The Wave

by Kristen Crusoe

  ‘Hi, I’m Megan,’ the tall woman, wearing a white lab coat, standing next to one of the behemoth machines said, a broad smile lighting up her face, as though they were gathering for that perfect dinner party. ‘Come on in. Stand right here. This is our new imaging radiography and it is so much nicer than the other one we had. Are you doing OK? Can I get you anything? This won’t take long.’

  She stood in the center of this white, startling room, trying hard to get her bearings. Her keeper, or guard from the psych unit, Linda, stood next to her, trying to be innocuous but not succeeding. How many patients come for a mammogram, from the locked psychiatric unit, with a guard? Clair thought not too many. So, here she was. If she had just kept quiet about that pain in her breast this wouldn’t even be happening. She’d just go on like nothing was wrong. But she had flinched on the beach with Jet. And damn that Jet, she had noticed and insisted on the doctor checking and now she was here. It had all happened so quickly; she was still stunned. She turned as the woman named Megan began to remove the kimono from her right side.

  ‘If you could just step close to this plate,’ she said, gently guiding her towards the mammography unit. Clair stepped up, allowed Megan to situate her breast on the flat surface, reach her arm up overhead, and flatten the breast between the two plates. She followed her instructions to the letter. It was comforting to be so controlled. So maintained.

  ‘I’m sorry, this might pinch,’ Megan warned. ‘OK, we’re almost there, let me take a look. OK, that’s good, hold your breath, hold, and OK, now breathe.’

  Clair stepped back from the vice grips, covered herself with the sleeve of the kimono. She stood still in the room, not moving as Linda read the magazine and Megan changed films.

  ‘OK, let’s do the other side. I didn’t ask but is this a routine mammogram or is there a problem? You were placed on the add-on schedule without much background.’

  ‘Ah, I am having some pain over here,’ pointing to her left side.

  ‘OK, let’s see what it looks like,’ Megan said as she gently guided Clair back to the imaging machine.

  ‘Like before,’ she said as she pulled the kimono off the left side, bearing the left breast that made her gasp before she knew how to stop. The redness was evident even from her angle.

  ‘Oh, well, yes, that is red. Let’s see if we can get a picture of this.’

  The small movement of taking hold of the left breast caused Clair to cry out. The pain was intense. Megan gently released her hold, easing Clair away from the machine.

  ‘Let’s stop,’ Megan said. ‘This won’t work. We need another tool here. Something that won’t hurt so bad. Are you OK?’ she asked, laying her warm hand on Clair’s arm.

  Tears came to her eyes, unbidden, unwanted.

  ‘Yeah, I guess I’m OK. What now? She said, stepping back, covering herself up again.

  ‘Clair, we need Dr Michaels here. I think we will switch to an ultrasound examination. It will be less painful and also provide us with a better picture. Can you and Linda wait here for a bit? I’ll give Dr Michaels a call. It shouldn’t take long. Can I bring you anything? Coffee? Tea?’

  What could she say? She was their prisoner. Their mental patient. Did she even want to know?

  After what seemed like an hour but was only ten minutes, another woman entered their exam room. She was also tall, like Megan, but so slender, it seemed she might break in two, like a twig. When she extended her hand for Clair to take, it felt strong, capable. Clair liked her immediately. Her hair was short, curly, brown with specks of gray. She wore no make-up, and her eyes shone with intelligence and kindness through wire-framed rectangular glasses.

  ‘Dr Mercer, hello. I’m Sarah Michaels, radiologist. I am sorry that you’re having this problem today and I’m going to do all I can to help you through the examination so we can know what is happening in your breast. How does that sound?’

  Linda had reached over and placed an arm on Clair’s shoulder, as though to steady her.

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  Dr Michaels sat down on the seat beside Clair. ‘Yes, you do have a choice. In fact, I have a consent form here for you to sign. This exam is invasive. First, we will locate the mass using ultrasound. Then a technician will insert a large needle and aspirate fluid for biopsy. It may be uncomfortable and we can give you a light sedative, if you would like. It’s the best way for us to determine if that lump in your breast is cancer or not.’

