by R. D. Power
“Mr. and Mrs. Lopez, I have the results of your son’s tests. I’m sorry to say they confirm that Jose has acute lymphocytic leukemia.” The wife embraced her husband and began to cry. The man was too shaken to say anything for the time being.
Kristen continued, “I know this is a shock, but I want to assure you the prognosis is good for this type of cancer. The chances of a cure are now approaching ninety percent. Try to focus on that throughout the ordeal. Let’s get the bad news over with, then we’ll talk about what we need to do to cure Jose. Besides the chance he might die of the disease, the treatment regimen isn’t pleasant. There are a few serious long-term effects, including the possibilities of future cancers, osteoporosis, heart disease, and infections. His physical growth may be affected—”
“How?” said the father. He looked like he needed to cry, but couldn’t.
“It may affect his height, and he may have a greater tendency to get obese. Also, he may experience depression, anger, and confusion. But we know those risks and work to prevent them. Clinical research is going on all the time, including here at UCSF, to increase the rate of cure and reduce the risk of side-effects.” The parents struggled to take it all in, despair darkening their small world.
•
Back east, the frenzied crowd awaited the next pitch. With the count three balls and no strikes, everyone knew the batter would not be swinging. The play-by-play announcer said, “Owens is pitching with a full windup. He delivers: Right down the middle for strike one.”
The color announcer opined, “If Owens misses the strike zone, the series is over, so the batter will be taking the next pitch, too.”
The play-by-play man took over, saying, “The crowd is on their feet screaming in anticipation of an impending win. The pitch: strike two!” With a full count the din reached a crescendo as the next pitch loomed. “Owens comes set. The pitch: Strike three! He threw that one right down the middle, too, but the batter swung through it.”
Added his color commentator, “Owens fooled him with a change-up. He was expecting another fastball and he swung too soon.”
The noise level abated for a moment as the next batter came to the plate. “Bases loaded one out with the Twins’ season on the line. Here comes the pitch, and here comes the runner from third! It’s a suicide squeeze!” The roar from the crowd was deafening. “The ball is popped up! Owens dives and makes the catch! On his knees, he throws to third for the double-play. Stupendous play by Owens!”
The crowd was silenced, except for twenty thousand or so who stated, “Fuck!”
•
“This will be a difficult time for Jose, and for you two, but he is in the best of hands,” assured Dr. Taylor. “We’ll work our very hardest to make sure Jose lives to old age. I know you need some time to adjust to this, but we need to get going with his treatment as soon as possible. He’ll need chemotherapy; we give him some potent anticancer drugs. The first month of treatment is intensive, but over ninety-five percent of all children come out of this stage with their cancer in remission. That’s miraculous, don’t you think? It should give you a lot of hope.
“Jose may need to spend some of the first month in the hospital to avoid serious infections because the chemotherapy will affect his ability to fight them off. Let me stress how important it is for Jose to take all medications prescribed for him. Do you understand?” The parents nodded as if in a daze. “After month one, he’ll get an intense four- to eight-month program of consolidation treatment and at least two years of maintenance chemotherapy. These two stages are critical to ensure we destroy all the cancer cells.
“Are you two okay?” They nodded in shock. “I’ll have more information for you next week, but I’m sure you have enough to think about already. I have pamphlets for you that describe the disease, its known causes, how we treat it, and so on. This one is for a support group for parents of children with leukemia. I strongly encourage you to join. It really helps. If you have any questions, please call me. My card is stapled to this brochure.”
•
Robert, who originally entered the game as the right-fielder, had to go up to bat. Leading off in the top of the twelfth, he was greeted by taunts of “You suck, Owens!” He responded by grounding a base hit past the pitcher into center field, which had the announcers chuckling that a pitcher with but two plate appearances in the majors could do that. It was his first hit in the majors, and he was thrilled. Jennifer, Brian, and Kim jumped up and clapped. Robert asked for the ball. The umpire threw it to the dugout for safe-keeping.
