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now. The numbers in her last CBC, her
last bowel movement, its consistency,
the color and volume of her urine. It was
terror that prompted her daily searches
and created, for them, a new connection
between their bodies, a novel sort
of lovemaking.
It reminded me of years earlier when
I totaled my car. My partner’s mother
had sent us on our way that rainy morning.
We called her later that day from
the interstate, my car in pieces, to tell
her what happened. She told me later
that every time one of her girls left
home, she always imagined the worst,
thinking that if she thought of it first,
it would never happen. That day, it
seemed her pre-emptive imaginings
had betrayed her. I wonder if Kat’s
relentless surveying and bargaining
came out of the same hope.
“It was here-ish,” Kat said, her
fingers plunged into Jenn’s groin,
her gray pubic hair exposed while
my resident and I stood by. Jenn
was half listening, half aware of the
low buzz of All My Children coming
from the flat screen. “For some reason,
I guess I can’t feel it now,” she said, bewildered
and frustrated.
“I never felt anything,” Jenn laughed.
Kat scowled at the floor, seemingly pondering
how her own fingers had somehow
deceived her.
I couldn’t feel anything either.
Neither could my resident. At Kat’s urging
though, in addition to increasing
Jenn’s pain meds, we agreed to get some
lab work and an abdominal CT.
Kat and Jenn had spent the past
two years or so preparing for the final
moments. On the palliative service, I’d
found this was actually kind of rare.
Most people would delay and delay,
throwing radioactivity and chemicals
at tumors that laughed at their efforts,
growing into organs and bone, hiding
from x-rays and stealing moms away
from babies, babies away from moms,
lovers from lovers. Kat and Jenn, in addition
to pursuing aggressive curative
therapies, sought comfort in psychotherapy
where they spoke freely about
what was to come, what Jenn wanted it
to look like, when and under what circumstances
she wanted to stop.
“Well, I’ve had four years since I was
diagnosed.” Jenn is very frank with her
words. “You know, I’d love four more.
Shit, I’d like forty more, but we’re prepared
either way.” I believed that Jenn
was. Kat was another story. Kat’s movements
were like Jenn’s words, decisive
and exact. Wiping sweat from Jenn’s
forehead, combing her hair from her
face, positioning her arms about her
body. However, sometimes I caught her,
in between stoic statements, staring
down at the floor like someone does
whose eyes just flooded, waiting for the
water to resorb, and then looking back
up into the conversation.
We really thought her pain sounded
like a pulled muscle or something.
Something really mild. She was pooping
and peeing and without other systemic
signs of something going wrong.
Perhaps her pain was just related to
her being almost sixty and overweight.
Perhaps it had nothing to do with her
cancer at all. It appeared to be a false
alarm, and I figured we’d have her back
home in no time. As I talked out my differential
with the two of them, Kat nodded
with some degree of relief, albeit
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