by Неизвестный
“And how it’s progressed.”
“You mean it’s progressed since Friday? Does it really grow that fast?”
“No, your cancer isn’t growing that fast. But I just need a better look at it in order to determine what I’m going to find when I remove it. The best case scenario for the best outcome is that I’m forewarned about as much as possible before I go in. You know, no surprises.”
That did make sense, finally. But how about he not call it her cancer, Maggie wanted to scream at him. The cancer would be fine. That rat bastard cancer would be even better. Or the cancer growing inside your body. By calling it her cancer gave Maggie an ownership of something she didn’t want. After all, who, in their right mind, wanted to claim any part of cancer? “Do you know what kind of cancer we’re dealing with, yet?”
“Not yet. But we know it’s there … according to the biopsy. Could be one of several things, though. All depends.”
“On what?
“On what we’ll sort it out in surgery, and that could be any number of variables. We’re just at the beginning of this, Maggie. Pretty much as in the dark about it as you are right now. So I’ll have my staff call down and get those tests scheduled for you in a little while. Then I’ll have my nurse give you a call when we know something. Until then, don’t worry.” He actually looked at her again. “We’ll take good care of you.”
Don’t worry? Is that really what the oncologist was telling her? It crossed Maggie’s mind that if he was going through the same thing, or if it was his wife, or someone he loved, he’d probably resent the hell out of the oncologist telling him not to worry. Don’t worry -du-du, um-du-du, um-du-du-du. Be happy -du-du, um-du-du, um-du-du-du. Really? “How long will it be until you know something?”
“Shouldn’t be too long. I know this isn’t easy for you. Waiting is never easy. But just be patient with us. We’ll get everything done we need to.”
Don’t worry, be patient! Now that just made things better. Tell me, Doc. Have you ever met anyone who’s just been diagnosed with cancer who doesn’t worry?
“So, anyway, first things first. Let me go get those tests going, then we’ll take it from there.” Then they all trooped out. Every last one of the stoic, white-coated herd. Just like that, the whole lot of them filed out of the exam room, but the doctor did stop directly under the exit sign and say, “Nice meeting you, Maggie. If you have any questions, call the office.”
The impersonal office? Questions? He hadn’t given her enough information to formulate any questions around. In fact, the sum total of what he’d told her could have been done in a text message or a Twitter Tweet hashtag cancer. Honestly, he hadn’t even looked at her. Hadn’t asked her to disrobe and get herself ready to be invaded, not that she liked getting naked for doctors. But she could have had the Liberty Bell tattooed all over her butt, with the Statue of Liberty on her belly and the great American bald eagle on her breasts and he wouldn’t have known because all he’d examined was her chart. The hell of this whole matter turned out to be how she wasn’t sure the man she was going to trust to save her life would recognize her if he bumped into her in the hall outside his very own exam room two minutes from now.
“I do have one question, Doctor Campbell,” she said. Actually there were dozens of questions, but he seemed mildly surprised that she would postpone his going.
“Yes?” he asked. “What’s that?”
“What kind of timeline are we talking about here? I know I’ll need surgery, so when will that happen? Then what happens after that?”
“My scheduling department will call you about that once we have a look at those tests.”
“A couple of days? One week, Doctor? Two weeks?” She persisted even though she was pretty sure she wouldn’t be getting an answer.
And, she was right. “Soon. Just … ”
Be patient. Or happy. Don’t worry.
“Relax.” Du-du, um-du-du, um-du-du-du.
Chapter Five
One week ticked off the clock, life as normal. Almost. Then two weeks, then three. And Maggie finally braved that phone call - the one they’d promised her that she’d yet to receive. Only to be told … nothing. We’ll call you back. So, another day, then another, and another spent waiting.
“Come on, Maggie. It’s not like you to sit back and wait.” That from her best friend, Sally, a congenial, if not impatient sort. “Normally, you’d be out there kicking ass for that information, so what gives?”
