Wonder of the Waves

by Jim Lombardo

  The woman gasped and closed her eyes, then leaned forward and pressed a fist tightly against her lips. She began to rock back and forth.

  Her husband gently stroked her back.

  An extended period of silence followed as the doctor gave the two all the time they needed to digest the news.

  “It’s going to be alright, dear. So, doctor, what do we do?”

  The doctor opened the envelope and pulled out one of the CAT scan photos. Rising from his chair, he moved over to a light projector that was affixed to a wall beside him. He switched it on and pushed the scan under two clips on top to reveal a cross-section of the woman’s abdomen. Using a pen as a pointer, he began telling a story that would alter the course of their lives.

  “This is your abdominal cavity...and this is the tumor here,” he said, pointing to an irregular dark splotch amongst the white and gray shadows. “We’ll need to perform a biopsy of the tissue to get a diagnosis.”

  “But Doctor, what do you think it is? Tell me honestly, please,” the woman implored.

  The oncologist really didn’t want to share with her his true gut feeling. “It’s impossible to tell for sure at this point. But let’s get the biopsy done right away. Hopefully it’s just a false alarm and you’re right back to enjoying the holidays.”

  The Blakes and Dr. Lally arrived at a section of the facility with a broad, winding stairwell leading down one floor to a glassed-in waiting room. Brian hoisted Hannah up, and eschewing the short elevator option, they made their way down the steps. On top of the entranceway was a sign reading, Stephanie Gosselin Cancer Center.

  As they made their way through the waiting room towards the entrance of the treatment area, Hannah noticed that most of the people seated were in pairs. About half of them wore white plastic identification bracelets. There were all sorts of people, of different ages and ethnicities. A young man in his twenties sat across from an elderly woman in a wheelchair with a similarly aged man sitting close beside her holding her hand. One woman was lying on a gurney, while a younger man stroked her hair gently. “Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll have you home and comfortable before it gets dark,” he told her. One woman, about 40 years old, sat alone with a medical bracelet on. She was wearing a red, exotically designed kerchief on her head and was nervously picking at her nails. A huge flat-screen television hung on a wall and was broadcasting a national morning entertainment show. The hilarity of the hosts on the show seemed out of place when contrasted with the people that Hannah was observing around her. There were no smiles in this room, except from the receptionist who was kindly greeting people as they entered, and checking them in.

  Dr. Lally escorted the group past the receptionist through an automatically opening door. They first passed a nurses’ station. “That’s her,” one nurse was heard whispering to another. The doctor nodded to them and guided the group forward. There was a series of individual cubicles stretching down the length of a long corridor, and the group ambled along. In each small room, a person was lying on a long, padded recliner with an intravenous tube hooked up to one of their arms. The lines were connected to fluid bags hanging above their head. Usually there was another person sitting alongside them in a regular chair. In one room, a nurse was putting a hot pack on a middle-aged man’s arm. In another room, a nurse appeared to be adjusting the flow of drugs with a clip mechanism.

  As they passed one cubicle, two nurses were preparing to administer chemotherapy to a patient.

  “Harold Drolet, what’s your date of birth?” the first nurse asked.

  “September 29th, 1932.”

  The first nurse held a tray with a plastic bag full of a creamy white liquid in it. On the side was a label that she read to a second nurse.

  “Harold Drolet. L243-692KL-5711-4.”

  The second nurse then proceeded to read off from a printout to the first nurse with the bag.

  “Harold Drolet. L243-692KL-5711-4.”

  “Did I just win the lottery?” the patient joked.

  The nurses chuckled respectfully.

  “We’ll get this in you, and get you out of here, Harry.”

  Dr. Lally explained. “This is where our infusions take place. The patient’s doctor orders a regimen of drugs and the nurses make sure that’s followed. The protocol is extraordinarily strict. These are very powerful drugs, and people’s lives depend on them.”

  As they passed one cubicle, a patient’s eyes lit up. “Hannah Blake!”

  Monica led her in.

  “I know you. You’re the girl with the sky-high I.Q., right?”

  “Hi, yes, nice to meet you.”

  “Would you mind taking a picture of us together on my cell? My friends are not gonna believe this.”

  “Sure, I’d be happy to.”

  Brian hoisted Hannah up so she was right beside the man as his lay on his recliner. Monica took the phone the man was offering, and snapped a few photos.

  “I have to tell you, Hannah, and your parents, I think it’s so great when celebrities take time out of their busy schedule to do charity work. I appreciate this so much.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Hanna replied, “but actually it’s not charity work I’m doing. I’m here to find a cure for cancer.”

  “That’s awesome. If anyone can find it, it would be you, Hannah. Thanks so much for helping.”

  The man glanced around at the others in the room with a bittersweet smile.

  Dr. Lally next brought the group into another adjoining part of the center. As they walked through these doors they were greeted with foil balloons, brightly colored floors and walls with paintings of animals and characters on them. “This is the pediatric cancer wing. We treat over 1,000 children per year in here, from all over the world. I’ll just take you through for a minute.” The setup was similar but with a shorter corridor of rooms with young children lying on small hospital beds that were propped up at the head.

