Elizabeth Edwards pens inspiring memoir

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A leader in the making
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It’s not too bad, I lied, as he moved toward the warmth on my side of the bed. He laid his head on my shoulder and reached his arm over me to pull me close. As he pulled, I felt a bolt of pain up my back and twisted quickly under his embrace. And then he heard it: a pop, or a crack. A crack, we now know. The next day, Dr. Lee, who had been treating my back, sent me for an X-ray. The rib might be broken. And the following day, he called with the results. A rib on my left side was cracked, he said matter-of-factly. But the X-ray showed something suspicious on the other side, and he wanted me to get a bone scan. I hung up after scheduling the scan, but the thought was already gnawing in my head: what was he looking for? I had promised myself when I was ﬁghting breast cancer two years before that I wouldn’t Google any more medical conditions. But I broke that promise to myself. And, again, no good came of it. I called Dr. Lee’s frank, smart nurse Ursula and told her what I had found online. They must be looking for cancer. He called right back. I am worried, I told him. He was honest, which I wanted, but his simple words were a dagger: I am worried, too.

John came immediately when I called, even though he was on his way to Indianola, Iowa. I said, “I need you.” It was all I had to say. He cancelled an evening campaign event and came back to North Carolina. I have e-mailed with the Iowa family in whose home he was supposed to have had a house party that night, and who had undoubtedly cleaned and prepared snacks for the friends and neighbors who were gathering to listen, preparing to decide— maybe in March—for whom they would caucus for president almost ten months later. The Waltons wouldn’t accept my apologies; he was where he should be, they said. I couldn’t really disagree.
That night, back in North Carolina, John held me sweetly, tenderly, as we each lay awake, each pretending to sleep, each waiting for the morning sun to ﬁll the room, waiting to go to the hospital, waiting to hear the words that were already playing on a loop inside our heads. The cancer is back, the cancer is back, the cancer is back.

Making breakfast for Emma Claire and Jack, packing their lunches, driving them to school, we forced ourselves to stop the loop, to concentrate on the children and the usual morning rituals. Baseball. This was the most compelling diversion we could imagine. They had climbed out of the car, loaded their backpacks on their backs and, as they always do, stood together on the sidewalk waving good-bye until we drove around the circle and headed out. As soon as we waved and drove on, the loop started again.

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Now we were alone in the small examining room. I’d had an injection that would travel through my bones and illuminate the “hot spots” where cancer might be lurking, and now we sat waiting for the scan itself. A woman on the elevator spoke to me about this book, and I let myself lean into her words about what it had meant to her. I leaned into her words, and into the book and thoughts of all that had happened in the last six months.

For a few minutes more, I could be the woman who had won her battle with cancer and lived to write about it. I said hello to Baseball and let myself fall into the memory of those halcyon days.

Copyright © 2007 by Elizabeth Edwards. Excerpted by permission of Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.”

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Elizabeth Edwards pens inspiring memoir