“They’ll call me when they know something,” Maggie insisted. Deep down, she knew they should have called her already. Or returned the phone call she’d made several days prior.
Then on to another day, and even another one. Finally into the fourth week. “I’m trying to find out what the results of my tests were, and when I’ll be scheduled for surgery,” she asked the office. After all, she’d had cancer going on to five weeks, now.
“Doctor’s not available, but I’ll have his nurse get right back to you.” Yeh, right. Another week, then moving on into the sixth week.
“For God’s sake, Mags. Get a grip. He’s a fuck-up and he’s going to kill you if you’re not careful. Do you really want him being your doctor?” That from her husband.
Well, maybe he was a fuck-up after all, because six weeks post-diagnosis was an awful long time to wait, only to be put off time and time again. But damn, she didn’t want to start through the whole thing all over. Let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start. Except her beginning wasn’t a good place to start and she didn’t want to go back there because she’d all but wiped it out of her mind. If the doctor didn’t think this was urgent enough to return a call over, then it wasn’t urgent. Huge denial thing going on there. Maybe it wasn’t even cancer at all. Huger denial.
But denial was where Maggie was not only lingering these days, it’s where she wanted to live. Not going forward, not going backwards. No, she wanted to stand in one place with her feet planted firmly on the ground and see her life the way she wanted it to be. As in, without cancer. So if he didn’t call, she got to put it off a while longer.
That was a good thing, wasn’t it?
“Call someone else, Mags,” her husband kept pleading. “Or I will.”
“And you’ll do what? Tie me up and carry me into the doctor’s office? Because that’s the only way you’re getting me there.”
“See, that’s what I don’t get. You’ve got it. They told you so. But it’s like you’re going to believe what you want to believe, and no one’s going to convince you otherwise. And that’s just stupid.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
“Fine, but with cancer. What’s fine in that? What’s fine in any of this?”
“He’ll call me when he needs to. Doctors don’t just forget to call, David.”
“You’re deluding yourself if you think this is going to have a happy ending the way you’re going with this thing, Mags. Sooner or later you’ve got to have to have something done, and I pray to God that when you come to your senses it’s not too late.”
He was right, of course. Every single word he shouted in frustration made perfect sense, and the only thing that didn’t make sense was … her. Her reaction. Her procrastination.
Procrastination … she’d loved that word ever since she’d learned it in the fifth grade. Procrastinate: to put off intentionally and habitually. Intentionally or habitually, either way she was screwed, and Maggie knew that as sure as she knew she was stuck in a place where the defense mechanisms go on overdrive and buffer out the immediate shock of cancer, of death, of anything bad. As detrimental as it sounded, though, Maggie found it a great place to hide, a place she didn’t want to leave. It was safe there. It was where the bad things didn’t touch her. Couldn’t touch her.
No phone calls from the doctor meant she could stay in that place, and that suited her fine.
But that place was dark. She’d had her husband cover up the mirror in the bathroom with a towel, and the one over t
he dresser as well. Why? Because she didn’t want to see the face of cancer. So maybe people thought that was crazy. Maybe even Maggie thought that was crazy, but it got her through until that night, seven weeks after diagnosis. It was after one A.M., David was asleep, and Maggie was not, as had become her usual -sleeping in dribs and drabs. Minutes here and there, but nothing lasting long enough to be considered healthy. Come to think of it, the psychology behind not sleeping was probably just as crazy as the no-mirror policy, but nobody said much of anything to her about it. Then that morning, at one twelve, to be precise, it hit her. All of it did.
“I have cancer,” she whispered at the dark ceiling. “I have cancer.” It wasn’t just something that was going to go away. And it wasn’t something to be ignored any longer. “Cancer.”
“What?” David asked groggily.
“I have cancer.”
He didn’t reply to that. But he didn’t go back to sleep either, and those who knew David also knew that nothing short of a tornado kept him from his appointed eight hours.
