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VIVIAN: No. Not now.
SUSIE: I’m sorry, but they want it now.
VIVIAN: Not right now. It’s not supposed to be now.
SUSIE: Yes, they want to do it now. I’ve got the chair.
VIVIAN: It should not be now. I am in the middle of—this. I have this planned for now, not ultrasound. No more tests. We’ve covered that.
SUSIE: I know, I know, but they need for it to be now. It won’t take long, and it isn’t a bad procedure. Why don’t you just come along.
VIVIAN: I do not want to go now!
SUSIE: Ms. Bearing.
(Silence. VIVIAN raises the screen, walks away from the scene, hooks herself to the IV, and gets in the wheelchair. SUSIE wheels VIVIAN, and a TECHNICIAN takes her.)
TECHNICIAN: Name.
VIVIAN: B-E-A-R-I-N-G. Kelekian.
TECHNICIAN: It’ll just be a minute.
VIVIAN: Time for your break.
TECHNICIAN: Yup.
(The TECHNICIAN leaves.)
VIVIAN: (Mordantly) Take a break!
* * *
(VIVIAN sits weakly in the wheelchair.)
VIVIAN:
This is my playes last scene, here heavens appoint
My pilgrimages last mile; and my race
Idly, yet quickly runne, hath this last pace,
My spans last inch, my minutes last point,
And gluttonous death will instantly unjoynt
My body, ’and soule
John Donne. 1609.
I have always particularly liked that poem. In the abstract. Now I find the image of “my minute’s last point” a little too, shall we say, pointed.
I don’t mean to complain, but I am becoming very sick. Very, very sick. Ultimately sick, as it were.
In everything I have done, I have been steadfast, resolute—some would say in the extreme. Now, as you can see, I am distinguishing myself in illness.
I have survived eight treatments of Hexamethophosphacil and Vinplatin at the full dose, ladies and gentlemen. I have broken the record. I have become something of a celebrity. Kelekian and Jason are simply delighted. I think they foresee celebrity status for themselves upon the appearance of the journal article they will no doubt write about me.
But I flatter myself. The article will not be about me, it will be about my ovaries. It will be about my peritoneal cavity, which, despite their best intentions, is now crawling with cancer.
What we have come to think of as me is, in fact, just the specimen jar, just the dust jacket, just the white piece of paper that bears the little black marks.
My next line is supposed to be something like this:
“It is such a relief to get back to my room after those infernal tests.”
This is hardly true.
It would be a relief to be a cheerleader on her way to Daytona Beach for Spring Break.
To get back to my room after those infernal tests is just the next thing that happens.
* * *
(She returns to her bed, which now has a commode next to it. She is very sick.)
Oh, God. It is such a relief to get back to my goddamn room after those goddamn tests.
(JASON enters.)
JASON: Professor Bearing. Just want to check the I&O. Four-fifty, six, five. Okay. How are you feeling today? (He makes notations on his clipboard throughout the scene.)
VIVIAN: Fine.
JASON: That’s great. Just great.
VIVIAN: How are my fluids?
JASON: Pretty good. No kidney involvement yet. That’s pretty amazing, with Hex and Vin.
VIVIAN: How will you know when the kidneys are involved?
JASON: Lots of in, not much out.
VIVIAN: That simple.
JASON: Oh, no way. Compromised kidney function is a highly complex reaction. I’m simplifying for you.
VIVIAN: Thank you.
JASON: We’re supposed to.
VIVIAN: Bedside manner.
JASON: Yeah, there’s a whole course on it in med school. It’s required. Colossal waste of time for researchers. (He turns to go.)
VIVIAN: I can imagine. (Trying to ask something important) Jason?
JASON: Huh?
VIVIAN: (Not sure of herself) Ah, what … (Quickly) What were you just saying?
JASON: When?
VIVIAN: Never mind.
JASON: Professor Bearing?
VIVIAN: Yes.
JASON: Are you experiencing confusion? Short-term memory loss?
VIVIAN: No.
JASON: Sure?
VIVIAN: Yes. (Pause) I was just wondering: why cancer?
JASON: Why cancer?
VIVIAN: Why not open-heart surgery?
JASON: Oh yeah, why not plumbing. Why not run a lube rack, for all the surgeons know about Homo sapiens sapiens. No way. Cancer’s the only thing I ever wanted.
