August 1984

"I'm going to miss you so much!" Ginger exclaimed as she hugged her eighteen-year-old daughter good-bye.

"It's only a six-hour drive, Mom," Audrey replied. "I'll be able to come home often." She'd graduated high school in June and was about to start her freshman year at Stanford University. Despite Ginger's high hopes that her only daughter would follow in her footsteps and become an actress, Audrey had decided instead to become an astronaut like her father, Igor. She'd starred in numerous commercials and had even had a couple of bit parts in movies, but had ultimately left the acting life behind to concentrate on her studies. She hoped to be hired by NASA after graduating from Stanford.

"But it won't be the same as being able to see you any time we want!" Ginger, who'd never been separated from her daughter for longer than a couple of weeks at a time, protested.

"I love you, Mom," said Audrey. "I'm gonna miss you."

"We'll miss you too, sweetie," Ginger replied. "Please call us as soon as you can."

"I will, Mom." Audrey hugged and kissed Igor good-bye, and then she was gone.

"I don't know what I'm going to do without her," Ginger moaned.

"She have to grow up sometime." Igor gave his wife a comforting hug. "She is big girl now. She will be just fine, and we will finally have time just for ourselves."

"It's still a couple of weeks before filming starts for my new movie," Ginger replied. "Maybe I'll fly up to Ohio to visit Roy and Mary Ann again." Roy and Mary Ann Hinkley still lived in Ohio with their five-year-old daughter, Dawn, and their not-quite-two-year-old son, Dusty. Roy still worked as a professor at the university in the city where they lived, and Mary Ann was a stay-at-home Mom to Dawn and Dusty. "You can come too, if you'd like."

"I would love to go with you," Igor said with a smile. "Now that it will be just you and me, I look forward to spending much time with my lovely Ginger."

"Oh!" Ginger suddenly grasped her abdomen as she winced in pain.

"You have pain again, yes?" Igor looked at his wife in concern.

"It's probably just a hormonal thing," Ginger replied. "My annual check-up's in a couple of days. I'll get it checked out then."

Dr. Green was silent as she conducted her examination. Ginger lay flat on her back on the hard table with her feet up in stirrups, trying her best to imagine that she was lying on the beach soaking up the sun instead. She thoroughly hated these awkward procedures and dreaded them with a passion. She couldn't wait for Dr. Green to tell her that she could get dressed and leave.

Instead, the physician was very quiet for what seemed a much longer time than usual, for so long, in fact, that the redhead knew that something must be wrong. At last Dr. Green was finished. She told Ginger to get dressed and wait in the examination room until she returned.

After what seemed an interminable period, the physician finally reappeared. "You have a mass on your uterus," she told Ginger. "I'll have to schedule a biopsy as quickly as possible to determine whether or not it's malignant."

Ginger felt as if all the wind had just been knocked out of her. Cancer? At her age? In all the catastrophes she'd faced in her long-ago life as a castaway on an uncharted island, none of them had even come close to being as terrifying as this.