Chapter 28
chapter
twenty-eight
I walk into the Department of Hematology Oncology like I’m walking on water.
I smile at every single person I pass and hum to myself.
Eitan dropped me off, and it was the first time I didn’t have to schlep here on the train.
The kiss he gave me before I got out of the car felt like invincibility.
A protective shield that even the clinic’s waiting room can’t penetrate.
“Good morning!” I waltz up to the front desk, singing to the receptionist who checks me in.
I don’t even bat an eye when she tells me my oncologist is running thirty minutes behind.
Today, not even the sight of everyone here for treatment can get me down.
I give each and every one of them a smile and scribble for thirty minutes in my notebook.
Since the camping trip, ideas have been a faucet I can’t turn off.
Spare musings and new ideas mingle and flow onto any proximate surface.
It’s the perfect time to find a new story, when I’m so close to finding representation for the old one.
I’m already halfway done filling in a new notebook.
“Ruby?” A nurse calls my name and I jump up.
“Hi, Bethany,” I say as I follow her behind the double doors.
“How are you?” she asks when we get settled in the room.
I lean back in the treatment chair and kick up the recliner. “Great,” I say, smiling, meaning it.
“I’m glad.” Her eyes crinkle in encouragement as she cuts off my circulation painfully with her blood pressure machine. But today, not even the machine from hell can get me down.
“Dr. Jain will be with you shortly,” Bethany gives me a nod and leaves me to change into my gown.
A few minutes later, a knock on the door interrupts the silence. “Hi, Ruby.” Dr. Jain scrubs her hands with sanitizer and puts on new gloves. “I’m going to do a quick exam, and then we’ll have a nurse come in and administer your shot.”
As Dr. Jain does the exam, I stare out the window, daydreaming. “How have you been feeling?” she asks.
“Good,” I tell her. “Great, actually.”
She looks a little surprised. Suffice it to say I’m not always at my most positive when I come in to see her. “That’s good to hear. Any reason you’re feeling so great?” Dr. Jain raises her eyebrows.
I roll my eyes dramatically. “If you must know, his name is Eitan.”
“Eitan,” she repeats. I can tell she’s smiling beneath her mask.
She tilts me back against the exam table and pulls my arm over my head.
This is the worst part of the exam. It feels like she’s carving out the inside of my armpit as she checks my lymph nodes.
“How did you meet him? Was it on one of those dating apps?”
“Surprisingly, no. We met…through a mutual friend,” I land on.
Dr. Jain moves my left arm down, and kneads into the implant, checking for lumps. “That’s how my husband and I met. I think it’s nice to meet in person. No expectations, no judgments.”
I hold in my snort. If only we hadn’t judged each other. Eitan and I could have made it here a lot sooner.
Dr. Jain’s exam moves to my right armpit, kneading one spot several times, not speaking.
The room is quiet for a few protracted seconds.
“What is it?” I ask. My stomach begins sinking into dread.
“I’m going to have my N.P. get you in for an ultrasound,” Dr. Jain says, levity gone. My stomach takes the full plunge into fear.
Turns out, this is where the invincibility ends.
“We need to do a biopsy,” the radiologist tells me, once her probe is returned to its cart and I’m left wiping the lube from my armpit.
Biopsies are bad. Biopsies create stone walls between one moment and the next. Biopsies create endings. Receiving the result of my first biopsy, almost two years ago now, was the worst day of my life. I sink into the memory like quicksand.
“Are you sitting down?” the nurse asked when she called with my biopsy result. It was late on a Friday afternoon, and I had just shut my laptop and changed into gym shoes for a run.
My legs went numb at the question. Good news doesn’t require sitting.
“Mhmm.” I sank onto my couch.
“It’s an invasive ductal carcinoma.”
The words were jarring. Carcinoma didn’t belong in a sentence anywhere near me. The sun was shining even though it was January, like the Universe just wanted to spite me.
The rest of the conversation blurred into an unintelligible stream of what could have been gibberish. Grade 3 floated somewhere, as did appointment on Monday.
Words were written on the back of a takeout menu. Carcinoma. Surgical Oncologist. Tamoxifen.
The entire world went dark. Everywhere I turned were cliff edges.
“You’ll get through this,” Grant said when he got to my apartment, then found me sitting in the same spot two hours later.
But his eyes belied his uncertainty. “We will get you through this,” he insisted.
I couldn’t nod. I knew, in the deep center of my being, that part of me had just died.
Whatever remained of me on the other side of this wouldn’t be the person who had answered that phone call.
