McKain's Dilemma

by Williamson, Chet

  It is remarkable how docile even the most ferocious man becomes in the face of such rational and horrible requests. Within hospital walls the man of strength has no strength, for all of it can be wiped away with one word, be it malignant or terminal or cancer or positive or any of the hundreds by which they name death and kill hope. I was no different from the ones who lay there before. I stretched out on my stomach, put my head on my hands, dug the fingernails of my left hand into the palm of the right, and waited.

  Something cold and wet touched the skin of my hip, and I heard Dr. Munro say, "Just a little Xylocaine so you won't feel too much. . ." I was glad for the Xylocaine, because I felt enough as it was. "This may be uncomfortable," the good doctor went on, "but it shouldn't really hurt."

  That's what they said at the guillotine died on my lips as I felt the needle go in. I can't say it hurt exactly, but it was so damned uncomfortable, as the doctor said, that my legs jerked like a galvanized frog's in biology class. I murmured a cross between "Jesus" and "shit" that came out sounding like nothing more than an amazed hissing. I guess they heard it a lot, because neither doctor commented on it.

  The needle came out then, and I took a breath. A moment passed and Dr. Munro said softly, "Have enough?"

  "Not quite," was the unintroduced doctor's response, and in that second I didn't give a damn if I was ever introduced to the son of a bitch or not.

  The needle went in again, dug and prodded. My legs jerked. The needle came out.

  "Now?"

  "Should be."

  "What did you need?" I summoned up the courage to ask the shamans.

  "Spicules," grunted Dr. X.

  Terrific. I was so glad I'd asked. Spicules. Shit.

  Abused and misused, I was taken back to my room, after being told by Dr. Munro that I would get the results tomorrow. I watched afternoon television—fortunately, amid the soaps was an hour's worth of Three Stooges shorts—and I was almost able to forget where I was and why I was there. Almost, but not quite.

  Ev and Carlie arrived about four o'clock. In a way I was glad to see them, and in another I wasn't. They reminded me too much of what I might have to lose, and I didn't want to think about that. I was loving but restrained, more demonstrative toward Carlie than Ev, when it was Ev who needed my warmth more.

  They stayed until six, when a skinny nurse brought my rubber chicken, and they went downstairs to the cafeteria and came back a half hour later. We watched the news, and at seven-thirty they left. Ev said she was taking the next morning off so she could be with me when the doctor came with the news of the marrow test. I told her not to, but it was sheer bravado talking. I wanted her there with me, just to hold my hand and to hold me if I cried. I had cried in front of Ev before for lesser things.

  Yet there was a truth in that bravado as well. I was ambivalent about her presence. What it all boiled down to, I learned later and probably knew then, was that I was angry at my fate, angry at God, and I was taking the anger out on Ev, since anything I did to God or to fate probably wouldn't have been noticed.

  I didn't sleep well that night, and wondered if I would ever sleep well again.

  Ev had said she would arrive the next morning at nine, since folklore has it that doctors are notorious at bringing the news from Ghent to Aix, and that if Dr. Fedder made it by noon, it would be a small miracle. A large miracle happened, however, and Fedder showed up at eight just as I was pushing my egg around my dish. He was carrying a clipboard and not looking happy. Suddenly I didn't feel very happy either.

  "Uh-oh," I said with a straight face.

  He tried a smile, but it didn't work. "I have the results of your marrow test, Robert." Even my mom never called me Robert. "I'm afraid it's not very good news."

  "Leukemia," I offered.

  He nodded. "I'm afraid so. And not a very nice kind either. It's acute myeloblastic."

  "And that's the worst kind?"

  "Yes, it is. I'm sorry."

  I just nodded and looked down at the hardened yolk. There was a fat lump of something in my throat, and I didn't think I could talk. I didn't want to cry in front of him, but I couldn't help it, and the tears started to roll. He sat there, looking sad and serious, and after a while I was through, for the time being. I wiped my eyes with the hospital napkin and said, "So what happens now?"

