tracks on her cheeks.Her glorious eyes were red and puffy. And I knew whatever the doctors were going to tell me wasn’t going to be good.

* * * *

I didn’t leave the hospital for another two weeks, and was in and out of the hospital for months after that. After the surgery to remove the tumor on my neck, which they had biopsied and determined malignant, my life became a series of blood transfusions, chemotherapy sessions, and radiation treatments.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Let me back up.

The morning after my collapse, the doctors told me that I had NHL. I’m not talking about the National Hockey League here, although I admit that it’s funny in a macabre way that this thing that is killing me should share an acronym with a recreational body. Whatever, I guess. In my world, NHL stands for Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Mine was already in Stage IV when they diagnosed me.

They called it High-Grade and Aggressive. They said something else about cleaved cells or non-cleaved cells, which had to do with how aggressive a cancer it was, but by that time I wasn’t listening anymore.

(I should probably tell you that I’ve never gone back and asked the doctors exactly what kind of lymphoma I have. It’s a pretty ostrich-like thing to do, I realize, but I just don’t want to know. Knowing the basics is bad enough.)

Anyway. When I first found out what was wrong with me, I was stunned. I was in shock. I told the nurses to tell everyone to go away. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not even Claudia.

Then, four days after my collapse, Claudia’s dad came to see me. He got past my embargo on visitors by using his staff doctor privileges. Let me tell you that I was pretty surprised when he walked into my room. Claudia’s dad is this quiet, reserved guy, but he had this really fierce look on his face that day, and an expression in his eyes (which I noticed for the thousandth time looked exactly like Claudia’s) that I couldn’t read. I didn’t know what to expect.

And he didn’t pull any punches. Essentially, he told me to grow up. He told me that he wasn’t going to let me hurt Claudia again, no matter how sorry I was feeling for myself. He told me that there were a lot of people who cared about me and who believed in me and who were going to help me get better. Then he looked me in the eye and told me that I shouldn’t make the same mistake he made in shutting the woman he loved out of his life when he needed her most.

I didn’t really understand the last part of what he was getting at -- I mean, what do I know about his relationship with Claudia’s mother? -- but I thought his other advice was basically sound. He is a doctor, after all. They probably teach doctors in medical school how to drum up a positive attitude in recalcitrant, depressed patients.

While I was mulling over his advice, he said something that really blew me away. He invited me to stay with them.

I found his offer ... well, I guess I found it touching. Remember -- I’m the guy who broke his daughter’s heart in high school. And he had held on to his reservations about my relationship with Claudia throughout the six years since college that we’d been dating again.In any case, I accepted his offer. And that’s why, after I was released from the hospital, I ended up staying in Roswell and commuting to an oncology outpatient clinic in Albuquerque for those blood transfusions, chemotherapy sessions, and radiation treatments that became the routine of my life with NHL.

Staying with the Evanses turned out to be the best thing that could’ve happened to me.

Claudia’s little brother invariably got my mind off my problems. Like a lot of shy, youngest-in-the-family children, Josh spends a lot of time on his own. He makes up fantastic stories about life on another planet he named Czechoslovakia. We spent hours together working out complicated scenarios for his Czechoslovakians.

And Claudia’s parents were great. I really got to know them better while I was staying with them. Sometimes when I watched them, I understood why Claudia had always said that she wouldn’t settle for any relationship that didn’t measure up to her parents.’ What they had defied words. I finally understood what Claudia had been talking about.

And the more I watched her parents together, the more I realized I wanted to have what they had with Claudia....

Of the two of us, Claudia was the strong one. She picked up the pieces of my life and held me together when I was falling apart. I never realized how much she meant to me until I realized that there was a very real chance that I wouldn’t be with her tomorrow, let alone forever. Her beauty, her selflessness, her sweetness, her intelligence, her humor: they were all things I suddenly couldn’t imagine living without.

I guess if there was one good thing that came out of this whole mess, getting closer to Claudia and her family was it. Except that was the really horrible part too.

* * * *

The problem with getting close to people is that you get close to them. (I know that sounds lame, but give me a break. I’m having a bad couple of weeks, months, life, whatever.)

