by Claire Adams
“Where are you from?” I ask.
“San Diego,” she says. “My parents moved here when I was a teenager, and I guess I just never really felt the urge to go back. What about you?”
“Delaware,” I tell her, and then I get to the question I really wanted to ask. “I don’t suppose there’s any way I could fire up a J in here, is there?”
“Sorry,” she says. “The administration frowns on that sort of thing in the hospital.”
“Bummer,” I answer.
“But…” she says, reaching into her desk, “and this has got to stay between you and me.”
She pulls a vaporizer pen from one of her desk drawers. “It’s strawberry flavored,” she says. “You can’t even taste the other stuff.”
“You just keep that in your drawer?” I laugh.
She smiles. “Let’s just say you’re not the first person I’ve been in here alone with who could use a little relief.”
“Do you have an alcohol wipe or something?” I ask. “It’s not that I don’t trust you or anything, I just don’t trust the other patients who’ve-”
“I meant me,” she says.
My jaw actually drops.
“You’re serious?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says. “I’ve got a valid prescription and everything — it’s totally legal. I’m sure the doc wouldn’t be too thrilled if he knew I had it here in the office, but he’s never seemed to notice.”
With that, she gets out of her chair and locks the door to the office before coming over to me and handing me the vaporizer.
“You’re not going to join me?” I ask.
“I’m still on the clock,” she says.
I take a puff and, even though Yuri assured me that there wouldn’t be any illicit smell, it still takes me about thirty seconds before I feel comfortable exhaling. Even then, I breathe out into the sleeve of my sweater.
The phone rings and Yuri answers it, saying, “Dr. Churchill’s office.”
I take another puff and try to remind myself that what I’m experiencing right now is a reality. I’m sitting in a locked office with the assistant to my oncologist who just hooked me up with MJ extract.
“Okay,” Yuri says into the phone. “Grace is still here, should I send her home or should I call down to…uh huh…uh huh…”
I take another puff, forgetting my still-low tolerance for the fact that what I’m doing really doesn’t feel like smoking anything except candied strawberries, and I’m already starting to feel less nauseated, less sore, less pained.
“All right,” Yuri says, “I’ll tell her.”
She hangs up the phone, gets up from her desk and takes a seat next to me.
I hold out the pen to her as I’m already starting to feel the high coming on pretty strong, and she takes it.
“He’s not coming in today,” she says. “I guess he’s already called radiology and gotten you scheduled for tomorrow.”
Her wrist makes an elegant series of movements as she takes a long pull from the vaporizer and blows out a series of — I guess they’re still called smoke rings if it’s coming from a vaporizer, but I’m still pretty new to all this.
“Where do you live?”
I tell her and, apparently, we’re only a few blocks from each other. In this city, that’s a pretty big coincidence.
“Wanna split a cab?” she asks.
“I thought you had work to do,” I answer.
“It can wait,” she says. “Most of what I was going to do, I guess Dr. Churchill already took care of, and I’d rather know that you got home safe than stay here and sit on my thumb, you know?”
It’s probably the pot, but I can’t help but feel like Yuri and I are old friends who’ve just never really had the chance to get to know one another.
“All right,” I tell her. “It’ll be nice to have some company for the ride home.”
“Cool,” she says and takes another puff before handing the pen back to me.
“Oh, I’m good,” I tell her.
“You sure?” she asks.
“Yeah, I’m still a cheap date with that stuff,” I answer.
She shrugs and takes another puff before going back to her desk and collecting her purse.
“You wanna hear something crazy?” I ask.
“What’s that?” she responds, pulling a small bottle of eye drops from her purse.
“I’m actually kind of hungry,” I tell her.
“It’s kind of nice, isn’t it?”
“It really is,” I answer.
Yeah, I just became pro-legalization.
She puts a few drops into each eye and then tosses me the bottle. I sit there for a minute, feeling the presence of the spout while not feeling any cold or wetness on my eye before I realize that the cap’s still on.
I chuckle to myself as I unscrew the cap, but I just sit there for another minute.
“I really like your hair,” Yuri says. “Where’d you get it?”
With that question, we both start laughing.
“There’s a place down on twelfth,” I tell her. “They’ve got some good stuff.”
I finally get a couple of drops in each eye and I give the bottle back to Yuri, who then helps me to my feet, asking if I’m good to walk.
I tell her I’m fine, and I take one more look at the office, breathing in the weirdness of right now, before we walk out the door.
Yuri calls a cab from her cell phone, and we sit on a bench out front while we wait.
“So, what’s your prescription for?” I ask.
“Oh, I really don’t like to talk about it,” she says.
“Why not?” I chortle. “You know all sorts of disgusting details about me, how about a little reciprocation here?”
“Did you know,” she says, “that it’s actually against the rules to actually smoke as a method of delivery for this stuff?”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Well,” she says, “I guess a lot of people didn’t pay attention to this part, but in the Compassionate Care Act in this state, it’s actually stipulated that smoking cannot be authorized as the way to take your medical marijuana into your system.”
