Hold Me Closer Tiny Cancer (Part 2)

I heard footsteps coming down the hall.  At first I thought it might be Manuel coming to take to my chemo appointment but realized it was too early for that.  It turned out to be Donna, one of the nursing interns.

Donna was young and very good looking, and her physical beauty really stood out compared to us bald and wasting cancer patients.  It was an uncomfortable contrast for her as well as us.  I wouldn't go so far as to say we repulsed her but it was clear she would have felt better around a different clientele, perhaps people recovering from rhinoplasty or minor sports injuries.  Or maybe just less depressing than we were.

It was nearly impossible to be around her and not be affected by her appearance.  I was a happily married man but when she walked in the room, I caught myself preening for her.  I sat up in bed and tried to straighten my hair, forgetting that it all fell out a couple of weeks ago.

Les' reaction was far more spirited.  He was holding two Post-it pads and dropped one of them on the floor.  When she bent over to pick it up for him, I was content to simply admire her posterior but Les had other plans.  He quickly scribbled a note onto the pad he was still holding, peeled it off, and slapped it onto her butt. 

This made her let out a yelp.  When she spun around to face Les, he was laughing, or his jawless equivalent, which sounded more like someone raking wet leaves on cement.  It must have been too much for the poor girl.  She fled the room with "Property of Les Chinn" stuck to her rear end.

Manuel arrived after a bit to take me to my chemo appointment.  As he helped me out of bed and to my feet, I noticed that he was wearing a gun belt and sidearm over his sky-blue scrubs

Les saw it too.  He scribbled a note on his Post-it pad and showed it to Manuel and me.

"Don't shoot me.  She wanted it," the note said.

"Huh?  Oh this", Manuel said, pointing at his gun.  "It's a new security precaution.  We're required to wear them when we go outdoors.  Try not to let it bother you."

"Do you think you'll ever have to use that thing?" I asked.

"I hope not," he said.  "We're not allowed to load our weapons."

I walked with Manuel down the hallway toward the door that led to the grounds.  I was hoping that even without bullets in the guns, Monos Borrachos administrators had erred on the side of caution.  After all, this wasn't a Planned Parenthood clinic.  Since the reformed healthcare system came into effect, there had been no shootings at clinics that did not provide abortions.  Well, there was that paintball incident at a hospital in Delaware when a homeless man was going in for a kidney transplant but nothing with real bullets.  Not bad for three solid months.

On the other hand, the anger level of protesters had increased after Fox News aired two-part series of special investigative reports about abusers of the system.

The first was titled "Cancer Cells, Terror Cells" and claimed that treatment centers such as the one I was in aided and abetted Al Qaeda.  According to an unnamed homeland-security expert shown in dark silhouette, members of this group have been getting tumors from handling WMDs during training exercises and are using free American healthcare to get well enough to carry out their suicide attacks.

"Day Laborers, Healthcare Nightmare" was the second piece and the story was about clinics and hospitals of every sort, rather than just cancer-treatment centers.  In this segment, an unnamed legislative analyst (also shown in dark silhouette) said that somewhere in the legalese of the bill signed into law was a provision that American citizens have a lower treatment priority than illegal immigrants due to an alien-reparations rider amendment tacked on by Ted Kennedy just before he died.

The Obama administration dismissed the allegations as pure fiction.  Fox News viewers, on the other hand, took it as gospel.

"Don't worry," Manuel, who was Latino, assured me.  "As long as no one thinks that I am the patient, everything is going to be OK."

We walked outside through the automatic double doors.  We must have surprised the crowd because at first, there was no shouting, no insults.  They stood around talking and joking withe each other like they were friends gathered at a weekend barbecue.  And for the briefest of moments, I didn't feel like I was their enemy.  I was not a parasite bleeding society dry to them.  I was simply Richard Terkel, a friend and neighbor who just happened to be very sick.

The moment didn't last.  When the protesters saw us, they mustered into a united opposition.  The exception were the Westboro Baptist, who had been yelling unintelligibly and waving their "God Hates Remission" signs from the get go.

 The bulk of the crowd started with a chant I was pretty sure they had been doing off and on all day.  I couldn't make out the exact words when I was indoors but the cadence and meter were the same.

As we neared the chemo/radiation building, the tempo quickened and the volume increased.  It seemed like they were nearing a boiling point where they would charge us.  Maybe it was basic civility that stayed their hand.  Maybe it was Manuel's pistol.  Things would turn violent for someone but not for us, at least not right now.  We made it inside the building safe and sound.

Manuel led me to one to one of the chemo couches, which looked like a Barcalounger with an IV unit set up on the side of it.

"I'm sorry about what happened outside," he said while helping me onto the couch.  "Can you do me a favor?"

"What?" I asked.

"Outlive them."

He said he'd be back in a few hours to pick me up and left. 

The room I was in sat twelve.  All the couches faced a TV screen showing Animal Planet so the patients didn't have to look at each other.  The struggle for survival of gazelles and sea otters is a lot more fun to watch.

A medical technician came along and hooked up the chemo drip, saying the doctor would be along shortly.  From an upside-down bottle hanging from the IV stand, fluid moved down a plastic tube and through a needle into my arm.  Its job was to kill the cancer cells growing inside my body.  It was not supposed to kill the rest of me in the process but after each of these treatments, it felt like it was doing just that.

A short while later, the oncologist came in and started making her rounds.  She asked me how I as doing while she was checking my chart.  I said fine, she said good, and she moved onto the next patient.  There was nothing kindly or maternal about her bedside manner.  It was as if she were overseeing an assembly line that churned out cancer survivors and she was damned if she was going to let anyone die on her watch.

I actually found her demeanor reassuring.  Sympathy and comfort for the afflicted do not cure cancer and they never have.  Chemotherapy and radiation treatment put people through hell but they hold the best hope for recovery.  My oncologist knew that what was best for me was not always what was easiest.  In that way, she kind of reminded me of Heidi when she and I first got together.

It was many years ago just after the death of my grandfather.  The man practically raised me and I loved him very much.  He left me a sizable sum of money that was sitting untouched in my bank account.  I couldn't bring myself to spend any of it because I thought it would cheapen his memory and I had every intention of living out my life grieving this way.

My girlfriend at the time was no help at all.  She was a sweet but plain woman with no ambition.  She had no problem spending night after night curled up with me on the couch in front of the TV, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes together while watching rented videos until all hours of the night.  It was her then best friend Heidi who rescued me from that and showed me that I deserved better.

Heidi persuaded me to dump the girlfriend and start dating her.  I was also to quit smoking (Heidi was allergic) and most importantly, to loosen up and live a little.  She convinced me of something that should been quite obvious all along, that my grandfather left me the money for me to enjoy.

The romance blossomed and within a year, Heidi and I were married.  We lived in carefree luxury for as long as the money would last, which turned out to be just over a year.  I might have slid back into my old ways if it weren't for Heidi.  She gave me the motivation I needed to find and hang onto a higher-paying job, even though that meant working long hours and weekends, so we could continue to live in the way we had grown accustomed.

It was all worth it.  We had a great life together that could be exemplified in no better way than in our beautiful son Tyler.  Even in my fight against cancer, I felt like I was the luckiest man alive.  I was glad I would have two days to recover between this chemo treatment and her visit.  I wanted to show her that I was on the road to once again being the man she married.  After all she had done for me, she deserved nothing less.