The Twins bunted him to second, but stranded him there, and the game went to the bottom of the twelfth. Between innings, Robert called Brian down and gave him the baseball. A camera recorded the event, which showed Robert kissing his son on the head, and the network replayed it as the bottom of the twelfth commenced. The network sent a roving reporter to question the boy, and Brian proudly stated on camera, “He’s my dad!”
“Maybe if he gets more hits, we’ll see how many other children he has,” joked the color commentator.
•
As the distressed Lopez couple left the office, Kristen’s next patient entered. “Hi, Mrs. Allen. Hi, Sonya. You’re looking good. How are you feeling?”
“Pretty good,” said the seven-year-old.
“That’s great. As I told you last time, Mrs. Allen, we’re going to do one more spinal tap to make sure the lymphoma is extinguished from her central nervous system. Have you reminded her of what she can expect?” The mother nodded. “Okay, Sonya, Mommy’s going to put you on the table and take off your shirt.” The mother did this. “All right, now lie on your side, curled up with your knees tucked up.” Her mother helped Sonya comply and sat next to her. “I’m going to clean your skin; it’ll be a little cold. Good girl. Now, I’m going to give you a little needle. It’ll sting a little, but it will make everything I do after this hurt much less, okay?” Sonya started crying. Her mother took her hand, kissed her, and petted her head. “That’s a brave girl!” praised Kristen. “We’ll wait a few minutes now.”
While waiting for the anesthetic to take effect, Dr. Taylor checked over her patient’s chart and chatted with the mother. “Okay, Sonya, you’ll feel a little pressure now.” As Kristen inserted the needle, Sonya once again began to cry. “Hold her still, Mrs. Allen. Good girl, Sonya … Okay, just a few more seconds,” Kristen advised as she withdrew the cerebrospinal fluid, then the needle. “All done. You were terrific, Sonya,” she complimented as she applied a bandage, then patted her patient on her shoulder.
“You’ll need to keep her still for about fifteen minutes,” she said to the mother. Mrs. Allen covered her shivering daughter with a blanket. “When you get home, make sure she lies down for several hours, flat on her back as much as possible. Give her plenty of liquid and restrict her movements over the next day. See you next week, Sonya.” While the Allen girls waited, Kristen did some paperwork.
After they left, Kristen dashed to an operating room in the hospital to observe as one of her patients underwent an operation. Weeks earlier, she’d diagnosed the two-year-old boy with Wilms tumor, a childhood cancer of the kidney. The operation, a radical nephrectomy in which a surgeon removes the entire kidney and surrounding fatty tissue and lymph nodes together with the adrenal gland, followed a course of chemotherapy to reduce the size of the tumor and eradicate disseminated disease. There was no need for her to be there, but she wanted to see the procedure so she could better explain it to parents in the future.
She stood next to the surgeon as he directed the surgical oncologist fellow. “Begin with a transverse abdominal incision long enough to enable a careful abdominal exploration to look for any evidence of cancer.”
•
While the surgery progressed, the game was unfolding nicely for Robert. He was pitching the game of his life, though his shoulder got a little sorer with each pitch. Through five innings, he’d surrendered but one hit to the best hitting team in baseball. The bats had gone silen
t. This 11-11 game was now a pitcher’s duel.
The fun had just begun. In the bottom of the sixteenth, the major league homerun king stepped to the plate with one out. He was mammoth, a six-foot-five, 250-pound monster with a mean look and an even meaner temperament. He’d broken the bat in two over his leg after Robert struck him out in the thirteenth. From the perspective of the pitcher’s mound, he was an awful sight. One expected him to launch the ball into outer space every time. The fans rose to their feet to urge him on. “Tiny,” as he was facetiously nicknamed (confusing many a German who objected, “But zis man is huge!”), leaned over the plate and drove an outside fastball deep to right field.
“Hit hard!” shrieked the announcer. The crowd roared. “If it stays fair the game is over … foul ball!” A relieved pitcher decided to take the plate back and threw the next pitch inside.
