I opened the door a few inches and leaned against the jamb until my lungs quieted. In my mind, then, I seemed to hear White's smooth professional voice: “I'm sorry, I'm afraid I have bad news for you…”
And then I heard it say, “You have nothing to worry about, the sputum cytology was negative; the lesion is benign…”
Bad news. Nothing to worry about.
Malignant.
Benign I shook myself and felt my lips flatten in against my teeth as I lifted the receiver again, caught up a dime and dropped it in the slot. The clatter of the coin falling, the buzz of the dial tone and then the ratchet of the dial when I spun the O all sounded too loud in my ears, as though my hearing had suddenly grown sensitized. I dialed the 415 area code and the first two digits of White's number, put my finger in the hole of the third digit.
And my hand began to shake and I could not stop it, it might have belonged to someone else, and the other hand too when it reached out convulsively and slammed the receiver back into its cradle.
Malignant, benign, malignant, benign, malignant…
I could not do it, I could not make the call.
Goddamn you, you goddamn coward, you've got to face it sooner or later. What's the sense in putting it off any longer? Make the call!
But my legs turned me around and my hands shoved me out of the booth, and I groped my way to one of the lobby chairs and sat in it with the sweat streaming out of me. I had steeled myself for this moment for days now, and I had been functioning all right, even with the fear and the doubts-but now that the time had come my nerve had deserted me. I took out my handkerchief and mopped away the wetness, and realized as I did so that the desk clerk had come out and was standing three feet in front of me, looking nervously worried.
He said, “Are you all right, sir?”
“Yeah, I'm all right.”
“You look pale as a ghost. You're not having some sort of attack, are you?”
“I'm not going to die in your lobby, if that's what you think.”
His mouth turned prim. “I was only trying to help, sir.”
“Sure,” I said. “It's okay-everything is fine.”
“Do you want a glass of water…?”
“No. I just want to sit here a minute.”
He hesitated, and then went away reluctantly; but when he got behind the desk again he made a pretense of sorting a batch of mail while he watched me with up-from-under glances.
I thought: Maybe I can't do it because it's too cold and impersonal this way. Long-distance telephone, you can't look at his face and he can't look at yours, there's nothing to hang onto but the words themselves. “Hello, Doctor, I'm calling from Tuolumne County to find out if I'm going to die pretty soon.” No, not that way-there's no dignity to it. A man should have a little dignity in a thing like this, a little human contact. A doctor's office, yes, that was the place for death sentences or reprieves; not a phone booth in a hotel lobby, with fiddlers playing outside and kids squealing for a ride on an authentic replica of the Hangtown Stagecoach.
All right, then. Try to get away from here as soon as possible, drive straight to White's office if you can get back before close of business; otherwise, first thing tomorrow morning. You can do it that way, can't you? You won't lose your nerve again?
I can do it that way, I thought, and knew that I was not lying to myself. This was not something you could run away from, or postpone for more than a few long hours. If you tried it, the not-knowing would become unbearable, and you would still have the answer to face eventually.
I began to feel a little better; I had myself under control again. After a time I got: up and found the restroom and washed my face with cold water, opened my shirt and used a wet paper towel to sponge off the drying perspiration on my chest and under my arms. The face in the mirror looked pale, all right. Pouches under the eyes, puffiness at the cheekbones and around the mouth. Old bear, Erika had called me, and I had thought then that it was a cute little pet name; I wouldn't have liked it at all now.
When I came back into the lobby and looked over at the desk clerk, I had a small twinge of embarrassment at the way I had treated him. I walked over there and said, “Look, I'm sorry if I snapped at you a while ago. I guess the heat is starting to get to me; I felt pretty dizzy there for a minute.”
“No need to apologize, sir,” he said, but there was still an injured stiffness in his tone. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“Well, you can get me Charles Kayabalian on the phone.”
“Certainly.”
We went through the switchboard-and-extension-phone routine, and Kayabalian was in and ready to see me in his room. So I climbed the stairs to the second floor, found the number he had given me, knocked, and went in when he called out that the door was unlocked.