As I was saying, the problem with getting close to people and letting them get close to you is that when you do that, it gets harder to think about any day -- today, tomorrow, even yesterday -- without seeing them. Even if you’re only seeing them while they’re doing mundane things, like folding laundry or watching television.

That’s my revelation from living with the Evanses. Pick your mundane, everyday activity: folding laundry with Claudia and her mom, losing at poker with Claudia’s dad and her uncles, playing cutthroat Monopoly with her whole family including her grandparents, watching horror movies with her cousins, taking a walk with her and her parents, going to the mall with her mom and her aunts, hanging out with her brother, just talking with Claudia. The mundanities of everyday life absorbed me so that I never got bored or restless. And I’m not even kidding about the shopping trips.

That’s what I mean about getting close to people, though. It becomes hard to let go.Over the next couple of months, my NHL got worse.

Apparently my tumors were the kind that didn’t respond well to either chemo- or radiotherapy. So while the rest of me was shrinking -- I think by that time, I had lost close to fifty pounds -- the growths kept growing.

The tumors in my chest began to make breathing difficult. It got so bad that I had to be admitted to the hospital so that they could keep me on a respirator. While I was stuck in the hospital again, hooked up to machines with needles in my arms, all I could think about was how much I missed having Claudia beside me most of the time, and then when she wasn’t able to be beside me, having her dad or her mom or her brother nearby to talk to.

I should tell you that I’ve always been kind of a loner. And I’ve lived alone almost all of my adult life. But the whole time of my second hospital stay, I missed Claudia and her family; they had become my family in a way that my own family never had.

(Let me get something else out of the way by clarifying what I mean by my last remark. I haven’t seen my father in years, not since my parents’ divorce. And my mother has never been much of a mother. In all the time I was sick, neither of them visited or called. I think my mother was in Acapulco with her third husband. And my father still lives, I assume, up north. Don’t get me wrong, though. I don’t feel bad about it. That’s just who my parents are. Besides I can only feel sorry for myself about so many things at a time, and my miserable relationship with my parents wasn’t at the top of my list around then.)

Anyway. As I was saying earlier, it’s hard to leave people you care about, even if you’re hoping that you’re only going to be gone long enough for your lungs to start working properly again. And the hard part about getting close to people is missing them when they’re not there.

Not that Claudia and her family didn’t try to spend as much time with me as possible. Because they did.

Claudia in fact spent every minute she could with me. At first, she took a leave of absence from her veterinary practice, but eventually she had to go back. She still ended up cutting her hours drastically so she could be with me most mornings and evenings. I can’t even tell you how much I relied on her being there, sitting beside my bed, holding my hand, day after day.

Claudia’s parents and brother spent a lot of time at the hospital too. Her dad especially stopped by to visit me whenever he was in that part of the hospital.

For someone who was in private practice, he seemed to be in the hospital a lot, but I didn’t think much of that at the time. And her mom and Josh were always dropping in too; they seemed to have a lot of errands in the area around the hospital. (Of course I saw through their little pretenses. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t appreciate it. Or them. Because I did.)

It wasn’t just Claudia and her immediate family either. Claudia’s whole extended family visited me in the hospital too.

Her Uncle Alex and Aunt Isabel came frequently. I appreciated the chance to get my mind off things discussing computer trends with Claudia’s Uncle Alex. And I was grateful that Claudia’s Aunt Isabel didn’t mind while we techno-babbled; invariably she worked on the legal paperwork that she’d brought with her. It was great just having them both there.

Her Uncle Michael and her Aunt Maria brought me liters of cypress oil to keep me calm. (Actually, I think the sniffing bottles were probably just her aunt’s idea, because when they came by to drop them off, her uncle just stood there smirking. Maybe I should also explain that Claudia’s aunt and uncle have this whole name-calling/teasing shtick that everyone in the family indulgently ignores, and that’s why I thought that the sniffing bottle gift was Maria Guerin’s idea, and that Michael Guerin was teasing her about it. Anyway.)

