Summary

Darkest Day – “It is the darkest day and Christmas week” (195). The author describes suffering intense pain in her lower back, and of thinking of her mother, who broke her back even while she was struggling with her cancer. Eventually, the pain gets so bad that she is admitted to hospital for tests, where she learns that one of her vertebrae has been fractured, probably from within – “a tumor that has metastasized from [her] breast” (199). She is prepared for immediate surgery.

Helicopter – In a post-surgery, morphine-infused haze, the author tells her sister-in-law where everything she (the author) had prepared for Christmas is located, and confesses to John that she had made arrangements for them to visit Paris in January – it is, she comments in narration, his favorite place. Meanwhile, she also describes the procedure she has just gone through (her cancer-infected disk...