“Why?” she whispered. “What did I do that caused this?”
“You didn’t do anything,” he finally said, reaching over to take her hand. For the first time in seven weeks, she let him hold it. “It just happens.”
“But why me? And why now, when the business is going so well?” In a downwardly spiraling real estate market, their sales were actually up.
He chuckled. “Because it’s no respecter of its choices. It just chooses, and to hell with everything else.”
Cancer chooses. What a profound thing to say. But it was true. “David, I have cancer,” she said, sitting up.
“Yes, I know,” he said, siting up with her. And for the first time in the whole ordeal, Maggie cried. Sat there silently, cross-legged in her bed, and let the gentle sobs that came first turn into racking sobs that shook her body with such a vehemence it robbed her of all strength at the same moment David scooted over and pulled her into his arms. And let her cry until the tears were dry, and the sobs were hiccups, and her chest hurt, and her throat hurt. And her soul hurt.
“I can’t stay here,” she finally managed to say, after expending half-a box of tissues and soaking through David’s t-shirt. “In this house. It’s … too small. I can’t stay here.”
“Where do you want to go?” he asked, noting that it was well after two by now. “IHOP is open, I think. And Denny’s. Or a McDonald’s drive-through, if that’s what you’d rather do.”
But she didn’t want food. Didn’t want anything. Couldn’t think. “Let’s just go out for a few minutes. I don’t care where.”
So David pulled on pants and changed his wet t-shirt, although Maggie didn’t bother to get out of her pajamas. It didn’t matter how she looked. There were no mirrors visible in her house so she couldn’t see herself anyway, and at a little after two in the morning, who cared? She had cancer. “Cancer,” she said again as she headed to the passenger’s side of the pick-up truck.
Chapter Six
The first night of Maggie’s insanity took them to the Wal-Mart parking lot, about two miles from home. David stopped at his favorite gas station and refilled his beat-up old plastic cup with sixty-four ounces of diet Mountain Dew, probably because he was expecting a rough rest of the night. Maggie just got a cup of ice to chomp on. Why just ice? Because she had cancer and that seemed right. No other explanation necessary.
“I’m good to go home,” she said, after that stop. But apparently, she wasn’t. Because as they drove through the shopping center parking lot on their way back to the road, she asked him to stop. “Under the parking lot light, please. Just for a minute.”
He didn’t ask why, maybe because he knew she didn’t know why. But he stopped, took a few swigs of the dew, and reclined his seat back a couple of notches. “Want to talk?” he asked her.
“No,” she said, knowing that if she did talk, she’d start crying again.
“Want me to talk?”
“No,” she said again.
“I’ve got some CDs … ”
Another no to music. Not even a good tear-jerkin’ country tune where his wife left him, his dog up and died and after fifty years he still grieved, then let go of life a little bit the way Maggie just had. Because all she wanted was … nothing.
And four hours later, when the sun finally began to come up, David turned on the truck, they left the Wal-Mart parking lot, and went home. Where Maggie was finally able to sleep better than she had since that first day.
Anger is a funny thing, though. It came on her, probably even while she was sleeping, and she woke up ready to kill something, or someone. “I hate my office,” was the first thing she said when she finally got up. “Can’t stand it. Too much clutter. Hate the color.” A nice, tranquil ocean blue they’d put on the walls on a year earlier. “Don’t like the bookshelves where they are, don’t want anything on my walls … want it all white. Now, David! We’ve got to do this now, because I’ve got to work in it, and everything is … closing in.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” he asked, glancing up at her over his cup of coffee.
“Change it. I’m going to Home Depot for paint.”
“We’ve got two houses to show today, and a closing at noon.”
“Fine!” she snapped. “Since that’s more important than my cancer … ”
“Whoa,” he said, setting down his coffee cup. “You’re the one who’s not treating it as important since you won’t find a doctor to cure it. So if it’s not important to you, why should it be to me?”