Claudia’s Aunt Maria’s mom came even; she suggested a good acupuncturist who would be willing to come to my hospital room, and who was guaranteed to take away pain. And Claudia’s cousins came by to cheer me up regularly. Some of the best times I’ve spent in that hospital room -- apart from every minute I spent with Claudia -- were the male-bonding moments I had playing poker with Claudia’s cousins, Stephen, Leo, and Matt, and her new cousin-in-law, Jamie. At least I didn’t lose to them all the time the way I did whenever I played with Claudia’s dad and her Uncle Michael.

* * * *

Life went on pretty much as normal. Well, normal under the circumstances. I stayed in the hospital. I continued with the chemotherapy and radiation. The doctors removed my spleen, one of my kidneys, and most of my stomach. And even though they didn’t say anything to this effect, I could tell that the doctors were *not* encouraged by my progress.

Don’t you just love how people use euphemisms when they’re trying not to tell you you’re dying? News, folks: I’d figured it out by then. As had Claudia. Not that we talked about it.

Then, one day after my (I think) fifth chemotherapy session, Claudia said out of the blue: "Let’s get married."

I was shocked. I wondered if the nurses were feeling sorry enough for me that they’d slipped me a morphine drip instead of my usual blood platelet drip. I looked up to check the bag just to be sure, but nope, it was still that weird yellowy-red color. I wasn’t hallucinating.

I told her, half-kidding, half-not, that I couldn’t even stand up, how would we even get to the chapel? And she looked at me with her serious, beautiful eyes and said, "We’ll get married here. In this room."

It was probably a selfish thing for me to do given the circumstances, but I said yes.I had never wanted anything else but to marry Claudia Isabel Evans. She was everything I had ever wanted out of my tomorrows. How could I not say yes? Although I wouldn’t have minded being the one to propose.

Anyway. That’s how Claudia and I decided to get married.

All her family crammed into my hospital room. Everyone tried not to notice how thin and pale I was. I tried not to feel bad that Claudia wasn’t wearing a white dress with flowers in her hair.

And that night, our wedding night, Claudia and I lay side-by-side on my single hospital bed. We held each other, both of us not sleeping, both of us just staring at the sterile white walls. I was too weak from the radiotherapy treatments; we couldn’t consummate our marriage even if we’d wanted to.

* * * *

It feels like I should title this section "A New Hope," like it’s an episode of Star Wars or something. Because that’s how it felt after Claudia and I got married.Because after our wedding, my cancer went into remission. I had to get Claudia’s dad to translate the cryptic pathologist’s report, but it seemed like for once the doctors *were* encouraged by my progress.

So I went home with my wife.

We still stayed with her parents. They had space, and it didn’t make sense for us to try to deal with moving into and setting up our own place just yet. We thought we could wait a couple of months.

Things were pretty good. Actually they were great. I got back into the outpatient routine, getting chest x-rays and platelet level tests every week. And my cancer continued to respond well to the chemo and radiation. In addition to the conventional medical stuff, I went to see Amy DeLuca’s acupuncturist once a week because it seemed to help with the itchiness that I still got sometimes. But I stayed away from the other lady Mrs. DeLuca recommended: the lady with the herbal wraps who kept telling me to avoid red vegetables was too bizarre for me to stomach. (Not that I had much of a stomach -- sorry -- grim humor.)

As I was saying, apart from the continuing medical stuff, my life was good. Claudia and I actually got to be newlyweds. We flirted with each other (flirting is one of those talents I picked up at MIT’s charm school). We played with the two kittens we adopted (we named them Frick and Frack at her Uncle Michael’s suggestion). We went out for nights of dinner and dancing (we both ate; she danced, I sat). We double-dated with her cousin Nicole and Jamie (we spent the whole time laughing like teenagers). We went for walks with her parents (they eventually asked me to call them Mom and Dad, which was ... amazing). We hung out with Josh (we made up even more scenarios for his Czechoslovakians).

I thrived on being married to Claudia. I thrived on being part of her large, loving family.I was beginning to think that things were finally looking up. And then I relapsed.

* * * *

Which brings me right back to today.

I won’t go into the gory details of my latest collapse. Suffice to say that no soup was involved this time at least.

