She has a morphine drip, the kind she can control herself. She keeps the clicker in hand. She never pushes the button.
I feed her ice chips and climb into the bed next to her. In the middle of the night I go home. In the morning she calls, waking me up.
“Flowers have been arriving like crazy,” she says, “from the hospital, from the ER, from the clinic.”
Doctors are like firemen. When one of their own is down they go crazy.
“They took the catheter out, I’m sitting up in a chair. I already had some juice and took myself to the bathroom,” she says proudly. “They couldn’t be nicer. But, of course, I’m a very good patient.”
I interrupt her. “Do you want anything from the house?”
“Clean socks, a pair of sweat pants, my hairbrush, some toothpaste, my face soap, a radio, maybe a can of Diet Coke.”
“You’re only going to be there a couple of days.”
“You asked if I needed anything. Don’t forget to feed the dog.”
Five minutes later she calls back, crying. “I have ovarian cancer.”
I run out the door. When I get there the room is empty. I’m expecting a big romantic scene, expecting her to cling to me, to tell me how much she loves me, how she’s sorry we’ve been having such a hard time, how much she needs me, wants me, now more than ever. The bed is empty. For a moment I think she’s died, jumped out the window, escaped. Her absence is terrifying.
In the bathroom, the toilet flushes. “I want to go home,” she says, stepping out, fully dressed.
“Do you want to take the flowers?”
“They’re mine, aren’t they? Do you think all the nurses know I have cancer? I don’t want anyone to know.”
The nurse comes with a wheelchair; she takes us down to the lobby. “Good luck,” she says, loading the flowers into the car.
“She knows,” my wife says.
We are on the Long Island Expressway. I am dialing and driving. I call my wife’s doctor in New York.
“She has to see Kibbowitz immediately,” the doctor says.
“Do you think I’ll lose my ovary?”
She will lose everything—instinctively I know that.
We are home. She is on the bed with the dog on her lap. She peeks beneath the gauze; her incision is crooked, the lack of precision an incredible insult. “Do you think they can fix it?”
In the morning we go to Kibbowitz. She is again on a table, her feet in the stirrups, in launch position, waiting. Before the doctor arrives she is interviewed and examined by seven medical students. I hate them. I hate them for talking to her, for touching her, for wasting her time. I hate Kibbowitz for keeping her on the table for more than an hour, waiting.
And she is angry with me for being annoyed. “They’re just doing their job.”
Kibbowitz arrives. He is enormous, like a hockey player, a brute and a bully. It is hard to understand how a man gets gynecologic oncology as his calling. I can tell immediately that she likes him. She will do anything he says.
“Scootch down a little closer to me,” he says, settling himself on a stool between her legs. She lifts her ass and slides down. He examines her. He looks under the gauze—“Crooked,” he says. “Get dressed and meet me in my office.”
“I want a number,” she says. “A survival rate.”
“I don’t deal in numbers,” he says.
“I need a number.”
He shrugs. “How’s seventy percent?”
“Seventy percent what?”
“Seventy percent live five years.”
“And then what?” I ask.
“And then some don’t,” he says.
“What has to come out?” she asks.
“What do you want to keep?”
“I wanted to have a child.”
This is a delicate negotiation; they talk parts. “I could take just the one ovary,” he says. “And then after the chemo you could try and get pregnant and then after you had a child we could go in and get the rest.”
“Can you really get pregnant after chemo?” I ask.
The doctor shrugs. “Miracles happen all the time,” he says. “The problem is you can’t raise a child if you’re dead. You don’t have to decide now, let me know in a day or two. Meanwhile I’ll book the operating room for Friday morning. Nice meeting you,” he says, shaking my hand.
“I want to have a baby,” she says.
“I want to have you,” I say.
Beyond that I say nothing. Whatever I say she will do the opposite. We are at that point—spite, blame, and fault. I don’t want to be held responsible. She opens the door of the consulting room. “Doctor,” she shouts, hurrying down the hall after him, clutching her belly, her incision, her wound. “Take it,” she screams. “Take it all the hell out.”