Curse of the Afflicted

by David Chill

  Chapter 8

  After Blair sauntered out of my office, I pushed myself back into work mode, preparing for the next day's focus groups. I crafted a discussion guide, an assemblage of questions and more questions to ask. I cooked up a scenario where I'd ask the groups to jot down their ideas of what an ideal president would be like. I'd then present descriptions of two nameless Brand X politicians, these would actually be the Rich Sudeau they most likely knew and then the Rich Sudeau we planned to unveil to the public. We'd reveal the vice president's name afterward so we could get reaction before and after. It was standard fare, elementary marketing research that could be applied to anything from soft drinks to shampoo.

  My extensive breakfast, the heaping stack of pancakes and the endless cups coffee, kept me fueled well past lunch, but the inevitable three o'clock crash hit. I walked a few blocks to the Third Street Promenade, stepping into a Starbucks, which was doing a surprisingly robust business at that hour. I ordered an iced coffee, stopping at the sweetener bar to clarify the flavor and make it palatable. I looked down at the choice of blue, pink, yellow and green packets, randomly chose two blue ones and poured them carefully and evenly into the cup. I stirred vigorously, not realizing a very pretty, very familiar face, quietly came into view next to me.

  "You must be Ned Baker," she started, interrupting my thoughts.

  "I must be," I said, turning toward her, scanning her face, trying to recollect why she looked familiar. She might have worked in my building, she might have been the parent of one of Angelina's classmates, she might have appeared on a reality TV show. In Los Angeles, any of these scenarios were possible, as well as all three combined being possible. A few years ago, I was walking along the Promenade and said hello to a good-looking man who I recognized from somewhere. I knew I had seen him before, and somewhat frequently as well. He gave me an odd look before quickly glancing in another direction. A few minutes later, blocks away, the embarrassing realization dawned on me that I had just interacted with Ryan Gosling.

  "I'm Callie Saxon," she said in a perky voice and stuck out her hand. She was tall and pretty; her blonde hair, short and straight, stopped right at her shoulders. Her tawny eyes had that bright, intense gaze, the look of confidence, an aura of mischief. While her face was familiar, the name was a giveaway. She was an on-air correspondent for MSNBC. I grasped her hand briefly and gave her a puzzled look. People like her did not typically approach people like me.

  "Pleasure," I said. "But how do you know me?"

  "Oh," she said breezily, "I know of you. Through one of my contacts. I'm in town covering the vice president's campaign appearance tomorrow."

  "I thought he was just coming in for a fundraiser," I said, adding, "Are you invited to that?"

  "Nope," she laughed. "They would never let someone like me in. But he's in town, so he's giving a speech at UCLA tomorrow afternoon. Never passes up an opportunity to get his face out there."

  I took a sip of coffee and decided it needed one more shot of artificial sweetener. I slit open a green packet this time, dumping the powder in less carefully before stirring quickly and sampling. Sweeter, better, more palatable. The green one did the trick. I snapped on the lid, jammed the straw into the too-small slit, and took a very long sip. I could practically feel the caffeine infusion, as I turned back to her.

  "So, you must have some good contacts about Sudeau," I said.

  "It's, um, through the vice president's campaign, actually. You'd be surprised how easy it is to get information in D.C., it's amazing. The maids and chauffeurs have remarkable access. They get paid so little, they appreciate the extra income. But this one came from a separate source. Sorry, can't reveal too much. I don't want to violate their privacy."

  I laughed. "Feels like a lot of people's privacy is getting violated these days. Especially mine. What else do you know?"

  "That you're on board with the vice president. That you've got focus groups tomorrow."

  I stared at her and put my drink down on the counter so it didn't slip out my grasp. "Okay, that doesn't sound like the type of intel a butler would have access to, does it?"

  "Nope," she smiled. "But I would appreciate it if you might confirm a few things."

  "Such as?"

  "Like the vice president's campaign is in deep trouble. That you're being brought in to try and salvage it. That the Baker Lipschitz Team has a plan to re-launch Sudeau as an outsider, to separate him from the president, give him some distance. Any truth to that?"

