Note to readers: Because of an unexpected situation that has come up, unfortunately, I won't be able to update Cherished from May 25-June 3. I sincerely apologize, but it's something that can't be helped. However, I will try to get as much work completed and posted as I can from now until then. And as always, thanks to everyone who is reading and supporting Cherished. It is always appreciated! :)
Chapter 10: Hysterectomy
That Friday evening, after the story of Mia's cancer and upcoming hysterectomy had officially been broken to the press earlier that day, Viscount Mabrey wasted no time whatsoever in going straight to the cameras so that he could bash Mia.
"An American has no place on the throne of Genovia!" he railed. "How would America like it if I, a true, lifelong Genovian, someone with no ties to America whatsoever, were suddenly made their president? Therefore, it is absolutely ridiculous that this American commoner, this silly, inept, clumsy, uncivilized, and soon-to-be sterile young woman is now sitting on the Genovian throne as Queen! She has been holding up procedures in Parliament for months to try to get her unnecessary legislation passed! She cannot even hold a fork at a royal dinner without clumsily dropping it and making herself – as well as all of Genovia – look stupid in front of diplomats from around the world! And now, we find that after Monday, she will not even be able to provide Genovia with a royal heir, which is a queen's most important, most sacred, duty to her country! Ladies and gentlemen of the press…ladies and gentlemen of the Genovian Parliament…citizens of Genovia…it is time, high time, that we do something about this. Our Queen is the biggest failure of a sovereign our country has ever had, and this cannot – this must not – continue!"
In that moment, someone from behind Mia picked up the remote to her television set and turned off the screen. Mia turned around in her chair then to see who it was. It was her grandmother.
"Don't you dare listen to that snake," Clarisse told her granddaughter, and then Mia smiled and got up and gave her grandma a big hug.
"I knew Mabrey would act like that when the news about my hysterectomy finally came out in the media. It's not exactly fun listening to Mabrey saying all those mean things about me, but it's not surprising, either. I knew all along he would be a big jerk about it. I'm okay, though."
In that moment, they walked over to Mia's loveseat in the living area of her suite and sat down beside each other. Clarisse then told Mia, "This goes beyond him just being mean and being a jerk, though, my love. He's being vicious to you now because the tide is finally beginning to turn against him in our country, and you have played a big role in that. The people of Genovia have seen what you're trying to do in our government to help women throughout our country. Your advocating for women to finally receive as much money in the workplace as their male counterparts and your advocating to help working mothers has not gone unnoticed by the Genovian people, nor have Mabrey's efforts to stop you in the good you're trying to do. He does still have a few people who support him in Parliament, but the fact of the matter is, most of Parliament can't stand him and are in fact far more loyal to you than they are to him. I really do believe that thanks largely to you and all the changes you helped to bring about, such as helping to make it possible for women to serve in Parliament with men, Viscount Mabrey's days in the Genovian political arena are numbered. I think that somewhere deep down, even Mabrey knows that. And that is why he's making such a fuss now. He knows he's on his way out and he knows it, but he's not the type of person who will go out without a fight, so he's trying to be as hurtful to you as he can."
"I hope you're right, Grandma. I really do. I for one am sick of having to endure him every time I have a session with Parliament. I don't know how you did it for so many years."
"It wasn't easy, my darling. It was not easy."
"I bet it wasn't. You really do have the strength and patience of a saint, Grandma. I'm not nearly as good at being patient with my political opponents as you always were. I mean, yeah, there are some Parliament members I disagree with, but not all of my opponents are jerks about it like Mabrey. I mean, we're able to agree to disagree and be civil about it, you know? We're able to act like adults about it. But with Mabrey, he is such a vicious, mean-spirited pain in the neck and it is still so hard sometimes for me not to lose my temper with him and end up raising my voice. I really hate it when that happens, though, because I know that is just the reaction he wants to get out of me, just like all the bullies I had to put up with in school when I was a kid."
"Oh, you called it perfectly. That is precisely what he is: a bully. And don't be too hard on yourself, love. You haven't even been Queen for a whole year yet. It takes time to learn how to deal with bullies like Mabrey. I didn't learn how to deal with snakes like him overnight, either. It takes time, and most importantly, it takes experience. And besides, it probably is a good thing for someone to let old Mabrey have it with both barrels in Parliament every once in a while. I think you're doing great. I really do."