I ignore for a moment, the fact that she’s dodging my question and say, “So, I’ve been breaking the law this whole time.”
“What have you been doing?” she asks. “How’d you even get the green stuff?”
“A guy in my building’s been trying to get me to try it out for a while now, and so I thought I’d finally take him up on his offer,” I laugh.
Our cab finally arrives and we get in, but Yuri’s not done with her questioning.
“So,” she starts again, “what did you do with your script?”
“I just never got it filled,” I tell her. “I figured if I could just get the same stuff from a guy in my building, it’d be a time-saver. I didn’t know it was such a no-no.”
“Here,” she says, pulling the pen out of her purse and handing it to me. “Why don’t you hang onto this and whenever you run out of your stash at home, just go get that prescription filled. This stuff’s better for you anyway.”
“I can’t take that from you,” I tell her and I start to laugh. “It’s your little buddy. I can’t get between the two of you.”
Either she’s not as high as I am, or I’m not nearly as funny as I think I am.
“Seriously,” she says, “take it. It burns cooler than what you’ve got, and it’s actually got a higher content of-”
“Sorry to interrupt your drug talk,” the driver says, “but is one of you going to tell me where I’m taking you? If not, I’m happy to sit here while the meter runs.”
I give the man my address and, making no effort to be discreet about it, I scoff and say, “What a dick!”
“Whatever,” the driver says and pulls onto the road.
“So,” I say, turning back to Yuri, “you never answered my question.”
“No,” she says, “I’ve tried telling patients before. It jus
t bums them out.”
“How do you bum out cancer patients?” I ask. “I mean, other than by telling them that they’ve got cancer. I mean, I’ve got a fucking brain tumor. It’s not like-”
The driver scoffs in the front seat, and I’m caught in that brief moment before fight or flight kicks in where it hasn’t quite sunk in yet that the man in the driver’s seat thinks that me having a fucking tumor in my head explains something.
“I’m sorry, but what the fuck is your problem?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says, keeping his eyes on the road.
“Really,” I persist, “if you’ve got something to say, why not just say it instead of being a fucking pussy? Besides, if there’s something funny about my oligodendroglioma, I’d love to hear it because it hasn’t been all that funny to me.”
Yuri puts a hand on my knee and leans toward me, whispering, “He was clearing his throat.”
“He scoffed at me when I mentioned my fucking brain tumor!”
“I really didn’t,” he says. “I would never do something like that.”
Well, don’t I feel like the perfect little piece of shit right about now?
The rest of the drive to my building is quiet, but as I’m reaching into my purse to pay my portion of the fare, I ask Yuri if she’d like to come up for a minute and show me how to change out the fluid in my new pen, but she says that she’s got to get home.
She’s kind enough to give me a crash course in the back of the cab, though.
I get to the door and Boris holds it open for me.
“How did the scan go?” he asks.
“We’ll find out just as soon as the doctor who was supposed to get me in turns up,” I tell him.
Boris mumbles through an empathetic response to my bad luck when my phone starts to ring. I’m not entirely surprised to see that it’s Yuri’s boss and my doctor/late night friend calling.
“Sorry, I should probably take this,” I tell him. “Hello?”
“Hey, I’m sorry I missed our appointment today,” Jace says. “I was wondering if there was any way I could swing by for a little bit.”
“Why?” I ask, pretty irritated that he left me high and dry and has the nerve to ask a favor.
“It’s Melissa,” he says. “I don’t know if you were joking with what you said about her, but I need some advice.”
“I don’t suppose this is something we could discuss through an intercom, is it?” I ask.
“It’s really something I’d prefer discussing face-to-face.”
“All right,” I tell him. “You know where I live.”
“Great, I’ll be right there.”
I hang up and Boris asks who called. I just tell him it’s an old friend that’s going to be stopping by for some advice.
Truth be told, I’m actually glad that Jace is coming over. I don’t know that I could really handle walking into my apartment alone. Since my diagnosis, I’ve started to realize just how alone I am.
I’ve put so much time and effort into being a success in my professional life that I’ve neglected cultivating relationships with anyone outside of a business context.
Sure, there’s Mags, but she’s not really the kind of person that’s going to be able to handle this sort of thing. So, for now, I guess I’m just stealing moments with the people that I can.
Chapter Six
Choking on the Sinker
Jace
I get to Grace’s building and the doorman recognizes me, waving me through.
Right now, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Things were going so well yesterday, but this morning, Melissa was already gone when I woke up.
I press the button on the elevator, trying to get the image of that video out of my head.
When it was happening, I was far enough away from the screen that I couldn’t make out what Melissa was saying to the camera. I don’t know, maybe it’s nothing to worry about.
Maybe my lip-reading isn’t nearly as good as I think it is and maybe I’m just blowing this whole thing out of proportion, but Melissa’s not answering her phone, and I happen to know for a fact that she’s not at work.
