A few days later, Mary was in one of the examination rooms at Dr. George's office. Usually, they joked around, both of their playful banter overly apparent, but today was different. George wasn't saying much and that made Mary nervous. He was always quiet when he was trying to hide something. Similar to the Camdens, he was not good at lying.

George sighed heavily as he finished the examination and looked up at her. Mary put her legs down from the stirrups and took notice that George was evidently upset, although he was trying so hard to hide it from her.

"I want to do an MRI," he said as he looked away from her.

Mary's mouth went dry and she was unable to question him for a while. He had caught her off guard.  "Why?"

George stood up and began to write tings in her chart. "I don't want to alarm you if there is nothing to alarm you with."

Her jaw dropped; she did not believe he was doing this to her. "So you're not going to tell me?"

He shook his head. "Later, if you don't mind."

Mary did mind, but she didn't say anything to him about it. She trusted him with her life, and sometimes you have to do things like that when you put your existence in someone else's hands. There was no doubt in her mind that George was capable of taking good care of her, so not knowing what he was up to didn't bother her as much as one would have thought. "Right now?" He nodded and she sighed heavily.

Mary quickly redressed and left the examination room. She walked about four different hallways and then up two floors until she got to where George told her she needed to go. She approached a desk in the middle of the floor; one nurse was standing there on the phone. "All right. Sure, I can do that. You're welcome. Bye," the nurse said into the receiver. The woman hung up the phone and then looked up at Mary. "Mary Camden?"

Mary nodded and without another word the nurse took Mary to the machinery where the MRI scan was to be done. The equipment in the room the nurse led her into was a little intimidating. It was a big cone shaped plastic apparatus that she was supposed to lay inside of while it x-rayed her body. Quickly, the nurse rattled off an explanation that she had probably given a hundred times and Mary hopped onto the machine.

The thirty-something nurse walked out of the room and the device started to whirr around Mary's sacred body. She closed her eyes and tried to process what was going on, but was completely unable to. Everything was happening so fast and she didn't know all of that much to begin with. Mary felt herself moving with the machine and opened her eyes. She didn't like this one bit.

Before she knew it the procedure was over. The nurse walked her out of the room and gave her a file that she was supposed to give to Rosa as soon as she got back inside of George's office. Being the good girl that she was, she did just as she was told. She wouldn't have been able to decipher anything from whatever was in her file anyway.

Mary waited about a half an hour before she was called back in to see George. He wanted to examine her again. When he came into the room, he didn't say anything to her. She had to admit that she was frightened. As she lay on the table she remembered something. The blood work George had done the last time she was here had to be back by now. She couldn't think about that for long, however, because George interrupted her. The examination he was doing this time was different; she could feel it. He was poking her in different areas, not where he normally checked her, and it just felt different. A bad different.

He touched one area a few times and she winced. Then, all at once, he was finished. "Please get dressed and meet me in the discussion room." He sounded so formal. Mary bit her tongue to keep tears from falling as she dressed for the second time.

In the discussion room, George sat rigid in his chair before Mary. He looked at her chart a few times, and then back up at her, then would look down again. She wanted to ask him what was going on but refrained from doing so. She knew it was something bad and she didn't want any more bad news. After everything that had happened in the past six weeks, she didn't thin she could handle it.

George began to speak. "I usually don't ask this, but you're special." Mary was even more confused than before. "I have something important to tell you. Would you like to wait for Wilson and I can tell you both later or something, or would you rather me just tell you alone right now?"

Mary's body stiffened. "Just tell me now. I don't think I can stand waiting any longer."

"I'm sorry about that. I just didn't want to put you through this if I didn't have to- warn you of a possibility that wasn't at all applicable. But now it seems…" He paused and started anew. "Mary, your cancer has spread into your uterus- Stage III."

Her eyes went wide and she took deep breaths. George's tone had been so firm and serious. That, coupled with what he said, had thrown her over the edge. Mary was very good at keeping things together, though. She had just been told that her cancer has stretched even further and developed into the next classified stage, but you wouldn't be able to tell from looking at her.

"What does that mean to me?" she asked him after the shock began to subside.

"We're going to have to be more aggressive with your treatment. Obviously the radiation isn't really helping."

"Aggressive how? Like, chemo?" she asked apprehensively.

"Possibly. I still don't know if I want to do that for you. It was always kind of my last resort. It's so damaging." He was floundering slightly under the pressure.

"George," Mary said with all sincerity, "forget about trying to save my body. It won't do me any good if I'm in the most fertile person in the world if I'm not here to do anything with it."

He felt like smiling at her comment, on the inside at least, but that was not what the time called for. He couldn't help but think, though, that he had let Mary down. He had been very secretive all day with her, and now she had just accused him of not doing his job. Without knowing it, he was in agreement with Mary. This was not good at all.

