Rules Get Broken

by John Herbert

  “That’s right,” Peg agreed. “I’d forgotten about that. You really were pissed.”

  We looked at each other for a moment in silence, each of us again wondering how we had come to be here.

  “Maybe we should take another trip to France on the QE 2 when you get out of here,” I suggested, happy to have come up with a way to push aside the gloom that had started to build—the gloom that always seemed to hover over us these days, right at the edge of our every thought, day after day, ready to wash over us at any moment for any reason. “Would you like that?” I asked.

  Peg looked at me for a long time before answering. It seemed as if she were trying to read my thoughts, trying to judge if I were serious or simply pretending to be optimistic for her sake.

  Apparently unable to decide, she sighed deeply, looked down at her hands and then over at me. “Maybe,” she finally replied. “We’ll see. We’ll see.”

  I waited for her to add something, but instead she seemed to lose interest in what we had been saying, and she turned to look out the window again, deep in thought. I watched her, wondering where she was at that moment and what she was thinking, knowing that the forces of gloom were winning.

  When she spoke again after several minutes of silence, she spoke without looking at me, still staring out the window, as if I weren’t even there. “I wonder if I’ll ever see my babies again,” she said matter-of-factly, without emotion.

  “Peg! Come on!” I shouted.

  She turned away from the window to look at me.

  “What a terrible thing to say! Why would you ever say something like that? Look at how far you’ve come. If you’ve made it this far, chances are good you’ll make it all the way. It’s just a matter of time, Peg. We just have to be patient. Have to give Dr. Werner and his people time to turn this thing around. That’s all.”

  She nodded quickly, as if she were trying to shake off the thoughts that had led her to ask the question in the first place. Then she began to smooth the sheets nervously with both hands, and her eyes filled with tears. “I know. I know you’re right. I just have to be patient. I keep telling myself that. I really do. Hour after hour. Day after day. It’s just that I miss them so much, John. You have no idea what it’s like to lay here and know my babies are out there with someone else. Not me. And to wonder if the last time I’ll ever see John was in our kitchen the afternoon I went to Huntington Hospital. Or if the last time I’ll ever see Jennie was when you brought her up to see me that night. You can’t imagine what that’s like, John. No one can.”

  She reached for a tissue from the box on her night table, wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “You know,” she continued, “I keep thinking about what a wonderful life I’ve had—we’ve had.”

  “Have,” I interrupted. “Not ‘had.’ ‘Had’ makes it sound like it’s over, and it isn’t.”

  Peg ignored me and kept talking. “And then I find myself wondering if maybe that’s the problem. That maybe our life was just too damn good. Maybe we’re paying now for having had such a great life.”

  “What are you talking about, sweetheart? You’re being silly.”

  “I’m not being silly, and I’ll tell you why. You’ve heard the expressions. ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch.’ ‘Pay me now, or pay me later.’ ‘Into every life some rain must fall.’ You’ve heard them. You know the sayings as well as I do. And maybe there’s some truth to them. If there weren’t, why did people create them in the first place? Adages reflect people’s beliefs, John, and those beliefs, I have to think, are based on experience. And if that’s true, then why did we expect to be so lucky in life when other people aren’t? When so many other people have such difficult lives with so much pain? What makes us different from them? Why are we so surprised this has happened to us? What made us think we’d get through this life without having to pay some dues?”

  She stopped talking and stared at me, demanding an answer with her eyes. I sat there speechless, not knowing what to say, because, in a way, everything she had said made sense.

  “I never thought of what’s happened in those terms,” I stammered finally. “I’ve never thought of life in those terms either. I guess the truth is…I just thought…we were lucky. Never gave it much more thought than that.”

  “Well, guess what, sweetheart,” Peg said sleepily, suddenly out of energy. “We’ve just run out of luck. It’s time to pay some dues.”

  I started to protest, started to say something encouraging, but realized I was too late. She was already fast asleep.