The doctors want to start a more intensive round of experimental therapy tomorrow. I guess we’ll see how that goes.

I have hope at least. I have a lot to live for. And I’m only twenty-seven after all.

So we’ll just see how tomorrow goes.

* * * *

"Hey, sweetie."

Claudia looked up. "Dad, hi."

"Has anything changed?"

"No. He’s still the same." Claudia sat back in her chair and stared up at her father. "Dad, I’ve been thinking about something. Is there anything we can do? I mean ... anything?"

Her father shook his head slowly. His eyes were sad as he looked at the motionless figure in the bed. "Sometimes things are meant to happen...."

Wrapping her arms around herself, Claudia got up from her chair and paced to the window. The grass and trees outside glittered with spring dew in the half-light of early morning. She couldn’t look at her father. "I can’t do it, Dad. I can’t do it. We haven’t had enough time together. There are things that I didn’t say that I needed to tell him. We need more time...."

Her father followed her to the window and put his arms around her, hugging her tightly, resting his chin on top of her head. "I know, sweetie."

"Dad. Is this what you felt when Josh was born and you were worried about Mom?"

He pulled away a little and offered her another sad smile. Then he glanced at her husband who had been in a coma for the past four weeks. "I’m sorry, baby."

Claudia buried her face against her father’s chest. She had thought that she had no tears left, but she found herself blinking back new tears as she felt him stroke her hair. Since she was a little girl, she had relied on her father for comfort and reassurance. She needed him now more than at any other time in her life; no one else knew how she felt. And even he didn’t understand the depth of her feelings at that moment.

After a few minutes, Claudia stepped away from her father and looked up at him. "There’s nothing we can do?"

Her father returned her serious look. "Sweetie. I’m so sorry. It’s close ... his time. He’s not ... I can’t ... but there’s one thing I *can* do. I’ve only done this once before, but maybe I can help you say goodbye."

"Goodbye?" The word sounded as cold and broken as Claudia felt.

"I’m sorry, baby."

Tears slipped down Claudia’s cheeks as she nodded. "I need to talk to him again, Dad."

Her father sat down in the chair beside her husband’s bed, the chair she always sat in when she visited him. He placed one hand on Tom’s hand and another around his wrist, then stared intently at Tom.

Nothing happened.

Then there was Tom, standing beside her. She reached up to touch his dark hair, which seemed haloed by light. She looked into his hazel eyes and tried tosmile. His smile back was ineffably sad. There was a shadow at the back of his eyes as he glanced at her father then back at her. "Claudia. Why didn’t you ever tell me?"

Claudia felt confused. "Tell you what?"

"About you and your dad and Josh." He nodded to her father, who was concentrating on his connection with Tom, and was trying not to intrude on their privacy. "About what you all are. Why didn’t you tell me? What did you think I would do?"

"Tom..." She tried to touch his arm, but he shook her off. "Tom ... don’t ruin this. Please."

"I’m not. I’m just hurt." He glanced at her father again. "I mean, we got married. And you still didn’t tell me."

"I was going to tell you. I was. But there never seemed to be a good time. And you were sick ... we had so many other things to worry about ... I thought I had all the time in the world to tell you."

Tom looked thoughtful. "So. That whole thing about Czechoslovakians: that’s true isn’t it? Josh’s stories about Czechoslovakia?"

"It’s true."

He sighed. "Well, I guess that explains your eyes. And your dad’s and your brother’s. I always thought your eyes were so beautiful they were unearthly. It figures."

She smiled painfully.

"Claudia." He pulled her into his arms. "Promise me something, Claudia...."

"What?"

"Promise me that you won’t close yourself off. That you won’t let your eyes get any lonelier. You need people, Claudi. Don’t push them away."

She nodded against his chest, feeling a pain in her chest that she was sure was her heart physically breaking into pieces. "I promise."

"Claudi. Can you say it?"

"Say what?"

"You know what."

She burrowed against him. "I love you, Tom. I have since the day you asked me to help you with biology in high school and then we studied together in the Crashdown."