VIVIAN: (Intrigued) Huh.
JASON: No, really. Cancer is … (Searching)
VIVIAN: (Helping) Awesome.
JASON: (Pause) Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. It is. It is awesome. How does it do it? The intercellular regulatory mechanisms—especially for proliferation and differentiation—the malignant neoplasia just don’t get it. You grow normal cells in tissue culture in the lab, and they replicate just enough to make a nice, confluent monolayer. They divide twenty times, or fifty times, but eventually they conk out. You grow cancer cells, and they never stop. No contact inhibition whatsoever. They just pile up, just keep replicating forever. (Pause) That’s got a funny name. Know what it is?
VIVIAN: No. What?
JASON: Immortality in culture.
VIVIAN: Sounds like a symposium.
JASON: It’s an error in judgment, in a molecular way. But why? Even on the protistic level the normal cell–cell interactions are so subtle they’ll take your breath away. Golden-brown algae, for instance, the lowest multicellular life form on earth—they’re idiots—and it’s incredible. It’s perfect. So what’s up with the cancer cells? Smartest guys in the world, with the best labs, funding—they don’t know what to make of it.
VIVIAN: What about you?
JASON: Me? Oh, I’ve got a couple of ideas, things I’m kicking around. Wait till I get a lab of my own. If I can survive this … fellowship.
VIVIAN: The part with the human beings.
JASON: Everybody’s got to go through it. All the great researchers. They want us to be able to converse intelligently with the clinicians. As though researchers were the impediments. The clinicians are such troglodytes. So smarmy. Like we have to hold hands to discuss creatinine clearance. Just cut the crap, I say.
VIVIAN: Are you going to be sorry when I— Do you ever miss people?
JASON: Everybody asks that. Especially girls.
VIVIAN: What do you tell them?
JASON: I tell them yes.
VIVIAN: Are they persuaded?
JASON: Some.
VIVIAN: Some. I see. (With great difficulty) And what do you say when a patient is … apprehensive … frightened.
JASON: Of who?
VIVIAN: I just … Never mind.
JASON: Professor Bearing, who is the President of the United States?
VIVIAN: I’m fine, really. It’s all right.
JASON: You sure? I could order a test—
VIVIAN: No! No, I’m fine. Just a little tired.
JASON: Okay. Look. Gotta go. Keep pushing the fluids. Try for 2,000 a day, okay?
VIVIAN: Okay. To use your word. Okay.
(JASON leaves.)
VIVIAN: (Getting out of bed, without her IV) So. The young doctor, like the senior scholar, prefers research to humanity. At the same time the senior scholar, in her pathetic state as a simpering victim, wishes the young doctor would take more interest in personal contact.
Now I suppose we shall see, through a series of flashbacks, how the senior scholar ruthlessly denied her simpering students the touch of human kindness she now seeks.
* * *
(STUDENTS appear, sitting at chairs w
ith writing desks attached to the right arm.)
VIVIAN: (Commanding attention) How then would you characterize (pointing to a student)—you.
STUDENT 1: Huh?
VIVIAN: How would you characterize the animating force of this sonnet?
STUDENT 1: Huh?
VIVIAN: In this sonnet, what is the principal poetic device? I’ll give you a hint. It has nothing to do with football. What propels this sonnet?
STUDENT 1: Um.
VIVIAN: (Speaking to the audience) Did I say (tenderly) “You are nineteen years old. You are so young. You don’t know a sonnet from a steak sandwich.” (Pause) By no means.
(Sharply, to STUDENT 1) You can come to this class prepared, or you can excuse yourself from this class, this department, and this university. Do not think for a moment that I will tolerate anything in between.
(To the audience, defensively) I was teaching him a lesson. (She walks away from STUDENT 1, then turns and addresses the class.)
So we have another instance of John Donne’s agile wit at work: not so much resolving the issues of life and God as reveling in their complexity.
STUDENT 2: But why?
VIVIAN: Why what?
STUDENT 2: Why does Donne make everything so complicated? (The other STUDENTS laugh in agreement.) No, really, why?
VIVIAN: (To the audience) You know, someone asked me that every year. And it was always one of the smart ones. What could I say? (To STUDENT 2) What do you think?
