“You’re quiet tonight,” Grace says. “I was hoping you’d get past that by the time I got back.”
“Are we going somewhere local or should I get on the freeway?”
“Nice deflection,” she says. “It is a ball and chain thing?”
“I’d rather not talk about it,” I tell her. “Let’s just focus on finding an amusement park to break into.”
* * *
“Will you just shut up and grab my ass?” Grace asks in a hushed voice.
Her strength gave out just before she was able to make it over the final fence to get into the Paroxysm Amusement Park.
I take a breath and put my hands on her upper thighs to give her a push.
She asks if I failed anatomy class in med school, but I’m able to help her get over the top of the fence.
“Are you sure you’re up to this?” I ask her. “You should be taking it easy.”
“Well, since you didn’t bother telling me that until I got all the way into the park, I think I’m just going to ignore you, if you don’t mind,” she says. “Now, hurry the fuck up. I really don’t want to get the beat down from some security guard.”
“You know they have cameras in places like this,” I tell her, but still climb over the last fence to join her on the other side.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” she says.
“Why? Do you know one of the owners or something?”
“No, I just wouldn’t worry about it. We’re already in, so we may as well have some fun before we get thrown out or arrested.”
This isn’t exactly the kind of thing I had in mind when I was looking forward to a spontaneous night.
“Come on, you pansy,” she says.
I have no clue where she’s leading me, and I’m even more uncertain exactly how nobody’s come to dive tackle us, stun gun in hand, but I follow right along with Grace.
She’s moving slower than she was when we got out of the car, but that’s to be expected. Tomorrow’s her last day of chemo for the month. The fact that she’s out and moving around, much less breaking into an amusement park, it’s actually kind of inspiring — you know, if you squint.
“I’ve never been here,” I tell her. “I don’t know where everything is.”
“You’ve never been here?”
“Nope,” I answer.
“Then you, my good trollop, have never lived.”
“When we’re not together, do you just sit around with a thesaurus and look for alternate words for prostitute or what?” I ask.
“No,” she answers, “I was in a band back in college.”
What that has to do with anything is beyond me.
It’s already dark enough outside that it’s taken me this long to realize why we haven’t been confronted by security: the amusement park isn’t just closed for the night. It’s been closed down for a long time.
Everywhere are bits and pieces of old carnival rides, many of them rusted into near oblivion, although here and there are almost completely assembled rides, though I seriously doubt I’d even get near one, much less on one.
“There’s the tilt a whirl,” she says. “I was fucking with you earlier about trying to figure out how to turn the thing on — that ship sailed a while ago. Still, I bet we can get a pretty good view of the sky in that one with the open end facing the hill.”
She leads the way as if she’s been here a thousand times before, and I can’t be certain that she hasn’t.
“It looks pretty rickety,” I tell her.
“Don’t worry, doc. I’ve had my tetanus shot.”
As I’m walking up the creaking metal stairs, I mutter, “I’m more worried about the thing collapsing on us.”
Even with my trepidation, it doesn’t seem like we’d be in too much trouble even if the ride were to fall apart with us on it, so I follow her into one of the cars.
The metal is cold as we sit down, but she was right about one thing: the view is pretty idyllic.
“Isn’t it funny how even a slight change of perception can make everything look so different?” I ask.
“Pretty cool, huh?” she returns.
We sit for a while, looking up at the sky.
There aren’t too many lights around here, so the stars are out in force. I’m trying to find constellations to point out to her, but it occurs to me that I only know how to find the big and little dippers.
It’s cold, especially on this metal seat, so I put my arm around her shoulders as she huddles closer to me.
“You know,” I say, “while you were in that building, I got a text message.”
“What’d it say?” she asks, huddling up next to me for warmth.
“It was from Melissa’s boss,” I tell her. “I think it’s safe to say that whatever’s been going on between the two of them has been going on for a while now, and I really don’t think there’s any reason to believe it’s going to be over any time soon.”
“Fuck her, anyway,” Grace says, shivering next to me. “You don’t need someone who’s going to treat you that way.”
“I think I’m starting to realize that.”
Grace looks up at me and smiles. “Come on,” she says. “There’s something that I really want to show you.”
She gets out of the car and starts walking back down the stairs. It takes me a little longer to get out of the car than it took her, but soon enough, I catch up to her.
“I can’t believe you’ve never been here,” Grace says, walking about half a step ahead of me. “Back in college, I used to get drunk out here with some frat guys.”
“Were you in a sorority?”
“No, I was too young. Apparently, they don’t like to let anyone in unless they’re old enough to go for a beer run. Besides, sorority chicks are bitches.”
“Is it weird that I’ve only ever heard that from women who never made it into a sorority?” I ask.
“Not particularly,” she answers and stops walking. Grace turns to look at me and, grabbing my hand, she tells me, “We’re almost there.”