I’m not proud to say it, but I checked.
I get off the elevator and walk down the hall to Grace’s door and just stand there for a minute.
What I’m doing right now isn’t fair.
What I’m doing right now is bullshit.
I’ve prided myself, since I began working at the hospital, that I’ve never let my personal life interfere with my professional life, but that took a nosedive this morning when I didn’t show up for Grace’s scan.
If I’d called Yuri before I did, Grace still could have gotten in and I could’ve just taken a look at the scans later today or whenever, but I was too busy having my precious little breakdown.
I knock and then consider leaving before Grace reaches the door, but I don’t get the chance to think all the way through the idea before the door opens.
“Hey,” Grace says. “Come in.”
“Thanks,” I tell her. “I’m sorry to show up like this after no-showing at your MRI this morning, but I really don’t know what else to do, who else to talk to.”
“It’s fine.”
“I shouldn’t have come here,” I start.
“No, it’s fine,” Grace assures. “Sit down. What kind of advice did you need?”
I’m standing, staring stupidly into space, trying to think of how to explain what I came here to do.
“It’s nothing,” I answer. “I should just go.”
“Well, apparently it’s enough of something that you skipped my scan this morning,” she says. “Now you’re here, so you may as well just tell me.”
“I really don’t think it’s something I should be discussing with a patient,” I mutter.
“What was that?”
I repeat myself a little louder and she just shrugs.
Her eyes are different right now. It’s not the irises, but the overall glassy appearance that I’ve seen from a number of my patients, even before medical cannabis was approved in the state.
“I think maybe it would be better if I come back when we’ve both got a clear head,” I say, knowing it’s probably going to be at least a few days before that’s going to happen.
“Nope,” she says and sits on her couch, patting the spot next to her.
Every instinct in me is telling me to turn around and walk out the door, but I really don’t feel like there’s anywhere for me to go.
“It’s Melissa,” I start and then try to figure out how to continue.
“Sit,” Grace says and pats the seat next to her again.
I sit, but I don’t say anything.
What I came here to do was to ask Grace if she’d watch the video and tell me what she thought Melissa was saying. I even cued the video up so we could avoid any images of actual penetration, but the ridiculousness of it all is starting to set in.
This is the kind of thing that can get you sued, but with Grace already aware of my second job, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem here.
“I don’t know how to say this,” I start.
“You think she’s cheating on you? I’d say it’s a pretty fair bet.”
“What makes you say that? You don’t even know her.”
“It’s the way she acts,” Grace says. “She’s just got that gleam of someone who’s getting some strange on the side, but come on, you can’t sit here and tell me that would be such a surprise.”
“Well,” I sigh, “I think you’re right. Yesterday, I, uh…I took a video, and she’s mouthing words at one point that seems to be-”
“Did you come over here to show me porn starring you and your girlfriend?” Grace interrupts with a smile.
When I don’t immediately answer, she starts laughing uncontrollably.
And I thought I felt like an idiot before.
“I didn’t come here to show you porn,” I explain. “The video is — well, that’s what’s goin
g on, but you don’t really see anything. I know it’s weird for me to-”
“Well, hand it over,” Grace says. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen a skin flick where I actually knew the people involved.” She leans toward me. “College was a strange time,” she says.
I would laugh, but I’d rather just jump out the window.
Grace is looking at me, waiting for me to pull out my phone and humiliate myself more completely. I shake my head, but I pull out my phone.
“I cued it up, so you’re not really seeing me or anything that’s going on directly,” I explain. “Are you sure you want to see this?”
“Yeah, why not,” she says. “It’ll be the closest thing to action I’ve gotten in quite a while.”
This is humiliating, but I need some answers.
Maybe I’m just letting what Grace said yesterday dominate my mind, but after watching the video and what it looks like Melissa was saying into the camera, I don’t know if there’s anything else for me to do.
I turn on the screen to my phone and there, paused and ready to play, is the image of Melissa bent over the hood of her car, her cleavage looking a lot more pronounced than it did before I had an audience.
“Oh yeah,” Grace says, “those are fake as shit.”
“That’s not really what I came here to show you,” I tell her, hoping that she’ll keep the commentary to a minimum and just tell me if I’m crazy or not.
“Well, hit play,” she says. “I’m losing wood over here.”
I close my eyes when I start the video, but that doesn’t make any difference. In my head, I can see exactly what’s going on.
Melissa is moving back and forth in response to my entry and, at first she’s only biting her lip, not saying anything at all.
“She looks pretty happy,” Grace says. “Looks like you’ve got a good dick there, doc.”
I’m hardly amused. I open my eyes and look down at the video.
“Right here,” I tell her. “Watch her lips.”
Melissa’s mouth starts going, and even more than the thirteen times I’ve replayed this part of the video, I can clearly see the words she’s saying.
“Oh shit,” Grace says, her voice turning serious.
