What about…" Jacob started but Louise's squeezed his hand shushing his question.
"Thank you doctor." She responded softly as she stood up preparing to leave.
* * * * * *
"We've still got options." Jacob said as they walked back to the train station. It wasn't over yet and he wasn't prepared to give up yet; not until they had exhausted every available resource. It was fall and the leaves had already changed colors but the weather was still warm for this time of the year; Indian summer.
"How should we tell the children?" Louise asked ignoring his assertion. It was best if she accepted things as they were; that way Jacob would eventually have to.
"I don't know… I haven't even considered telling the kids as an option right now. We can go to the Mayo Clinic or even to one of those cancer care centers that's being heavily advertised now." He continued arguing attempting to assert his own desires. He couldn't lose Louise. He had given up everything to have her. It wasn't fair that after all that he had done to get and keep her that he should lose her now and like this. God was being cruel.
"Hmm… We'll see." Louise smilingly said. Abruptly Jacob's cell phone rang.
"Hello… Linda… What's wrong?" He spoke quietly into the phone as they entered the train station and bought their tickets for the return trip. "What? Momma?" Without warning, Jacob's body fell hard against the wall with a heavy thud.
"Jacob…" Louise panicked as she ran to her husband side attempting to help him regain composure as he crumbled to a heap on the cement floor. Before she could ask him, his cell phone hit the ground and he began weeping heavily.
"Jacob… Jacob… Honey what's wrong? What happened to your mother? What's the matter?" She questioned him as he sat there with a bowed head crying his eyes out. Louise could tell that whatever it was, it was literally the straw that had broken Jacob's emotional back. She knelt down pulling him into her arms comforting him as best she could as passing passengers watched with curiosity as a grown man sat on the train floor crying his eyes out and a sickly, pale and frail woman sat on his lap attempting to console him.
* * * * * * * * *
"What?" Jayden set his empty glass on the counter as he listened to his mother's words carefully. He had been drinking a glass of orange juice when his mother entered the kitchen giving him the bad news.