I walk with her or, rather, I walk as she pulls me behind her, her grip surprisingly strong for how little strength she must have right now.
“There,” she says, pointing into the darkness.
It takes a minute for me to spot it, but there looming ahead of us is an old Ferris wheel, its dark metal blending in with the night sky.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asks.
The words I’m thinking at the moment are more along the lines of “unsafe” or “terrifying,” but Grace’s almost innocent look of awe and excitement is enough for me to bite my tongue.
“It really is,” I tell her. “How did you know this place was still here, anyway?”
“People never move a graveyard unless they absolutely have to, and this one’s still collecting bodies. Come on,” she says and starts walking toward the Ferris wheel.
“Where are we going? I seriously doubt that thing’s still got power running to it.”
“Oh, there’s no way. That’s why we’re going to climb.”
Even if I weren’t a doctor, I’d still know this is a bad idea.
“I really don’t think we should,” I tell her.
“And why’s that?” she asks, continuing to walk toward the base of the old ride. “It’s there and we’re here. What’s the problem?”
“For one thing,” I start as I catch up with Grace, “that thing’s falling apart. For another thing, it’s dark. Even if the whole structure doesn’t come toppling down, we’re going to have a hell of a time getting onto any of the cars without falling. For another-”
“I’m sure you have a long list of reasons not to,” she interrupts, “but have you ever stopped to consider the reasons that you should?”
“Like what?” I ask, stepping between her and the rungs of the built-in ladder.
“It’s frightening,” she says. “Isn’t that reason enough?”
“Jumping out of an airplane without a parachute would be frighte
ning,” I tell her, “but that doesn’t mean that you should do it.”
“That’s completely different. This is the one thing that I never did when I was tooling around here with the guys. If it can hold half a dozen football and lacrosse players spread throughout the top three or four cars, I know for a fact it can hold the two of us. Now come on, get out of my way.”
“Grace,” I say, putting my back against the metal rungs, “you’re not ready for this.”
“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m great at climbing shit.”
“I believe you,” I tell her, “but you’re not there right now. You can’t do this.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you needed my help getting over the fence,” I answer.
I feel like an asshole saying it, but it needed to be said. Idealism or not, people have physical boundaries and a person on chemo, even the kind of dose and frequency Grace is on, tend to reach those boundaries a lot faster than the rest of us.
She’s not saying anything, and she’s not making a play to get around me. With that sentence, however honest, however necessary, I feel like I’ve done what the diagnosis and the treatment hadn’t been able to do: I’ve put a crack in her spirit.
“I’m sorry, Grace,” I tell her. “Let’s get you through this round of chemo, and when you’ve got some more of your strength back, I’ll come back here with you and we’ll climb up there together. What do you say?”
She’s still not saying anything and it’s killing me.
I’ve had to tell patients a lot of difficult things in the short time I’ve been an oncologist, but I never would have expected that something so bizarre and clearly beyond her present capability would feel just as bad as any prognosis I’ve uttered.
“It’s fine,” she says in a tiny voice. “I was just kidding.”
“Yeah?” I ask, doing my best to hide the fact that I can see, hear, and feel her deepening realization that’s she’s just that sick.
“Yeah,” she says. “I mean what kind of freak breaks into and old scrap yard of amusement park rides to climb to the top of the Ferris wheel? Of course, I’m joking.”
“I meant what I said,” I tell her. “In a couple of weeks, before your next round, I’ll come back here with you and we’ll make it to that top car together, okay?”
“You’re not listening to me,” she says coldly. “I told you that I was making a joke. I’m obviously too weak to do that now, and even if I wasn’t, it would be a monumentally stupid idea, anyway. Can we just go?”
“There’s other stuff we can find,” I tell her. “We just got here.”
“It’s getting late,” she says. “I’m getting tired. That chemo just drags it out of you, doesn’t it?”
“Okay,” I tell her, “I’ll take you home, then.”
I did the right thing, and I know that. Even she knows that, but it doesn’t change the fact that what’s going on in her body just became a whole lot more real than it ever was before.
As a doctor, this is an important thing, though rarely a pleasant experience for anyone involved. False hope only leads to a harder crash, and as tempting as it can be to let a person think they’re doing better than they are or that their treatment isn’t taking as much out of them as they’d like to believe, the right thing to do is be straightforward and take the hit sooner.
It’s better in the long run.
But it’s in this moment that I realize that I’ve been doing the same thing that Grace wanted to do in climbing to the top of that Ferris wheel. I’ve been pretending that it’s still okay that I’m her doctor — that the friendship we’re developing or whatever else it may turn into down the road isn’t going to affect my judgment when it comes to her treatment.
Today, I received a group email from the dean of medicine at the hospital regarding a new clinical trial and I already know that I’m going to sign her up for it. That wouldn’t be a big deal if it weren’t for the fact that the trial is specifically for oligodendroglioma patients who have lived with the diagnosis or are otherwise known to have had the condition for at least five years, for whom chemo and radiation have had little to no impact.
