The next few days were a blur. Even though cancer clearly had me on the ropes, I wasn’t down for the count quite yet. The pain was no worse at this point and the radiation fatigue had temporarily dislodged the nightmares. I was punch drunk but keeping my feet under me.
On the morning of my twelfth treatment, I drove to the Yellow lot through a deluge. A line of cones blocked the entrance and the yellow-slickered valets were directing people to park along the street. I already felt like a wet rag; I didn’t want to hike through the pouring rain to receive my radiation treatment. I circled the block three times before finding a spot. The narrow side street was a river of brown water. I slipped off my new red flats and tucked them in my backpack before slogging my way through the muddy puddles back to the Cancer Center. Outside the sliding doors, I recognized the minivan-driving mom talking on her cell phone under the small overhang. “I’m sorry, Dwight, you’ll have to miss first period again. Give your sisters some frozen waffles and pack their lunches. They can watch TV until I get home. I’ll email your teacher to explain why you’re late again.” She smiled at me while I rinsed my toes in a downspout. I smiled back before stepping inside. I hoped her children were all right home alone.
The reception area was a cacophonous mess. The rain hammered on the glass ceiling while a crowd of patients peppered a frazzled volunteer with questions. Lorraine was nowhere to be seen. I stepped into the crowded ladies room for some paper towels when a wave of fatigue suddenly swamped me. I needed to sit down before I fell down. People were packed cheek to jowl in the normally calm waiting room. No one spoke. They were as grey and tepid as the rain quietly dribbling down the large windows. They just sat, waiting. I drifted around the room like a fading butterfly looking for a place to land until I heard someone croak, “Hey, Blue Eyes,” from the other side of the room. The Badger was waving a copy of National Geographic like a flag. “Over here, I saved you a seat.”
My breath caught in my throat. The grumpy rodent was turning out to be a fairy godmother. I squeezed in beside The Badger on a pale yellow loveseat sprinkled with embroidered daisies.
“You look like a drowned rat. And where the hell are your shoes? You’re always walking around barefooted.”
I pulled my shoes out of my backpack and dried my feet off as best I could with the paper towels in my hand before slipping them back on. “Thanks for saving me a seat.”
“You looked like death warmed over. I knew you couldn’t stand in the hall for two hours.”
“Two hours!”
“Room A broke down this morning so they were doubling up in B. Then I heard that some kid flipped out and had to be sedated. That took forever. So now we’re two hours behind.” The Badger scratched at her chest. I could see a discolored patch of skin there.
“Does that hurt?”
The Badger squinted at me. “What d’you think?”
I bent over and started to gather up my things. “I’ve got to get to work. My boss is going to be pissed if I’m gone all day. Think they would let me cut in front of some of these other people?”
“No,” The Badger said with finality. “What makes you so special?”
“But I’ve got things to do.”
“What makes your things more important than anybody else’s?”
I thought about Minivan Woman’s children needing to get to school.
“Hell, some of us don’t have that many days left,” The Badger mumbled. She cleared her throat and winced.
A jolt of compassion twisted my heart in my chest. I had researched esophageal cancer after we met. The odds of The Badger recovering from this relapse were slim. Getting to work no longer seemed quite so important. “How are you feeling? Are you in a lot of pain?”
“Might have to get a feeding tube,” she replied curtly. She scratched at her chest again.
The Badger watched me shift my weight so I was not sitting on my painful parts. “Didn’t talk to your doctor about the pain, did ya?”
“I’m sure he has more important things to deal with. I’m tough. I’ll be fine.”
That type of response usually put people off but The Badger merely laughed. “You think you’re that tough? If you think you can beat back cancer with those little fists, you’re sicker than I thought.” She cleared her throat again and took a long replenishing draught from a tall green sports bottle with the Ellery Hospital logo on it. She winced as she swallowed but seemed relieved afterward.
“Can I do anything?”
“There’s nothing to do. The doctor gave me pain pills.” The Badger took another swallow of water then said, “Just talk to me while we wait. It’ll keep my mind off my throat.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Read any good books lately?” Those were magic words. We chatted about British mysteries and suspense novels. I was surprised to find this lifelong employee of a textile mill from the mountains of North Carolina was a reader of P.D. James and Ruth Rendell. The two hours went by as swiftly as Hercule Poirot through a sitting room of lying socialites.
Hours later, I emerged from the changing area to find Rosaria waiting for me. She took my arm in a Vulcan grip and led me to a private alcove. “I got a call from Rex yesterday,” she said sternly. “He told me you wince when you walk and that he saw black and blues on your knees.” I involuntarily held my backpack in front of the fist shaped bruises where I had silently punched through the pain of using the ladies’ room at work.
“Then,” Rosaria continued, “when I asked Lorraine to buzz me when you were finishing up today, she told me another patient reported they were worried about you.” Rosaria’s starched white pants glowed under the fluorescent lights. “Now. Tell me. What is going on?”
I was touched that Rosaria cared enough to come check on me. I struggled to keep my voice steady as I replied, “It hurts. It hurts to pee and it really hurts to go… you know.”
