say can stop the tidal wave of emotion that I’ve unleashed.
So eventually I stop talking and clutch my phone so tightly my knuckles get sore while I wait.
And wait.
And wait some more.
For my mom to stop crying.
seven
“Y OU REALLY FEEL fine? No headaches? No noticeable lack of energy?”
Jack and I are sitting across from a thin black man in a lab coat who doesn’t look much older than us, in an office across town from Dr. Saunders’—but may as well be in the room next to his, as similar as they are. The light reflects off his shiny bald head and his thick lips part while he stares at the results of my second PET scan and MRI. He doesn’t even attempt to hide his bewilderment as he looks up at me.
I shake my head no. He mimics the movement, like we’re playing that acting class mirror game, and continues to scrutinize me as if I’m some medical miracle. Maybe I am. Maybe I’ll be the first person to surpass the expected survival rate for Lots of Cancer. Maybe my tumors will form some kind of symbiotic relationship, instead of a parasitic one, and we’ll all live happily ever after.
He tries again. “No pain or discomfort of any kind?”
He’s so incredulous that I start to second-guess myself. Have I felt any pain, and I just can’t remember it? Or I chalked it up to something else? And then I remember a special I saw years ago on Discovery about a girl who didn’t feel pain. She could put her hand on a hotstove, and leave it there, the skin searing and blistering, but she didn’t feel a thing.
Maybe I have that, I think.
And then I remember slamming my hand in the car door when I was five, and the excruciating pop when I rolled my ankle in high school and the white open sores on my throat during chemo and the two toenails that fell completely off and the headache just two days ago on the floor of my kitchen. I do feel pain.
“Is that a good sign? That she doesn’t have symptoms?” Jack asks.
“It doesn’t mean her condition is any less serious, if that’s what you’re asking. And it’s kind of unfortunate—she might have come in months ago if an unusual pain had prompted her to seek medical advice.”
“So what do you recommend? Chemo? Radiation?”
He looks at Jack. “Frankly?” And then pauses, as if he really expects Jack to respond, “Yes, please be frank.”
I almost laugh at the near Abbott and Costello of it all.
“I think it would be a waste of time. There’s just . . . too much of it.”
He then asks if we’ve looked into supportive care, and gives us a card with the number for hospice services and a pamphlet titled “Coping with Terminal Cancer.”
In the Zagat of doctors, this guy would have zero stars.
AT HOME, JACK throws his keys onto the kitchen counter. They skid across the laminate and stop just inches before the sink drop-off. He walks to the fridge and yanks open the door. Grabs the cranberry juice, takes three gulps directly from the bottle, sets it in an open space in the door that’s strictly just for sauces and salad dressings, and slams the door closed.
He’s mad. It happens so rarely that I just watch him, like he’s a curiosity—the three-headed lady or the alligator boy in a traveling state fair. I once asked him if he ever got furious, ever worked up to the point of throwing something or growling with rage. He shrugged. “I’m from the Midwest.”
His back remains toward me, his hand still resting on the fridge door. I gently pick up his keys and place them on the hook by the door.
We stand there in silence, not moving, like kids who have just been touched in a game of freeze tag.
And then Jack speaks: “That doctor was an idiot.” His voice is gruff, worn.
I nod, even though he can’t see me.
The silence is back and it hangs in the air between us. A privacy curtain to hide our true thoughts.
Jack breaks it again. “I’ll be in the office,” he says, but the word “office” cracks in the middle in a way that makes my
So eventually I stop talking and clutch my phone so tightly my knuckles get sore while I wait.
And wait.
And wait some more.
For my mom to stop crying.
seven
“Y OU REALLY FEEL fine? No headaches? No noticeable lack of energy?”
Jack and I are sitting across from a thin black man in a lab coat who doesn’t look much older than us, in an office across town from Dr. Saunders’—but may as well be in the room next to his, as similar as they are. The light reflects off his shiny bald head and his thick lips part while he stares at the results of my second PET scan and MRI. He doesn’t even attempt to hide his bewilderment as he looks up at me.
I shake my head no. He mimics the movement, like we’re playing that acting class mirror game, and continues to scrutinize me as if I’m some medical miracle. Maybe I am. Maybe I’ll be the first person to surpass the expected survival rate for Lots of Cancer. Maybe my tumors will form some kind of symbiotic relationship, instead of a parasitic one, and we’ll all live happily ever after.
He tries again. “No pain or discomfort of any kind?”
He’s so incredulous that I start to second-guess myself. Have I felt any pain, and I just can’t remember it? Or I chalked it up to something else? And then I remember a special I saw years ago on Discovery about a girl who didn’t feel pain. She could put her hand on a hotstove, and leave it there, the skin searing and blistering, but she didn’t feel a thing.
Maybe I have that, I think.
And then I remember slamming my hand in the car door when I was five, and the excruciating pop when I rolled my ankle in high school and the white open sores on my throat during chemo and the two toenails that fell completely off and the headache just two days ago on the floor of my kitchen. I do feel pain.
“Is that a good sign? That she doesn’t have symptoms?” Jack asks.
“It doesn’t mean her condition is any less serious, if that’s what you’re asking. And it’s kind of unfortunate—she might have come in months ago if an unusual pain had prompted her to seek medical advice.”
“So what do you recommend? Chemo? Radiation?”
He looks at Jack. “Frankly?” And then pauses, as if he really expects Jack to respond, “Yes, please be frank.”
I almost laugh at the near Abbott and Costello of it all.
“I think it would be a waste of time. There’s just . . . too much of it.”
He then asks if we’ve looked into supportive care, and gives us a card with the number for hospice services and a pamphlet titled “Coping with Terminal Cancer.”
In the Zagat of doctors, this guy would have zero stars.
AT HOME, JACK throws his keys onto the kitchen counter. They skid across the laminate and stop just inches before the sink drop-off. He walks to the fridge and yanks open the door. Grabs the cranberry juice, takes three gulps directly from the bottle, sets it in an open space in the door that’s strictly just for sauces and salad dressings, and slams the door closed.
He’s mad. It happens so rarely that I just watch him, like he’s a curiosity—the three-headed lady or the alligator boy in a traveling state fair. I once asked him if he ever got furious, ever worked up to the point of throwing something or growling with rage. He shrugged. “I’m from the Midwest.”
His back remains toward me, his hand still resting on the fridge door. I gently pick up his keys and place them on the hook by the door.
We stand there in silence, not moving, like kids who have just been touched in a game of freeze tag.
And then Jack speaks: “That doctor was an idiot.” His voice is gruff, worn.
I nod, even though he can’t see me.
The silence is back and it hangs in the air between us. A privacy curtain to hide our true thoughts.
Jack breaks it again. “I’ll be in the office,” he says, but the word “office” cracks in the middle in a way that makes my
Similar Books
