by Charles Bock
How many cups had she finished today? the attending wanted to know.
A guilty motion. “That’s my first.” She saw the liquid along the bottom. “I’m still working on it.”
The attending did not seem impressed. He looked around, told the nurse, “We’ve got to get her a bigger room.”
—
A snapshot: my hair long, unwashed and piled into a scrunchie, my face still plump in a way that embarrassed me at the time. I beam in her direction. She stares with a dumbfounded look, big ears protruding, the cutest little yellow headband across that bald moonchild head. You can see a chubby segment of her hand, the bitten red star on one of her teething bubbles.
I open the orange envelope with the name of a drugstore that is no longer in business, flip through the snapshots, check if there is a duplicate, take out a negative. I raise the small strip of hard plastic film toward the ceiling. The practice is second nature to me, carried over from the fashion world: checking on the originals from a shoot, checking head shots. “Get a duplicate of the teething one,” I say. “Maybe blow it up to eleven by fourteen.”
I keep moving through the album; I’ll have him do the same for the one where I’m holding Doe and she’s adorned in floaties, in the pool behind my cousin’s house. And the one of her twisted baby face, intense in its fervor, biting down on my thumb.
As I keep flipping, however, I notice something odd. A gradual shift: from photos of the two of us together to photos of Doe alone. Instead of Oliver taking photos of her and me, I’d taken most of these pictures of her; in them she was alone. This infuriates me, sends a baseball bat of doubt crashing through our happiness. Where had he been? I wonder if he’d ever been all that happy. I wonder how deep the fissures ran through the life we’d built together. It makes me doubt the wife I was, the happiness I trusted. It’s all I can do to not scream.
Then I think: What if these photos are all he’ll have to show Doe of the two of us, mother and daughter, together?
—
Glendora, the name of tonight’s night nurse, gets written in my Moleskine notebook, though it isn’t necessary, for her impression already is made. A Caribbean woman in her fifties, Glendora is mother to a litter of children, gramma to tons more. Her hair is piled high in a black block, like a tower of chocolate cake, and she has a penchant for unusually-colored eye makeup—bronze shimmery liner with blue mascara, both of which are shocking on her dark brown face. As if this is not enough, she’s drawn dramatic half-moons for her eyebrows. A large woman, she seems even larger because of how she lumbers around this little closet, wheezing through her nostrils as she checks the levels of an IV battery, clears a clogged line, takes my blood and vitals, makes sure my medicines are correct, helps me to and from the bathroom, answers questions from my friends and relatives, asks me questions for the doctors, and writes down answers in my file. She always tries to be pleasant. Looking at the bedside photos, she says my daughter is a blessing. She says that having Oliver look after me is a blessing. My temperature being around normal before heading off for my third radiation blast today? Also a blessing.
Presently, her rear end knocks a photo off the bedside table. Glendora apologizes and picks up the picture—a framed snapshot of Doe and me in a different hospital bed, the child bright red and mushed in the face, not minutes after she was born.
“What a blessing,” Glendora says.
“Thank you.”
“Honey, you gonna get through this.”
“Of course,” I mumble. “That’s not up for debate.”
She smiles. “You have to think like that.”
Oliver’s eyes are already with me, and for a moment—because otherwise death is waiting? That’s why we have to think like that?—we are united in our irritation. But the moment doesn’t last; his clean face again ignites me, and he recognizes this, and goes back to whatever he’s doing on his laptop.
—
How much of life is regret, fretting over mistakes, wishing you’d had that perfect comeback to your ex, trying to make good for a turn from which there was no returning; reckoning with errors made from pride, desire, need, or defensiveness. Making mistakes because you were afraid. It’s a necessary pain: understanding there are fissures that cannot be healed, our time here is messy.
I’ve seen weight lifters in the free-weight area of my gym pump each other up before a massive bench press. “No pain, no gain,” they shout. This also happens to be one of the teachings of Satchidananda. Well, here is my pain: my swollen jaw, my muddled mind, my torn heart.
