Libera me Domine.
PART II
THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD
I said to Life, I would hear Death,
And Life raised her voice a little higher and said,
You hear him now.
KAHLIL GIBRAN
17
The Biggest River in Egypt
“There is something wrong with you. No, no, don’t argue. There is. You’re sick. You are. You think you’re well, you think you can lick it, but it’s got you licked. You think you’re in control, but it’s got you in control. You think you have the power, but you don’t have any. I always thought human beings were stronger. When we wanted to, we could just stop doing what was killing us. But I was wrong. You can’t.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“You don’t know? What about what’s been happening? The screaming, the ranting? What about that?”
“I don’t remember any of it.”
“You were screaming as if you were being cut open.”
“I wasn’t. I was fine.”
“You’re pretending now. You’re lying to me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re taking advantage of me. You’re taking advantage that all I want is a peaceful life.”
“I’m not taking advantage of you. You’re taking advantage of me! I’m sick, and you’re yelling at me.”
“Look at yourself. Look at what you’ve done to yourself. What are people going to think when they see your legs covered in black bruises? I’ve never seen anyone bruised like that.”
“My stomach medicine makes me very weak.”
“Your stomach medicine? What about the liquor in your cranberry juice glass? Maybe that makes you fall down?”
“There’s no liquor in the glass.”
“I smelled the glass.”
“Nonsense. It’s fermented juice. It’s been sitting out in your Hawaiian heat for two days.”
“You don’t think I know the difference between alcohol and fermentation?”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
“Do you think you’re living a normal life?”
“Who can live a normal life in this hellhole. Of course I’m not living a normal life! I’m suicidally depressed. Perhaps you haven’t noticed.”
“Let’s sell the condo and move back.”
“You’ll have to carry me out of here feet first,” she declared. “There is no point in going anywhere. Don’t you know you carry what’s inside you wherever you go?”
“Yes, yes, you’ve told me,” he said. “But I’ll be happier in North Carolina.”
“It’s always about you! You, you, you. Never a thought for anyone else. What about all the money we’re going to lose by selling it? It’s not your money, so you don’t care. You’re very casual with my money. Living well now, aren’t you, on the blood money I got for my health. I paid for this condo with my health, just so you could live in style, and now you want me to lose money? Never.”
“You have to stop drinking, do you understand that? You have to have one glass of beer, one glass of wine, one small sip of cognac and then stop. I do it. I do it every day. Why can’t you? I never drank during my forty-five years of work before five in the evening. Why can’t you show an iota of self-control?”
“Yes, sorry, we can’t all be perfect like you; if only I was more like you, I wouldn’t have any problems.”
“You have to stop drinking.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
George said quietly, “You crash the car, you get your license suspended, and twice a month the neighbors call the police because you’re screaming so hysterically they think you’re being beaten. I have to hide you in the bedroom because if they saw your legs they’d arrest me for sure.”
“Maybe they should arrest you, the way you treat me.”
At first he had tried to help her by regulating her, by drinking with her.
He gave her a little wine. She drank the whole bottle.
He bought a six-pack of beer. It was all gone by the evening.
It was all gone by dinner. It was all gone by the time they sat down to watch a movie.
He bought a twelve-pack.
It was all gone by movie-time.
He bought a twenty-four-pack.
It was all gone by the end of the movie.
He stopped buying the beer, the wine, and hid the cognac out in the trunk of the car and went outside at night to grab a quick swallow, like a criminal, a hobo, a drunk. How he resented her for it! Drinking—the balm of civilization. The lubricant of culture. To sit, to read the paper, to watch the news, a little baseball, and to have a small glass of cognac. And now he had to sneak out of his own house for a drink! He never hurt anybody, never ranted, never yelled, the police were never called on his account.
Was it his imagination or was his drink disappearing too quickly in the bottle of Remy Martin he was hiding near the spare tire in the trunk of his car?
18
Fertility Options
Lily’s doctor at Mount Sinai was a tall WASPian man named bizarrely Lawrence DiAngelo, though how he could look so whitebread and have a last name like DiAngelo, Lily didn’t know. He said nothing while he looked over her medical chart. He was in his sweats and running shoes and a dark blue Adidas nylon jacket. He looked either on his way to, or coming from, something undoctorly. Perhaps it was his day off.
“Where is Spencer?”
“Who?”
Lily sighed, wishing for Spencer and his impassive support. She could never tell what Spencer was thinking, and that was perfect at a time like this.
“It says here you’re twenty-four. Is that right?”
“That’s right. Why?”
DiAngelo whistled, shook his head. “You look about sixteen.”
“Give it to me straight, doctor,” said Lily. “But not until I can sit up.” He adjusted her bed so she could sit up. She watched him with the clipboard in his hand.
“You have leukemia,” he said, giving it to her straight. “Acute myeloid leukemia. Acute promyelocytic leukemia to be precise.”
It’s cancer? she breathed out. Cancer!
“Do you know what leukemia is?”
“Yes…it’s what Jenny Cavilleri had.” Lily had no idea what leukemia was. She was going numb inside.
