It was oddly reassuring to see the worn orange chairs still squatting along the walls in the Radiology room like a line of slowly rotting pumpkins. So much was changing in my life, it was nice to know what to expect. I had settled into an armchair near the window with my bottles of Gatorade-contrast solution and an old copy of Jurassic Park, when a tiny plastic stegosaur hit my leg. Ten feet away, a little boy was launching an assault on a group of dinosaurs with his action figures. As he lunged Batman forward to ambush a triceratops, his baseball cap tipped off his head. A golf-ball-sized chunk of skull was missing from the right side of his head. He grabbed up his baseball cap, shoved it back on his head, and went back to playing.
The woman in the next chair picked up the dinosaur with a tired smile. “Sorry about that. Rory sure does love his action figures.”
The little boy ran over and reclaimed his dinosaur. He pointed to my book. “Do you like dinosaurs, too?”
“Dinosaurs are fun. I think it’s neat how big they were.”
“Some of them were like chickens,” he replied with a toothy grin that transformed his grey face.
The front of his cap had the Durham Bulls logo on it. I once had a cap just like it. My grandfather took me to a Bulls game the summer I was six. PawPaw was excited to introduce me to the world of minor league baseball but worried I’d fuss during the long drive. He planned a surprise for me in the car to pass the time. Once we left the twisting mountain road and were on the interstate, he pulled a plastic box filled with cassette tapes from beneath my seat. It was an unabridged reading of Anne of Green Gables. He said Grammy had a much-loved copy somewhere in the attic, but he had never gotten around to reading it with my mother. The five-hour drive flew by as I saw the hills of Prince Edward Island in my mind instead of the red dirt of North Carolina. When we arrived in Durham, PawPaw was as reluctant as I was to turn off the tape.
Grammy had packed us a bag of ham and cheese sandwiches and jelly jars of lemonade, but PawPaw left them in the car. He wanted to eat hot dogs and cotton candy for lunch and stop in Gastonia on the way back for some barbecue and a bottle of Cheerwine. At the end of the day, I fell asleep in the backseat of PawPaw’s old blue Volvo with a full belly and sunburned neck. Nestled in my arms was a stuffed bull wearing a cap exactly like the one now covering Rory’s dented skull.
Before I had a chance to think it through, I was kneeling on the floor beside Rory. “Are you a Bulls fan?”
Rory looked up from his toys. “They gave a bunch of us kids from the hospital free tickets. It was really fun. They have a billboard of a bull that shoots out steam if a ball hits it. Do you have cancer, too?”
“Rory!” his mother scolded. The woman’s face colored as she said, “You know not to ask questions like that.” It improved her looks.
“That’s okay,” I chuckled as I poured half a Gatorade down my throat. “It’s likely everyone here has cancer.”
“Want to see my tattoo?” Rory asked.
I was overcome with an urge to scoop him up in my arms and hug him. I picked up a little red plastic man instead. “Who’s this?” We played with his little men for several minutes until a technician came and took Rory back to the testing rooms. When he was gone, I helped his mother pick up his toys.
“Thank you for playing with him. So many people are afraid of us.”
I handed Rory’s red backpack to his mother. “I’m just as radioactive as he is.”
“They’re doing a scan today to see if the cancer has spread to his bones. He puts on a brave face, but he’s really in a lot of pain. We haven’t slept through the night for weeks.” Her face was a collage of anguish: red rimmed eyes, gaunt cheeks, deep fissures between her brows, and a persistent flutter in her upper lip as if she was trying not to scream. “I wish I could go through this for him. I would trade my life for his in a heartbeat.”
Is that what it means to be a mother? To be willing to give up your life for your child’s? This woman is younger than I am. She could still have other children. She may have other children. But here she is wishing to trade places with her sick child.
I drank some more of my contrast solution.
Mama would never have sacrificed herself for me. I was her flesh and blood and she wouldn’t even inconvenience herself for me. What made me so unlovable?
I reached out and touched Rory’s mom’s shoulder. “You are a good mom. I wish there was something I could do to help.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m afraid there’s not much anyone can do. I think we’re coming down to the end now.” Her eyes filled with tears, but they didn’t escape her lashes. I foolishly wondered if a person could run out of tears. “I just don’t want him to be in pain anymore. I want this all to be over.”
I felt awful leaving Rory’s mother alone in the waiting room when they called my name. If I could have stayed with her until Rory came back, I would have. But I had to go. I had already drunk the contrast. The nurse was waiting for me.
