Between the Bylines

by Doug Krikorian

  She had undergone surgery the previous Thursday, and the surgeon had taken out a sizable tumor in her colon. Everything had gone well, and the surgeon was optimistic that nothing had spread. There was an initial fear that Gillian might have to permanently wear a colostomy bag—or even one temporarily—but that wasn’t the case. She was making a rapid recovery from the procedure, and I was confident everything soon would be back to normal.

  That is, until I received that phone call, one whose memory still sends shivers down my spine. It came from Gillian’s oncologist, Dr. Peter Rosen.

  “There’s a spot we found on her chest X-ray,” he told me, and my heart sank. I felt exactly like I had a couple weeks earlier after her colonoscopy.

  “What’s that mean?” I said with alarm.

  “We’ll have to wait and see,” he said cautiously. “We don’t know for sure what it is.”

  “But what could it indicate?”

  “It could indicate the cancer from her colon has spread to her lungs.”

  “In other words, it might have metastasized.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll talk later.”

  I hung up the phone and realized that Gillian now faced a serious crisis.

  After I left Long Beach and headed up the San Diego Freeway to the hospital, I kept thinking how I was going to present this dark news to Gillian without alarming her.

  And I also kept thinking back to February of the previous year when Gillian and I had gone to the Long Beach Veterans’ Hospital to visit one of my pals, Bobby “Bullets” Babian, a colorful bartender known for doing back flips behind the bar and also for stuffing an enormous amount of cocktail napkins in his mouth while pouring drinks amid loud laughter from the patrons. He also was known for having shined Al Capone’s shoes as a youngster growing up in Chicago. Bullets had lung cancer, and I recall Gillian telling me when we left the hospital, “I’ve never known anyone who’s survived lung cancer because it always seems to spread all over the body.”

  I felt I had to tell Gillian about Dr. Rosen’s revelation because Rosen would eventually do so himself. And I’m simply not a good actor. I couldn’t walk in her room with a big smile and act like everything was perfectly normal. It wasn’t. I would learn in the next year and a half dealing with Gillian’s condition that an essential part of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is to inform their patients about the truth. And not once during this chilling period were the reports from doctors uplifting to Gillian.

  I never will forget the beatific expression that was on Gillian’s face that late morning when I walked into her hospital room. She was in bed propped up against a pillow reading Auden, and she smiled so sweetly upon seeing me. She looked so young and so angelic, much like she had when I saw her coming out of that exit gate at the Nice airport. But this time, she also looked vulnerable and fragile.

  “Feeling better every day,” she said. But her smile quickly disappeared when she noticed my grave expression. As I said, I’m not much of an actor and didn’t attempt to be one on this occasion.

  “What’s wrong?” she wondered.

  I slowly pulled a chair up to the bed, pursed my lips and said, “They found a spot on your chest X-rays.”

  I remember Gillian looking straight ahead, and her smile soon was replaced by tears.

  “Oh,” she finally said after a brief silence.

  “But they don’t know for sure what it is,” I said. “It could be something else.”

  “No it isn’t,” she said. “I was fearful of that.”

  Gillian was informed officially a week later in a meeting in Dr. Rosen’s office at the UCLA Medical Center that, indeed, the colon cancer had metastasized into her lungs.

  International soccer great Pelé is flanked by longtime Long Beach bartender Bobby “Bullets” Babian (left) and Doug.

  After Rosen went over with Gillian the specifics of her upcoming chemotherapy regimen, she asked him what her chances were of survival.

  “About 20 percent,” he said candidly.

  After returning to Long Beach that day, we went to the Nature Center at El Dorado Park, a 105-acre forested oasis with streams, lakes and various habitats.

  We had often walked its two miles of dirt trails in the past after lengthy runs, and we decided this would be a good place for Gillian to resume her fitness program. Midway through the walk, we took a break and sat on a bench in a secluded area, silently gazing at the idyllic sights that surrounded us.

  And then Gillian began crying.

