by Neil Hetzner
In all of her planning Bett had imagined that Neil would be the one to tell her how the operation had gone. She had envisioned waking up to find her hand in his. She had even practiced what her response would be if he told her that she had had a mastectomy. Although she could remember being told that she would go from surgery to a recovery room, she hadn’t incorporated that information into her plans. It didn’t seem appropriate that what might be some of the best or worst news of her life should be delivered by a stranger. Now, when she and Neil first saw one another, they both would know that her breast was gone. It would be a fact. It would be old news. They wouldn’t have shared the moment of change. She, or they, could begin to plan beyond that old news.
Bett tried to pull herself into a tight tough shape to begin to deal with that old news, but she found herself dreaming of the quilt and wishing that she could stay longer in the recovery room away from his knowing eyes.
The nurse came back twice more to ask her to try to move her fingers and toes. She took her blood pressure. She asked Bett her name, the day, and the name of her doctor. Ten minutes after the third examination, she was wheeled out of the recovery room and along the beige and orange corridors to her room.
Neil stood in the corner of the room as the orderly and two nurses maneuvered Bett into bed. As the nurses chattered cheerily between themselves, to her, to Neil and to a larger unnamed audience as to what they were going to do—”Here we go. Upsy daisy. There you are. That’s nice.”—and as to how she was—”You’re fine. Your color’s terrific. Any discomfort?”—Neil tried to maintain eye contact with his altered wife. Each time that a body blocked that connection, they both craned their heads as if they were afraid of becoming lost in a crowd. When the nurses finally finished with their ministrations and instructions, the sudden removal of so much energy made the atmosphere of the room seem to be a half-vacuum.
Neil came around the end of the bed to take Bett’s left hand. She shook her head half in real and half in mock exhaustion.
“Sickness is such a carnival,” she said throatily.
“The sickness part is over. This is the wellness part.”
“True?”
“Dr. Falconi said that the surgery could not have gone better. He said that he’d be by later. How do you feel?”
“Stupid.”
“Don’t knock it. When you start feeling smart again, you’ll probably start feeling pain, too. Does it hurt at all?”
“It did once when I put pressure on my arm.”
“You were in there a long time.”
“Was I? I have no idea. What time is it?”
“It’s almost two. That’s almost six hours.”
“I couldn’t have guessed.”
After several more minutes of talk that dealt with the minutiae of the day while ignoring the major issue, Bett drifted off into a sleep frequently broken by moans, giggles, fluttery lids and nervous fingers. After a long while Neil eased himself from the edge of the bed and returned to the sienna-seated plastic chair.
Neil was lost in his thoughts about various futures when Dr. Falconi appeared in the doorway. The surgeon studied Bett and her records for several moments before motioning to Neil to join him outside the room.
Neil hurried after the physician as he quick-marched halfway down the corridor. Dr. Falconi turned suddenly and waited for Neil to catch up.
“Her signs are fine. How was she? How long has she been sleeping?”
“We talked for awhile. Her spirits were pretty good. We didn’t really discuss the surgery. I didn’t say anything about the radiation.”
“You don’t have to. I will. I just wanted you to know so that that you would be prepared to help her when it’s time to tell her. As I told you after the surgery, the frozen section didn’t look great, but we won’t really know everything until the lab finishes its work, which usually takes three days. We’ll wait to tell her about the radiation when we get the lab results back. That gives her a couple of easy days to recover.”
“What is her prognosis?”
“Mr. Koster, cancer is a very complicated business. We’ll know more in a couple of days. I’ve got rounds to make. I’ll check in one more time before I leave to see if she’s awake.”
“Thank you.”
Dr. Falconi nodded his head before he accelerated down the hallway.
Neil wanted to be angry at the surgeon. He wanted information, solid information, that would allow him to plan his and Bett’s and their lives. The acid of anger began, but the thousand memories of giving the same kind of non-committal answers—to young couples seeking mortgages and business people wanting loans—neutralized its corrosiveness. He walked back to Bett’s room resigned to patience.