  "You know full well I can't comment, right?"

  "Why not? Everyone else in that town does."

  While she was partly correct, I always felt there are certain confidences I needed to maintain. It is a delicate path to walk down, though. Revealing a candidate's strategies is not new in politics, and could enhance a consultant's public stature, but it does not make for good relations with the candidate. Being chatty with a reporter can help put a consultant on the map, provide the publicity that so many of us crave. But it is a double-edged sword, one that Frank Phelan, Sudeau's previous pollster, had recently experienced.

  "I think your sources are impressive," I said. "But I'm honestly not sure I can add anything. It's not like the vice president's hiding something. That I know of anyway."

  "Everyone in public life is hiding something," she said, her smile fading, a cold, harsh look of seriousness replacing it. "And the vice president is a big fish."

  "You know my partner tends to be the public face of our company," I said. "He's the mouthpiece."

  "Oh, I know Blair, believe me. Unfortunately he sounds just a little too, well, shady. Like the cool boyfriend a girl has to dump, even though he's tons of fun. He becomes more trouble than he's worth. You, on the other hand have an aura of, well, credibility. You come off as genuine. Viewers lap that up."

  "I suppose I should take that as a compliment," I said.

  She handed me her business card. "Let me know if you ever want to talk more. I help you, you help me. I might even be able to get you on air for a segment. Can't hurt to get your face in the public eye."

  I slipped the card in my pocket and said I'd think about it. Never say never is a good motto to adhere to. And while I couldn't envision myself on television, there was something about Callie that I liked. Maybe it was her shrewd ability to see Blair unvarnished through the same lens in which I saw him. But her reference to me as something genuine was actually unnerving. I thought back to Blair's comment yesterday, in our meeting with Sudeau. Once you can master authenticity, you've got it made. But as I walked back to the office, I noticed I wasn't feeling so authentic today, and I didn't feel as if I had it made. In fact, I felt quite the opposite. I had tried to suppress the subject in my mind, but it inevitably came back to gnaw at me, the way unresolved problems always do. The chest x-ray that revealed a mass. The scans I had done this morning. The decision to keep my family out of the loop until I knew more. Things did not seem right.

  Instead of going back to the office, I walked quickly into the subterranean garage and climbed into my Pilot and headed for home. Santa Monica was settling in to its normal afternoon gridlock, although for a change, I didn't mind. The traffic inching along San Vicente gave me time to think. I tried to decide whether to share my story with Leslie and Angelina. Whether I could release the burden I had carried with me for the past day. I thought of how I might disclose the tremulous news to the two most important people in my life. I tried to assess how best to move forward. What I ought to do. How I ought to do it.

  But suddenly, the buzzing of my phone interrupted my thoughts. I punched the speaker button.

  "This is Ned."

  "Hi, Ned. It's Eli. Listen. Are you in Santa Monica? Can you come by the office?"

  "Why?"

  "I need to speak with you."

  "Shit. No. Tell me now."

  "I don't like to do this over the phone, Ned."

  "Just tell me."

  He cleared his throat. "Okay. Are you in a place wher
e you can talk? It sounds like you're on the road. Maybe you should pull over."

  "Sure," I said, as my stomach tightened. I swerved in front of a Mustang, just before Fourteenth Street. The Mustang's driver stopped long enough to offer me an angry stare and a reproachful middle finger before jamming his foot down on the accelerator and departing with a screech of tires. I slowed the Pilot to a stop in front of a huge Mediterranean-style home. The gated front yard was overgrown with roses of all colors. Some snaked their way up the wrought-iron gate that stood in front of the house.

  "Is this what I think it is?" I asked.

  Eli paused. "I'm sorry. Listen. I reviewed the radiology reports from the PET scan. A lot of things lit up. There are lesions in the pleural area. And in the nodes near the chest. It's spread to other organs."

  "What does that mean?"

  Once again, Eli waited a moment. "Look, there's no getting around it. I reviewed the cytology report. The lab tested the fluid they drained from your lung, and they found malignancies. And based on the scans, it looks like stage four."