  "We treat it. It's not necessarily a death sentence, you know. It's a disease. A tough one, the son of a bitch of diseases, but still a disease."

  "What's the outlook then? The best?"

  He thrust out his lower lip and shook his head. "Hard to say. If you respond to chemotherapy the way most people do, you can go into remission and lead a normal life."

  "A normal life."

  "Yes. You'd have to come back every few days for continuing therapy, but there's no reason you can't do exactly what you're doing."

  "For how long?"

  "Well . . . most remissions should last a year or more. Some up to five years."

  "A year."

  "Some up to . . ."

  "Realistically. If I'm just an average case. A year?"

  I had him. Hooray for me. "A year."

  "Chemotherapy," I said.

  "Yes."

  "That'll make me sick, won't it?"

  "Possibly you'll feel some nausea."

  "And hair loss."

  "Possible, but after remission begins, it should grow back . . ."

  I waved an impatient hand. "That doesn't matter. Is there . . . is there a possibility that I could die during the treatments?"

  "Mmmm . . . none to speak of There's always the danger of infection when the body isn't prepared to cope with it, but it's such a slim possibility that . . ."

  "Then it is a possibility."

  "It's always a possibility, but . . ."

  "And when do I have to start chemotherapy?"

  "As soon as possible."

  "What happens if I wait?"

  "Nothing good. Leukemic cells are very active. They double in four days. In a little over five months one cell can become a trillion."

  "Sounds like a lot."

  "Enough to kill you."

  "That's a lot." I thought for a moment. "Can you give me a week?"

  He sighed. "Every day you wait, you make a successful remission that much more difficult to achieve."

  "I'll die anyway, won't I? In a year or two at most."

  "We don't know that for sure . . ."

  "We know, doc. Don't we." He didn't argue anymore. "I want one week. That's all. Then I'm yours. But I've got to have a week to take care of some unfinished business. That's the deal. Take it or leave it."

  He took it. He didn't have much of a choice. After all, he couldn't keep me there against my will.

  He could and did, however, tell Ev of my refusal to go into therapy immediately. He caught her in the hall before she got in to see me, took her downstairs to his office, and told her everything. When she finally came into my room, there was a mixture of anger, sorrow, pity, and half a dozen other things visible on her face. At first she couldn't speak, just stood there and looked at me, tears running down her face. Then she threw herself over me, decorously, as though she was afraid I might suddenly crumble to powder beneath her. "Hold me hard," I told her. "I'm not that fragile." She did then, and we both cried for a while, embarrassing a nurse who came in with a thermometer. She came back later.

  "We can't give up," was the first thing that Ev said, her pretty face shiny with tears that I wiped away with a hospital tissue.

  "We won't."

  "I love you."

  "I love you."

  "You've got to do what they tell you."

  "I will."

  "The doctor said you weren't."

  "I will just as soon as I take care of something."

  "But a week could make all the difference."

  "Fedder told you." She nodded. "Shit."

  "Why?" she asked me. "Just tell me why you won't go in right away?"

  "I can't."

/>   "Mac, what could be more important than this? I mean, my God, you're talking about leaving me, me and Carlie. I don't want you to leave us, I love you, goddammit, and I don't want you to go away. I'll do anything for an extra day, Mac. I won't let you do this. You've got to start right away, right now."

  "I can't. There's just something I've got to do first." She started to talk, but I put a finger to her lips. "One week. I promise. It has nothing to do with another woman, nothing to do with us. It's something to do with me, that's all. Something I've got to finish. And even if it's not finished, I'll start the chemotherapy, I promise."

  She argued for a while, and I couldn't blame her. If it'd been her, I'd have done the same. But it did no good. While I'd been in the hospital thinking about life and death, I'd also been thinking about Carlton Runnells and Christopher Townes. I had nothing in common with Townes except for the fact that he was dead and I soon would be. But somehow that was enough. Although Runnells was my client, he was healthy and alive, and there were other reasons I didn't like him. I believed in my gut that he had had something to do with Townes's death. There wasn't enough to go to the police with—just an unpleasant coincidence, really—but I wanted to watch Runnells for a few days, dig a little deeper, and see what happened. In retrospect it seems absurd, risking my life to follow a hunch. But it was something that I had never done before, and suddenly it was the most important thing in the world, more than life, more than Ev and Carlie, and that's saying a lot.