* * *
Bett worked diligently at being a good patient for the first three days after her surgery. She endured the massages and persisted at the elevating exercises that were intended to lower the chance of lymphedema in her arm. Dr. Maurer, Dr. Falconi and all of the seemingly endless number of nurses who made up the various rotations each warned her of the necessity of being very conscientious about preventing lymphedema. The surgery that had been done on the axilla nodes in her armpit could affect her arm’s ability to drain away lymph. If she weren’t careful, her arm could swell to be two or three times its normal size. The swelling could become a permanent condition. One nurse, Frannie, who worked the night shift, told her that it had taken her own mother more than a year to bring the swelling down after she had given herself a slight burn while pulling a pan of scalloped potatoes from the oven.
Bett tried to be a good patient, but it wasn’t always easy to know how to do that. Maryann, a large, extremely freckled and extremely friendly nurse who worked during the day, cautioned her to go easy when she found Bett doing vertical finger walks up the window that looked onto the parking lot. She warned that if Bett were too energetic in following her regimen, she might tear the stitching in the skin flap that covered her wound.
Bett tried to be patient when the nurses fussed over the drains that extended through the bandages that covered her chest all the way to her waist. She remained silent on the second day after surgery when both at lunch and dinner time the food which arrived on the tray was different from what she had ordered. She acquiesced to the insertion of the thermometer, the frequent bondage of the blood pressure cuff and the presentation of the nut cups of pain medication. However, after three days of constant care, Bett had reached her limit for being the recipient of others’ kindnesses and concern. She couldn’t remain any longer in a room that was devoted solely to her well-being. She took the pamphlet Dr. Falconi had left and her wallet and padded to the cafeteria for a cup of herbal tea.
Sitting in the large green room with its supposedly warm and upbeat orange furniture drinking lukewarm tea that tasted mostly like the white plastic foam of the cup holding it was wonderful if only because she was the one who had submerged the teabag and decided when the steeping should stop. Sitting at a small square table of wood-grained brown plastic along the back wall, ignoring the pamphlet open before her, Bett welcomed the transfusion of unknown faces and voices which were momentarily forcing out the well-worn thoughts of self that had filled her mind for three days. After more than a half hour of watching various displays of the edgy heartiness that she guessed would only be found in hospitals and courts, she picked up the unread pamphlet, disposed of her trash and slowly walked from the cafeteria.
Bett wandered the corridors trying to draw off some of the electricity which had built-up inside her. Her right shoulder ached, her chest burned, the skin of her stomach, just at the edge of the bandage, itched, but her physical discomfort was exceeded by her agitation. One nurse had told her that the agitation and restlessness were common post-operative symptoms; however the fact that she knew the cause did not alleviate the effects. She noticed a sign for physical therapy at a crossroad in the corridors. She followed directions until she came to a medium-sized room with a number of chrome-plate
d machines of which she only recognized the stationary bicycles and a rower. The room was empty. It took Bett a long minute to figure out how to adjust the height of the bike seat. She groaned aloud as she put too much weight on her right arm when she mounted the bike. It took three attempts before she correctly interpreted the cryptic messages of lighted red dots that gleamed on the control screen between the yoke of the handlebars. Finally, she managed to enter her weight, selected a program called, she thought appropriately, Rockies Ride, and set a low level of resistance for a ten minute interval.
The recovering patient found that to pedal without pain to her chest or right shoulder that she had to list to the left. She barked a sharp, wheeze-shortened laugh at a flashing memory of Dilly riding her bike lop-sided, the effect of having a large boil on her bottom.
Bett abruptly stopped pedaling when she felt droplets of sweat roll down across her furrowed brow before being caught in the tangle of her eyebrows. It felt so healthy to have her calves and thighs push through the resistance of the pedals. It felt useful to be churning her legs. She would have liked to pedal until her muscles were so fatigued that they would quiver when she climbed down, but the trail of sweat reminded her of her wound. If she began to sweat under her bandages, she could drive herself crazy with itching. A disappointed Bett gingerly dismounted the bike, slowly reached down to pick up her wallet from the floor, then, took time to study the collection of unidentifiable machines before wandering out of the room and back to her exploration of the hospital.