“Who?”
“Jenny Cavilleri. Oliver Barrett. Love Story.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
She sat on her bed and looked at the doctor, and he held the clipboard and looked back at her, and she tried to focus on what she was thinking, but at the forefront of her brain, the prevailing thought was, HOLY SHIT, and also, is that why I have gone off Double Chocolate Milanos?
“You must have a million questions.”
“I do…yes.” Lily couldn’t think of a single thing.
“I know this is difficult…”
This wasn’t difficult. This could not be happening to her. And yet, why wasn’t she surprised? All the visions in her head, of shock, of disbelief, of fear, were reduced to Jenny Cavilleri sitting by Wollman’s rink watching Oliver Barrett skate before her. She could think of nothing else. Why?
Lily waited for a suitable question to come to her, and she saw the doctor in his Adidas tracksuit and Nike cap waited, too. He looked like a decent-enough man. But really, she was fresh out of questions.
The doctor sighed perceptibly. “Do you have any questions for me?”
Lily said nothing. Cancer.
The doctor read from the report. “You are grossly hypercellular. The cancerous cells in your bone marrow cannot mature into healthy blood cells. They grow big, like blasts, but are vacuous and do you no good. They are lazy and they do no work. They do, however, spill by the millions into your bloodstream. What they don’t do is clot your blood, or fight infection, or transport oxygen. They don’t heal you.”
“What about my regular blood cells?
”
“No room for them.”
“Some room?”
“No room.”
“Any?”
“No.”
“What am I living on then?”
“Ah, good question. On three red-cell transfusions. On one platelet transfusion. One white-cell transfusion. Someone else’s blood in other words.”
“I mean before that?”
“I’d guess you weren’t doing much living.”
Lily didn’t even nod.
“Your veins became thin due to the illness. Finally they burst. That’s why you hemorrhaged internally. That’s the pain in your stomach, that’s the bruising.”
“So painful.”
“Yes.”
“What about the pneumonia?”
“Yes. You’ve almost reached blast crisis.”
“What?”
“That’s the term we use for those whose blood has been completely replaced by the rapidly dividing cancer cells. No red, no white, just blasts. You have no choice but to begin chemotherapy immediately. Blast crisis patients do not go home.”
“Is that me?” she said in a small voice.
“Nearly.”
Lily didn’t know what else to say. She breathed out shallowly. “I have to go home for just a minute, doctor,” she said. “I have to do a couple of things, tie up a couple of things…you know…just for a day or two…” She had to call her brother. She had to call her Grandma. She had to…just see her bed for a second. Is leukemia a bad cancer? It sure wasn’t so good for Jenny Cavilleri back in 1970. What does she ask the doctor now? Does she ask if they can cure it? Does she ask for her odds? She doesn’t want to know. She wants to ask…has the cancer spread? She doesn’t want to know. She wants to know…
“Why?” But she knows. 49, 45, 39, 24, 18, 1.
“There’s no why. People just get sick.” They sat. She could see the doctor wanted to get up and leave. He was fidgety. “Do you want me to get Spencer? Is he your significant other? Maybe we should go through the rest of it with him in the room.”
“Through the rest of what?”
“Your treatment. Your protocols. Your therapy. Your care. Your prognosis. Your future for the next four months, and beyond. Your fertility options.”
“My fertility options?” She clasped her hands tighter. “Spencer is not my significant other. He is not even my boyfriend. He’s just…a police detective who brought me here. What fertility options?”
DiAngelo clasped the clipboard tighter. “Is there anyone I can call before we do this? Is there someone you want here with you during this time?”
“Fertility options?” Lily said in an empty voice. Her whole life she had never considered that question except in the contraceptive negative. She thought she had plenty of time for the fertile positive.
“Oh, God. Marcie!” DiAngelo yelled.
The black nurse with a yen for Yodels and burgers and cigarettes came in.
“You’ve met Marcie, your critical-care nurse. Marcie, meet Lily. You’ll be spending quite a bit of time together. Now, Lilianne, who can Marcie call for you?”
Her hands squeezed and released the pillows underneath her as she shook her head.
DiAngelo unbuttoned his nylon jacket. He was sweating. He looked up at Marcie helplessly. “I’ll be back, all right?” he said. “I need some air.”
“Me, too,” Lily called to his leaving back.
“You giving the doctor a hard time, child? Don’t you know he hates to see young ones like you get sick?”
“How would I know that? Can you tell me…please…” Lily became afraid she wasn’t going to be able to get the words out.
All of a sudden she felt monumentally small, monstrously alone. Her voice broke. “Is there anyone in the waiting room for me?”
Marcie went to look.
Marcie came back.
“No,” she said.
When the doctor returned, Lily said in a defeated voice, “What about finishing college, what about painting, work?”
The doctor put his clipboard down. “Listen to me,” he said. “For the next four months of your life forget school, forget work. Forget everything. I can’t imagine you’ve been doing much work lately the way you must have been feeling. Didn’t you hear what I said? Blast crisis, Lily. Your blood looks like Beluga caviar, nothing left in it but black cancer.”