All the nurses are busy; Oliver is in his chair, still doing his thing with his laptop; the room is quiet. It’s moments like this I feel most alone, most scared of what’s ahead. I wish I had Tilda here, feeding me, caring for me, reminding me to eat every two hours.
But this is the wrong way to look at things, I know. So I ask myself: What stands in the way of me fully taking care of my physical body? The answer isn’t comfortable. I get food delivered to my bedside, but let it sit out and spoil. I don’t drink enough water or eat enough ice. I don’t brush my teeth at night. I am too much in love with the idea of Tilda, a nurse, or some old Indian woman caring for me, bringing me soup, changing the blankets I’ve soaked with sweat.
What happens if I become that Indian woman caring for me? I can isolate the pain in my jaw and mouth, reducing it to one small throbbing blip in the vast blackness. I can place the absurdity of Oliver’s appetites into a closet, shut the door, and let blackness wash over him as well. I can turn my back on the horror and fear that arrived this afternoon—my own absurd brush with appetite—when desire manifested from the ether and walked into this room to sit at my bedside. But it also walked away, didn’t it? I can stay in the moment of now. But it’s so hard to detach from her.
Finally, a good half an hour later than had been arranged, the room phone rings. I want to get it, but Oliver’s already picked up the receiver, is bringing the phone to me.
“She had a big day,” says my mother. “She did so good at the children’s museum. I got a disposable camera and took pictures. I’ll send them off like you want, every day. More than a year old—my precious girl is getting so big. We had mac and cheese for dinner, then rub a dub in the bath. She’s a tired tomato right now. Yes you are.”
My mother describes the face that my daughter makes when she is trying to figure something out. “Right now she’s scrunching her nose and tossing her head to the side a bit. Like what is happening is yucky. Anything she doesn’t want to do is yucky.”
I hear Doe’s laughter and my mother fussing over her. My heart is gray coals, its embers burning.
“Your laugh is the greatest thing.” I say. “You light up when you laugh.” I am thinking of her when she is uncertain, holding her arms out to her sides, palms up. I whisper to Doe that I love her. “Today I am missing you very much. I wish I could have you in my room and we could play together.”
There is static on the other end. Fumbling sounds. Now a wail.
“I’m sad, too,” I say. “I’m sad, too, Blueberry.”
The crying increasing, becoming oppressive. “Every minute of the day I am loving you,” I continue.
“She’s tired,” my mother says. “She doesn’t have the attention span right now.”
“Then why call so late?”
My voice wavers; I’m on the brink. But Oliver steps in. Interjecting, speaking over me, he calls Doe little macaroon. He sings to her, the first letter of the alphabet. The second.
The other end stops futzing.
“Tell her she is in Mommy’s heart,” he says to me.
My vocal cords strain: “MOMMY’S IN YOUR HEART.”
The other end softens, goes silent. I hear a garble.
A questioning “Maa?”
And then: “Daa?”
And, “Haa?”
“Mommy, Daddy, heart?” I ask.
“Maa daa haa.”
—
The Second Noble Truth of
Suffering, or dukkha, seeks to determine the origins of craving. I might crave fine silk sheets, the pleasures of a Dolce handbag, but these cravings are transitory, a thirst—tanha—that might be allayed but never quenched. Buddha teaches that tanha grows from a lack of personal awareness, that grabbing wildly for one thing after another is an illusion. Says Buddha: “If, in the world, you overcome this uncouth craving, hard to escape, sorrows roll off you, like water beads off a lotus.”
Maybe I could accept rough, starched sheets. Maybe I can stop desiring to watch Pulp Fiction. But I will shout, straight into Buddha’s face: You listen to that baby who came from your womb, you give up your desire to be with her.
The other end of the phone is silent, but my heart is jammed in my throat, my pulse racing through my jawline. I am aware of Oliver’s hand on my shoulder. My face is a blubbery wash.
I am here. Possessed. In this moment Fully alive.