***
Forty minutes later, I waddled into the ladies room feeling a bit nauseated from the contrast solution working its way through my innards to find Jane standing in front of the sinks staring at herself in the mirror. I almost didn’t recognize her. She looked awful. A grey knit cap that blended with her skin had replaced the wig and jaunty silk scarf. A too-new looking tracksuit hung off her frame. A wave of guilt washed over me. I’d meant to call Jane to ask how she was doing with the treatments. I tottered over as best I could.
“Lara! What are doing here?” Jane’s eyes twinkled within their purple-tinged hollows. “You’re a lucky penny the way you keep turning up.”
“I had a CT scan this morning. You?”
“PET scan.” I waited. Jane had more to say; I could see the words twitching around the edges of her mouth. “I think they saw something.”
“What do you mean?”
“The girl. She was friendly enough when she was putting in the IV but business-like. After the test though, she was… I don’t know. Too nice. Overly attentive helping me up out the machine. Then, she called me ‘dear’ when she gave me my paper work.” Jane tugged absently at the medical tape securing the IV still sticking out of her arm. “I don’t know; something about it was out of whack. I’ve been standing here trying to put my finger on it.” I turned off the water she’d left running in the sink and handed her a towel. I didn’t feel a need to fill the silence.
“When will you find out the results?”
“I see my oncologist at two.”
I took Jane’s arm and led her out of the ladies room. “Are you just hanging out here until then? Are you here alone?” Listen to me. I sound like Rosaria.
“Tom dropped me off and then went to the office. We had a huge fight on the way here.”
“What’s going on?” I settled Jane on a loveseat and waited for her to go on.
Jane continued to pick at the medical tape on her forearm. “I overheard him talking on the phone yesterday. He’s signed an agreement with some young architect to build a green subdivision. He committed to do twenty houses!”
“Is that a bad thing? Can’t you do the work?”
“We can do the build.” Some color came back to Jane’s cheeks as she griped about her son. “He signed on without even asking me. It is my company!”
“Is that legal?”
“Yes, technically. I made him a director when I started chemo so he could make day-to-day decisions, but—” Jane had reached the sticking point. She had signed over control of her company because she planned to be out for a few weeks, but now her son had taken over and made a major decision without consulting her.
“What did he say when you confronted him?”
Jane tugged her cap down on her forehead. “He can’t understand why I’m even upset.”
“I can. It’s your company.”
“Thank you, Lara. That’s it. Exactly. It’s mine. Everything else in my life has been for him or my mother. But the business was mine. It was my life. Now I don’t know who I am.” Jane played with the zipper on her warm-up jacket. “It’s too much. Really, too much to bear. This cancer has taken away the one thing that made me, me.
We sat in silence for ten minutes until the contrast solution caught up with me and I had to run back into the bathroom. When I returned, Jane said, “Look sweetie, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you told me was going through your mind while they were making that mold of your body.” Jane rubbed her eyes as if to rub away a vision. “I refuse to believe this is happening to you as some sort of retribution, Lara. I can’t believe there is a God up there somewhere who would punish such a lovely young woman like that.”
“I…”
“I don’t care what you did to make you think you deserved this.”
“But I…”
“No! I don’t want to know! It doesn’t matter. I refuse to believe you are anything but good. No one deserves to get cancer. I don’t care what we’ve done. All this is totally random. It has to be. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have smoked all those years, and believe me, I tried to quit a million times. And maybe that caused my cells to mutate, but they are just cells—insidious, deadly cells—but that’s it. The cells were not put there by some retributive overlord.”
“You’ve really been thinking about what I said that much?”
“Haven’t you?”
I looked across the waiting room and watched a man pacing back and forth in front of the heavy orange doors. He took a sip from the tall cup in his hand and shuddered at its foul taste. I felt a tired kinship with him and all the other souls in the room, each going through their own private hell. “Every second of every day,” I admitted.
“I can’t sleep at all these days,” Jane said. “I’ve been reading some Eastern philosophy book my ex left behind. So far, I’m getting that pain is a part of life. You can’t avoid it. Everyone dies so we need to just accept that. This book says that if we can let go of our desires, then we won’t suffer so much. I don’t really understand it all but it’s an interesting way to think about what’s happening to me. And honestly, I would really like to be free of this pain.”
Pain and suffering I could understand. Letting go of it—I had trouble with that. “Do you want me to hang out with you until its time to go to your appointment?”
“Don’t you have to get to work?”
“No,” I said with a laugh. “How about we go find you a cup of tea and I’ll tell you all about it?” I thought Jane could use some distraction. “I can’t guarantee the cafeteria will have scones, but we might be able to find a bagel or a muffin.”