  ‘And if I refuse, what then?’ Clair asked, gazing into the other woman’s steady brown eyes.

  ‘Well, if this is cancer, it will get worse. It will most likely spread throughout your body. The fact that it came up suddenly, is painful, and the area around it is red, makes me think that it might be a form called inflammatory breast cancer. If so, you will need to get started right away on treatment.’

  ‘And if I don’t want treatment?’ Clair asked, feeling a bit like a stubborn two-year-old talking about eating her vegetables.

  ‘Well, I don’t know, Clair. Every individual is unique, every cancer is unique. Maybe we should just take this one step at a time. Beginning with an ultrasound exam to clearly visualize the area in your breast that is causing the pain and redness. May I touch you?’

  Dr Michaels pulled back the kimono, exposing the left breast. She gently palpated the reddened area. Clair winced but didn’t pull back.

  ‘I can feel a hardened area. Clair, we will need to biopsy this area to know if it is cancer or something else, like an infectious process. We need to know before you can make any sort of informed decision about what comes next. Can we do that today?’ Dr Michaels asked.

  Clair looked at Linda. ‘Do you need to get back to the unit? Can you stay with me?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll call over. Let them know what’s happening. I’ll stay, Clair.’

  ‘OK, then, let’s get this done.’

  Chapter 12

  Adam

  The drive over the Coastal Range mountains to Eugene took Adam close to an hour. This time of year, the river was low from lack of rain, gurgling over the rocks and fallen debris. The hillsides were dotted with sheep and grown offspring, many still trying to nurse, even though often bigger than their ewes. Cows, horses, llamas, and goats lay about under large oak trees, soaking up the last of the late summer sun. Weathered barns and outbuildings caught the shadows, inviting reverie for times past.

  He felt twisted inside out, hungover, depleted. Still wearing the same shirt and jacket, pants, even socks he had on at the bar last night, he knew he smelt of beer, smoke, and old sweat. He had closed the place down, playing pool with the bikers, dancing with the woman who, like Cohen sang, must have been a hundred but was wearing something tight. He didn’t remember how he had gotten home. He had woken up, head throbbing, mouth dry, his phone alarm jangling. When he had looked at the calendar reminder, it said to pick up Ben and Jodie at the airport at 6 p.m. It was 4.30 and he knew the drive would take at least an hour or more, depending on traffic and road work. Somehow, he made it in under an hour.

  Ben was the first to emerge from the security area. Jodie close behind, both wearing backpacks and carrying large canvas totes. Not for the first time he marveled at how different they were and yet, banded together for many years now. But maybe that had been as much circumstance as character. Ben took after their mother, small, pale complexion, hips wide, almost feminine. Clair had inherited her father’s height, aristocratic personage, but not his arrogance. Jodie’s skin and bone structure showed off her South African heritage. Her father, an Anglican bishop during apartheid, had moved the family first to South Carolina, where they were granted protected status, and later to Washington. Jodie’s accent mixed her original Afrikaans, with deep south and her own unique musical and articulate voice. Beautiful and kind, she was a strong balance for Ben’s quick-fire nature.

  They wa
nted to go straight to the hospital, not stopping at the house to change or rest. And that was fine with him. He hoped they would decide to stay in town, rather than at his house, seeing as it was so far out. He might find a way to suggest this. For now, he just wanted get this visit over with, then go home and sleep.

  The drive back to the coast gave him time to catch them up.

  ‘All I know is that she is under commitment,’ he said when Ben asked why she was being kept on the psych ward.

  ‘Why can’t she go home?’ he had asked.

  Adam tried to explain the convoluted mental health laws in Oregon to these people who had spent the better part of the past twenty years living and working in countries under attack, or in refugee camps. The idea that a mathematics professor could be kept locked up for six months because she was grieving for her lost child was incomprehensible to them.

  ‘Crap!’ Ben exclaimed. ‘Did she have a lawyer? Anyone to argue for her?’