“It is true,” I say, carefully enunciating, working against the swelling. “Mommy and Daddy are in your heart. You are in our hearts, too. So we’re really not apart. Our desire lifts us. It delivers us.”
—
From the extended lounger, he says, “I guess the whole thing was a success.”
The events behind us, the room finally black.
“It was nice,” I manage.
“I think we’re doing this well, so far.”
The walls black and lighter black.
“The night nurse is a piece of work, right? With those eyebrows?”
“Glendora?”
“That’s her name? Were those tattooed on?”
“Those are drawn.”
“Drawn?”
“Mmmm. You shave your eyebrows and draw in more dramatic ones. A lot of women do it.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m wise to the ways of women, Oliver. I know these things.”
The air conditioner kicks into a different gear, a slight shift.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he says.
“I want to sleep.”
“Because I’m willing. I want to make things—”
“It’s been a long day, Oliver.”
He waits.
“I need to sleep,” I say.
His resignation is palpable. I hear him shifting on the lounger. “Right.”
—
Dawn, or five minutes after. Whatever awful time it is. I am roused from depth and drool. The young nursing assistant, Noelle, tells me the doctors want samples—“Stool sample. Urine sample.” My throat remains tender, as if I’d spent the evening chewing on shoe leather; and this is an improvement. It’s possible I can string together a few sentences. I am careful, slow. “Bad enough pooping and peeing into hats,” I begin. “Trying to do it in separate hats.”
Noelle doesn’t break from her plastic smile.
I keep going. “Especially when those pills cause diarrhea. My poo is liquid as my pee. They both come out at the same time. Getting them into separate hats? You’re asking me to perform ass gymnastics.”
Noelle looks at the pictures on the bedside, says how beautiful my baby is.
Usually I fall back to sleep after vitals, but this time I’m too worked up. And now Nurse Hwan makes an appearance. She wants to know about my jaw. “How’s it doing?”
She walks me through the previous day: my medicine regimen when I woke, the trip to the radiation room. That afternoon. Before I went to sleep, did I feel any symptoms? Swelling in my tongue, pain in my jaw? Were these immediate when I woke after the midday radiation treatment? She tells me she wants to be my advocate.
“Advocate for what?” I ask. She does not answer.
An hour later, Blasco comes in, along with my radiation doctor. Familiar with what I’ve told the nurse, they ask more follow-ups, trying to fill in the time line: step by step, what side effects took place starting here, what drugs I was taking beforehand, how long beforehand. “We want to know as much as we can,” Blasco says. “Any tips or hints can be helpful.”
He asks how the lemon drops are working. I nod and say they’ve helped. Dr. Blasco looks relieved, and proceeds to my bowel movements. “Records show you haven’t had one since checking in.”
“That’s not true,” I say.
“You’re on Zofran, and that causes constipation,” Blasco continues. “Let’s start you on a pill regimen that will soften your stool.”
“No.”
“It should loosen things up.”
“You don’t understand.”
The radiation doctor nods at Blasco. They look to me to make it unanimous.
“Is it my turn?” I ask.
—
It will be the last time out of my room, at least for a while. We get to the second floor and start down the corridor with the row of windows. I pay extra attention to the pale white sky, the blustery day, the highest branches of trees passing the ward’s windows, swaying back and forth in thickets. Their remaining leaves, all the reds and oranges and pale yellow shades that define fall, seem ready to fly off into the wind. But right now they are hanging on, the branches swaying closer to the building, so close that a few leaves actually press against the windows, and then spring away. Watching the syncopations, I feel a violence in my stomach, as if I could vomit.
“I will give you a hundred dollars,” I tell the orderly, “if we can play hooky and go outside for five minutes.”
Emaciated, with a junkie’s shrunken-apple face, jailhouse tattoos on his neck.
“What happens when I get caught taking you outside?” he says. “Hazard a guess.”
“Two thousand dollars.”
He clucks his tongue.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go get high.”
He goes inward, studies me, taking in my rabidness.