"That means everything to me, Grandma. It really does. I just want to do good things, that's all. I just want to take good care of the Genovian people. I just want to be the kind of queen you always were."
"That's a very sweet thing to say, Mia, but I don't want you to be like me. I want you to be like you."
"Even though I'm a clumsy, uncivilized American who's about to be sterile?"
"You are not uncivilized, young lady. You are intelligent, sweet, caring, generous, and very classy. You are every bit as much a Genovian as you are an American and as the daughter of Prince Philippe and the granddaughter of King Rupert and myself, you have every right to the Genovian throne. And no one in their right mind, absolutely no one, cares one teeny, tiny little bit that you're a little clumsy, and they certainly don't care that you need a hysterectomy. Of course there will always be stupid, mean-spirited idiots like Mabrey out there who will put up a fuss about it because they've got nothing better to do with their time, but the opinion of idiots does not matter. It's your heart and your brain that matter, not the presence or absence of your uterus. You just remember that."
Mia smiled then and kissed her grandma's cheek and told her, "You are so wonderful, Grandma. Thanks for all the encouragement."
Clarisse touched her fingertips to her granddaughter's cheek and responded, "That's what grandmas are for."
A few minutes after Mia's very helpful conversation with her grandmother, her mother, Helen Thermopolis, arrived at the palace. Shortly before Mia first ascended the throne, Helen and her second husband, Mia's stepfather Patrick O'Connell, had a baby boy together named Trevor, and Patrick had had to stay behind in San Francisco with Trevor because he was sick with an ear infection, so Helen had flown to Genovia alone to be with her daughter when she had to have her surgery. Mia's best friend, Lilly Moscovitz, also arrived about half an hour after Helen did, and having her mom and her best friend with her was a very big help.
In the meantime, while Mia was catching up with her mom and her best friend, Clarisse personally called Dr. Hart and asked her to come by the palace once her workday was over. There was something she wanted to discuss with her in regards to her granddaughter's upcoming surgery, and she wanted to talk to her about it in person and not over the telephone. When Dr. Hart arrived that evening, she met with Clarisse alone in Dr. Mackenzie's office so they could talk together in private.
"What can I do for you this evening, my Queen?" asked Dr. Hart.
"Well doctor, as you can imagine, I've been doing a great deal of thinking about my granddaughter's surgery on Monday."
"Of course."
"And speaking to you, not as one of your patients, but as both a fellow queen and a fellow grandmother, there is something on the day of Mia's operation that I would like to do."
"I'm listening."
"I realize that what I'm about to ask goes against hospital rules, but when you're in the operating room with Mia on Monday, I want to be there, too. I know that ordinarily, you cannot allow a patient's family members to be there in the operating room while you're performing surgery, and I understand why you have that rule. I know that if something should go wrong in surgery and a family member is present, it is highly likely that that family member would get emotional and create a disturbance for you, making it all that much harder for you and your surgical team to do your jobs. But I want you to know that if you allow me to be present with Mia while you and your people are operating on her, and should anything go wrong, you do not have to worry about me distracting you or creating a disturbance."
"Queen Clarisse–" Dr. Hart started to say.
"Doctor," Clarisse interrupted, "as I told you a moment ago, I am speaking to you not only as a fellow grandmother but also as a fellow queen. I have many years of experience at keeping my emotions in check and maintaining a professional attitude, even in the most difficult of situations. I give you my word as a fellow queen that if you allow me to be there with Mia and any kind of complications occur, I will do absolutely nothing to prevent you and your colleagues from doing your jobs. I will maintain my composure at all times and I will stay out of your way.
"But speaking simply grandma to grandma, I have to be there with her. I've been doing a great deal of research about these kinds of things on the Internet here lately and according to my research, patients do better during operations if there's a positive, encouraging atmosphere around them in the operating room, and I am convinced that it will be better for Mia if I'm there with her through all of this. As a grandma, I need to be there. I need to hold her hand while you're doing this. I need her to know that I'm here."