I told myself I’d just be taking my first step back toward being true to myself, doing what I know to be right regardless of how it looks to others. Now, though, it’s starting to set in that my growing affection for Grace, this patient of mine, has just put me in a position to lose my job, possibly my license to practice medicine.
Administrators don’t look too kindly on falsifying medical records to get a patient into a trial and that’s what I’m going to have to do to make it happen.
Still, though, as I catch up to her, trying to cheer her up, I know the damage is already done. I can’t stand to see that look on her face again, and I’m going to do whatever I can to make sure I don’t have to.
“Grace,” I start, “there’s something I need to tell you.”
Chapter Nine
Under the Radar
Grace
It’s been a week since Jace told me about the clinical trial.
At first, I was just thrilled that there might be something that could change the course of the rest of my life, but once he let slip what he would have to do to get me in, I tried to back out of it.
I know what kind of a risk he’s taking in doing what he’s doing, but he had a point when he told me that while chemo may extend my life, though there are no guarantees on even that; without some other intervening factor, chances are I’ve already lived more than half my life.
That’s a hell of a motivator.
He’s coming over tonight and we’re going to go over the kinds of things I’m going to have to know when I give “my history” to the doctors running the trial.
Right now, Yuri’s here, keeping me company.
We’ve gotten pretty close over the last while, and it’s nice to have someone who’s not an employee to share my thoughts and feelings with. It helps that she’s almost as crazy as I am.
“So, are you going to go through with it?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “I think I have to. I know it’s a risk for the doc, but with my life actually hanging in the balance-”
“It’s not the risk to him that I’m worried about,” Yuri says. “Okay, he’s my boss and if he loses his license, I lose my job. And, of course, I actually respect him and I would hate to see something bad happen to him, but Grace, I’ve seen countless patients who’ve gone through clinical trials. Sometimes they come out the other side better off for their inclusion, but a lot of times it goes the other way.”
“Well, if it weren’t safe, they wouldn’t test it on people, would they?”
“They wouldn’t knowingly test a drug they knew to be more harmful than helpful,” she answers. “At least, that’s what I like to think, but you’ve got to understand that you’re in one of the very first test groups for this drug. There’s a lot they don’t know about it.”
“It’s worth a shot, though,” I tell her. “If anything goes the wrong way, they’ll take me off of it, right?”
“Yeah, but a lot of times, they don’t know that something’s going the wrong way until it’s already past the point of no return. You could lose years of your life or you could develop new symptoms, symptoms that may or may not respond to treatment. I just want to make sure you’re going into this with all of the facts.”
“Hey, on the bright side, they might put me on the placebo,” I laugh, trying to cover my trepidation.
“That’s true,” she says, “but in that case, you’re going to be risking Dr. Churchill’s job, reputation, and license over something that’s not actually going to help you.”
“So you don’t think I should do it?”
“I’m not saying that,” she says. “I’m just saying that I want you to be prepared that this might not go the way you’re hoping it will, the way Dr. Churchill and I are hoping it will.”
There’s a knock on the door, and I get up
to answer it.
“He’s probably going to tell you a lot of what I’ve been telling you,” Yuri says, “but I can’t be sure of that.”
“Why wouldn’t he tell me?” I ask.
“I know he’s got a soft spot when it comes to you. He likes you, and I wanted to make absolutely certain that somebody told you the things you need to know before you make a firm commitment to this.”
“Are you staying? He knows we’re friends, it’s all right.”
“I’ll say hi,” she says, “but I think I should leave the two of you to go over the details — plausible deniability and all that.”
“Okay,” I tell her. “I’ll call you later and let you know how it goes.”
She nods and gets to the door. Answering it, she says, “She’s inside. Don’t sugarcoat this.”
“I won’t,” Jace answers. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Yuri.”
The door closes and I’m sitting down again when he comes into the room.
“She knows that she can’t be seen to have had any part of this, right?” I ask him.
“Of course,” he says. “The last thing I’d want to do would be to put her at risk with what we’re doing.”
“So tell me,” I start, “what kind of results have other trials of this drug had?”
“There’s not a lot of data yet,” he says. “An earlier form of the drug was recalled before trials were over because it was shown to actually cause patients with grade two oligodendroglioma to progress to grade three.”
“I’m guessing that’s the wrong direction?” I ask, knowing very well what grade three means. It means that my chance of being alive in five years would be cut in half.
“Yeah,” he says. “They did another trial of this version of the drug, and it’s shown some improvement in over sixty percent of patients, thirty percent over placebo.”
“That’s so weird,” I muse.
“What’s that?”
“That thirty percent of people get better when they’re told they’re getting something that would make them better,” I tell him. “Maybe you should start handing out sugar pills along with your other treatments.”
Escort (A Standalone Romance Novel) (New York City Bad Boy Romance) Page 10