  “Douglas, I’m going to die,” she said. “I don’t want to die. I’m only thirty-three. I want to have kids. I love life. I love you. I don’t want to die.”

  “You’re not going to die,” is all I managed to say in a feeble attempt to calm her down.

  “Remember, what I said after we visited Bobby Babian at the hospital, how no one survives lung cancer?” she said. “Well, I have lung cancer, and I know it’s going to spread to my lymph nodes and then my brain and then my liver and then…”

  I quickly gathered myself.

  “Listen, Gillian,” I said sternly. “Are you going to die tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to die next week?”

  “No.”

  “Next month?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not going to die next year, or the year after or the year after that. I don’t ever want to hear you say that you’re going to die. Promise me that. Never again will you say that. You’re going to fight this like Lance Armstrong [American cyclist who had cancer] fought his. Cancer spread over all his body, and he survived. I don’t ever want to hear you again talk about dying.”

  Gillian became ill a few weeks after her surgery and for precautionary reasons wound up back at the UCLA Medical Center. On May 23, my father, Leo Krikorian, eighty-nine, died of congestive heart failure. He was a decent man with high morals who labored most of his life as a sales manager for the Peloian Packing Company in Dinuba, a first-generation Armenian workaholic who never retired and never made a lot of money.

  But our family never lacked for comforts, and my father was loyally married to my mother for sixty-four years and was responsible for my lifelong passion for sports.

  When I was a youngster, he often took me to Kezar Stadium in San Francisco to see the 49ers play, and he’d also take me every year to the college football match known as the Big Game between Stanford and California.

  He was a man dedicated to his wife, his children and his job, and his brother, Sam Krikorian, a Fresno nightclub owner, once said of my father, “Leo could be stuck in a Tijuana whore house and would not cheat on your mother.”

  He would pass away on a Tuesday night in a Fresno hospital, and his funeral was scheduled on a Saturday. Because Gillian was in the hospital that week and I didn’t want to be apart from her—I made daily visits up to the UCLA Medical Center—I wasn’t able to make it to Fresno until Friday evening.

  I returned to Los Angeles shortly after my father’s burial on Saturday and visited Gillian at the hospital early that evening. I later felt guilty about not feeling the deep grief for my father’s passing that I should have felt—I later wrote a cathartic newspaper article on that subject—but Gillian’s condition dominated my thoughts in those depressing days.

  Chapter 23

  For several reasons, the 1996 World Series between the New York Yankees and Atlanta Braves that I covered for the Press-Telegram is etched indelibly in my memory.

  The Series itself was riveting, as the Yankees were impaled in the first two games in their storied Bronx stadium, only to come off the mat spectacularly to win in four straight games that gave them their first world championship since 1978.

  Then there was the poignant sight of the Yankees’ third baseman, Wade Boggs, galloping around the Yankee Stadium outfield on a policeman’s horse in a seminal image of the raucous celebration that erupted in the historic structure after the final out was recorded in the Series amid loud cheers and
Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” crooning over the public address system (perfect conditions for a reporter on a tight deadline).

  And lastly, I was in a perpetual mood of tranquil joy at that time because of my blossoming relationship with Gillian, in which there were no lingering doubts and the usual impulse to stray had remained muted.

  This was in such dramatic contrast to so much of my past when seeking new female companionship had been a daily sport. I now actually found myself feeling empty and sad when Gillian and I were apart.

  Soon after the World Series, I returned to London, and this, for sure, was going to be the watershed moment for us because I finally was going to meet her parents. Frankly, I was wary. I realized most parents wouldn’t be thrilled about one of their daughters being romantically involved with a man twenty-three years her senior. I know I wouldn’t be.

  We drove the 250 miles from London to the northeast village of Elwick, where Gillian’s parents had a comfortable single-story, two-bedroom home.