  I left the hospital that afternoon. When I got home, I packed a small bag, and told Ev only that I had to finish a case I'd been working on, and might be gone for a few days. She was furious at me, but that fury was tempered by love and impending loss, so she didn't react as violently as she could have. She tried to use guilt to make me stay, but it didn't work. Nothing would have worked. I didn't know what I was doing.

  I drove out to Ravenwood, parked my car alongside the main road, and walked back to the house through the fields, staying behind cover all the way. I sat down in a grove of trees from where I could see the front of the house, and I waited, just sat and waited. Michael Eshleman drove in in a Porsche just after five, but Runnells wasn't with him. Soon it got dark, and lights started to go on inside the house. One time I saw Carlton Runnells framed in one of the windows, so I knew he was there. Around midnight the lights went out, and I went back to the car and drove home.

  Ev cried when she saw me, and for the first time I realized that she suspected I was going out to commit suicide. Though she didn't say so, I could tell that that's what she had been thinking by the look of relief on her face. I held her while she cried, and told her that I would have to leave again in the morning. This time, since she believed me, she made little protest.

  In the morning, around seven, I kissed my sleeping Carlie good-bye, and drove back to Ravenwood. This time I didn't have long to wait. Just before noon, Michael Eshleman drove around to the front of the house in an '83 dark-gray Mercedes. He parked in front, and then went inside, reappearing with two leather shoulder bags, which he put in the trunk. I got back to my own car as quickly as I could, and drove down the road a half mile, pulling into a farm road that Eshleman would have to pass if he was heading for Route 283, the only road that led anywhere from Ravenwood.

  In twenty minutes I saw the Mercedes pass by. Though I was far back down the dirt road, I could see Runnells's chopped black hair through the passenger window. I counted to fifteen, and started to follow them, staying far behind. They got on 283 all right, and headed east toward Lancaster. There they turned northeast on 272, and finally got the turnpike heading east.

  I would have been willing to bet the year of life I had left that we were bound for New York City.

  Chapter 7

  We got there just after five in the afternoon, not a moment too soon as far as I was concerned. Following a car from southern Pennsylvania to New York City is no treat. I lost them several times at tollbooths, but always caught up with them. Fortunately they stayed well within the speed limit, an occurrence one might not expect from one who had as much money to pay speeding fines as Carlton Runnells did. I sort of guessed (hoped?) that there was a good reason why they didn't want to be stopped by the police. They took a break halfway there, getting ice cream at a Howard Johnson's. I didn't join them.

  If it was tough following them on the New Jersey Turnpike, it was twice as hard once we got into New York. When I found myself right behind them at a red light, I jammed on my baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses. If Eshleman saw me in the rearview mirror, he gave no indication. It's a remarkable thing that if you don't expect to be followed, you never look back. So did that mean that my two buddies felt no guilt at all? Or did it just mean that their self-confidence was supreme?

  I hung onto them like death, and wasn't surprised to find myself tailing them into the east eighties, Townes and Arkassian's neighborhood. They entered a parking garage, and I rounded the block before I followed them in. When I got to the fifth level, I could see them down the ramp standing by the elevators. I parked and took the stairs. They were halfway down the block and heading toward Ben Arkassian's apartment building when I hit the street. I went to the other side and followed them until they went into the building.

  The friendly coffee shop where I'd spent so many joyous hours a few weeks before I became doomed was open, so I went in. None of the help was the same. They must have heard I was coming. I took a window seat and ordered a glass of milk. I was jumpy enough without coffee.