“Sheeeeeiiit.” He laughs.
I laugh back, stick out my swollen tongue at him.
—
I’ve got an easy dialogue with Paul, the radiation guy, though it’s not quite a rapport. The most revealing thing I’ve learned is that he’s friends with Dr. Eisenstatt; but when I asked how old Eisenstatt is, Paul got flustered, as if I’m not supposed to know human information about the man, am not supposed to think about him as anything other than my doctor.
Today, however, I can’t keep up my end of the banter. My head is pulsing, my breaths labored. When I move in any direction, I get a rush, must hold on to the sides of the bicycle seat. Paul tells me to take as much time as I need. I stare ahead, hoping to find an object to focus on. A vomit bucket—in actuality it looks like a bedpan—has been tied to one of the nearest handles; however, these handles are immovable, and there’s no way my head can reach. My breaths are not coming any easier. The air in the room has a slight chill. I have goosebumps. All around me is that constant machine hum. I think of telling Paul I can’t keep going. I imagine being unstrapped, the port gently withdrawn, getting disconnected from all these tubes, waiting outside for the car service. But it doesn’t feel true.
This is what people go through.
Now is my turn.
I catch my breath, brace myself, grit my teeth, feel the tightness in my jaw, less than it’s been, but still tight—an odd relief. I ready myself; nod.
—
All right, I tell myself. I never have to go through that again.
My pajamas and undergarments lie on the floor next to the bed. Since I am now approved to shower, it has been impressed upon me that cleanliness is very important to my health. There are no words for how ready I am to wash away the bed grime, the sour stench of my own self. I use the intercom to let them know I’m going to shower. “You can come in and change the sheets.”
A chipper answer: “All righty.”
The water is a refreshing assault; I let it wash over my skull, my shoulders, turn and lift my head, let the water batter the front of my neck. I hold on to the steel pole for support, stand under the blast for as long as my legs allow. Afterward, still soaking wet, I defy fate and manage a bowel m
ovement. The plastic lid is sealed, the small container gets placed as instructed, atop the toilet.
Back in my freshly cleaned bed, settling on the spanking white sheets, I again call the nurses’ station, report that I have a sample.
Another “All righty,” just as chipper as the first.
Feeling a measure of competence, I shut my eyes, let myself drift.
—
Across the street from Penn Station, a dusty office building from the era of brimmed fedoras and three martini lunches: Oliver ignored the rental cop at the counter and headed straight to the groaning elevator. He traversed the dusty maze of deco hallways with their obsolete bronze mailboxes, their ornate eagles—eyes still alert, watching. Then he was at his destination: that dark room, its door creaking ajar. Illuminated by the usual series of scented candles, she emerged: small, curvy, fitting the description he’d heard over the phone, her body fully packed into that matching bra and panties. Perla, this one’s name. Attractive enough, but older than promised, her nose long and Baltic and red and veined at its rounded nostrils. The wear of life around her eyes. Mouth pinched at the corners. She purred his name, held out her hand for his picture ID.
This moment remained a stomach churner, a test of his most paranoid self: Who needed to get caught in the middle of a sting? Or what if something went wrong and his identification got taken, or fell onto the floor and was left behind? Along with his appointment record, this could be an evidence trail, a way to track him, expose him to the world. (Thank hell, nobody had done that pecker check since the first time.)
Perla handed back his card.
And so here he was, in yet another nondescript bedroom. And this wasn’t even that, just a bare office space with gothic moldings and a queen-size in its middle—far enough away from walls that the headboard would not thump. Oliver stepped inside, moving onto the industrial carpet and past the line of canvas sneakers and platform shoes, all of them in small sizes, almost like children’s shoes. The closet door was open, a travel suitcase on the floor, overflowing with tangled tops and jeans. Next to it sat a small pile of goodies (logic suggested they’d been purchased from nearby Koreatown wholesalers): perfume boxes still in cellophane wrappers, toy stuffed bears, samplers of dark chocolate.