  “This is where we treat our outpatient children,” explained Dr. Lally. “There’s an inpatient area for kids who have to stay with us for a while, but I can’t take you in there unfortunately. We need to be extra careful about exposing them to viruses or bacteria because their immune systems are often compromised. These are places that people don’t usually think about during their busy day, but I’m glad you did, Hannah.”

  As they neared the end of the corridor, Hannah glanced through a gap in curtains that covered the entranceway to a room. Inside a mother was gently stroking the head of a young girl with patchy hair. The patient was bony thin, with dark circles under her eyes. She was wearing bright red lipstick and rose blush, and on her ears were silver, crescent moon earrings. The two children’s eyes locked.

  “Mom, can you take me in?”

  “If it’s okay with them, Hannah,” said Monica. “Excuse us, my daughter wanted to meet you for a moment. Would that be alright?”

  “Oh, sure, we’d love some company,” said the girl’s mother. “Is your daughter a patient here too?”

  “No, actually this is Hannah Blake. Maybe you’ve heard about her?”

  The mother gazed carefully at Hannah. “Oh, wow, yes. Thanks so much for visiting us.”

  The group entered, and Brian hoisted his girl up over the bedrails and sat her down close to the other child so they could talk to one another.

  “Hi, I’m Hannah.”

  The girl spoke weakly. “Hi, I’m Ellie.”

  Ellie was eight years old and had been battling leukemia most of her young life. There had been three remissions, but the cancer had returned each time. Her doctors were having greater difficulty reversing the disease with each relapse.

  “I really like your nails, Ellie.”

  The child seemed delighted by the compliment. She put her hands out on display and spread her fingers apart. Her fingernails were polished, alternating between orange and purple.

 
“Thanks, Hannah.”

  Ellie then kicked a sheet off her feet showing that her toenails were polished with the same colors. Both girls giggled at the sight.

  “I love purple and orange too, Ellie. Hey, if anyone tells you that nothing rhymes with orange, tell them that there’s a mountain in Wales called Blorenge. It’s a real place, and rhymes with orange just fine.”

  Ellie giggled again. “What about purple?”

  “Purple’s got some serious rhyming issues too. Maybe we better not end any lines of a poem with purple, until somebody invents a smurple.”

  “You’re funny.”

  Hannah pointed at the young patient’s t-shirt that had a picture of a teen pop idol on it. “Fantavio!”

  “Yeah, isn’t he awesome? My mom’s gonna take me to his concert when I get better.”

  “You aren’t going to be one of those crazies rushing the stage, are you?”

  Ellie managed a laugh. “No, I’ll be good. Or…well…I’ll try.” They both giggled again.

  “I’m sorry that you’re sick. How are you doing?”

  “Well, they’re working on getting me better. I have acute leukemia. They call it acute, but it isn’t cute at all. It hurts and makes me wanna sleep. But I have the best doctors and nurses in the whole wide world.”

  Hannah took hold of one of Ellie’s hands. She noticed they were rather cold, and the end of her fingers had a bluish tinge to them. Hannah looked squarely into her eyes.

  “Ellie, I’m going to try to help the doctors and nurses get you better, okay?”

  The youngster thought for a moment, then smiled at Hannah. “How about you do that, and then I’ll take you to see Fantavio?”

  “That’s a deal.”

  The two continued chatting amiably for a long time, and they made plans to meet again soon, preferably not in a hospital setting.

  After touring the treatment and research areas of the hospital, Dr. Lally and the Blakes found an empty family consult room, and they sat down to talk. Hannah sat on the edge of a couch in between Brian and Monica with one leg crossed over the other, looking very adult despite her size and age.

  Dr. Lally began. “To be frank, this is an unusual situation. Normally when I hire a research assistant, they would have a resume that included years and years of rigorous academic study, and countless hours in the lab. It actually isn’t ethical or even legal for Hannah to have access to the equipment and materials that we use in our research labs without the proper credentials and licensing. I’m not sure exactly what you have in mind, Hannah, but I imagine I would want to begin by having you brought up to date on what we currently know about the disease, and all of the approaches we’ve tried in fighting it. Actually I should say “diseases” as there are about 100 different types of cancer, and each of them are unique.”

  “No,” Hannah replied firmly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “No. I don’t want to approach it that way.” Hannah put a thumb on the right side of her lower jaw and began making a tight circular motion with her index finger around her chin as she was thinking.

  “I mean, yes at some point, the current knowledge base, all of the approaches tried and results, absolutely, but not to start. I prefer to start as if cancer was just discovered. That way I won’t have any prejudice or predisposition as to how best to approach the problem. You, and other cancer scientists and researchers have made incredible progress over the years. But showing me the paths others have taken may cause me to overlook other possible avenues that may need to be explored. I’m going to go home and begin studying everything I can get my hands on about cell biology, but only review early cancer research publications for starters. If you could just help get me secure access to resource materials through my desktop computer, I can take it from there. I’ll be back to you when I have something worthy to suggest. Mom, Dad, can you help me get all the junk out of the spare room?”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Climbing Boys

  Dusk descended over Gloucester. Hannah sat alone in the Blakes’ guest bedroom with the door closed, staring at a dark computer screen. She sat on a black leather swivel chair that had been adjusted to its maximum height allowing her to properly reach the keyboard and mouse. The child closed her eyes and drew in a deep, controlled breath. She cleansed her mind of all distractions, concentrating only on slow breathing for a period of about two minutes. Upon opening her eyes, she powered on the computer.