Tiny leaned right into the pitch and proceeded to charge the pitcher, bat in hand. Kim and Jennifer screamed in unison. The crowd hushed.
•
The surgeon, a lifelong Yankees fan from the Bronx, had asked to be kept updated on the game. He had scheduled the surgery late in the afternoon so he could watch the game. When it went into extra innings, he cursed as he went to do his critical work, telling a resident to let him know when something important happened. Now, ninety minutes into the operation, he’d heard nothing and was curious about what was going on.
A few minutes later, the resident called in from the observation room to report, “The game is still tied in the top of the seventeenth. The Twins are down to their last pitcher. He’s been pitching since the eleventh, and so far he looks un-hittable.”
“Who’s the pitcher?” asked the surgeon. Just what Kristen wanted to know.
“Owens.” Kristen’s eyes opened wide. “You know, the one who was married to Jennifer Taylor. You should’ve seen the play in the last inning. Owens hit Tiny with a pitch, and Tiny charged the mound with his bat, aiming to foul the pitcher,” said the resident with a chuckle at his own wit.
“Is he hurt?” asked an alarmed Kristen.
“No. He dropped Tiny in the blink of an eye. It was amazing. Then he just walked away from him, cool as could be. Tiny was down on the ground and out of it for a few seconds. When he revived, they ejected him for charging the mound.” The doctors got back to work.
•
The ex-Special Forces soldier had subdued Tiny in a split second, ending up with the bat in his hand. It happened so fast, there was no time for the benches to clear. Robert tossed aside the bat and walked away from the prostrate Yankee, who showed no signs of movement.
“Did you see that?” the astonished announcer said. The crowd was too stunned to boo for a few seconds. The Yankee’s manager, trainer, and doctor came out to check on Tiny, who was slowly coming to his senses. The Twins’ manager ran out to talk with the home plate umpire to forestall an ejection of his pitcher, which would cost his team the game. He ousted Tiny, whom he held solely responsible, and called him out for leaning over the plate to get hit by the pitch. Then the booing began.
The network played it back over and over from different vantage points, also showing Jennifer jumping to her feet, screaming, then sitting with a slight smile. Tiny was helped to his feet and off the field. With fifty-something thousand irate New Yorkers screaming for his head, Robert calmly struck out the next batter and strolled off the mound.
“Who is this guy?” everyone started to wonder.
In baseball, there’s commonly a tit-for-tat when a player is hit by a pitch. As luck would have it, Robert was the third batter in the next inning. The umpire went out to warn the pitcher not to throw at Owens. With no more substitutes, the Twins would lose by default if any player got injured and couldn’t continue. He didn’t listen. His first pitch was a ninety-seven mile-per-hour fastball that hit Robert’s left hand as he attempted to avoid it. With his hand still on the bat, there was no give, and the ball shattered two bones in the back of his hand.
Pure joy and pure pain are immediately betrayed by our facial expressions; there was no doubt which one Robert was experiencing at that moment. Just looking at his face, everyone watching at home went, “Ooh that must hurt. That poor guy,” with a titter.
Robert picked up the ball and reared back to retaliate at the pitcher, who put his arms up over his head for protection. The umpire immediately grabbed his arm and admonished, “If you do this, I’ll toss you, and your team loses.” The center field camera showed a close-up of his furious face, as the umpire warned him. His manager ran out to calm him down. Robert considered for a moment, then dropped the ball and walked toward first base. The umpire ejected the Yankee pitcher and warned the Yankee skipper that he would go next if there were any further incidents.
The Twins’ doctor accompanied the manager to check on their injured player. Seeing his bloody hand with a small bone protruding through the skin, the manager asked Robert if there was any hope of his continuing. “I’m not losing this game!” he asserted. The game was called for a few minutes while the doctor sprayed on anesthetic and bandaged the hand, the TV showing his damaged hand and grimacing face as the work proceeded.