Rosaria held her pen poised over a notepad. “When did this begin?”
I was embarrassed to admit how quickly the side effects had started. “Last Monday.”
Rosaria slammed her pen down on the pad. “Last Monday! Pobrecita! Why did you not call? I told you to tell me if you experienced any side effects.”
I stared out the window and watched the rain slide down the glass. “I thought I could handle it.”
Rosaria rested her tiny hand on my arm and searched my face with her warm brown eyes. “Has there been any blood?” I didn’t dare respond. Rosaria rolled her eyes and mumbled, more to herself than to me, “Who knows what kind of damage has been done.”
Rosaria gathered up her clipboard and grumbled, “Come to my office. I have some things to give you to help with the side effects and, hopefully, we can catch the doctor for a minute.” Rosaria hustled away, muttering to herself in Spanish. I struggled to keep up with her.
I expected Rosaria’s office to be cold and impersonal; however it was a warm, inviting room with large windows and a rag rug in the center. A disused desk was pushed against one wall and piled high with reference books. Along the other wall was a threadbare couch, an obvious cast-off from a waiting room. The sun broke through the clouds and shifted the shadows cast from a collection of carved angels hanging from the suspended ceiling. I imagined Rosaria sitting on the couch reviewing patient’s charts with her choir of angels over her head.
Rosaria sat down on the couch and gestured for me to sit beside her. “Come. Come. Sit. I only have a few minutes.” She looked at me and sighed heavily. “Dr. Obatu will want to see you. You’ll just have to be patient until we can fit you in.”
“But I have to get to work. I’m already really late.
“You’re taking the day off,” Rosaria replied. She stretched her petite form to its full height and continued firmly, “Now, have you been drinking enough fluids?”
“I don’t know,” I lied.
Rosaria took a tall green sports bottle out of the plastic bag at her feet. I recognized it as identical to the one The Badger carried with her to alleviate the burns in her throat. “I want you to drink four of these every day.”
I gulped at the thought of passing that much scalding urine over my tender skin.
“I get it, but we need you to move fluids through your body.” Rosaria shifted to look me in the eye. “Lara, this is important. What have you been eating?”
I hadn’t been eating much for the last few days. I picked up my order from Lucky Lee’s in order to see Helen and maintain some semblance of a schedule but had only been nibbling at the rice. I’d even been too tired to go to the gym the last few days.
“Some rice,” I replied defensively. “My grandmother always said rice and bananas are good for the digestion.”
Rosaria pat my knee and replied, “Your grandmother was correct. Rice is easy on the system.” She stood up to retrieve a plastic bag. “Here are some liquid meal replacements to get some calories in you. You need to eat actual food, too. Isn’t your family helping you?”
I set my jaw. “I can take care of myself.”
“You’ll need to do a better job of it then. I would feel better if you had someone to help you through all this. Now,” she said, turning toward the door, “let’s go find you a room.” Rosaria left me in an exam room to wait for Dr. Obatu. I stripped and put on the hospital gown. It now felt natural to be half-naked whenever I was in this building. Once undressed, the fatigue started to wash over me again. I couldn’t sit on the hard plastic chair and standing upright was too much of an effort. I hoisted my weary body up on the examination table and curled my feet up under my bottom. The room was warm and the fluorescent lights emitted a low buzz that made my eyelids heavy. I leaned back and quickly drifted off to sleep to the sound of muffled voices through the wall.
I was roused from my catnap by Dr. Obatu’s warm laugh. “Ms. Blaine, I gather that you are experiencing some fatigue? My patients do not typically curl up on my examination table like sleeping kittens.”
I sat up and tugged my gown around my legs. “Sorry. I was just so tired and—”
“Do not apologize! I am glad you were able to rest a few moments and it brought me a bit of joy on a trying day.” A shadow seemed to pass across his smiling face. “But let us talk about how you are getting on. Rosaria tells me you have been having some difficulty.” He sat down and opened my chart on his lap. His expression turned grave. “Oh my goodness, she writes here this has been going on for some days. When did you first experience these side effects?”
“Monday?” I mumbled.
“Well! I would have preferred that you had told us right away but that is in the past. Let us examine you and see what can be done.” Dr. Obatu called Rosaria in to help with the exam. I lay back, dreading what he would say once he saw how red and swollen my body was. The doctor had to gently nudge my knees apart to examine me. As soon as he touched my skin, I gasped and arched in the stirrups. The doctor jumped back at my reaction and said, “It’s okay, Miss Blaine. Although it may be uncomfortable, I need to examine you. Try to relax.” He signaled to Rosaria to stand closer by and resumed the examination, moving as gently and slowly as possible. Rosaria placed her hands on my upper arm and talked to me again about how important it was to drink plenty of fluids. I could tell she was prepared to hold me down if necessary and was talking more to distract me than to impart any new information. Still, I liked the sensation of her hand on my arm.