  Twenty-Seven

  Friday, August 15th, was the two-week anniversary of Peg’s arrival at New York Hospital. I left the office that afternoon at five after three and arrived at the hospital at twenty after four. As I walked down the corridor from the elevators towards Peg’s room, I saw that her door was closed, usually a sign that someone was with her. I knocked lightly on the door before opening it, hoping Peg’s visitor was Dr. Werner and not one of the nurses. I hadn’t seen him since Tuesday, and I was anxious to get a first-hand report from him before the weekend.

  I peeked in around the door; sure enough, there he was, sitting on the edge of Peg’s bed, one leg crossed over the other, arms folded across his chest, looking more relaxed and more approachable than he had at any of our prior meetings. To my surprise, he smiled when he saw me and waved me in with his hand. “Your timing is perfect,” he exclaimed.

  I walked over to Peg’s bed and bent down to give her a kiss. “Why’s that?” I asked, taking off my suit jacket and hanging it on one of the hooks next to the bathroom door.

  “Well, I was just about to tell your wife the results of the tests we did on the bone marrow sample we took this morning.”

  “I didn’t realize you were scheduled for a bone marrow test today,” I said, turning to Peg.

  “Me neither.”

  “Well, anyway,” Dr. Werner continued, “we took a bone marrow sample this morning to determine the extent to which you’re responding to the chemotherapy. We obviously expected to see some improvement, but quite frankly, I didn’t expect the kind of results we got.”

  “Is this going to be good news or bad news?” I interrupted in spite of myself.

  “Good news,” Dr. Werner responded with a self-satisfied smile. “Very good news.”

  He paused for a second, looking first at Peg, then at me, then back at Peg. “In short, on the basis of the bone marrow sample we took this morning, I am pleased to report that you, Mrs. Herbert, are in complete remission.”

  “Remission?” Peg repeated.

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “Does it mean what I think it means?”

  “It means we saw no cancer cells in your bone marrow sample. None whatsoever. In other words, the chemotherapy you’ve been receiving for the last thirteen days has successfully destroyed all of the cancerous tissue in your body, so your bone marrow sample showed no clinically detectable signs of leukemia. You’re cancer-free.”

  “Oh my God,” Peg whispered, hugging herself with one arm and pressing her other hand, balled up into a fist, against her mouth.

  “Holy shit!” I exclaimed, stunned at this totally unexpected news.

  “Oh my God, my God,” Peg whispered again as she started to cry.

  “Does this mean she’s cured?” I asked, trying to control the elation that threatened to overwhelm me.

  “In the clinical sense, yes, she’s cured,” Dr. Werner answered.

  “But how is that possible?” I asked, still unable to believe what I was hearing. “I mean, she’s only been here for two weeks.”

  “You’ll recall that the type of leukemia Peggy has, I should say had, was an extremely aggressive form. The bad news with this type of leukemia is that, left untreated, it can overwhelm the body very quickly, resulting in death of the patient. The good news is it’s very susceptible to aggressive chemotherapy if the therapy is started early enough in the disease cycle. We were lucky in that we were able to start treating Peggy�
�s leukemia early enough to get a jump on it, with the result that as of this afternoon, she’s cancer-free.”

  “Unbelievable!” I exclaimed. “Absolutely unbelievable!”

  “Now a couple of words of caution are in order here,” Dr. Werner continued, addressing Peg. “The good news, as I said, is that all of the cancerous cells in your body are dead. The bad news is all of the tissue in your body that normally produces white blood cells is also dead. Which means that until this tissue has a chance to regenerate itself, you have no white cells available to fight an infection.”