He tightened his arms around her, almost cracking her ribs, as if he knew there wasn’t much time left. "Claudi. There’s a computer locked in my bedside drawer. There’s a note and a letter for you. Please read them."

"I will."

"I love you, Claudia Isabel Evans Lindsey."

Then he was gone.

And the only sound in the room was the mournful hum of the heart monitor machine.

* * * *

Claudia found the note and the computer where Tom had told her they would be. The note was folded neatly on top of the computer. She read:

"Claudia,

When you start up the laptop, it’ll pop up an email program. There is a letter in the draftbox that I wrote for you. (I started to write it because of something your mother said, about how she found writing in her journal therapeutic.)

Anyway. I was going to go back and edit it because it’s mostly ramblings, but I don’t think I’ll have a chance to do that now.

I would appreciate it if you would send it to the address at the top after you read it. Maybe it can give someone else hope.

Claudi, I love you. You were always everything I ever wanted.

Tom"

* * * *

Nicole and Jamie found Claudia sitting cross-legged on the sofa in her parents’ house two days after the funeral. She looked very small. She was lost in thought, lost in the wilderness of the photographs and papers and letters with which she had surrounded herself. On the coffee table in front of her sat a laptop computer that had gone to screensaver.

The soft click of the front door closing behind them caused Claudia to look up. She tried to smile when she saw them, but her usually slow smile wobbled before it got very far then faltered altogether.

She bit her lip and looked down quickly, but they had already seen how dark and empty her eyes were.

Gesturing to the computer to change the unspoken subject, she said, "He left me his biography. I just read it. It’s an email -- a letter -- that he wanted posted on this web site for other people who have lymphoma to read. I read it. I just read it." Claudia’s voice broke a little, but she held herself together. "It’s amazing. It’s like hearing his voice...."

Nikki and Jamie looked at each other, and Nikki moved quickly to sit beside her cousin. She put an arm around Claudia’s trembling shoulders.

Claudia leaned into Nikki’s arms but didn’t tear her eyes away from the computer screen. She tapped the keyboard so that the screensaver went away to reveal a screen filled with text. "It’s there," she said softly, pointing to the screen. "Everything he wrote." Claudia choked back a sob. "He said, you know, before ... before ... he said that he didn’t want to live forever, just until tomorrow ... so he could spent his tomorrow with me. But now -- with this email -- he gets to live forever in a weird way, but not tomorrow ... I hate it ... it’s not fair ... a letter doesn’t make up for not having his arms around me...." Claudia buried her face in her hands.

"Oh, honey," Nikki said softly and held her cousin more tightly. She shot a devastated look at Jamie. He had tears in his eyes too. Nikki stroked Claudia’s hair. "Honey...."

Claudia pulled out of Nikki’s arms and wiped her cheeks with the back of one hand. "I’m fine, really. We knew it was coming. We knew all along...."

Closing her eyes, Claudia reached towards the computer again. Knowing where the key was without needing to open her eyes, she clicked 'return.'

Her computer chimed, and a window popped up telling her that her message had been sent. Nicole stifled a sob as she watched Claudia log off and shut down the computer.

When he heard the strangled sound, Jamie came over to sit beside them. He put an arm around Nikki and a hand on Claudia’s knee.

She gave both Jamie and Nikki a watery, grateful smile, and picked up a framed black-and-white photograph from the sofa beside her. Tracing a finger over the laughing faces under the glass, she said solemnly, "This was us, you know."

Nicole took the frame out of her hand, looking at it carefully before depositing back on the coffee table. It was snapshot of Claudia and Tom at Tom’s graduation from MIT. They were laughing, standing between soaring columns, their figures reflected in the window glass behind them so that they looked like they were floating over grass and trees and river. In the snapshot, they looked happy. They were in love and together. The couple in the photograph had every expectation that that day was just the beginning of a forever of tomorrows together.

Blinking rapidly, Nikki hugged her cousin again. "I’m so sorry, honey. We need to get back. You’ll be okay?"

"I’ll be fine," Claudia lied. "I’ll probably be able to deal with everything tomorrow."

Back to Area 51 (Section I)