Beginning With A Text

The past few days have been full...full of information, full of doing, full of thoughts, full of emotions, full of conversations.

I don't have to time write all of it right now.

Maybe I'll start with being on an airplane and getting close to putting my phone on airplane mode. I think I was responding to a text - someone asking about results that I did know yet. I noticed a text from Layne..."are you there?". He must have sent it while I was boarding. By the time I had finished my other text there was another text from Layne. It said "call me". Given the circumstances, that wasn't usual for him. I was about to text him and let him know that I was on the plane and not able to talk - I was going to suggest that I call him when I landed. Before I was able to finish my text there was another, "call me". At that point I decided I'd better find out what was going on. Something didn't seem right. I called - the connection was terrible. I had no idea if he could actually hear me, but I told him that I was going to hang up and try calling again. I hung up and noticed a "try again" message. He was obviously anxious about getting a hold of me. I continued with what I was doing and made the call. The connection was much clearer. He asked about where I was and told me that he wasn't getting chemo and I needed to figure out what I wanted to do (regarding when to travel back home). I was sitting by a window seat and turned around to face it. I used a quiet voice to ask if that meant the tumors had gotten bigger. He told me that he was done with the trial and that he would tell me about it when I got there. My eyes suddenly felt wetter than usual and I put some effort into staying in control. We then quickly decided what was going to happen when I got into Houston. He was going to pick me up and we'd head back to the Franklin's home and figure things out from there. We said good-bye and I called the shuttle company...twice...technical issues...again...to cancel my reservation. I was flustered and a bit panicked by then. The calls were taking longer than I thought I had. By the time I had finished we were taxying down the runway. I was glad I didn't need to talk with anyone. The guy next to me seemed nice and like he would be up for a conversation when he sat down. But, he kind of let me have some space once he overheard something about tumors getting bigger. It's a fact...the word cancer can be a conversation stopper.