She threw an English muffin at him and stormed out of the room. And that night she slept in the truck, in the street in front of their house, David in the driver’s seat, Maggie at his side. Neither of them saying a word. And only the occasional gurgle coming from the sixty-four ouncer diet Dew in the cup holder between them. Then it was the next day when David, and a couple of his friends disassembled the bookshelves in Maggie’s office and started taking down the plaques and pictures.
“It’s looking better,” she admitted, two days later. Then to David’s friend, Ted, she said, “Did he tell you why we’re doing this?”
“He just said you need a change. My wife gets crazy at her time of the month, so … ”
“I have cancer,” she said. Except to David, and a couple of her close friends, this was the first time she’d said it to someone else. And said it so casually.
“I-I’m sorry to hear that,” Ted replied, backing away from her. Clearly this was the reaction she was going to get with most people.
“Diagnosed seven weeks ago.”
“Uh-huh.” Backing even farther.
“Going to have surgery, as soon as the doctor calls me back.”
“That’s … um … hope it goes well for you.” Turning, practically running out the door.
In spite of her bad mood, Maggie actually laughed, positive that’s how she’d reacted when Judy, an old sorority sister, had announced she had breast cancer and when Maggie’s grandfather had talked about his prostate cancer at the Thanksgiving dinner table like it was a dreaded distant third cousin.
Seven weeks of denial, two days of anger, and suddenly it was like the damned thing was finally hers to own. “I, um … I need to make an appointment with an oncologist,” she said to the scheduling secretary an hour after the first coat of white paint went up on her office walls and she knew, surer than anything, that she hated white walls. “I had another oncologist who diagnosed the cancer, but it’s been almost two months now, and he’s never gotten back with me. So I need to start over, and make an appointment … ”
No procrastinating this time. Twenty-four hours later, as a coat of lavender was going up over the white, Maggie walked into the office and said to the waiting surgeon, “I have cancer. Now I need to see about having surgery.”
And just like that, she was on the schedule for a week later. And she wasn’t surrounded by gawking med students, nurses and scribes this time. No, it was just the surge
on and her surgical nurse. “Can we discuss the timeline?” Maggie asked tentatively since every time she’d asked before she’d been ignored.
“We can discuss anything you want,” Dr. Snider said, and pulled up a stool and sat down across from Maggie, quite obviously ready to talk. “Take your time. Make sure you’re clear on everything we’re about to do.”
“Did I wait too long?” Maggie asked. “I mean, it’s been weeks, and since Dr. Campbell wasn’t calling me back … I know I should have been more aggressive, but I couldn’t. So, did I wait too long?”
“I think you got to me at just the right time,” Dr. Snider said. Then she smiled. “This is going to be okay, Maggie. I’m going to get you through this. Can’t promise it will be easy, can’t guarantee the outcome yet. And you’re probably going to need some chemo and radiation afterwards. But we’re going to take those things one step at a time.”
“How long will I be down?”
“In the hospital about four or five days, probably another couple weeks of leisure time at home, and after that … ” The doctor shrugged. “We’ll see how it goes, but I should think you’ll be ready to get back to some semblance of your normal life pretty soon. Just a watered-down version for a while.”
In time to have that hideous lavender on her walls painted over. “I’m having my office re-done,” Maggie admitted. “Went a little crazy for a while.”
“You’ve got cancer. You’re entitled.”
Chapter Seven
Prayer wasn’t one of the things that came naturally to Maggie, but the closer she got to surgery day, the more she wondered if she should be praying. She wasn’t religious, per se. More like a believer who didn’t let herself get confined by the trappings of buildings and dictates. Live a good life, be a good person. That was something an old Buddhist monk had said to her once, and it stuck. Probably because it was so simple, packed with so much meaning. “Will that get me everything I need in life?” she’d asked him, intending to be cynical.