“A cup of tea would be great,” Jane replied weakly. I took Jane’s arm to help her up and was shocked by just how much the chemotherapy was ravaging her body. We had to stop and rest every hundred feet or so on the circuitous path down to the cafeteria.
What could her son be thinking? She shouldn’t be here alone. He should be taking better care of his mother.
I found Jane a table overlooking the courtyard where she could watch people walking amidst the last of the roses. A platoon of gardeners were pulling out begonias and planting pansies in the wide beds. I came back with tall paper cups of tea, a plate of muffins, and a plastic container of cubed fruit.
“You bought enough to feed a small army,” Jane said with an anemic smile.
“I didn’t know what you’d want, but I thought you should probably eat something.”
Jane turned her face to look out the window. I got the impression I’d just been dismissed. “I think this is the courtyard I can see from the chemo room.” Jane smiled wryly. “I’m terrible to those poor nurses. I always insist on getting one of the chairs near the window. It’s awful enough just being there, letting them pump poison into my veins. I can’t stand having everyone and their brother staring at me.” Jane held the hot cup of tea against her chest. “I have to tell them every time. You’d think they’d write it down.”
“Maybe some fruit would taste good.”
A cold chill came over me as I remembered saying the same words to my grandmother. In the last year or so that I lived in the mountains of North Carolina, Grammy had also grown quite thin. PawPaw and I could usually persuade her to eat some fruit though, especially the raspberries and apples from her own garden. As a little girl ,my grandmother seemed like an old woman. Now that I quickly did the math in my head, she couldn’t have been more than fifty years old when I lived with them—far too young to have been that frail.
“I estimate that it took three loads of gravel to do these paths. And look over there. When they put the addition on the main building, they didn’t quite match the brick. The foreman should have picked up on that.” Jane took a sip of her tea and winced.
“I’m sorry, Jane. I should have gotten a cup of ice.”
“Details Lara, they can be the difference between success and failure.” Jane half-heartedly ate a strawberry in four bites. “So, what’s going on with you these days? Why did you have another CT today? Did the radiation treatments go all right?”
“Not so well. But I think that was mostly my fault.”
“There you go again, blaming yourself for what has happened to your body!” Jane reached across the table and grabbed my arm. “Listen to me, none of this is your fault. It’s just not. You are not responsible for getting cancer.”
“But I had all these side effects. I didn’t tell the doctor. I let myself get radiation burns in—inside. What if it did permanent damage?” Tea rose up in my throat. Explaining it to Jane made me realize how stupid I had been.
“Well, okay, maybe you were imprudent, but that still doesn’t make it your fault. Why beat yourself up on top of having the cancer work you over? You need to be strong now, not weak.”
Jane’s words scalded my already raw feelings. Could Jane be right? Am I being weak? Am I taking some sick pleasure in wallowing in self-pity? But I didn’t want any of this. Did I?
Jane nibbled on the corner of a muffin then dropped it back on the plate. “These muffins taste like cardboard. So why aren’t you at work today?”
“I got my boss in trouble so I’m kind of in-between jobs right now. I’m supposed to start working directly for this guy Frank Mariano, who is my old boss’s boss. He’s creating a new position for me called Special Projects in Emerging Markets. I’m not exactly sure what I’ll be doing yet.”
“Do you get a staff?”
“No. I get my own office with a door though.”
“I can see why you’d be excited about that. I never could understand how people get any work done in those rat runs of cubicles. Then again, I’ve never had to.” I was again struck by how easy it was to talk to Jane, as if she understood the thoughts between my sentences. “You will be getting some new clothes before you start this new position, right?”
“What do you mean?”
Jane swirled the dregs of her tea. She seemed to weigh her words before continuing. “You’re around thirty right?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Aren’t we all?” Jane laughed. It was nice to see her smile. It took some of the grayness away from her face. “You dress like a kid rather than a successful thirty year old. The clothes make the man—or woman—in this case. If you are going to be taken seriously, you need to have more of an air of self-confidence about you. You need some power suits. You also have the added bonus of being able to use your sexuality as a tool. Didn’t your mother teach you this stuff?
I pulled my sweatshirt over my hips. “Not in the way I think you mean.”
“Right, you and your mother aren’t close.” Jane twisted the old scratched men’s watch around her slim wrist and sniffed. “Well, I guess we have that in common now, too.”
“Excuse me?” I picked up one of the muffins and took a small bite.
“I had a fight with my mother. Actually, it wasn’t so much a fight as an epiphany.
