Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Fourteen Words
It was now Christmas Eve of 1977, and since early March of that year, Louise Jefferson had started getting a dry, hacking cough that frequently came and went. Louise also experienced some episodes of hoarseness, shortness of breath, weakness, and fatigue in those months, but it didn't happen often enough that she was all that concerned. She wrote it off as seasonal allergies, colds, the flu, etc., and she didn't make a big deal about it. As a matter of fact, she never even told her husband, George, or her best friends and in-laws, Tom and Helen Willis, about it, and she almost always told them about everything in her life.
But over the past several weeks, Louise's symptoms worsened. She'd suddenly started experiencing horrible nausea over the past couple of months or so, and she'd even started vomiting two or three times every single day. And now on Christmas Eve morning, a Saturday, she'd begun having a terrible coughing spell while in the shower. To her horror, she coughed up blood that morning. Understandably frightened, she quickly got dressed and took a cab to the emergency room. She was so frightened and stunned by what had happened that she didn't even think to call her husband and son and let them know that she was going to the hospital. She just took off.
A few hours later, a doctor came into Louise's exam room, showed Louise her chest X-rays, and said the fourteen words that would change hers and her family's lives forever: "Mrs. Jefferson, I have bad news. You have a mass in your left lung…"
Understandably, Louise didn't hear another word that was said after that. She was shocked, horrified, terrified, devastated, and completely numb all at once. It was as if that doctor had made a fist, punched her, and knocked her out cold. It wouldn't have been quite as brutal had George been there by her side, but unfortunately, there was no way he could have been there now. His seventy-seven-year-old mother, Olivia, was now on her deathbed. She'd come down with pneumonia in both lungs weeks earlier, and her doctor had told George and Louise that she wouldn't last long. Frankly, they were all surprised that she'd held on until now. The Jefferson family knew that they could lose their matriarch at any moment.
"Mrs. Jefferson? Mrs. Jefferson?" said the doctor in a gentle, understanding voice, bringing Louise back to reality. His name was Dr. Hendrix, and he was a tall, slim black man in his forties with glasses and kind dark eyes.
"Huh?" Louise gasped.
"As I was saying, it's imperative that you get a biopsy as soon as possible. I have a colleague, Dr. Bernard. He specializes in this. I highly recommend him."
"Thank you, doctor," Louise said quietly. She then said, "Doctor, just tell me upfront: does it look like cancer?"
"The mass in your lung does appear…very concerning, Mrs. Jefferson," he answered, obviously choosing his words very carefully. "It's extremely important that you make an appointment with Dr. Bernard to have the biopsy as soon as you possibly can so that you and your family know precisely what it is that you're dealing with."
"You do think it's cancer, don't you?" asked Louise, looking him straight in the eyes, demanding an honest answer with her gaze.
After a long silence, Dr. Hendrix told her truthfully, "I think so."
"Oh, God," Louise gasped as she buried her face in her hand and allowed herself to cry openly over the next few moments. She then managed to compose herself enough to look at him again and ask the question, "What's my prognosis, doctor? How bad is it?"
"We can't know that for certain until more tests are done. But I won't sugarcoat it, Mrs. Jefferson. Even though it's almost 1978, even though we've made great strides in the fight against cancer over the years, lung cancer remains one of the toughest kinds of cancer to beat. You and your family are going to have a hard road ahead of you. You're going to need a lot of care and a lot of support in the weeks and months ahead. You can survive this and you can beat this, but it isn't going to be easy."
"Mother Jefferson," Louise whispered.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Oh, my mother-in-law. She's in her late seventies and she's got pneumonia in both lungs and her doctor doesn't expect her to live much longer. She fell down and broke her ankle a while back, and she just hasn't seemed to be able to bounce back from it. It's taken a hard toll on her health. And now the pneumonia."
"I'm very sorry. It's typically like that with older people. They tend to have more falls, more broken bones, and when they break a bone, it's often very hard for them to completely recover from it."
"Now that my husband is losing his mother, the last thing he needs is to have to worry about me."
"I understand what you're saying, Mrs. Jefferson. I understand that you don't want to be a burden to your husband right now. But even though he's going through a lot with his mother's illness, you need to let him be there for you, too. After all, he promised to care for you in sickness and in health every day for the rest of your lives, not to care for you in sickness and in health only when it's convenient to do so. When he married you, he basically promised before Almighty God to always put you before himself, no matter what, just the same as you promised to do for him. Unfortunately, it's been my experience through the years that wives, in general, are much better at putting their husbands ahead of themselves than husbands are at putting their wives first."