  Elwick had a population of fewer than six hundred and was less than three miles from Hartlepool and a mile from Dalton-Piercy, where Gillian grew up. Elwick turned out to be a charming place right out of central casting with its side-by-side pubs, the Spotted Cow and McCorville; its tiny food store that served also as a post office; its one church; its two small schools; its tiny cemetery; its old town hall; and its panoramic view of the North Sea.

  It also turned out that Gillian’s parents were like, well, Gillian in that my age didn’t bother them. Her father—his name was Jim—was sixty-seven, a mere fifteen years older than I was, and he was retired. When I discovered he was in the British army for a couple years and stationed in Palestine, I peppered him with questions about the experience, which he liked.

  He related some interesting stories, and we also talked about World War I, long a particular passion of mine since visiting one of the Western Front’s most notorious sites, Ypres, where more than one million soldiers died in a twenty-eight-square-mile area in three major battles in four years in the Flanders enclave in Belgium. He had an uncle who fought in the Great War in which more than one million British Commonwealth soldiers lost their lives, many of the deaths coming at Passchendale, near Ypres, and also at the Somme in France, which I had also visited.

  Gillian’s father enjoyed having a beer, and I wound up accompanying him on his daily afternoon visits to the Spotted Cow. Gillian’s mother—her name was Mary—was a retired schoolteacher with a soft, quiet disposition who spent a lot of time caring for her two young grandchildren, Victoria and David, when her other daughter, Katharine, and son-in-law, John Elliott, were at work. Both were radiologists.

  While I’m sure Gillian’s family was skeptical of my being so much older than Gillian and also because of my 1992 New Year’s Eve betrayal, I never was made to feel uncomfortable and was treated with warmth and kindness.

  I enjoyed those early morning runs that Gillian and I took in the neighboring countryside dotted with cow pastures. It always was cold, windy and rainy, and I came to quickly realize that Gillian grew up in an area far removed from Southern California. But I found such an environment to be enchanting—perhaps because it was so different—and the people I met couldn’t have been nicer to me.

  We stayed in Elwick for three days and took side trips to Newcastle, Durham and York.

  After meeting all the members of her immediate family, I was more certain than ever that I wanted Gillian to become my wife. I remember my father once saying to me that daughters were extensions of their mothers, and Gillian was a mirror image of her mother.

  On the way back to London, we took a slight detour to Bristol, where Gillian and I spent the evening at a bed-and-breakfast inn on a large sheep ranch. The next day, we went into the city and visited the mother of a close friend of Gillian who had terminal cancer and was expected to die within weeks.

  Gillian was visibly distraught when we departed, and I remember her saying to me, “I come across cases like this sometimes at work, and you feel so helpless. It’s very difficult. What always amazes me is how brave these people are. They try not to let on what they’re going through. I’m not sure I ever could be that strong and brave if I were in that condition.”

  June 2000 (The Treatment)

  I’ll never forget Gillian’s first chemotherapy session at the UCLA Medical Center for a couple of reasons. In the room next to hers sat a fellow I had known since 1969, when he joined the Los Angeles Lakers.

  I was stunned to see Happy Hairston going through a chemo session, but the starting forward on the 1971–72 Lakers team that set a record that might never be broken—thirty-three straight victories—insisted he was fine.

  “I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, but it’s under control,” said Hairston with assurance.

  I figured Hairston soon would return to good health, but the next time I came across Happy was in a hallway at the hospital almost a year later. He was lying on a gurney being pushed by an attendant. He gave me a thumbs-up hello but would die a couple of weeks later, on May 1.

  After Gillian received her dose of chemotherapy, which took around three hours, we drove back to Long Beach, and she accompanied me to El Dorado Park, where I planned to go on a forty-five-minute run. I figured Gillian would walk, since she hadn’t done any serious exercise for more than a month. I should have known better. She not only ran alongside me for forty-five minutes but also started sprinting the final one hundred yards to finish well ahead of me. Clearly, she hadn’t lost her competitive edge.

  I was informed by my newspaper that month that it wanted me to cover the upcoming Olympics in Sydney. I told my editor, Rich Archbold, that it would be a privilege to do so but that I would have to decline because of Gillian’s illness. He said he understood. But when I told Gillian of my decision, she protested.