***

Mary paced around the area of the front door as she waited for Wilson to come home from work. She had been going over in her head what she should say to him and hadn't settled on anything that really suited the situation or her mood. Honesty, however, was the only way to go with this. She had to tell him the truth, and as soon as he came home.

The door opened ten minutes later to reveal Wilson. His eyes were warm and loving as he looked at Mary while approaching her. He had no idea what he was about to be up against. He went over to kiss her hello before he said anything. Wilson leaned in and his lips almost touched Mary's; she turned her head away from him.

'What's wrong?" he immediately asked.

"I have some news for you." Her voice was monotone. She led him into the heart of the apartment and held his hands.

"Good news or bad news?"

She felt bad for him. "Bad news." His look told her that he wanted her to continue. "Maybe you should sit down."

"Is it that serious Mare?" She nodded and he immediately sat on the couch.

"I saw George today," she began.

"So?"

The corners of her lips turned up slightly. It was not quite smiling, because she was incapable of smiling at a time like this. "I had an appointment with George," she clarified. "He did some more tests, diagnostic stuff, and he…he… He told me that my cancer's in stage III and has spread to my uterus." That wasn't as hard as she thought it would be. It actually felt good to have said it, like she was releasing some of the pain she felt from it somehow by sharing this information with Wilson.

He stared back at her blankly. He looked so completely innocent and scared to Mary. After what seemed like an eternity to him, Wilson embraced Mary slowly. He didn't hug her because he thought she needed the hug, he hugged her because he needed it. Yet again, everything in his life he took for granted kept slipping away from him. "How does he know this? Is he sure?"

"He did a pap smear, measured my CA 125, and an MRI scan, plus did a different pelvic exam. I…I don't know." She tried to explain a little bit, but it was hard for her- harder than she expected.

"What's a CA 125?"

"CA 125 is a protein that's made in the abdominal area. He's been measuring it for a while, and looking at the numbers you can tell when something is wrong. Consistency is good, but, um, my number nearly doubled since the last time he checked it." Mary was shocked by her knowledge of all of the medical jargon. Being in the hospital so much must have been rubbing off on her.

He cleared his throat and she took notice of how pale his face had gotten. "What's going to happen now?"

"I have to change my treatment because the radiation is obviously doing squat. He hasn't decided on what, though, but he said that he'd call later once he decided on something. Depending on what he picks, I could have another appointment tomorrow."

Tear welled up in Wilson's eyes and he had no idea what he should be saying to her. "Are-are you OK? This must be hard on you."

"I'm fine," she told him. He hugged her again, but she wriggled out from underneath his grasp. "I want to be alone for a little while longer." She noticed the concern on his face. "I'm fine, I just need a little more time by myself to process this."

"You take all the time you need." He squeezed her hand. "I'll be here for you when you want to talk though."

"I know," she said as she stood. Wilson watched as Mary exited the living room and went into the bedroom. He heard the click of the lock on the door behind her; she had completely shut him out. Wilson leaned his back against the couch behind him and covered his face with his hands. The tears had subsided for now, but for all he knew they could come back at any time. Wilson knew that this was bad- a lot worse than he ever anticipated her getting. She was doing so well, too. At least that was what he thought…or hoped. He must have missed the signs, or maybe George had missed them.

Wilson stood up and went over to the bedroom door. As lightly and quietly as possible, he passed his fingers over the doorknob to verify that it was locked. His shoulders slumped when he realized that it was. He ran his hand through his perfectly coifed dark brown hair as he leaned his body against the door. Mary was quiet inside. He could imagine her lying on the bed, seeming to be unfazed by the whole situation, and staring up at the ceiling.

Mary was doing just what Wilson thought. Her head was devoid of all thoughts as her chest rose up and down with every breath. She felt like she was having some sort of out-of-body experience, or a nightmare. This couldn't be happening. Without her consent, her mind flashed to Wilson and Billy. This wasn't the way it was supposed to happen. She was supposed to get better and be with them forever. That goal, no matter how nice it might have been, seemed completely unreachable at that moment. She closed her eyes and imagined grabbing a fictitious object, but it was impossible for her to get at. That was the way her life felt at the moment. She was so close, but not close enough. Everything was still inches away from her grasp, and no matter how hard she stretched, nothing mattered. Her arms would never be long enough to reach what she really wanted.

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A/N: This chapter was weird. I guess it was kind of supposed to be weird, though. I felt weird when I was dreaming it up, so that was what I wanted to put down on paper. I did some research for this chapter, and by no means am I a medical expert, but it seemed all right to me. Don't yell at me if it's wrong.

I don't know what I am doing next. I mean, I know, but I don't know how I am going to get there. The chemo thing…George is undecided because I am undecided. I don't quite know if it will fit, but I have kind of written myself into a chemo-corner.

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Mary's long gone, but your reviews will help make a certain sexy male feel better.

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