Louise knowingly nodded and said, "When it comes to George, you're quite right. Don't get me wrong, though. My husband is a good man. He's a good provider. He's a very hard worker."
"But if he's like many men I know, the workplace tends to come first far too often."
"Exactly."
"Well anyway, as I was saying, don't be afraid to let him take care of you now. I know this is already a tough time for him, but don't try to shield him from this. Let him help you. Let him be there for you. Let him do the things that a husband is supposed to do. He may be going through a lot with his mother now, but still, you just took a horrific blow, and it's okay to let yourself lean on him."
Louise took in a deep breath, let out a long sigh, and said, "Thank you. Thank you for everything, doctor."
"Of course. And whatever you do, Mrs. Jefferson, don't ever let go of hope. In my profession, I've seen Jesus do some real medical miracles. No matter how bad or how impossible things seem, you never know when He may decide to step into your situation and work a miracle for you. Don't ever quit. Don't ever give up."
"Thank you," Louise said quietly.
"I'm so sorry I had to give you such terrible news on Christmas Eve of all days," he told her sympathetically, and it was obvious that he really did feel awful for her. Louise responded with a respectful nod, and then he left, which gave her the privacy to have the good cry that she needed.
Louise returned to her apartment in a complete daze. Her trip to the emergency room clearly took a terrible toll on her, and when she got home, she didn't call her mother-in-law's apartment to speak to George, who'd been by her bedside day and night over the past several days. Her part-time cleaning lady, Florence Johnston, who came by once a week to help out with the apartment, was now in Canada visiting her parents during the Christmas holidays, and her best friends and upstairs neighbors, Tom and Helen Willis, were out of town for the holidays as well. Louise knew that her son Lionel and his bride Jenny were with Olivia now, and she knew she would likely have the place to herself until later that evening, so she just took her shoes off and laid down on her living room couch and put a cold compress on her forehead.
About an hour later, the phone rang, and Louise – not in the mood to speak to anyone – reluctantly got up off the couch and walked over to the desk and answered it.
"George?" she said, understandably expecting it to be her husband.
"Am I speaking to Mrs. Jefferson? To Mrs. Louise Jefferson?" asked a young woman.
"Oh, yes, this is Louise Jefferson. How may I help you?" Louise graciously asked.
"Mrs. Jefferson, this is the East Side Medical Center. My name is Andrea. I'm the nurse who drew your blood in the E.R. earlier today."
"Oh yes, I remember."
"I am so very sorry about this, Mrs. Jefferson, but with today being Christmas Eve, things have been absolutely crazy. There was a twenty-car-pile-up near the hospital that we had to deal with right after you first came in for all your tests."
"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that."
"Yeah, it's been pretty rough today, although I know today has been just as rough for you as it has been for some of our patients."
"You can say that again," Louise agreed.
"The reason why I said all of that is because the pile-up had us distracted and while the doctor was able to get to your chest X-rays and everything, we didn't the chance to review your bloodwork until after you had left. Something showed up in your bloodwork that we didn't expect."
"Oh, God. Now, what?" Louise gasped as she was overwhelmed with waves of nausea, with her heart pounding away in her chest.
"Relax, Mrs. Jefferson. It's not that anything's wrong, per se. It's just that, given your age and everything, we didn't expect to see this. You see, Mrs. Jefferson…you're pregnant."
"I'm what?!" Louise cried out in shock.
"You're pregnant."
"Are you…are you serious?" Louise gasped, completely unable to believe her ears. "Is this some kind of sick, crazy joke?!"
"Believe me, ma'am, this is no joke. This is no joke at all. We wouldn't be calling you, on Christmas Eve of all days, if this weren't completely real."
"Oh, my Lord. I…my husband and my son don't even know about the X-rays yet," said Louise in pure, utter disbelief.
"I understand that this a very great deal to have to take in all at once. I know this must be unbelievably hard, but try to take it easy. Try to relax as much as you can. Take a lot of deep breaths. Just try to get through all of this one day at a time. And if that's too hard, take it one minute at a time. One second at a time, if need be."
After a long pause, almost forgetting the young nurse on the other end of the line, Louise finally said, "Thank you, nurse. Thank you for calling."
"You're very welcome. I know it's hard, but hang in there."
Louise nodded and said, "I will. Thank you. And Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas to you and your family, too," she said kindly, and then they hung up. And a few moments later, Louise collapsed back onto the couch and cried once again. She knew that no matter hard she tried to relax, no matter how many deep breaths she took, she would never be able to handle this.