  In less than fifteen minutes Runnells and Eshleman came out the front door of Arkassian's building, and went down the street toward the parking garage. I tossed a buck on the table and followed them. It took me a while to pick them up, but eventually I did, and tailed them as far as the Lincoln Tunnel, which was a good indication that they weren't going to hang around town any longer. I didn't give a damn where they went from there, so I turned my car around and headed back to the city.

  I parked illegally by a phone booth and called a couple of hotels, all of which were filled. Then I tried Tom and Jay's number, although I really didn't want to stay with them—I felt too lousy for that. Nobody answered, so finally I figured fuck it, and drove over to the Helmsley Palace, turned my clunky old Chevy over to an epauletted valet who looked afraid to get in, and strode through the lobby up to the front desk like Lon Chaney as the Red Death. The desk clerk said they didn't have any rooms, but when I handed him a pair of twenties he said he thought there may have been a cancellation.

  I got a room, and didn't enjoy it one bit. Oh, sure, it was just like Mrs. Helmsley said it was, but it didn't mean much when you were dying and didn't have anyone you loved there to share it with you, both the room and the dying.

  Once I got settled in and tipped the snotty bellman, I called Eddie Reilly and told him I'd like to buy him a drink. He had to come in from Queens, and I heard him ask his wife for permission. Evidently he got it, because he said he'd see me in an hour, and he laughed when he heard where I was staying. "Hit the lottery?" he asked jokingly.

  "In a way," I said, thinking of Shirley Jackson's story.

  We met in the bar and ordered scotches, then chatted for a while before I asked him what I'd planned to. "Can you do me a little favor, Eddie?"

  "If I can."

  "There's a case I'm interested in—that Townes homicide." He nodded and sipped. "I'd like to know what might have been found in the apartment the night he died."

  "What, the evidence list?"

  "Yeah."

  He shook his head. "You got any official business in this case, or is this . . . a private matter?"

  "Private."

  "Mac, you're a buddy of mine and I like you a lot, but that kind of information just isn't available to the average citizen. Anybody found out, I'd get my butt reamed."

  "Tell you what," I said. "If some inside knowledge I had cracked the case, and I came to you with it, what would happen to you then?"

  He cocked his head and loo
ked at me like I was something he hadn't seen before. "I might get a citation, if we played it smart. Why? What's in it for you?"

  "Nothing. Satisfaction. Can you get me the list?"

  "Probably. You promise to keep it to yourself."

  "Unless it turns out to be something, then I come to you."

  We shook hands on it, and he promised to call me the next day. After two more drinks, I went back to my opulent room and slept poorly.

  In the morning, my room-service breakfast sat untouched, that was how lousy I felt. I did sip a little fresh orange juice, though, so there was something in my stomach when I hit the street. I figured Eddie wouldn't call for a few hours, and if he did he could leave a message. So I went across the street to St. Patrick's Cathedral—I had last been there on my senior-class trip to New York. It was big and clean and awesome, and even though I'm not a Catholic, I went from saint to saint, from one station of the cross to the next, in an attitude of religious humility. At last I found myself in one of the pews on my knees, my head bowed, praying for life. All thoughts of Carlton Runnells and Christopher Townes were gone. All thoughts of everything were gone except for what was happening to me.

  I didn't hear anything. I didn't expect to. No statues bled, the earth didn't shake. Nonetheless, I felt better for having done it. It couldn't hurt, could it? I didn't think it could hurt a bit.

  I have never been a deeply religious man. At home we say grace before meals, and we go to church, but we started to do it only since Carlie was old enough to understand what it meant. We did it for her, I suppose. There are too many distractions in church for me to take it seriously as a place of worship—weak singing, announcements of dinners and lectures, the intrusive offering plates. Perhaps I should have been a Catholic. Perhaps my faith would have been greater had it been sustained with the stuff of ritual. Right now I needed ritual. I needed something to bear me up, to hug me to it like a child to its mother's breast. Now the last rites, which had always seemed to me so absurd, seemed entirely reasonable, and I decided that when I was ready to die I would become a Catholic.