“This is ESPN Thursday Night Football and heeerrre’s your starting lineup!”

The luminescent glow of the television filled the living room and its massive speakers radiated noise down to the floorboards. The family lounged on the burgundy leather sectional, dogs dozing peacefully by the fireplace, adolescent children immersed in the microcosms of social media. The long and enduring week had begun to show signs of an end for John’s wife, Emma, and his children. Emma, a university professor, and his two high school-aged kids would soon be on holiday break, free from the stressful workloads to which they had grown accustomed.

John, however, would not feel as much of a reprieve as the rest of his family. Having spent the past fifteen years of his career as an internist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, his career had been anything but a breath of fresh air. Frequently on-call over weekends and holidays, John sacrificed time home with his family during Thanksgiving and New Year’s in order to take five days off over Christmas. His widowed mother, Carol, had just moved into the family’s guest bedroom, and the household still very much was in a period of transition. Carol mulled about the kitchen, claiming that she wanted to prepare dinner for the family that night. John knew that she most likely wouldn’t be energetic enough to feed the masses when all forty members of the extended family arrived on Christmas Eve.

Tomorrow marked the beginning of the last weekend of work before his brief vacation began. The holiday season always meant a higher census: various seasonal-related injuries, drunk driving accidents, untimely cases of pneumonia, suicides, and many other diagnoses would surely ensue within the coming weeks.

Reclined at the end of the sectional, he opened up his laptop and logged on to the Epic hospital portal, allowing him access to census records and previous physicians’ notes on his upcoming patients. Knowing that there were, at most, 15 minutes before dinner, John wanted to finish updating some notes from patients he’d already seen. He had left work an hour early that day in order to make it home in time for his daughter’s varsity soccer game. Emma, Carol, and the whole family always made it out to support the kids, even when weather conditions were less than ideal. As he revised records and typed the last of his notes, he wanted to begin preparing for the day ahead.

He scrolled through the list of admitted patients in need of consultation; a retired man in recovery from a pulmonary embolism, a college student with a potential case of appendicitis, and a young mother that had survived a heroin overdose. There were at least twenty more consults on the list, and this was after the census had been divided among the other internists in the practice. It was going to be a long weekend. Letting out an exasperated sigh, John’s attention turned to the inviting scent diffusing from the kitchen.

“Hey guys, the pot roast should be ready in about fifteen minutes! Kids, why don’t you give your parents a break and set the table for us?” Carol chimed, in the typical sing-songy tone that she had used with John as a kid, usually indicating that she wanted something done and wouldn’t put up with excuses.

He used to loathe hearing that tone, remembering all of the afternoons spent raking the thousands of maple leaves surrounding his childhood home or the hours of labor that went into deep-cleaning every corner of the house any time Carol planned to have company over. Somehow, her once-bothersome inflection was now welcoming to his ears. Along with his mother, the familiar memories of his youth had also moved back into the house.

John continued to click through his patients, eventually reaching the last one. The minuscule blue text, having grown more difficult to read as his eyes aged, was suddenly quite clear: “Johnson, Carol” it read.

He had been putting this one off for as long as possible. Clicking on the link to read the oncologist’s notes, unconfirmed fears suddenly became reality. Her CA 125 levels read 60 U/mL. The normal threshold was 35. Ovarian cancer, and fairly advanced, too. John began mentally calculating her five year survival rate but stopped mid-way; there was no use tabulating statistics and treatment plans. Carol’s diagnosis wouldn’t be anything like that of the hundreds of patients to which he’d broken this kind of news.

He glanced over at his mother as she deftly stirred her signature pot roast, a dish she only made around the high holidays. He thought back to all of the Christmas seasons when she would prepare an array of delicious soups, stews, and casseroles to warm the bones of anyone who sat at their dinner table (there was always a constant flux of guests coming and going).

“I don’t think this will be enough to feed everybody!” Carol used to worry, rummaging around the kitchen and using any spare ingredients to throw yet another side dish together. “Throwing things together” was her specialty, as she liked to say. To Carol, there was never enough food on the table. Although he may have been biased, the sight and scent of her dinners back in the household reaffirmed that his mother was still the best cook he knew, even better than Emma (though he would never tell her).

Looking back at the charts, he knew the conversation that awaited would not be an easy one.

Growing up, he had always viewed his mother as tiny, but strong. Determined and unyielding, she effortlessly raised a family of ten kids and maintained close relationships with every single one of them, to this day. Their massive family reunions, growing with the birth of new grandchildren each year, were days Carol eagerly anticipated for months. She loved each of her grandchildren with vigor, spending hours playing with them outside and maintaining much of the sprightly energy of her youth. John couldn’t bear the idea of seeing his mother weakened by the harsh treatments her oncologist would be sure to prescribe: a full hysterectomy and cocktails of chemotherapy and radiation would rip apart every normalcy her body had.

All for the sake of killing a tumor.

John was never one for romanticizing disease. He loathed the idea of bending the truth with any of his patients, telling them that their survival chances were high or even the classic anthem of any cancer-awareness group, “We can beat this!”

John preferred the facts; his patients knew and respected that. Yet somehow, he could not maintain this type of composure when the patient at hand was the woman who had taught him everything about life. This was the woman whom he adored and respected more than anyone else. He couldn’t bear to think of a world without her.

He closed the laptop and stood up from the sectional, walking over towards Carol, embracing her slight frame by putting his hand around her waist. “Anything I can help you with, Mom?” he asked, already knowing what her answer would be. “Oh John, you know you’re no use in the kitchen! Ever since you exploded that pot of hard-boiled eggs, I don’t think I can even trust you to stir the soup.”

Her scolding was valid; John’s culinary capabilities were next to none. But it didn’t hurt to offer. He would do anything for his mom, and she knew it too.

John walked over to the dining room table, pulling out a seat at the head and gesturing towards it, “C’mon Mom, the table is set and dinner is on the table. Take a seat and we can finish up the dishes later.” Carol put down the soapy sponge and cautiously made her way towards the table. John knew how much pain she had been feeling lately, but couldn’t bring himself to consider the pain she’d endure after her next doctor’s appointment. Be present, he mused, Appreciate the now, and you can revisit this tomorrow.

He took his seat at the table, the five of them linking hands to say grace before eating. He briefly glanced over at Emma, then Carol, beaming at her with the most genuine smile he could muster, and began to pray.