Although her cheeks still felt flushed, Bett’s breathing had returned to normal by the time she walked into the dimly lighted chapel. She couldn’t remember ever seeing a tinier place of worship. The room was no bigger than the linen closet where she had put away the sleeping bags just before entering the hospital. The two maroon-covered straight back chairs, one along each wall, the thick gray carpet, the cottony quiet and the dim yellow lighting from the two wall sconces combined to remind her of a funeral parlor. On the windowless front wall was a backlit stained glass window of Christ tending his flock. Three feet in front of the stained glass was a blond wood prie-dieu.
Bett pulled a chair out from the wall and turned it so that she could face the figure of Christ. She had been told the very first day by Dr. Maurer that if her lump were cancerous there might be a post-surgical need for either radiation or chemotherapy or both, or even a hysterectomy or oophorectomy. She had heard the words, but as she had been overwhelmed by too many others things, the words hadn’t really registered. She had been sure that her lump would be benign. When Dr. Falconi had stopped by that morning to check her drains and review her medication, he had told her that the pathologist’s report indicated that cancer had been present in some of the nodes which they had removed. After a period of silence while each waited for the other to speak, Bett had asked what the implications were. Dr. Falconi had said that the size of her tumor and the fact that her underarm was involved meant that her cancer was considered to be a Stage II situation. The most common treatment for Stage II patients was to follow up surgery with five or six weeks of radiation therapy. Twice, he repeated that even though her cancer had spread beyond her breast, Stage II was considered to be early stage breast cancer. The recovery rates were high. He had offered her the names of three radiation therapists whom he thought did good work. He had told her that he and Dr. Maurer, who also had her pathology report, were willing to answer any questions that she had. He had left her the pamphlet on radiation therapy.
Bett looked down from the figure of the bronze-haired Christ to the teal-colored guide to radiation in her hand. She wanted help, but she felt she had taken too much help in the last several days to be able to take anymore. She wanted to return to that lifelong feeling of competency which had been missing for a week longer than her breast. She wanted to pull some strength down from the figure of Christ, but she found she could not. Her faith, though strong, had been little used. Her religion had tended to be a one-way conduit. She gave her energy, her love, her worship, her pies and cakes, her flowers, and her voice to God. On those few occasions in her life when she had had a need, rather than reaching out to God for help, she had turned to herself to find some untapped inner reserve, some heretofore unrealized increment of will. Or, she had turned to Neil.
Bett stared at the pamphlet in her hands. She didn’t want to open it. It seemed strange to her not to want knowledge. In her pregnancies, especially during her series of miscarriages, during Nita’s problems with DES, after Peter had come home from Viet Nam, she had read everything she could find to help her to understand the situation and, thus, to be of use. She thumbed the sharp edges of the glossy paper. She didn’t want to know. She did not want to know what was going to happen. She wasn’t even sure that she would allow anything else to be done to her. She put her hand on the bandage over where her breast had been. She moved her fingertips up to her armpit. Maybe that was all that she was willing to give to this disease. It seemed so powerful. She had known that it wasn’t cancer, but it was. In the small doubtful corner of her mind where she had thought that what she was growing might be malignant, that small place had known with surety that the tumor would be contained. But that intuition had been wrong; the tumor hadn’t been in situ. The cancer was invasive. Like burdock and crab grass. Termites and earwigs. She had chosen the one-stage operation rather than the two-stage. She had chosen to have a mastectomy rather than a lumpectomy. She had reached beyond the recommended procedure twice because she wanted it done with. There were limits. She wasn’t sure what they were, but she felt herself to be very close to them.