  "Yes, but again, what does that mean?" I repeated, this time with more than a hint of a tremor in my voice. "In English."

  "It means," Eli said, his own voice now dark and gravelly. "You have cancer. it's spread beyond the lung, so it's inoperable. Metastatic. We can't simply remove this through surgery. It's just in too many places in your body."

  I gulped, probably in an audible way. You have cancer. The words echoed through me. "What is my longevity?" I asked, refraining from adding the soldier's line of give-it-to-me-straight, Doc.

  "Okay, let's not go there yet. There are advances being made. I'm going to set up an appointment for you with an oncologist, Gus Ashland. He's very good, he specializes in all types of cancer. He can provide you with some options. Bring Leslie. You're in shock right now, it helps to have your partner there. They hear things you'll miss. I'll try and get you in with Gus tomorrow morning. He's got a busy practice, but I'll ask him to make some time."

  "Tomorrow?" I asked.

  "Yes. The sooner the better. You shouldn't delay this. Lung cancer moves very fast."

  Chapter 9

  It was unclear just how long I sat parked in front of that magnificent home on San Vicente, staring endlessly at the roses crowding the front lawn. I replayed the conversation with Eli in my mind, before descending into worries, real and imagined. And then I returned to staring at the roses, their straggly vines and hooky thorns making the cluster of bushes in the front of the house look more like soldiers protecting a fortress.

  My idle contemplation eventually came to an end, the sharp sound of a blaring horn jerking me back into the present. I looked over at an impatient woman driving a red Porsche Cayenne. She pointed at the house, annoyed and perturbed and gesticulating in a highly animated way. Apparently I was parked in front of her driveway. I silently apologized, slowly shifted gears, and gradually found my way home.

  Our house was calm, empty and still. The silence offered me some time. Time to think, time to process, time to compartmentalize. Maybe time to mourn. Eli was probably right, I might well be in a state of shock. I knew this diagnosis might be coming, but nothing could have prepared me. And I was even less prepared to tell Leslie. And, oh dear God, Angelina. Before yesterday, I had never thought about my own death. My only thoughts of mortality lay in that conceptual framework, the knowledge that like every other living thing on the planet, I would one day succumb to the inevitable. Slide off the raft and into the dark abyss. Many decades from now.

  My biggest concern was that I did not have many answers for my family. As always, I had more questions than answers. I liked to investigate, query, probe, and then probe some more. But now I was faced with the herculean task of informing my wife and child about an illness of which I had limited knowledge. There is no good handbook on how to tell your only child that you have a serious ailment, the likes of which might well prove fatal. I briefly toyed with the idea of not saying anything tonight, but that meant going to the oncologist tomorrow by myself. And it simply didn't feel right to not tell them. It was unfair and it was selfish. They deserved to know. The question was how much to impart.

  There is a certain amount of information we withhold from others, no matter how close we are to them. Things that are kept unflinchingly private, hidden stories from our past, tales that we're either too uncomfortable discussing, or ones we simply never want anyone to know. But the advent of a terminal disease could not be classified as such, and given my impending appointment with Dr. Ashland, I needed to learn a lot in a short time. So, I began what I later discovered was frowned upon by the medical establishment, inadvisable for an enormity of reasons. I sat down at my computer and went on the internet.

  There is no shortage of information on the Web, and certainly no dearth of opinions, be they amateur diagnoses or crackpot theories. I read articles of those who believed dogs were capable of assessing cancer through smelling a patient's breath. I sifted through the myriad of homegrown cures, from mixing cottage cheese and flaxseed oil to smoking a specific type of marijuana. I finally made it to what appeared like legitimate websites, ones imparting what might have been sound knowledge. But I also came upon a painful conundrum. Whereas the oddball sites, populated by random individuals of dubious stature, were at least encouraging, the more conventional websites were mortifying and dire.