  “And what does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means that it’s more important now than ever before to keep Peggy free from infection—long enough to give her body a chance to regenerate the white blood cells she needs to fight infection on her own. Infection’s been a risk ever since she started the chemo, but less of a risk than it is now, because although her immune system was impaired, it was still existent and functioning. Now it’s not. So for the next several weeks, we have to do whatever we can to prevent her from being exposed to infectious agents. That means I’m going to ask you to limit visits to immediate family members only—and then only if they are completely healthy. In other words, if they even have so much as a head cold, I do not want them in this room. Understood?”

  “Understood,” I replied.

  “I’ll advise the floor staff of Peggy’s status and will request that everyone who comes in contact with her over the next few weeks—doctors, nurses, aides, everyone—be gowned, masked and gloved to minimize the chances of someone transmitting something to her. So don’t be alarmed if you see someone in here wrapped up from head to toe. And that will include all guests too,” he added, looking at me. “Even you.”

  “Okay. But what happens if Peg does get an infection?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer but knowing I had to ask the question.

  “Well, first of all, the likelihood is very good she will get an infection of some sort. It can’t be helped. We’re surrounded by infectious agents every day of our lives. What we’re going to do, though, is monitor her very, very carefully throughout each day. That way we’ll note the first sign of an infection, which will probably be a fever, early in its cycle, and we’ll be able to respond immediately with the appropriate antibiotics before it gets out of control.

  “One more thing,” Dr. Werner said with an audible sigh, looking at each of us to make certain we were listening. “And please, neither of you should quote me on this. We’re notoriously short-handed on weekends. Especially on summer weekends. And as I just said, I want Peggy monitored day and night. So I strongly suggest that we arrange for a private nurse to be here around the clock from this afternoon, say from six or six-thirty, until six o’clock Monday morning. And we should do this every weekend from now until Peggy’s out of danger. Is that okay with the two of you? It’s not going to be cheap, but I think it’s something you have to do.”

  “If you think that’s what we should do, that’s good enough for me,” I replied without hesitation.

  “Good. I’ll take care of that on my way out. They’ll bill you directly, Mr. Herbert. I’ll give them your home address. So,” Dr. Werner concluded, slapping both hands on his thighs, “we’re not out of the woods yet, but we’ve come a long, long way, and today’s news couldn’t be any better.”

  He turned to face me. “To use your words, Mr. Herbert, we’re winning. Definitely winning. Not just ‘not losing,’ but winning.”

  “Thank you, doctor,” I mumbled, still trying to absorb the last two minutes of conversation. “Thank you. Thank you for the news, and thank you for everything you’ve done. You have no idea how grateful I am. No idea whatsoever.”

  “Well, hold the thanks until we put Peggy in a car on her way home. But needless to say, this is the kind of news I love to give.”

  He turned back to Peg. “You probably won’t get a lot of sleep for the next few weeks, because the nurses will be examining you and taking your temperature every two hours, twenty-four hours a day. But that’s a small price to pay, isn’t it?”

  “It certainly is,” Peg said, tears again running down her cheeks.

  Dr. Werner stood up, patted Peg lightly on the cheek and extended his hand to me. “I’ll leave the two of you alone now,” he said as we shook hands. “I imagine you have a few things to talk about.”

  He was halfway to the door when he stopped and turned around. “I knew I forgot something. I’ll be off this weekend, so Dr. Porter will be covering for me. Just so you know.”

  “Okay. Have a good weekend, doctor. And again, thank you.”

  He gave us a quick wave, turned back towards the door and was gone.

  For several seconds, neither Peg nor I spoke. We just stayed where we were, her propped up in her bed, me standing a few feet away, both of us immobile, both of us too stunned to know what to say or do next. We stayed like that for fifteen or twenty seconds, until Peg lifted up her arms and reached out to me. In an instant, I was standing next to her bed, bending down to her, feeling her arms wrap around my shoulders, burying my face into her neck, now wet with tears as she sobbed uncontrollably. By the time we finished our hug, we were both crying and laughing at the same time.

  “Do you realize what happened a few minutes ago?” I asked. “Do you realize what Dr. Werner told us?”