  While waiting for the browser to pop up, Hannah recalled a faded photo she had seen of her mother as a young child with Hannah’s grandmother Sarah, in a lightweight sailboat. They were on a sapphire blue lake, gliding past the end of a dock under full sail. Both were seated in the back of the boat on either side of the rudder’s wooden tiller arm. Monica had her hand on the tiller, and Sarah had one hand over her daughter’s. With her other hand, Sarah was trying to wave at the camera while at the same time controlling the mainsheet line. Hannah evoked the image of that long corridor at the hospital. Then she thought about Ellie and her crescent moon earrings. She clenched her teeth together and tapped in the URL, username, and password given to her by Dr. Lally to gain entrance into the hospital’s vast medical library.

  She began by reading an online textbook titled Introduction to Cell Biology. This included a lot of information that she was well aware of already, but she insisted on beginning with the most elementary resource available. The word cell was derived from the Latin word cella, meaning “small room.” Cells were first discovered by Robert Hooke in 1665, and the human body was determined to have about 100 trillion of them. Although single cells were considered the basic building blocks of life, they were hardly the most elemental component.

  As she conducted her research, Hannah imagined herself physically diving through the plasma membrane to find that inside each cell was a spectacularly exotic world unto itself. She thought of Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim across the English Channel, as she navigated the salty liquid interior of the cell, known as the cytoplasm. As she soared above the mighty engine room of the mitochondria, she was now Amelia Earhart in her mind, venturing across the Atlantic Ocean solo in her Lockheed Vega. Soon she found herself trekking the rugged terrain of the cell’s gogli apparatus, which serves as the chemical product shipping department for the cell. Here, Hannah pictured herself as the legendary Sacagawea. Between 1804 and 1806 this young Shoshone Indian woman successfully guided members of the Lewis and Clark expedition thousands of miles, including one particularly treacherous part of the journey through the high mountain Gibbons Pass in the frigid and barren Rockies.

  Next, Hannah touched down on the surface of the cellular nucleus, conjuring up mental images of The Eagle, at Tranquility Base, on July 16, 1969. She studied how the nucleus is the central processing unit of the cell, where all cellular activity is regulated. Inside of the nucleus is where most of the cell’s genetic material is housed in breathtakingly miraculous molecules known as deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. These objects consist of two strands coiled alongside one another like a twisted ladder, upon which are encoded the genetic instructions, or map, used to create every living organism, and enable it to function. In the morning there was a knock on the door. It opened a crack.

  “Sweetie, I made some chocolate chip pancakes for you…Hannah?”

  At that moment the child was completely absorbed in the intricacies of a seemingly magical cell process known as mitosis whereby a single cell divides into two identical daughter cells. To Hannah, her mother’s voice sounded like it was emanating from the bottom of a deep shaft.

  “You should eat.”

  “Can you bring it in and just set it here for me, Mom? I’m on a roll.”

  Monica entered the room to see Hannah pointing to a side table while keeping her attention fixed on the screen.

  “Alright, if you agree to go for a walk with me later on. Fresh air and exe
rcise are good for your brain, you know. And mothers are good for you too.”

  “Correct on all counts, Mom. Agreed.”

  Hannah continued her research over the course of the next few days. In addition to cell biology, she studied the closely related fields of biochemistry, organic chemistry, and molecular biology. Every once in a while her jaw would drop open, or she would gasp at the incredible nature of what she was learning. “Amazing!” she would exclaim, fascinated by the physical structure of life, the order, the intricate design, the exquisite machinery of life. White blood cells were like secret agents to her, stealthily coursing through the bloodstream searching for any potentially harmful foreign invader such as bacteria or viruses. When an enemy was discovered, the white blood cells would send out the alarm, kick-start the body’s immune response, and attack, sometimes sacrificing their own very existence to destroy the intruder.

  Stem cells also astounded her, with their ability to transform themselves from a homogenous type of cell into completely different specialized cells for a wide range of purposes. She learned that these cells serve as the repair system for the body when tissues needs to be fixed or replenished. In a developing human being, embryonic stems cells could change into different cells to create every single tissue and organ for the entire human body. Sometimes she would chuckle at the outrageousness of it all, once exclaiming, “No way! How is that even possible?” Somehow this orderly design has to be even more than a miracle, she thought.

  As evening approached on the third day, Brian interrupted Hannah to give her a letter in a pink envelope. She customarily received a good-sized bag of mail every day from fans, charitable organizations, the news media, and companies offering business opportunities, but the return address on this particular piece of mail convinced Brian to give it a special delivery.

  Inside the envelope was a card with a picture of a dog holding a big red umbrella over a small pup in a heavy downpour. Underneath the picture typed in fancy blue block letters was “THANK YOU.” Inside the card was a handwritten sentiment that was difficult to read because the writing was so faint and messy: