I Never Thought I'd See You Again: A Novelists Inc. Anthology

by Неизвестный

  “It means tests to begin with. Then surgery. After that … ” She shrugged indifferently. “Chemo, radiation. It’s too soon to tell, exactly, what we’ll be doing.”

  It wasn’t really a medical timeline she’d wanted right then, though. No. Maggie Holmes needed the reassurances all people with cancer needed. She needed to hear it would be fine, that the cancer wasn’t drastic, wasn’t spreading, wasn’t going to be significant. Bottom line - she needed some hope to go along with the diagnosis. All she got, though, was a doctor who didn’t want to be bothered, a nurse who didn’t have enough time to be bothered, and a lot of hours staring at the gray walls in an empty emergency exam room, wondering how this had happened.

  “But I wasn’t sick,” she told the doctor, who was in the process of donning her party hat. “No symptoms, not feeling bad. Not tired. Maybe it’s not cancer. I mean, there haven’t really been any tests yet, and …

  “It’s cancer,” the doctor cut her off. “Advanced. You had to have symptoms because nobody gets to this place without a warning sign. You probably just ignored the obvious. People do that.”

  But she hadn’t. She knew that, no matter what the doctor said. “So, what’s the prognosis?” Maggie asked. It was a simple request, really, but the doctor merely shrugged.

  “Too soon to tell.” Said in front of the mirror where she was starting to apply a fresh coat of glossy pink lipstick.

  Life as normal for her, Maggie thought. But for me? “Then what comes next?”

  She blotted her lipstick on a paper towel, then tossed it in the trash. “I’ll be referring you to an oncologist who’ll be able to tell you more.”

  Oncologist. Such a formidable word, and she wondered why someone would be drawn to a specialty where the odds were stacked against any one patient right from the beginning. Maybe it’s because the victories were better. You have a broken leg, it will heal. Nice victory, not great. You have cancer, you’ll survive. Great victory. Of course, some people thrive on challenge and cancer, if nothing else, always posed a challenge. Whatever the reason, Maggie was suddenly mighty glad people chose that line of work.

  “In the meantime, we’re going to admit you for observation,” the doctor tossed casually over her shoulder on her way out the door. “Your oncologist is on vacation, won’t be back until the first of the week, so I’ll write the order to keep you until then.”

  For most people, that might have sounded good. Reassuring. But Maggie wasn’t reassured at all by the promise of four days under observation. And all for a cancer that, most likely, had been growing in her for some time. What were they going to observe? The slow realization that she did, indeed, have cancer? The onset of the real emotions? The fear? The anger?

  “I’ll be going home,” Maggie said.

  That actually stopped the doctor at the door. “Why?”

  “Why not?” she countered. “What can anybody do for me here that I can’t do for myself at home?”

  You have cancer,” the doctor said. “Perhaps you don’t understand what that means.”

  To the contrary, Maggie understood exactly what that meant. And over the course of the next few days, she had no doubt that understanding would mature. Because right now, her cancer was only in its infancy. Maybe not in terms of how long it had been in her body. But in terms of how long it had been in her mind. And like a cancer itself, that understanding would grow, and consume.

  An hour later, Maggie signed the dismissal papers, with promises to subject herself to even more tests before she went home to live out day one. Truly, this was the first day of the rest of her life. Sure, it was a trite saying, one that didn’t mean much under usual circumstances. Today, though, circumstances were not usual. She had cancer.

  Chapter Two

  Now came the definitive tests, and doing this alone was tough. Yet she couldn’t help but think that doing it with someone tagging along would have been tougher, because she would have had to talk. Or react. Or try to be strong for the person who was grappling for the right words even though, at this early stage, Maggie wasn’t sure there were any words she wanted to hear other than Oops, big mistake. You don’t have cancer. To be honest, she just didn’t feel like being social for a little while. Not yet, when it was all so fresh and not really even sinking in.

  So, for awhile, this was her secret to keep and, truthfully, parts of her wondered if she might be able to keep the secret for the duration. Of course the bald head somewhere down the line might be a dead giveaway that something was going on. Me, on chemo? Heavens, no. Hair is just so done to death these days that bald is my new look. Then there was the distinct possibility that with radiation she’d be too weak to Facebook for a while, and those who knew her knew she was a total addict, that her day wasn’t complete without a comment or a like or a share.

  For now, though, doing the first round of tests alone was fine, probably because she wasn’t yet weak or bald, and more probably because she had to figure out how to tell people in such a way that didn’t make them feel bad. Or sad. Or horrified. Or end up in tears. Because these were emotions to which she was entitled. She, alone. Maggie Holmes. Not her circle of friends , not even her family. Not yet, anyway. And she hadn’t had time to experience them herself, so she sure as heck wasn’t going to give someone else the opportunity to beat her to them.

  So, the people in blue scrubs, and green scrubs and even red scrubs rushed her into a barrage of tests, and for the first little while after diagnosis the pace was so hectic Maggie really wasn’t given sufficient time to digest the information of her condition, let alone think about anything other than which test came after the last one. Was that by design? She wondered, because it occurred to her that in the grand scheme of all dire medical things, an occupied mind was easier to deal with. As her grandmother always said, “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” Okay, so maybe that applied more to sinning than thinking cancer thoughts, but what about cancer was not of the devil? It was one of the most feared diagnoses in the world, the one that came straight from hell, and would drag you through hell, if you let it. So maybe it did make sense to keep the thoughts out for as long as possible. Or at least long enough for all the different colored scrubs to get you through the tests.

  Scans, needles, test tubes, undress, dress, sit around and wait, hold her breath and don’t move. Numb upon numb. It was no wonder Maggie was exhausted on that, the first day of her cancer. Armed with a handful of explanatory papers and prescriptions for tests, she was sent off to follow the yellow line down the middle of the hospital corridor for even more tests, with explicit instructions to stop and see what was behind door number one first, proceed afterwards to door number two, and we’ve made you an appointment for door number three in exactly an hour. Don’t be late … late … for a very important date.

  People were kind to Maggie on the initial launching of her new purpose in life. Never in her life had she had so many sympathetic looks and hand squeezes. But the sympathy literally oozed from everybody, and for every little drop of it she encountered, Maggie wondered if they knew something she didn’t. Where they hiding something from her, not telling her the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Were those looks of condolence for the consequences of cancer nobody ever wanted to think about? The part where someone doesn’t survive it, where they fight it like hell, turn their life over to it and tell the world they’re determined to beat the bastard. But they know you won’t? Was that what she was seeing and only coming to understand as she was being sucked into a claustrophobic tube to have every last inch of her body scanned? Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.

  Or not.

  “So, what are you in for?” the ultrasound tech asked her, as she glopped some icy-cold slime all over Maggie’s front side.

  “C-ca … can … ” Nope, not ready to say the word out loud yet. “Tests.” A nice, barren term for nothing. “My doctor’s trying to figure out what’s going on with me. No biggie,” Maggie said, figuring the tech had probabl
y read the chart and seen the diagnosis, and this was her way of managing tough conversation. In other words, it was Maggie’s ball to pick up or drop.

  “Yeh, they do like to do a lot of tests, don’t they? Come in for a hangnail and they treat you like you’ve got … well, something worse.”

  So did that mean if you came in for some worse, like cancer, for instance, they’d treat you like you had a hangnail? Didn’t sound like such a bad trade-off, actually. “Guess it’s better to be safe than sorry,” Maggie said.

  “It’s a CYA world,” the tech replied.

  “Huh?”

  “You know. Cover-your-ass.”

  Yes, that it was. Especially if your ass had cancer, Maggie supposed.

  Chapter Three

  She didn’t sleep much that first night. Too many thoughts creeping in and out. Too many uncertainties. How do I handle this? Who should I tell? When will it hit me?

  Maybe that was the biggest question, because she was waiting for the real impact of it to replace the abject numbness and, for the first time in her life, Maggie understood what it meant to wait on pins and needles because her body felt like it was being pricked from all directions. Little pricks and jabs of memory from just hours earlier, the task of telling her husband, trying not to think about it every second of every minute of every hour. Then there were the thorny reminders from yesterday when she didn’t know she had cancer, when her greatest expectation had been a benign diagnosis and a prescription for a pill. And the day before that, when life had been good.

  But it wasn’t good now, and in the short bursts of sleep she was allowed, she tossed and turned, and woke herself up with thoughts that slipped back and forth from the conscious to the unconscious as easily as anyone might walk from room to room. It was like both parts of her mind - the waking and sleeping - were intertwined, the worries of the day drifting into her dreams, turning them into nightmares. But the nightmares came as much in her wakefulness as they did in her sleep, volleying her back and forth between the two existences.

  “I’ve got to do better,” she told her husband, David, the next morning. “I can’t go through another night like I had last night.”

  “It’ll be fine,” he commented over his cup of coffee. “The doctors will do whatever they have to do, and you’ll get through it the way you get through everything else. You’re a strong woman, Mags. This isn’t going to defeat you, but you’re going to have to be patient with yourself.”

  Words meant to be supportive that somehow fell flat. But it really was a singular battle, wasn’t it? One no one could know unless they’d fought it themselves.

  Oh, he’d put his arms around her when she’d told him, and held her as long as she needed to be held. Then he’d asked her the timetable for whatever they were going to do after which she’d fixed dinner, read for a while - life the way it usually played out. Maybe his kiss goodnight had lingered a little longer than it usually did, though. Or maybe that’s just what she’d wanted. Maggie wasn’t sure about that, or about anything else. But when the lights went out, David was instantly asleep, as was his own normal, and she was left to linger in her abnormal, with her doubts and confusion. And now … “But am I strong enough?” she asked him. “Am I really strong enough to do this?”

  “What makes you think you wouldn’t be?” he asked. “Nothing’s really changed, has it? You’ve got cancer, but that doesn’t change who you are.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “Give it time, Mags. Like I said, it’ll work out.”

  Time? What a vague concept. Certainly in any given life, the journey of time was doled out by Fate, or luck or deity, and everybody had that life calendar allotting them their life’s time. But in practical terms, it was always easier to look at the time in front of you as limitless, stretching out for an eternity. A vast unknown of hopes and dreams and possibilities. Otherwise, too many people would spend their allotment wallowing away in self-pity or hopelessness or the why bother attitude for the ending of that time. Prior to yesterday, she’d had that limitless time where hopes and dreams and expectations could still exist. Hers had. Now they didn’t because a roadblock had been put up on that journey and she could see it as plainly as she could see her image in the mirror.

  Her mirror … day two, and she was afraid to take a look for fear of what she’d see looking back at her. Was her reflection still strong, or already beginning to fade? Would she look the same, or had one day changed her into someone she would no longer recognize? A contortion of what used to be prior to diagnosis?

  Turning off the light in the bathroom so she wouldn’t have to face the inevitable, or the impossible, depending upon your perspective, Maggie stood in front of that mirror - ten minutes, twenty, maybe an hour - and stared at the darkness. As long as she couldn’t see the face there, maybe nothing existed differently than it had before. But if she turned on the light, she knew the image would be one of cancer because that was consuming her life right then, and she wasn’t ready to see that. Or admit it. Or deal with it. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe never.

  “We’ve got to show a house in an hour,” David called through the closed door. “I’d like to leave in fifteen minutes. Think you can be ready? Or would you rather stay home?”

  That’s right, she thought, as she fumbled around in the dark to find her hairbrush. Life does go on. But she still didn’t know how.

  Chapter Four

  Her first trip to the oncologist came four days after her diagnosis and, for Maggie, it was a wholly unsatisfying experience in the form of an hour waiting to be seen, and five minutes tops being seen. Certainly, she had no delusions of the medical profession, since she’d never watched those medical dramas on TV where doctors spent scads of time with their patients and nurses had what seemed like all day to sit around and get personally involved. She hadn’t even read a novel by Robin Cook or Michael Palmer, either, where doctors got involved to the point of intrigue or adventure, all for the sake of a diagnosis. Nope, no rose-colored glasses for her. Still, she expected some semblance of medical compassion, or if not compassion, then civility. Someone with a dire diagnosis needs that, don’t they?

  But what she got was the flip side. Maybe not cold detachment as in we really don’t care, but in a lack of courtesy and good old-fashioned manners. As they said: Treat people the way you’d like to be treated. Karma’s only a bitch if you are. And what a bitch her day turned out to be.

  The doctor rushed in, the tails of his white lab coat flapping behind him - well maybe not literally. But at the time, that’s what it seemed like to Maggie. So, on the coattails of his flapping coattails, he was followed by his barrage of staff - med students, residents, a couple of nurses, and a harried-looking scribe of some sort who did nothing but write. No one made eye contact with her, she noticed. They didn’t smile, or nod, or even acknowledge her presence in the room. What they did, though, was surround her on all sides, this mirthless band of medical-makers, each and every one of them appraising her like she was truly some kind of specimen under a microscope.

  “Hello,” Maggie said, not sure who would turn out to be the appointed spokesperson for the entourage.

  “Good morning, Maggie,” the doctor said to her, even though his attention was focused entirely on her chart, not on her.

  He was reading it for the first time, she assumed. Becoming acquainted on the fly with his new patient. So much for personal interaction when everything he needed was on the written page.

  “And how are you doing this morning?” he continued, still avoiding all eye contact with her.

  How was she doing? Let’s see. Cancer diagnosis a few days ago, left up in the air since. How would anyone be doing under the circumstances? “You tell me, Doctor? You’ve got the chart, so how am I doing?”

  “Well, according to what I’m reading, you have cancer.”

  Is this what her three-thousand dollar initial consultation was getting her? Drollery in the face of her adversity? “I assume so, since I
’m here, seeing you.” Although he wasn’t seeing her yet.

  Belay that. He actually looked at her. Raised his head up and looked over the tops of his glasses at her. “Well then, since that seems to be the case, let’s send you for some more tests and see exactly what’s going on.”

  “What I had wasn’t enough?”

  “Those were preliminary tests, just to get an idea of where you are right now.”

  Where she was? It seemed to Maggie she was sitting on an exam table in a doctor’s office, being stared at by a half-dozen strangers, none of whom were examining her. “So what else do I need?” And why hadn’t it all been ordered before so she could just get to the main event and skip all this preliminary stuff. After all, she had cancer-a foreign invader in her body. She wanted it out. Out, damned cancer! out, I say! One; two: why, then, ’tis time to do ’t.

  His attention snapped right back to the chart. “Um … CAT scan, a little more blood work … that should be good enough for starters, since you’ve already had an ultrasound and a biopsy.”

  “Good enough?” she asked him. Did he actually say good enough in conjunction with her diagnosis? Well, she didn’t want good enough. By virtue of the fact that she was now fighting for her life, good enough in any capacity was nowhere near good enough. She wanted what every cancer patient wanted-the best. Better than the best. Something to top even the best of the best.

  He nodded. “The tests you’ve already had are conclusive, but not conclusive enough. So what I’m prescribing will be good enough to give me the rest of what I want to see.”

  “Which is exactly what?”

  He actually had to think about that question for a minute before he answered. “Your cancer.”

  Ah, the drollery, again.