I claw my way back to the present. I am healthy, I tell myself. There is no cancer in my body.
“Are you sure?” I ask, clutching the edges of my gown with sweating palms. “You said it was only a little swollen.”
The radiologist sighs. “That can be a sign that there’s cancer in the lymph node. There’s increased vascularity around the node too. These are all signs that make me suspicious.”
“It’s probably nothing, though, right?” I press.
The radiologist puts a hand on my shoulder. “We can never be too careful.” She begins walking out of the room, discarding her gloves by the door. “Carrie, the charge nurse, will get your biopsy scheduled on your way out.”
Carrie is leaning out of her office by the time I have my shirt back on and leave the imaging room. “Let’s get you scheduled,” she says, tapping the doorframe.
I stand in her office doorway, not able to step fully inside.
She opens her computer, choosing not to comment on my refusal to sit. “I’ve got tomorrow at 8 a.m. available.”
Tomorrow. In less than twenty-four hours, a hollow needle could extract a core of my lymph node and decide the next seven months of my life. Could be the rest of my life, if something bigger is afoot somewhere else in my body.
Outside the window of Carrie’s office, the sun shines on a perfect autumn day. The Universe is taunting me again. It’s no coincidence this is happening just as I’m close to crossing off the only three things I asked for, to get back the life I lost to cancer the first time.
It’s more than the Dark Place that’s threatening to consume me. The world itself is slipping into darkness, threatening to yank me back to the treatment chair, beneath the knife, seared by ionizing radiation. Back to a wasteland surrounded by cliffs.
My bones know I won’t survive going through what I went through again. If the cancer is back, what guarantees do I have? Set myself on fire again, for the hope that we stop it in its tracks. What if we can’t?
“I—can’t—” I stutter.
Carrie stands, sensing my flight instinct. “We don’t have to do it tomorrow, we can do it early next week.”
Next week. Next week. The wedding is next weekend. Everything I’ve been working for. Everything I’ve gained. Eitan, my writing career, my friends. It wouldn’t even matter. Nothing would matter.
I’d lose everything. Again.
“I’ll, um—” I back away. “I’ll call. I need to check my—schedule.”
“It would be best for us to schedule it now—”
“I have to go.” I turn abruptly and run to the exit.
It’s incredible how robust denial can be, if you surrender to it.
“How was your appointment?” Eitan asks, after he kisses me hello.
I buckle my seatbelt. “Fine,” I say, the word tasting of crushed glass. I distract myself by rifling through his CDs and finding the best music to drown my thoughts. Paramore.
“You sure?” He shifts into drive and begins the trek back to the city.
I nod, avoiding looking directly at him, my smile not reaching my eyes.
Eitan lets me get away with it, merely holding my hand while we drive down Sheridan, crawling back to the city in evening rush-hour traffic.
The slow drive gives me time to think. I just need some time, I reason.
I want to get to the other side of the wedding.
Meet Alice Sutherland. Sign on as one of her authors, ideally.
Spend more time with Eitan. If Eitan’s reasons for staying are already nebulous, a cancer recurrence could be the cherry on top of the I need to get out of here sundae.
There’s just some things to figure out before I open myself up to that kind of vulnerability.
And, most of all, it’s probably nothing.
I’m so distracted, I don’t catch the incoming call from an unknown number. Since we’re in bumper to bumper traffic, Eitan sees it on the dash and answers.
Carrie’s voice bursts out at full volume. “Hi! I’m looking for Ruby Hirsch—”
I panic. My hand shoots out to end the call and Carrie’s voice is abruptly cut off.
We’re stuck here, waiting to get on Lake Shore Drive. “Wrong number?” Eitan asks, slightly amused.
Obviously, the wrong number card isn’t going to work. “That was just the, um, nurse I saw.”
“Calling with a test result?” Eitan prods.
I roll my lips between my teeth, nodding. My knee bounces. I look like a kid caught stealing from the cookie jar.
“Ruby.” Eitan calms my knee with a hand. “I’m not new to this. Tell me what happened.”
“Nothing,” I say, far too quickly. My lie ricochets around the car like a stray bullet. “My oncologist—” My throat closes and I clear it. “Found a weird lymph node. It’s probably nothing.”
Eitan looks at me sideways. “A weird lymph node?”
“Just in my arm pit.”
“Wouldn’t they want to do some tests? Make sure it’s nothing?”
“The radiologist only had mild suspicion.”
“You saw a radiologist?” Eitan’s voice is sharper. Hurt leaking through. “Were you planning to tell me?”
“Like I said.” I sit on my hands. “It’s probably nothing.”