  ‘She refused to let me pay for one. She insisted on having the legal aid attorney who, like most of them, was fresh out of school and hated the ‘mentals’ as they are called. He was less than helpful. But Ben, it might be the best place for her now. She still perseverates on dying and being with Devon. She had a near-death experience and it has left her psychotic. She believes she saw Devon while she was in the ocean, and that he is out there waiting for her. You can’t reason with her. It just is this way.’

  ‘In my culture, we believe in the division of the body, and that the spiritual parts of the body and sometimes the physical body itself will survive death,’ Jodie said from her seat in the back. She leaned forward, placing a hand on Adam’s shoulder.

  ‘From an anthropological and theological perspective, it is understood that during the near-death experience, the mind or spirit leaves the body, and this idea is not a strange or new phenomenon to many people. I think Western thought and maybe the criminal justice system has some learning to do.’

  ‘That may be so Jodie, and I respect and honor your knowledge on this, but it isn’t helping her now. And she has this therapist, Jet, who I am afraid is feeding into her psychosis. I just want her out of there so I can find her some real help. She needs to be on medication but she refuses.’

  ‘I thought that was the purpose of commitment,’ Ben said. ‘To force people to take meds?’

  ‘Only if they are violent. She’s committed but still has her rights to refuse treatment. It’s a fucking wreck.’

  ‘What can we do Adam? How are you? We feel so out of touch,’ Jodie said.

  ‘I don’t know. Your being here might be good for her. To see, and know about the world outside. I just really don’t have a clue.’

  They were quiet the rest of the ride. Both Ben and Jodie slept, exhausted after their eighteen-hour flight from Amsterdam. Following the river back, retracing earlier miles, evening settling in, his mind wandered back to the first time he had seen Clair. He had been at the annual Arts Showcase, a sort of final exam for students, and a chance for faculty to show off their own skills. Clair had been on stage, playing cello, while dancers performed a passage from The Rite of Spring.

  ‘Who is that?’ he had asked Claudia, his theater department chair and sometimes lover. They had both viewed their sex as recreational and avoided the romantic pitfalls so many faculty colleagues fell into, always with awkward and sometimes fatal consequences. Loss of tenure prospects, loss of job. Loss of family, reputation. With Claudia, it was mutually beneficial and superficial. At least he had believed.

  ‘Oh, that’s Clair Mercer, theoretical mathematics,’ she had replied, sipping her champagne.

  ‘So, that’s the beautiful and enigmatic Dr Clair Mercer,’ he had thought out loud. Stories had circulated among faculty, about this brilliant woman who kept to herself, didn’t engage in the usual social activities that seemed to infect college campuses, giving rise to a culture of sophomoric competition.

  Claudia had given him a funny look, then turned and walked away. He had watched mesmerized as Clair played. She had been dressed in a full black skirt, tucked modestly in so that she could hold the cello between her knees. Her every stroke and caress of the strings had caused her to bend and sheer to the side, her hair, tied back in a bun at the nape of her neck, came loose, and feathered her face. He had wanted to reach out and tuck it back, reveal her. As she dipped and swayed, taken over by the music, occasionally throwing her head back in pure ecstasy, he had been captured, unable to take his eyes off her. After, he would watch her cross campus, long, confident strides making her seem to glide. Occasionally she would stop, chat with the groups of students, easy and natural with them. During a faculty meeting, he had overheard her talking to a math colleague about fractals. Patterns that expanded, but held onto their original seed pattern, a spiral dynamic that always contained its beginning. If only he could help her find that seed inside herself – that person before all of this, before him, before Devon. If he could help her remember, and let go of everything else, maybe she could find a way to live. Even if it meant living without him.

  When they pulled up to the front of the emergency department lobby, Adam directed them to the Psychiatric Unit, on the third floor.

  ‘I’ll just park, and be there in a minute,’ he said, looking forward to a short power nap in the car. His eyes burned and he thought he might pass out.

  He parked the car, let his seat down, pulled his jacket over him, locked all doors, closed his eyes and was gone in a moment’s time. He woke with a start when he heard his phone’s ringtone. Dark now, the lights in the parking lot casting a yellow glow, he was momentarily disoriented.