“He has to stay in the game or the Twins lose, but that has got to affect his pitching,” said the announcer.
Yankees fans started chanting, “O-wens, O-wens, O-wens.”
•
The resident came back to inform the surgeon, “The Yankee pitcher retaliated at Owens. He threw a fastball right at him. It hit his hand; it hit so hard I’m sure it must be a comminuted fracture. He screamed when it hit.” Kristen flinched. “They showed the hand up close. A bone was piercing the skin. I could feel his pain as the TV showed him grimacing.”
“What was the pitcher doing up to bat?” asked the surgeon.
“He had to come in as a right fielder when two Twins collided in the outfield. The Twins are out of players. If anyone else gets hurt their season’s over.” The surgeon chortled. Yankees fans aren’t noted for their sympathy.
“Can he stay in the game? Which hand got hit?”
“His left hand and he’s a right-hander. He has to stay in the game or the Twins lose … Wait,” said the resident who was watching the game on a portable TV. “Owens just stole second! The fans were taunting him. That shut them up. Ha!” Kristen smiled. “Oh, pop out,” resumed the resident. “Now we’ll get to see if he can still pitch.”
“Okay, we need to get on with the surgery. Just update me when something exciting happens,” instructed the surgeon. The resident sat back and watched the game and the operation.
•
Getting his glove on was a chore, but Robert went out in the bottom of the seventeenth to pitch. The Twins’ coaching staff held their breath as they witnessed him wincing with every warm-up pitch. The announcers speculated as to the effect the sore hand might have on his performance.
“Not only will he feel it every time he throws, if something is hit back to him he may not be able to catch it. That opens a big hole up the middle for the Yankees.”
After walking the first man up, they began to guess this was the beginning of the end. His fastball was now topping out at eighty-six miles per hour. He threw it to the next hitter, and he walloped the pitch to deep left-center field. The crowd rose to their feet and screamed.
The play-by-play announcer said, “Long fly ball, deep to left! This could end it … Jones leaps and makes the catch! Right at the top of the wall!” The crowd hushed in disappointment as the marvelous play was replayed from different angles on TV. But now everyone believed it was only a matter of time. The Yankees and their fans smelled blood.
Robert’s curve was still working to perfection, however. The next batter up drove the pitch into the ground for an easy double-play. The TV showed Brian standing up and cheering.
Nothing happened in the top of the eighteenth, but the bottom was another story. His pitching speed dropped another notch, and the Yankees began to make regular contact.
•
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“The Yankees have bases loaded with one out,” said the resident over the intercom a few minutes later.
“All right!” declared the surgeon. “Owens is starting to struggle. Now let’s get tissue samples from the other kidney and lymph nodes,” he instructed his protégé.
“Actually, he’s still doing well,” corrected the resident. “The Twins should be out of the inning, but the second baseman made an error on a double-play ball.”
•
Up to the plate strode the leading hitter in the majors. The situation once again looked grim, but Robert refused to give in. His next pitch was hit hard. The runners left their bases on contact. The crowd again jumped up and screamed. “Ground ball to short!” exclaimed the animated announcer. “Here comes the throw to the plate … he’s out!”
The color commentator noted, “That might’ve been a double-play ball, but the shortstop couldn’t take that chance with the season on the line.” Fans, tiring of the emotional rollercoaster, fell back down dejected. But there’s still another chance, they consoled; bases are still loaded. This would be a real battle between a weary pitcher and a fatigued hitter.
•
The surgeon looked around to prompt an update. The resident went to the intercom and reported, “Two outs now, with bases still loaded and a full count!” said the resident.
“Put the TV’s speaker up to the intercom,” ordered the surgeon. The resident did as his boss demanded.
“Three and two, two outs, bases loaded in the bottom of the eighteenth inning,” said the announcer to underscore the exciting situation. “If Owens misses the strike zone, the Twins go home for the winter. If he gives up a hit, the Twins go home. If he balks, the Twins go home.”