Bett looked back up at the sapphire and ruby colors outlining the pearlescent figure of Christ. Drs. Falconi and Maurer were shepherding her through this business, but, although she trusted in their good intentions, she had growing doubts if they knew where they or the cancer itself was going. Either they were one step behind the disease, or they were on top of it but chose to hold back the information from her—either because the path to recovery was so terrible or because it led to nowhere but to her death.
Bett’s eyes drifted from the shepherd to the sheep. There were four sheep hovering around the legs of Christ. She wished she could find the simple faith of sheep. She wished she knew more about how to follow. For most of her life, she had been the one in front. It hadn’t been since the days of hoeing down the rows with Opa that she had been a follower. Bett longed for a simple faith. She tightened her hand into a fist and gently knocked it against her wound. Looking at the figure of Christ she prayed, “Please, God, give me the faith to go where I’m supposed to go and do what I’m supposed to do. I am very lost and very afraid and filled with doubts. Please give me strength and guide me.”
Bett sat still for many minutes. As she sat, she stared at the luminescent colors of the stained glass. Her eyes traced the lead bead around the fragments of colored glass as if she were tracing a map. She softened her focus so that the scene became a jigsaw puzzle of colored glass. She tightened her focus to scrutinize what message might be contained within the picture. The longer Bett sat, the more difficult it became to remain still. She could feel the heat of anger spread down out of her head, across her shoulders and down into the tips of her fingers. The anger added fire to the heat of her wound. It added more itch to the skin that she couldn’t scratch. Its boiling heat surged down her thighs, and little impeded by the bent blood vessels, rounded the corners of her knees. It began to fill up her calves, ankles and feet with a vibrant energy. She sat and seethed and forgot that she had prayed. The agitation of the anger passed into the atoms of her flesh. Although she remained seated, Bett felt as though every cell of her body was poised to break away. Finally, the anger overwhelmed her. Bett jumped up from the chair. She broke off her stare of the flock at Christ’s feet. She wouldn’t be a sheep. She wouldn’t just follow. She would fight.
* * *
The woman at the administration office, whose tag said Eunice, was surprised at Bett’s request.<
br />
“Usually, it’s the opposite. People want to transfer into a private room.”
“I’ve been in there for almost four days. I feel pretty good. I seem to be healing fine. I want some company. I’m tired of reading.”
“I hear you. I go on vacation. After three days I’m ready to come back. I’m going to put you in 218. That’s upstairs in the Bellscomb wing. Do you know where it is?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll have to wait a little until I can round up an orderly to move you.”
“That’s okay. I don’t have too much. I can do it myself.”
“House rules.”
“All right. Thank you. Should I call my doctor?”
“No, we’ll take care of that.”
“Thank you, again.”
“You’re welcome. I hope you like your roommate.”
“I’m sure I will.”
When she stepped through the light blue doorway of room 218, Bett was shocked. In a bed surrounded by machines was a small lump. At one end of the lump, just above the edge of the covers, was a small jaundiced face. Clear plastic tubes were going up into the nostrils of a nose which was much too large for the face. The head was slightly elevated. The decisiveness with which the nose split the face and the tilt of the head made the woman’s face look as if it were trying to wedge its way deeper into the atmosphere. Although the eyes were shut in apparent sleep and the breathing, though raspy, was regular, Bett thought the woman looked desperate for oxygen.
On each side of the bed were tall machines with tubes running from them to under the bed covers. On the right side of the bed, nearer the door, were a wheeled patient table and a night stand filled with flowers. She counted four four-inch pots of cyclamen, each topped with pale pink blossoms, each pot wrapped in gold foil. She wondered if everyone knew the patient loved pink cyclamen, or if one visitor had brought all four plants, or if there were a sale on cyclamen at the floral shop in the nearby grocery. Making these exotic members of the primrose family look plebian was an arrangement that held several orange and blue crane-shaped blooms of a bird of paradise, the ripening red pine cone-like bracts of a ginger blossom and some type of purple orchid she didn’t recognize. Another arrangement, the one she liked best, was a jar filled with black-eyed Susans, Peter Pan zinnias, Shasta daisies and spikes of blue salvia and statice.