  ‘Where the hell is she?’ Ben’s voice cried into the phone. ‘They’re saying she’s not there, on the unit. That they’ve never heard of a Clair Mercer.’

  ‘Oh fuck. They are so obstructive. I’ll be right there. Wait for me in the lobby.’

  He used the door handle to pull himself out of the car. Stiff, sore, he stretched tall, lifted his face to catch the cool mist drifting down, allowing a moment to breathe in its velvety softness. Pulling his jacket hood over his head, shoulders slumped, he lumbered off across the tarmac.

  * * *

  The intercom buzzed.

  ‘It’s Adam Gage, here to see Clair Mercer. Belinda, you know it’s me. This is Clair’s family. Please, let us in or at least let Clair know we’re here.’

  The voice coming through the speaker was tinny. ‘Dr Gage, it’s Charles. Hold on, I’ll come out and talk with you. Better yet, come in. I’ll let you into the conference room.’

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ Adam said to Ben. ‘I don’t get it.’

  The buzzer, indicating the door to the sallyport unlocking, sounded. Adam pushed through, holding it for Ben and Jodie. They waited in the center of the small cubicle, for the second click, indicating they were released to enter into the locked unit. Charles, a middle-aged nurse with shaggy, gray hair and a gold stud in his earlobe, stood sentinel, shepherding them into the conference room to the right. But before they were able to enter, two surgical technicians, wearing the green scrubs of the operating room, wheeled a gurney towards them. As they moved aside to make room for the team to pass, Adam saw Clair, her head covered by a surgical cap, IV line dripping from her arm. She caught his eye as she passed, and mouthed the words, ‘I’m sorry,’ as they pushed by.

  Chapter 13

  Clair

  Clair laid still on the white sheeted bed, an IV-line snaking into her right forearm, a sting, each time the machine beeped, pumping a hit of morphine into her fragile vein, followed by immediate and intense nausea then blessed nothingness. She would drift off for several minutes, then awake again with a start, panic and dread chilling her blood, her entire body shivering in spite of the room’s sticky warmth and the heated blanket thrown over her near naked body. A thin cotton gown, untied to allow for eas
y access by the nurses barely covered her. She felt carved out, unmasked, and vulnerable. The only thing keeping her connected with reality was the punishing pain in her chest, where her breasts used to be.

  A soft knock sounded at the door, followed by a voice.

  ‘Hello, Clair. How are you feeling? OK if I come in?’

  Clair turned her head, eyes trying to focus through the morphine cloud.

  ‘Hmm, Jet, come in.’

  Jet stopped at the sink to wash her hands, then walked over to the side of Clair’s bed. A stool on wheels sat in the corner. She pulled it over so she would be at eye level with Clair. Clair had turned her head away again, looking out the window at passing clouds cutting through the tops of tall evergreens. The light was fading early, fall bringing shorter, cooler days, longer nights. Jet noticed her hands gripping the blanket on the bed.

  ‘Are you hurting now?’ she asked. ‘Do you need your nurse?’

  ‘I’m OK,’ Clair said, keeping her head turned so Jet wouldn’t see the tears glistening in her eyes. ‘I don’t like the morphine. It makes me sick. I prefer the pain.’

  Jet didn’t say anything. They sat there, in quiet, for several minutes until another knock sounded at the door. They looked up together, seeing a tall, slumped-shouldered man, with short, dark-brown hair standing there. He wore a bright purple shirt, lime green tie, and jeans. He wasn’t old, but not young either. He looked like he might have looked since he was a high school student, except for a receding hairline.

  He walked briskly over to the side of the bed. Jet had to scoot over on her rolling stool to make room for him. He held out his hand, eager as a puppy. Clair began to reach up to take it then winced, tucking her arm back down by her side. He smiled and tucked both hands in his pockets, nodding at Jet. They knew each other from having worked together over the years, Jet consulting on his patients with depression and anxiety. Jet stood up, offering him her stool, the only available seat in the room.