STUDENT 2: I think it’s like he’s hiding. I think he’s really confused, I don’t know, maybe he’s scared, so he hides behind all this complicated stuff, hides behind this wit.
VIVIAN: Hides behind wit?
STUDENT 2: I mean, if it’s really something he’s sure of, he can say it more simple—simply. He doesn’t have to be such a brain, or such a performer. It doesn’t have to be such a big deal.
(The other STUDENTS encourage him.)
VIVIAN: Perhaps he is suspicious of simplicity.
STUDENT 2: Perhaps, but that’s pretty stupid.
VIVIAN: (To the audience) That observation, despite its infelicitous phrasing, contained the seed of a perspicacious remark. Such an unlikely occurrence left me with two choices. I could draw it out, or I could allow the brain to rest after that heroic effort. If I pursued, there was the chance of great insight, or the risk of undergraduate banality. I could never predict. (To STUDENT 2) Go on.
STUDENT 2: Well, if he’s trying to figure out God, and the meaning of life, and big stuff like that, why does he keep running away, you know?
VIVIAN: (To the audience, moving closer to STUDENT 2) So far so good, but they can think for themselves only so long before they begin to self-destruct.
STUDENT 2: Um, it’s like, the more you hide, the less—no, wait—the more you are getting closer—although you don’t know it—and the simple thing is there—you see what I mean?
VIVIAN: (To the audience, looking at STUDENT 2, as suspense collapses) Lost it.
(She walks away and speaks to the audience.) I distinctly remember an exchange between two students after my lecture on pronunciation and scansion. I overheard them talking on their way out of class. They were young and bright, gathering their books and laughing at the expense of seventeenth-century poetry, at my expense.
(To the class) To scan the line properly, we must take advantage of the contemporary flexibility in “i-o-n” endings, as in “expansion.” The quatrain stands:
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an ex-pan-see-on,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
Bear this in mind in your reading. That’s all for today.
(The STUDENTS get up in a chaotic burst. STUDENT 3 and STUDENT 4 pass by VIVIAN on their way out.)
STUDENT 3: I hope I can get used to this pronuncia-see-on.
STUDENT 4: I know. I hope I can survive this course and make it to gradua-see-on.
(They laugh. VIVIAN glowers at them. They fall silent, embarrassed.)
VIVIAN: (To the audience) That was a witty little exchange, I must admit. It showed the mental acuity I would praise in a poetic text. But I admired only the studied application of wit, not its spontaneous eruption.
(STUDENT 1 interrupts.)
STUDENT 1: Professor Bearing? Can I talk to you for a minute?
VIVIAN: You may.
STUDENT 1: I need to ask for an extension on my paper. I’m really sorry, and I know your policy, but see—
VIVIAN: Don’t tell me. Your grandmother died.
STUDENT 1: You knew.
VIVIAN: It was a guess.
STUDENT 1: I have to go home.
VIVIAN: Do what you will, but the paper is due when it is due.
(As STUDENT 1 leaves and the classroom disappears, VIVIAN watches. Pause)
VIVIAN: I don’t know. I feel so much—what is the word? I look back, I see these scenes, and I …
(Long silence. VIVIAN walks absently around the stage, trying to think of something. Finally, giving up, she trudges back to bed.)
* * *
VIVIAN: It was late at night, the graveyard shift. Susie was on. I could hear her in the hall.
I wanted her to come and see me. So I had to create a little emergency. Nothing dramatic.
(VIVIAN pinches the IV tubing. The pump alarm beeps.)
It worked.
(SUSIE enters, concerned.)
SUSIE: Ms. Bearing? Is that you beeping at four in the morning? (She checks the tubing and presses buttons on the pump. The alarm stops.) Did that wake you up? I’m sorry. It just gets occluded sometimes.
VIVIAN: I was awake.
SUSIE: You were? What’s the trouble, sweetheart?
VIVIAN: (To the audience, roused) Do not think for a minute that anyone calls me “Sweetheart.” But then … I allowed it. (To SUSIE) Oh, I don’t know.
SUSIE: You can’t sleep?
VIVIAN: No. I just keep thinking.
SUSIE: If you do that too much, you can get kind of confused.
VIVIAN: I know. I can’t figure things out. I’m in a … quandary, having these … doubts.