“So what now?”
“Now we try to kill it. I’ll let you go home until Monday. You’ve got a day and a half to sort yourself out. But Monday, you’ll be with me for a month. In-house chemo. Then for three months we’ll try the outpatient way, see how you do.”
“Why such a long time?”
“Four months? I know this has to sink in, but you have cancer, don’t you understand?”
“I understand.” She didn’t at all, though. She may not have been surprised but she didn’t understand either. “What about…the other thing you talked about…the fertility options?”
“I’m sorry, Lily.” DiAngelo shook his head. “We have to begin the chemo on Monday, and egg fertilization takes time. Since you don’t have a boyfriend, perhaps even longer—you’d have to go to a sperm bank, find a donor.” He paused. “It’s not for you. The only thing remotely left is Lupron.”
“What’s Lupron?”
“It’s a drug that makes your body think you’re going into menopause. It stops your egg production temporarily. It’s only about twenty percent effective in preventing sterility from the chemo.”
“Oh God, stop, stop, please…”
He stopped, stopped.
Finally Lily whispered, “Twenty percent is better than nothing.”
“Before I tell you about Lupron, I’m going to tell you about cancer. The only point of it is to kill you. That is its sole objective. It doesn’t want to do anything else, it does not moderate itself, it does not weaken when you weaken, it just gets stronger, and perversely, if you manage to get stronger, it gets stronger, too. It literally eats your healthy blood. Which is why we throw all our men in front of its tanks. Which is why we fight poison with poison. We put poison drugs into your body to try to kill the thing that’s killing you. And sometimes that works. Sometimes. But in the meantime, for the duration of the battle, it poisons you too, it poisons everything healthy inside you. It makes your vital organs sick, all of them. The cancer and the chemo do battle inside your body, and it’s a vicious bloody battle, Lilianne. You are going to feel very sick. And now about Lupron—I can give you the fertility drug, but Lupron is a division in your cancer’s army, not yours. Lupron is a weapon against you. It will give you sweats that will make you feel like you’re burning from the inside out. I advise all my patients against Lupron, but I have to inform them of it anyway. Do you understand?”
“And either way my hair falls out?”
“Right.”
Lily said nothing for so long. Finally she said, “Who wants to live bald?”
Larry DiAngelo smiled, and took off his baseball cap, underneath which he had a shiny bare hairless skull. Lily didn’t smile back.
“But after four months I’ll be all better?” she said, in a voice so hopeful and small she was embarrassed for it.
“You have advanced acute pro-myelocytic leukemia. We’re going to do our best not to leave Oliver Barrett sitting on that bench by himself.”
The hospital room was private with beige curtains and beige walls, and smelled slightly of alcohol and bleach. Through the window was sunlight, the TV was attached to a wall bracket above the doctor’s head. Lily sat and looked at her white sheets, at her blue specked gown, at the window, at the TV, at anything but DiAngelo. Finally she closed her eyes. “That’s just the thing, doctor. Don’t you see? In Central Park there is no Oliver Barrett.”
Spencer had stepped out of the hospital to make some work calls. He asked a grumbling Harkman to meet him at the precinct later in the afternoon.
When he came into Lily’s room and saw her in the bed, he summoned his stren
gth and smiled. She looked a little better after the blood transfusions. He sat by her side.
“Did you hear?” she said. “I’m sick.”
“Yes. DiAngelo spoke to me. You’re in good hands with him, I can tell. You’ll be fine.” He tried to sound bright himself.
“Can you believe it?”
“I can’t believe it.” He tried not to look away from her.
She had a pale feel about her. “Looks like you were right, Detective O’Malley. Looks like I’m going to have to claim that lottery prize.”
“Looks like you are, Lily. I can think of worse things than claiming eighteen million dollars.”
“Yes, you’re looking at them.” Self-consciously Lily reached for his hand. She felt like a little girl, holding his grown man’s hand. They were quiet by each other. “Spencer, please,” she whispered. “I need my brother. I need him now.”
He pulled away from her. “Lily, every day Amy’s mother calls me to ask if I have found her daughter. My job is to find her. Wouldn’t you want someone to find you for your mother?”
“I’d like someone to find my mother for me.”
“Oh, Lily.”
She closed her eyes. She let go of his hand.
In an hour she was provisionally discharged until Monday. In his unmarked Buick Spencer drove her home where she pulled her lottery ticket from the wall while he waited.
“So what do we do, just go in and get my money?”
“How would I know? I’ve never won a single thing.”
“Lucky you,” Lily said.
He drove her downtown to the World Trade Center where the New York City Lottery office was located under one of the twin towers. She felt like fainting.
“Are they going to ask me how I would like my money?” she asked him.
“Yes,” Spencer replied. “Tell them you want seventeen million singles and the rest in twenties.”
Lily wondered if afterwards they could get a hot dog and sit near the fountain in the square in the fresh air space between the towers. She always liked sitting there. It was so peaceful. But she didn’t feel like a hot dog today. She could barely remain upright. She sat in the chair, with her head back against the wall, until it was her turn.