“Remember that day that you and I met? Of course you remember. How could you forget? Anyway, the next morning I drove to Greensboro to see my mother. Stupid me, I thought I should tell her. The whole way up, I rehearsed what I was going to say. She’s getting old. I didn’t want to give her a heart attack. I don’t know what I was thinking, really.
“Anyway, I got all the way there and she wasn’t even in her room. I had to wait around in that glass and chrome mausoleum, drinking watered down coffee for an hour. Of course, what I really wanted was a cigarette. It’s crazy. I’ve bleached the stains out of my teeth and got collagen injections to erase the wrinkles around my mouth but, even with the cancer, I still can’t break free of the need.”
I picked at my muffin and let her go on. I was pretty sure Jane wasn’t aware that I was even there anymore.
“Eventually, Mother showed up, pink cocktail in hand. Typical Mother, she didn’t even say ‘Hello,’ or ‘Janie, great to see you.’ She said, ‘What are you doing here? It’s not Sunday.’
“You know,” Jane continued, staring out the window at the mound of discarded begonias. “I have gone to see her every Sunday since she moved there in ‘85 and she never, not once, has said thank you. Heaven forbid I want to go away for a vacation or anything. My ex-husband hated that.
“I abandoned my plan and blurted out, ‘I have cancer.’
“Mother just sat down in one of the lobby chairs and sighed, ‘How long? Six months? A year?’ She crossed her arms and scowled at me as if I had admitted to committing a crime. I couldn’t believe she was angry at me for cancer. ‘Didn’t you ask for some kind of estimate?’ she demanded.
“‘My God, Mother!’ I said. ‘I haven’t even had the surgery yet.’ That was when they were still holding the surgery carrot out in front of me.
“‘Bah, they never tell you the truth,’ Mother scoffed. ‘They make you get that chemo crap. All your hair falls out. You’re sick all the time. Might as well take rat poison.’ She had the gall to pick up her compact and apply a fresh coat of lipstick. For a second there, I thought she was going to say something kind to me. ‘So when are they going to cut your breast off? You’ll be all crooked after.’
“‘It’s not breast cancer. It’s lung cancer. You know this cough I’ve had—’
“‘Lung cancer?’ she said. ‘Why even bother with chemo? Lung cancer’s a killer. I told you, you should have smoked lights like me. And you’re always around all those diesel fumes. If you’d have had a job more suited to a woman, this wouldn’t have happened.’
“‘Mother, this didn’t happen because I took over Daddy’s business. Dr. Pemachokatha said—‘
“‘An Indian! You’re seeing an Indian doctor?’ Mother rifled through her pocketbook for her address book. ‘Look, Mimi Greenberg’s son is a doctor. I’m sure she can ask him to pull some strings for you and get you an American doctor.’
“‘Sanjay Pemachokatha is as much of an American as I am. He sounds like he’s from Texas.’
“‘Well, you do whatever you want. You always do. Just don’t expect me to nurse you like I did your father. It is extremely selfish of you to get sick. That is not the way it is supposed to work. Who’ll take care of me now?’”
Jane shook her head as she relived their conversation. “You know, Lara. Maybe it’s best that you don’t see your mother anymore. I wasted my whole life trying to make up for the fact that my father loved me more than he did her. For what? I told her I have cancer and she essentially gave me the back of her hand.”
“Have you seen her since?” I asked.
“Nope, we haven’t even talked on the phone.” Jane shook her head, making the cap fall over her ear. “No, I’m not going to apologize for walking out on her that day.”
“She’s still angry with you?”
“Oh yeah,” Jane replied. She took a sip of her tea and set the cup down between us. “She called Tom while I was driving back and gave him an earful. He thinks we should simply stop paying her bills and see how long it takes for her to come crawling back.” I wasn’t sure if Tom’s attitude made me think more or less of him.
“So when do you start this new job?”
“I’m not sure. Next week sometime?”
“We should go shopping. I love shopping! I used to wish I had a daughter to dress up in pretty little dresses and go shopping with. We should go this weekend.”
“Wouldn’t that be a lot of walking for you? Maybe I should go by myself. The sales lady at the boutique near the—”
“Sales lady? Don’t listen to them! They just want to earn their commission.”
“They get commission?”
“Lara, where have you been?” Jane rolled her eyes. “No, I will take you shopping.” I could see how excited Jane was getting at the prospect of getting out and having some fun. I wanted to be a part of that. “We’ll make a day of it. We can eat lunch in the café in Nordstrom’s. We’ll be ladies-that-lunch.”
Jane didn’t ask me to come with her to get the results of her PET scan, but I wasn’t about to leave her alone. What if she collapsed or got lost getting to the office? Who would run for help? When it came time for Jane to go, I simply gathered up our things and led the way. Even with my help, it took us nearly an hour to work our way to the green waiting room from the cafeteria. Jane’s breathing had not fully recovered before Stephanie, Dr. Pemachokatha’s nurse, pushed a wheelchair through the heavy green doors.
“Good afternoon Mrs. Babcock-Roberts,” she said quietly. This nurse was nothing like the nurses that worked with Dr. Lander. I wondered if nice doctors tended to have nice nurses working with them and brutal people like Dr. Lander attracted curt cohorts. “Would your daughter like to see Dr. P with you?”
“She’s not my daughter. She’s my friend,” Jane exhaled loudly in a half laugh. “Do you think she could?”
“I think it might be a good idea to have someone with you today.” The nurse pursed her lips as if to keep herself from saying more and nodded once to me over Jane’s head. “To take notes,” she added lamely. Perhaps I was succumbing to Jane’s sense of trepidation, but the nurse seemed too solicitous as she left us in one of the many identical examination rooms. The chill had not faded from the plastic chairs when the doctor bustled in carrying a mammoth envelope.
I was surprised that Jane’s doctor was so young. He couldn’t have been more than 35. With his jeans and running shoes under his lab coat, he looked like he should have been coaching a peewee soccer team instead of ministering to the sick and the dying.
“Mrs. Babcock-Roberts—”
“Please, it’s Jane. And this is my friend, Lara.” He shook my hand enthusiastically and flashed me a ready smile. He washed his hands again and paused a moment while drying them as if gathering some inner reserve of courage before turning again to Jane. “Jane, I have the scans from this morning here, and, well, they are not what we hoped for.”
“That bad?” Jane asked. I moved to slip out of the room but Jane grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard.
“Well,” Dr. Pemachokatha hesitated. It must be so hard to be an oncologist. This poor guy has to give people bad news all day. “It is not what I would call good.” He pushed Jane’s scans into a light box mounted in the wall. “These two scans are from before the chemo and these are from this morning.” Jane stepped over and studied the multicolored blobs representing her internal organs. The blue blob on the right was far larger than the corresponding blue blob on the left. She ran her fingers over the shiny film leaving long smudges.
“Is this the main tumor here?” she asked. “Shouldn’t it be smaller after the chemo?”
Dr. Pemachokatha wiped his forehead with his palm. “Well yes, that was the desired outcome.”
Jane turned away from the films and sat back down. “It’s all right Sanjay. I know you’re doing your best.” He blushed and Jane said bitterly, “You reminded me so much of my son just then. You both do that thing with your forehead when you don’t want to say something difficult.” Dr. Pemachokatha went on to explain that the chemotherapy had been ineffective at reducing the tumors in Jane’s lungs but had stopped the cancer from spreading.
Jane stared at the floor for a moment. She seemed to be reviewing the last three months in her mind—losing her hair, losing her strength, losing her independence, losing her mind—and questioning what it was all for. “So what’s next?”
“I recommend we try a different approach. I suggest you rest for a few weeks to regain some of your strength and then we’ll proceed with a course of radiation.”
The doctor went on to outline what focused radiation could do for Jane’s type of tumor and how she could restart the chemo down the road. I could see Jane slipped further into a shocked daze with each passing moment. I remembered being there myself. I grabbed a notepad emblazoned with a drug company’s logo and scribbled down most of what the doctor was saying. He was encouraging and seemed to have a plan for how he could help her in light of the many different eventualities. Jane would need this information later. Getting it down was the one thing I could do for her right then. I thought about how concerned Rosaria had been that I didn’t bring anybody with me to my appointments. I now understood why. Jane didn’t hear half of what Dr. Pemachokatha had just told us. I took a deep breath. I was grateful I could.
Dr. Pemachokatha stopped talking long enough to notice that Jane was not following his words. He picked up her pale hand and checked her pulse before turning to me. “I’m afraid she’s had quite a shock. I’m glad you were here. Did you get the gist of what I was saying?” I nodded and held up my notes. “Good. I’ve got other patients waiting right now but could you make her another appointment for a day or two from now? I would like for us to sit down again when she is in a better frame of mind and go over her options again.” The doctor shook Jane’s hand again to which she nodded numbly. Then he was gone.
What would have happened if I hadn’t been here? Would the nurse have eventually come back and found her and called her son to come get her?