SUSIE: What you’re doing is very hard.
VIVIAN: Hard things are what I like best.
SUSIE: It’s not the same. It’s like it’s out of control, isn’t it?
VIVIAN: (Crying, in spite of herself) I’m scared.
SUSIE: (Stroking her) Oh, honey, of course you are.
VIVIAN: I want …
SUSIE: I know. It’s hard.
VIVIAN: I don’t feel sure of myself anymore.
SUSIE: And you used to feel sure.
VIVIAN: (Crying) Oh, yes, I used to feel sure.
SUSIE: Vivian. It’s all right. I know. It hurts. I know. It’s all right. Do you want a tissue? It’s all right. (Silence) Vivian, would you like a Popsicle?
VIVIAN: (Like a child) Yes, please.
SUSIE: I’ll get it for you. I’ll be right back.
VIVIAN: Thank you.
(SUSIE leaves.)
VIVIAN: (Pulling herself together) The epithelial cells in my GI tract have been killed by the chemo. The cold Popsicle feels good, it’s something I can digest, and it helps keep me hydrated. For your information.
(SUSIE returns with an orange two-stick Popsicle. Vivian unwraps it and breaks it in half.)
VIVIAN: Here.
SUSIE: Sure?
VIVIAN: Yes.
SUSIE: Thanks. (SUSIE sits on the commode by the bed. Silence) When I was a kid, we used to get these from a truck. The man would come around and ring his bell and we’d all run over. Then we’d sit on the curb and eat our Popsicles.
Pretty profound, huh?
VIVIAN: It sounds nice.
(Silence)
SUSIE: Vivian, there’s something we need to talk about, you need to think about.
(Silence)
VIVIAN: My cancer is not being cured, is it.
SUSIE: Huh-uh.
&n
bsp; VIVIAN: They never expected it to be, did they.
SUSIE: Well, they thought the drugs would make the tumor get smaller, and it has gotten a lot smaller. But the problem is that it started in new places too. They’ve learned a lot for their research. It was the best thing they had to give you, the strongest drugs. There just isn’t a good treatment for what you have yet, for advanced ovarian. I’m sorry. They should have explained this—
VIVIAN: I knew.
SUSIE: You did.
VIVIAN: I read between the lines.
SUSIE: What you have to think about is your “code status.” What you want them to do if your heart stops.
IVIAN: Well.
SUSIE: You can be “full code,” which means that if your heart stops, they’ll call a Code Blue and the code team will come and resuscitate you and take you to Intensive Care until you stabilize again. Or you can be “Do Not Resuscitate,” so if your heart stops we’ll … well, we’ll just let it. You’ll be “DNR.” You can think about it, but I wanted to present both choices before Kelekian and Jason talk to you.
VIVIAN: You don’t agree about this?
SUSIE: Well, they like to save lives. So anything’s okay, as long as life continues. It doesn’t matter if you’re hooked up to a million machines. Kelekian is a great researcher and everything. And the fellows, like Jason, they’re really smart. It’s really an honor for them to work with him. But they always … want to know more things.
VIVIAN: I always want to know more things. I’m a scholar. Or I was when I had shoes, when I had eyebrows.
SUSIE: Well, okay then. You’ll be full code. That’s fine.
(Silence)
VIVIAN: No, don’t complicate the matter.
SUSIE: It’s okay. It’s up to you—
VIVIAN: Let it stop.
SUSIE: Really?
VIVIAN: Yes.
SUSIE: So if your heart stops beating—
VIVIAN: Just let it stop.
SUSIE: Sure?
VIVIAN: Yes.
SUSIE: Okay. I’ll get Kelekian to give the order, and then—
VIVIAN: Susie?
SUSIE: Uh-huh?
VIVIAN: You’re still going to take care of me, aren’t you?
SUSIE: ’Course, sweetheart. Don’t you worry.
(As SUSIE leaves, VIVIAN sits upright, full of energy and rage.)
VIVIAN: That certainly was a maudlin display. Popsicles? “Sweetheart”? I can’t believe my life has become so … corny.
But it can’t be helped. I don’t see any other way. We are discussing life and death, and not in the abstract, either; we are discussing my life and my death, and my brain is dulling, and poor Susie’s was never very sharp to begin with, and I can’t conceive of any other … tone.