  “No way you’re staying home and missing the biggest athletic event of the year because of me,” she said. “I’ll be all right. I’ll be done with the chemo by then, and you’ll only be gone for three weeks. My parents will come over and stay with me. Douglas, I insist that you go. The Olympics are a great event, and you should be there.”

  Gillian’s reaction was predictable. She always thought of other people rather than herself. I knew had I remained home and not gone to Sydney that that would have caused her great aggravation. Reluctantly, I went to Sydney.

  Near the end of June, we had one of those periodic consultations with Dr. Rosen, and it didn’t turn out well. None ever did. I remember Gillian asking him in that one, “If the cancer is not contained, when will I know the end is near?”

  He cast a wary eye in her direction and gave an honest answer that would turn out to be sadly true.

  “When you are unable to get out of bed and walk,” he said.

  Gillian nodded grimly.

  There always was a solemn silence in the car during the ride back to Long Beach from the UCLA Medical Center.

  Gillian always requested to have the radio turned off, and she would sit in the passenger seat, gazing pensively out the window, lost in thought. She never spoke, nor did I, even though I wanted to. But I knew that no matter what words of encouragement I might utter, they would sound contrived and hollow.

  At that time, I still was confident Gillian’s cancer would go into remission. After all, Lance Armstrong had beaten it, and cancer had spread throughout his body.

  Why couldn’t Gillian do the same? I asked Dr. Rosen about Armstrong’s miraculous recovery, but he pointed out that Armstrong had testicular cancer, which he said was more curable and not nearly as aggressive as colon cancer.

  Still, in June 2000, when Gillian began her treatment, I didn’t view her illness as being terminal. Perhaps I was deluding myself and simply wouldn’t let any other thought invade my mind. But I still was certain that Gillian, with her indomitable will, would survive her condition.

  Chapter 24

  On December 29, 1996, a couple months after I met her parents, Gilli
an flew to New York from London, and we planned to celebrate New Year’s Eve among the hordes at Times Square.

  Actually, we had been making a lot of plans, with the most important one being Gillian agreeing to soon give up her ten-year job with the National Health Service and relocate to the United States to live with me as a prelude to our getting married in the fall.

  Gillian had never been to New York, and I knew she would like it, much like I had on my first visit to the great metropolis. That came in the summer of 1968, when I took a nine-hour flight from LAX—with a fuel stop in Kansas City—on the Los Angeles Dodgers’ old turboprop Electra 2 named the Kay O.

  What an experience I had on that three-game road trip with the Dodgers—the team also journeyed to Pittsburgh and Houston—and never will forget on that long flight actually sitting across the aisle from future Hall of Fame pitcher Don Drysdale and Ken Boyer, who should be in the Hall.

  After reaching New York and checking into a Midtown hotel at nine o’clock in the evening, I walked the streets alone for a couple hours, mouth agape.

  I was totally mesmerized by the towering buildings, the reverberating subway trains, the horn-blaring taxis, the architectural and cacophonous ambiance that sets New York apart from any other city in the world.

  In looking back, that was a transformative development in my life, for being on assignment with the Dodgers in New York meant I had already realized my fervent ambition of traveling with a major-league sports team.

  The sportswriter and his familiar subject—Doug and Tommy Lasorda—share a pensive moment in the manager’s office moments after the St. Louis Cardinals’ Jack Clark hit a three-run homer to defeat Los Angeles in Game Six of the 1985 National League Championship Series.

  I would go to New York many times in the ensuing years, but those early visits with the Dodgers and then the Lakers and also the Rams remain particularly vivid to me.

  I’ll always remember the first off day I had in New York that came in my first season of covering the Lakers—it was in February 1969—when I went bar-hopping during the afternoon with Hot Rod Hundley, a one-time Lakers player himself and one-time University of West Virginia All-American whose scoring records at the school later were eclipsed by Jerry West.