  Lung cancer is grouped into four stages. The first stage is where the tumor is just in the lung, and can be surgically removed. The second and third stages are where the tumor has grown and spread to various nearby lymph nodes. Stage four is where the cancer has metastasized, meaning it's expanded to other parts of the body. I heard Eli's words. It looks like it's stage four. I continued reading. There was no stage five.

  There are times in our lives when we can physically sense we have entered a new phase. They can be times where we look fondly back upon the feeling of accomplishment. Be it piano recitals, scoring the winning goal in a ball game, graduation from school, first intimacy, first job, marriage, birth of a child. These are moments of lucidity, where we see ourselves propelled onto a different path, ones where we feel inexplicably changed and cannot change back. These are often the moments which mark our journey through life. The halcyon days that signify our time on earth. But the markers are not always good. And in this instance, I was forced to look at that sign post which pointed in another direction. Not the one from which I could springboard, but the one providing a glimpse of the time I might have left.

  Stage four lung cancer. That was my diagnosis, that which would now define me. I combed through some articles, breezing past the technical discussions, the exegeses which tried to simplify reports in medical journals, but which only served to make them more cryptic. I moved quickly on to the statistics, the hard data from which I could distill something tangible, a lifeline to which I could cling, or at least in which I could immerse myself. I was briefly buoyed when I saw that almost one-quarter of lung cancer patients were non-smokers like me. But I also noted that some doctors drew the quick conclusion that lung cancer patients were smokers, hardheaded scoffers who had this fate coming to them. And as I sifted through the numbers, the lifeline quickly frayed. I trembled as I read the five-year survival rates detailing the life expectancy of stage four lung cancer patients. I had to look away from the glowing monitor, trying to blink away the percentages, the numbers that burned into my brain. The percentage of patients living five more years were in the single digits, unlikely and slim. And if less than ten percent would survive five years, the flip side of that sobering reality was that over ninety percent would not.

  I felt the eerie stillness in the house and it made me jittery. Leslie and Angelina would be home soon, and I decided I needed to have a plan. Something to reassure them, a guide which would limit their fears, a pathway to provide them with some light in the grim darkness. It was not honest, but it was not unfair. I had been dealt a poor hand, a random grouping of cards that did not p
rovide me with much confidence. But I felt the need to be strong, to maintain a steely resolve, to not allow my fate-scorched dilemma to infect my family. I would need to be something different than who I was, to evolve, to play a new role. I needed to avoid the most treacherous part, the risk of descending into that dark hole of self-pity. I thought back to something a high school teacher once said, an off-the-cuff remark that stuck with me. If you're not feeling brave, just fake it. No one will know the difference.

  The faint hush of an engine became audible in the driveway, but was extinguished quickly. I heard excitement, Angelina's exuberance over something that happened in school, followed by the cautionary timbre of Leslie's voice, and then the tapping of footsteps on the red brick path leading to the front door. The sliding of the key into the lock and the snapping sound that followed. The door opened and the molecules changed. Life entered our house, a vibrant energy, cheerful sounds bouncing off of the powder blue walls of the living room. My family was home, and a knot formed in my stomach as I prepared myself for the most difficult, most perplexing conversation of my life.

  "We're home!" Leslie called, putting down a plastic bag.

  "Daddy, I've got great news!" Angelina exclaimed.

  "Okay," I managed.

  "Aaron asked me to the prom!"

  "Ah," I said, nowhere near as excited as my daughter.

  "This is big news!" she insisted. "I've been working him for a month now. I even let his sister know that if he asked me, he'd get a definite yes!"

  "Well," I said, not able to conjure up any further verbiage.

  "Aren't you happy for me?" she asked, her expression more quizzical than deflated.

  "Sure," I managed. "If you're happy, then, well ... "

  "Is something wrong, Ned?" asked Leslie, looking carefully at me.

  It is our partners that can often tell when we are hiding something. Whether it was the expression on my face, most likely grim, the lack of any lilt in my voice, or the overall dour essence exuding from me, Leslie had quickly sensed it. Most likely, it was my expression. I was not blessed with a poker face; rather, I had a face that was loaded with tells, those unconscious tics and habits that allow skilled observers to easily read thoughts.