"I understand, my dear Queen. As a grandma of a young granddaughter myself, I understand exactly what you're saying. I hear you, love. I really do. However, I am not only Queen Mia's physician. I am also yours and little Isaac's. As a fellow queen, I do not doubt your ability to maintain your composure in the slightest. If I were to allow you back into the operating room, you creating a disturbance for my team and me would be the least of my worries. Unfortunately, even though Queen Mia is very young and very strong and even though I do not anticipate anything going wrong at all on Monday, with surgery, there is always a little bit of a chance of unforeseen problems occurring, and if that were to happen, it would be very traumatic for you. And speaking as your doctor, that would worry me a great deal. If anything should happen that traumatizes you, it also traumatizes Isaac, and with your high-risk pregnancy, that would be a bad thing."
Clarisse let out a sigh of defeat then, knowing that Dr. Hart was right. "I tell you what," Dr. Hart continued. "We grandmas will compromise, okay? On Monday morning, I'll allow you to scrub in with the rest of my team and me, and I'll allow you to sit by Miss Mia and hold her hand until we administer the anesthesia to her. How about that?"
"Very well, doctor. Since you think it's a bad idea for me to be there through the entire operation, that does sound like an agreeable compromise. Thank you."
"Of course. And I just want to say that while I do understand how frightening a cancer diagnosis can be for a family member, please, try not to let it scare you too badly. When it's caught in the early stages, the cure rate for uterine cancer is over eighty, sometimes over ninety, percent. Queen Mia's kind of cancer is one of the easiest kinds there is to cure."
"When it's caught in the early stages."
"I'm confident that it is in the early stages, my Queen. I really am. Our little Queen is young, she is strong, and with the exception of this cancer, she is very healthy. I am very, very confident that as soon as we get this hysterectomy done, she is going to be perfectly fine. We just hit a little bump in the road, but we will get past it."
"That's what my brain keeps telling me. But in my heart…in my heart, I can't stop thinking about how I lost Philippe, and I can't stop being afraid that it's eventually going to happen all over again with Mia."
"That will not happen again."
A couple of tears came to Clarisse's eyes then as she told Dr. Hart, "You don't know that."
In that moment, even though it wasn't the most professional thing for Dr. Hart to do, she didn't hesitate to walk up to Clarisse and give her a warm hug. Then she said to her, "Yes I do know it, my dear. I do know that that will not happen to you again. I have a very powerful gut instinct, Queen Clarisse, and in over four decades of delivering babies and practicing medicine, it has never once been wrong, and my gut instinct tells me that as soon as we get this problem taken care of, our young little Queen is going to be perfectly fine, and she is going to outlive Methuselah."
Clarisse laughed through her tears and said, "She'd better!"
"She will, my Queen. She will."
"Oh! I hate these pregnancy hormones!" Clarisse complained as she grabbed a tissue from a box of tissues on Dr. Mackenzie's desk and began dabbing her eyes.
"It's not pregnancy hormones. It's being a mother, and a grandmother. Any woman going through what you're going through now would have the need to cry. It's nothing at all to be ashamed of. I know that you always had to keep your emotions under control during all your years as Queen, but you cannot keep them bottled up all the time. There are times when you have to let them out, and it's perfectly okay for you to do so. It's okay to admit you're frightened, Clarisse. And it is okay to let yourself have a little cry every now and then. You just keep reminding yourself about my gut instinct when you start feeling scared. You just keep remembering that I say your granddaughter is going to outlive Methuselah."
"I will. Thank you for everything, Dr. Hart."
"That's what I'm here for, my Queen. That's what I'm here for. We're going to get through this."
"I know," said Clarisse, and then she and Dr. Hart said goodbye and Dr. Hart left.
Mercifully, with her mother and Lilly with her, the rest of the weekend went by fairly quickly for Mia. And even though Viscount Mabrey wasted no time whatsoever running her down in the media for her inability to produce a biological royal heir, most Genovians expressed compassion and support in the press for their Queen throughout that weekend, which was a big help to Mia as well. Something else that also proved to be very helpful was the fact that Andrew managed to pull some strings and get his leave extended for another week so that he, too, would be able to be there with Mia through the surgery, a fact that Mia found to be very comforting.