  “I do. I do,” Peg said between sniffles and giggles. “I do.”

  “You’re coming home, Peg. To me. To Jennie. To John.”

  “I’m going to see my children again. I’m going to be their mommy again. Oh God, John. I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.”

  “Well, you better believe it, because it’s true.”

  Peg nodded, blew her nose a few times, wiped her eyes and then laid her head back on her pillow.

  “You know what’s funny? The things I’ve missed most and want to do most when I get home are the simplest, silliest things you can imagine. I want to bury my face in Jennie’s hair and smell it. I want to pick up John and feel his warm little body. I want to sleep in our bed. I want to take a hot shower whenever I want to. I want to listen to Jennie’s non-stop nonsensical chatter. I want to feed John and watch him swallow his food and watch him smile as he tastes it. I want to unfold little shirts and little pants and little dresses and little sweaters and dress my kids. I want to tuck my children into bed. I want to hear Jennie say her prayers.”

  She stopped to blow her nose again. “I want to see my roses. I want to see the sky and the sun. I want to smell fresh air and feel the breeze on my face.”

  She looked up at me. “I want to come home. And I want to live.”

  Peg and I had what could only be described as a victory celebration that night. We both knew she wasn’t out of trouble yet, but we also both knew she had cleared the toughest hurdle. For the first time in two weeks we talked about how life would be when she came home. She even brought up the trip to France on the QE 2 and told me she’d love to go again someday.

  It was an evening focused on the future instead of on the moment or the past. It was as good an evening as one can have in a cancer ward.

  Twenty-Eight

  On Saturday morning, August 16th, Peg developed a fever.

  Although expected, the fever was nevertheless frightening, because it meant she had already contracted an infection, even though twenty-four hours had not yet passed since Dr. Werner had declared her in remission. She was given massive doses of antibiotics intravenously throughout the morning and into the early afternoon, but her fever continued to rise. As a result, around two o’clock, she was once again placed on a chill blanket.

  By the time my parents and I arrived shortly after five, Peg’s temperature was almost back to normal, and she had been taken off the chill blanket. But she was a wreck. She was soaked with perspiration, she was shivering uncontrollably even though she had been off the chill blanket for over an hour, and she was exhausted from the fever and the antibiotics. So the visit was short and
nothing like the night before. But the good news was that Peg had won another round.

  As we prepared to leave, I remembered I had wanted to tell Peg that Dave had called.

  “When did he call?” she asked with obvious effort.

  “This morning. Just before lunch.”

  “How is he?”

  I gave a half chuckle, half snort. “He’s good. So is Beth. And he asked me to give you a hug for the two of them.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “What do you mean ‘what else’?”

  “You laughed when I asked you how he was,” she answered, eyes half closed.

  “You don’t miss a trick, do you?”

  “Mmm-mmm,” Peg whispered.

  “He wanted to know if I’d like to go sailing on our boat.”

  Peg looked at me, her eyes now fully open, questioning, confused.

  “What he wanted to know was,” I continued, “would I like to go sailing tomorrow with Beth and him? He thought maybe I could use a few hours of relaxation and thought some time on Windsong might do the trick.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I told him no.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I went out on the boat, I wouldn’t be able to visit you tomorrow.”

  Peg smiled. Weakly, but she smiled. “You should go,” she said softly, eyes again half closed. “He’s right. It would be good for you.” She took several shallow breaths before continuing. “And given the way I feel right now, I probably won’t be very good company tomorrow anyway. Seriously. Go. I don’t mind.”

  “I’m not going to do that. Especially not after what you’ve gone through today.”

  “You really should. You can’t do anything for me, and I could use the rest.”

  “You can’t rest while I’m here?”

  “Of course I can,” Peg replied with a heavy sigh. “But I try not to. I try to stay awake when you’re here. So I can see you. But tomorrow I should sleep. Go. I mean it. Call Dave when you get home, and say yes.”