Eventually, Dr. Obatu instructed me to sit up. He sat in the chair across the room from me and made some notes in my chart. He wiped his brow, although the room was chilly. “There is quite a bit of irritation. I had hoped we could proceed with the last several treatments with a different cradle. I no longer feel that would be a prudent choice. I suggest we stop, let the tissues heal, then re-evaluate. We can proceed with the one day-long internal radiation treatment at some point down the road.” He closed the chart and stood up. “I want to see you again in two weeks. I will leave you with Rosaria now. She can give you advice on how to help you heal better.” He wearily walked out of the small room into the busy hallway.
Rosaria closed the door and leaned against it for several long moments. Her eyes felt like spot lights examining every inch of my face. “You are like the girls that would wander into Antigua from the jungle—too frightened to know any better. My sister, Maria Angeles, would take a pitcher of water and some food and leave it in the back garden for them. In the morning, the food would be gone. Only after weeks of feeding them did they talk to her. My sister cried for their souls. They made me angry.”
“Angry?”
“The soldiers had come into their villages, killed their families, and… well.”
“Really? What happened to them?”
“I went to my father and he was able to save a few of the girls. The Church helped some. Perhaps that is why Maria Angeles is a nun and I am a nurse.” Rosaria shook her head as if to shake out a memory. “I met Reg at a conference on post-traumatic gynecology. His sister runs a clinic for women in Kigali. He was supposed to go back and work with her in her clinic, but he fell in love with a girl from New York and stayed here in the States.”
“Why are telling me this?”
“Because I want you to remember that you are not the only young woman who has been abused by life.”
“But I—”
“M’ija,” Rosaria sighed. “You flinch exactly like those girls who wandered, skinny and tired, out of the jungle into my father’s garden. It’s time to stop fighting.”
Rosaria walked out of the room and left me, dumbstruck, to change. I felt a fool. Rosaria saw the way I pulled away from the doctor’s touch. She saw the way I am and she didn’t reject me. She didn’t judge me.
I dressed and retrieved Ruby from the valet. He smiled at me and wished me a good day. He didn’t give me a hard time about leaving the car there for hours or leer at me. He was nice. Dr. Obatu and Rosaria had been nice.
I drove down the interstate on autopilot. It was already late afternoon. I realized I never called Letitia to say I wasn’t coming in. The car parked itself in front of Lucky Lee’s. When I opened the door and entered the deserted restaurant, Susan Lee looked up from her ledger and squealed, “Miss Lara! What are you doing here so early? Your food isn’t ready.” I couldn’t help but be amused.
“That’s okay.” I leaned against the first booth. I didn’t even know why I was there. I wasn’t hungry. “Actually, can I get something different today? Can I have some of that chicken soup with the big noodles in it?”
“Won ton?”
“Sure, Miss Lara. You sit down and I’ll go get you some.” Mrs. Lee trotted off into the back of the restaurant. When she returned with a bag filled with a tall take-out container of golden goodness, she asked, “Why aren’t you sitting down? You look tired.” I didn’t want to lie to Mrs. Lee. She had always been so sweet to me. I looked forward to seeing her and her daughter, Helen, in the evenings.
“There is something wrong, isn’t there? I noticed you don’t go to the gym down here anymore. Sit down. Tell me all about it. There aren’t any other customers here.” Mrs. Lee slid into a booth.
From the function room to the left, Mrs. Lee’s mother-in-law said, “I told you she looked terrible.” She padded over and squeezed my shoulder like a chicken bone. “You’re too skinny.”
I cracked. First Rosaria saw through my facade, and now the Lees were fussing over me. I sunk into the booth and flinched as my bottom hit the vinyl.
“What is it, colon cancer?”
“Geez, Mom! That’s none of our business,” Mrs. Lee chided her mother-in-law. They argued over my head in Chinese.
“Cervical cancer. The radiation is burning me up inside. Everything hurts these days.”
The older woman put her hand on my head. She seemed to be measuring my energy and then proclaimed, “You need some ginger tea and mushroom sauce.”
“What?” I asked.
“You need ginger tea to sooth your system and mushroom sauce to heal you. I’ll go get some!” Mrs. Lee skittered into the kitchen.
The bell rang as a family entered the restaurant and Susan jumped up to seat them in the back of the room. She quickly came back to sit next to me. “My mother-in-law and her Eastern medicine. She makes herself out to be the old Chinese sage, but she learned it all from books. I don’t understand it, but when she makes me drink her teas and concoctions I always feel better. My brother is a pediatric urologist and he can’t explain why they work, but they do. I’m so sorry to hear about your cancer. Is your mother helping you?”
“No, my mother and I don’t get along,” I replied. Susan seemed more disturbed by this news than by my diagnosis. Mrs. Lee came back with a huge container of tea, a box of rice, and another container filled with a black sauce.
“You drink a cup of this tea every hour and eat the rice with some of this sauce tonight. Tomorrow, you’ll feel better. Next time, I will make a special dinner to help you not hurt so much inside. Okay?”
I stood up. “Okay. I’ll come see you tomorrow. Thanks.” I didn’t know how to thank the Lees enough for their generosity. The sweet, spicy aromas emitting from the plastic bag filled the air inside Ruby as I drove home. I felt better already.