Chapter 9 #2
‘The cancer was only discovered late,’ she says quietly now, tracing the seam of her blanket with her finger. ‘I kept getting infections, nothing you’d rush to the doctor for.’
Yes, that’s how it started for me too. Fever and fatigue. ‘And then?’
‘When it kept coming back again and again, I went to the doctor. He said I was working too much – I’m a cook – and that the stress in the kitchen wasn’t good for me,’ she continues.
By now my infusion is running; I tilt the backrest of the recliner and place a pillow at my neck.
Lilly tells me how she tried to fight the recurring infections with relaxation techniques and nutritional supplements to strengthen her immune system, but she kept feeling worse and worse.
She kept working anyway, because she needed the money.
‘You know, in my family we don’t talk much about it when we’re not doing well, and my doctor also said I was physically okay,’ she says now, as if she had to apologize for her illness. ‘And then there were these weddings my boss desperately needed me for.’
I have a sense of where this is going. ‘How long did your illness go undetected?’
She lowers her lids. ‘Eight months.’
What? She must have had symptoms most of the time and lost a lot of weight.
Didn’t her family worry about her?
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say quietly.
She waves it off. ‘Oh, it’ll be fine. It just takes a little longer, that’s all.’
With her disease at such an advanced stage, her chances of survival are now probably around fifty to sixty percent. That’s significantly lower than mine, since my illness was detected early, but it’s still a good chance.
‘You can do this.’ I reach my hand out to her, wanting to encourage her, even though she herself seems to have plenty of courage.
She takes my fingers and squeezes them, barely noticeably. ‘We can do this together.’
Just under nine months later, my oncologist declared me healthy, and a doctor on the palliative care ward declared Lilly dead.
The memory hurts; I clutch my patient’s file—the one with the swallowing difficulties—even tighter to my chest and let my gaze wander down the corridor of the emergency department.
Doctors, nurses, cleaning staff, police officers, paramedics, patients, and relatives hurry past me. There are so many people around me, yet with all the emotions raging inside me, I feel alone.
Lilly and I were about the same age, led similar lives, had the same illness. The fact that my heart is still beating while hers will never beat again is mainly because my doctor realized what was wrong with me earlier than hers did.
It isn’t fair.
It just isn’t fair.
That won’t happen to my patient, that much is certain. No matter what Dr. Franks just said, ordering the tests was the right thing to do.
I march down the hallway, the memory aching in my chest along with the realization that what happened can’t be changed anymore. Only our future can be changed. By doing the right thing today.
Three days, echoes through my head, and my stomach turns. I’ve done everything right these past few months, but was it enough to stay healthy?
The emergency coordinator waves at me. ‘Hey, Nyla, the test results are in.’
Churned up inside, I walk over to his desk, take the papers, and thank him before I bury myself in the documents.
In a moment my suspicion will become certainty and Dr. Franks’s doubt will become carelessness. I can feel it. There’s something there. No one wanted to believe me with Lucy’s mom either, until the barely visible edema on her ankles finally turned out to be an early sign of heart failure.
‘Okay, what do we have?’ I let my gaze drift over the numbers and letters.
Lab diagnostics: unremarkable. Same as the tumor markers.
Strange.
Thyroid function: within normal range. MRI of neck and head, thoracic CT, ultrasound of the thyroid—everything without findings.
I read the results again.
No findings? Not a single one? How is that possible? The woman is ill; at least one of the tests should have proved that.
In confusion, I leaf through the papers.
Suddenly Dr. Franks is beside me. ‘Mhm,’ he grumbles, his eyes on the test results in my hand. ‘Just as suspected, then.’
‘No, that can’t be… that isn’t…’ I stammer, still trying to grasp what could have gone wrong here, and let my index finger glide over the results again.
Thyroid function: within normal range.
MRI of neck and head, thoracic CT, ultrasound of the thyroid— all without findings.
Without findings. The words echo inside me, but I don’t understand them. Don’t want to understand them, don’t want to admit to myself what they mean.
My boss’s expression is suffused with pity. ‘I know working in the emergency room isn’t easy for you,’ he says sympathetically. ‘But you have to leave your own story at home; it must not affect your work.’
‘I was sure that…’ Distractedly, I touch my head, which suddenly hurts. In fact, suddenly everything hurts.
And my forehead is hot.
I have a fever, my pulse is racing.
Damn it, what is happening here?
‘Take a break, get yourself back together,’ he suggests.
‘Yes, I probably should.’ Overwhelmed by the situation, I shove the test results into Dr. Franks’s hand and start running. Anywhere at all. As long as it’s away.
Down the corridor, which is now blurring before my eyes.
Towards the exit.
Out into the open.
Rain is pelting loudly onto the asphalt, the cool air makes me shiver. I stop abruptly under the canopy so I don’t get wet. I pull the coat tighter around my chest, gasp for air, but none comes.
Tears stream down my cheeks—full of sadness, anger, and despair. Because in this moment it becomes clear to me that this damned illness has not only robbed me of my carefree life and shown me that fear can dig its claws in far more deeply than I ever could have imagined.
No, there’s more. Because now it’s also turning me into a bad doctor. Shit, what’s even left of my old life?
A violent sob shakes me. My hand pressed over my mouth, I lift my gaze, look out into the rain, and cry together with the sky for everything I’ve lost.
A figure appears in the middle of the rain. A man. He strolls toward me at an unhurried pace and seems so relaxed, as if the sun were shining wherever he is. He’s wearing a dark blue uniform.
Jaden.
He comes closer and closer, his hands buried in his pockets, his hair sopping wet, a carefree smile on his lips.
Now he lifts his lids, our eyes meet, and I’m sure he sees the tears in my eyes, the despair in my expression, that damned fragility in every fiber of my body.
For a moment we look at each other.
Then he does what I least expected: he motions for me to come to him.