What Mia took the most comfort from, though, was her grandmother's surprise to her on the morning of her surgery. When everybody else had said goodbye to Mia just before orderlies took her back to the operating room, she thought she'd seen the last of her loved ones until she'd be waking up from her operation a few hours later. However, much to her delight, she was wrong.
As Mia was lying on the operating table in a hospital gown and blue cap covering her head, surrounded by Dr. Hart and her team all dressed in the appropriate blue scrubs, surgical gowns, caps, masks, and gloves, Dr. Hart told her, "My little Queen, before we get started, we have a little surprise for you."
In that moment, Clarisse came into the room, also attired in matching blue scrubs and in a cap, gown, and gloves, wearing a white surgical mask over her face. But even though her face was mostly covered, Mia could immediately tell that it was her grandma, of course. "Oh, cool!" she said with delight after Clarisse sat down on a stool beside her bed and took her hand, making everybody else laugh. "Grandma! You're a surgeon!"
Clarisse laughed and said, "No, my love. I'm just a grandma."
"This is a way cool surprise, Dr. Hart," said Mia.
"Oh, I wish I could take the credit for it, my little dear, but this was all your grandmother's idea. She's going to stay right here by your side and hold your hand until we put you under the anesthesia for your operation."
"You are so thoughtful, Grandma. Thank you."
"You are more than welcome, sweetie. Besides, it's hardly any great sacrifice. This is precisely where I want to be right now." Mia looked up at Clarisse and smiled then, and squeezed her hand. "It's going to be alright," Clarisse whispered.
"I know."
"I'm here. Grandma's right here."
"And now that we do have Grandma here with us, why don't we begin?" Dr. Hart suggested. "Miss Mia, this is Dr. James Silver, and he's going to be your anesthesiologist today."
"It's an honor to meet you, Your Majesty," the man sitting just behind Mia's bed told her.
Mia leaned her head back then and looked up at him, and she said, "Thank you. It's nice to meet you, too, Dr. Silver. Hey, you're not a Mabrey supporter, are you?" she teased, and then everybody else in the room cracked up, including Clarisse. The entire country of Genovia was very well aware of the fact that Mabrey disliked their young Queen with a terrible vengeance.
"Absolutely not, Your Majesty," he assured her, which was, in fact, the truth. Like the majority of Genovians, nobody in that operating room that day liked Mabrey at all. "Absolutely not. I think I can say with the utmost confidence that everybody in this room is a Queen Mia fan."
"That's right," Dr. Hart agreed.
"Absolutely," Clarisse chimed in.
"Cool! I'm glad to hear that because if there were any Mabrey fans in here, there's no telling what kind of condition my body would be in when I woke up. A Mabrey supporter would probably do some unauthorized plastic surgery or something. Maybe I'd wake up with two noses." Again, everyone had a good laugh.
"I would never stand for that kind of foolishness taking place in my O.R., Miss Mia," Dr. Hart assured her. "You don't have to worry about any kind of mischief taking place while I'm in charge."
"That's very comforting to know, Dr. Hart. Thank you."
"Okay, Your Majesty, I'm going to start your anesthesia now," Dr. Silver told her.
"Okay."
Clarisse squeezed Mia's hand then and said, "I'm here, darling."
"Thank you, Grandma. I know everything's going to be alright."
"Well of course it is," Clarisse said lovingly. "I love you, sweetheart."
"I love you, too."
"Your Majesty, I'm going to ask you to start counting backwards from one hundred, okay?" said Dr. Silver.
"Okay. One hundred. Ninety-nine. Ninety…eight. Ninety…seven. Ninety…"
A moment later, Dr. Silver told the rest of the team, "She's out."
"I take it this is my cue to step out, now," Clarisse sighed. She really hated to leave Mia.
"Don't worry, my Queen. I'll take care of this girl like she was my own granddaughter," Dr. Hart assured her.
Clarisse looked at Dr. Hart in that moment and said, "I'm going to hold you to that." Then she bent down and kissed Mia's cheek and whispered in her ear, "I have to be going now, my love. I'll see you again very soon. God is watching over you, sweetheart, and so are all of us, and we are all going to take such good care of you. You are going to be just fine, so don't be afraid."
A long moment later, as hard as it was for her to, Clarisse forced herself to let go of Mia's hand, get up off the stool, and walk out of the operating room.