Scope 2006 - SIU School of Medicine

The Other Side of the Clipboard
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Kourtney Bradford
MSIII 2nd place, prose
I watched through the dusty gray aluminum blinds as the cold January rain
mockingly rapped lightly against the tall office window. Each wave taunting me with an
“I told you so” tone reminiscent of how mother would sadly hold my broken hearted 16
year-old body and remind me of her warnings about boys my age. I wish she were here
now. I smell her lilac perfume and a fleeting glint of hope and warmth begins to surround
me until I hear the hospital paging system remind a certain Dr. Bellows that his
nurse is still holding on line two and I am jolted back to the fluorescent light-filled box I
am suffocating in. The coarse paper on the examining table. The new, young nurse
who had mispronounced my dead husband’s first gift to me. The four-month-old magazines
on fishing and home re-decorating that seemed so much more inviting six years
ago.
Tick. Tick. Tick. I can see John’s shrunken physique sitting next to me in
the hard plastic chair, clammy hand in mine. How I loved him for explaining what a
“lymph node” was and how “cancer” had decided to take up residence in mine. No sir.
No family history of cancer. No sir. No tobacco or alcohol use. I was always the
healthy one. I had to be since John’s first heart attack in ’93 had induced a stroke and
left him paralyzed on the left side of his body. Now it was his turn to comfort and care
for me, of which he did so adoringly until the week of my last chemo treatment. He
must have thought I was going to be okay, and that he could finally go home. My
family quietly celebrated my remission as we paid our last respects to my dear love, my
soul mate, and tried to console me with thoughts of “at least now you have your
health.” Yes, I suppose I did. But, what good was my health without my heart? I had
wept unrelentingly at my good fortune.
In the past four years, however, I had learned to deal with John’s passing as I
rationalized his advanced years, his debilitating condition and how he had fought till the
end to make sure I would make it. The single, thin, gold band on my twisted and
swollen left ring finger is all I have of him with me today. Looking past my deformed
hand, I notice the doctor has installed new floor tiles. Well, probably not the doctor
himself. They look cold. I wonder how they will feel when I collapse onto them, trying
to pull them up over my head and hide under them, after he tells me I am dying. No. I
will not fall. I will clutch my light blue cardigan tighter around my 94 pound frame and
defiantly refuse any further treatment. I am 84 years old. I will lose neither the hair I
have spent the past two years growing back, nor my lunch…or any other meal for that
matter.
I suppose when they had said there is a chance it will return, the cancer that
is, that I would have preferred it if they had been a little more clear. Thirty percent
chance. Well, does that not leave a 70 percent chance that it will not? That seemed like
SCOPE 2006
a lot of percent until last week when I had walked to the mailbox to collect the post,
trying to ignore my ever-increasing breathlessness, and returned to the house only to
cough up a handful of blood. Fresh. Candy apple red like my first tube of lipstick. I
hadn’t felt right for months, but that is what brought me here four days ago and
prompted a pleasant array of poking, prodding, and testing. I had just finished rinsing
my teacup this morning when the nurse phoned. Of course I could come in this afternoon.
Her tone of voice was similar to that you would expect of an invite to luncheon
with the ladies or a friend’s birthday party. Some party this was going to be. I had left
the water in the sink running a good 15 minutes before the incessant beeping of the disconnected
phone line reminded me of my RSVP.
Now, I sit and wait. Confused. Resigned. Proud. I am relishing how I have
come full circle and am ready to strongly face this alone when there is a knock at the
door. A solitary tear silently emerged from my right eye and plotted a course over my
freshly rouged cheek and to the corner of my
quivering wrinkled mouth.
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