Two fashionably dressed young women meet by the water cooler while taking their morning break at the office.
“I guess you heard the news about Lindy?” The first young lady sighs, sipping daintily at her chilled spring water. “She found a lump in her breast.”
“Oh my Gawd!” the second lady gasps, nearly choking on her water.
“Yeah, she went to the doctor and had a whaddayacallit, a mammogram, and they told her she has cancer.”
“Cancer? But she’s so cute and sassy! I can’t believe it!”
Both women burst into tears and embrace each other. Neither of them says it out loud, but they’re both thinking that they probably won’t have lunch with Lindy because they won’t know what to say or how to act. They return to their respective cubicles to contemplate the news.
Meanwhile, in a nearby hospital, two worn-out nurses stand at a counter, syringes in hand; one is drawing up 12.5 mg of phenergan and one is drawing up 10 cc of saline.
“I guess you heard the news about Carli?” the first nurse asks. “She found a lump in her breast. Had a mammogram and then a biopsy. It’s cancer.”
The second nurse flips the empty saline vial expertly into the trash with her left hand while her right hand reaches for an alcohol pad, a red top, a blue top, and a lavender top.
“How big was it? Has she had a CT yet? When will her path be back? I’ll be back in a minute, I want to hear the rest.”
Both nurses secure their materials and head off in opposite directions. Each of them is thinking of Carli. Both have a lot of questions.
That afternoon, Carli receives approximately fifty phone calls. She cries freely, laughs often, and tells her story over and over and over. She’s telling us, her colleagues and friends, but also telling herself.
Carli schedules her port placement and lymph node biopsy. People she thought she hardly knew stop her with good wishes and promises of prayers and offers of donated vacation time and little gifts.
Grown men get misty-eyed and ask who is doing her surgery and then assure her, “Oh yeah, he’s great, he’s fine, he’ll take good care of you.” She is hugged well and often by a wide array of people. She volunteers to let all the girls palpate her mass so that they will know what one feels like. She says the men can too, but it will cost them in hard American currency, up front and no refunds. Carli laughs, the nurses all laugh, and then everybody cries a little until one of the men starts digging in his pocket for change. Then, everybody is laughing again.
Carli arrives for her procedure, calm and resolved. The hospital phone lines heat up as the morning progresses. Carli has her IV. Carli is okay. She is joking. She looks pale. Carli is in surgery. They are waiting for the preliminary pathology report. It seems as though the whole hospital is vibrating with anxiety and it seems funny to think that Carli is sleeping through it all.
The phone lines hum quietly, waiting. Finally, one call is followed by another, and two more, and four more, and then eight, until it is a wonder that the hospital lines are not overloaded and glowing red hot. Her nodes are clear, clear, clear, and was there ever such a beautiful word?
All over the hospital, prayers of thanksgiving are sent up, up and out. Carli has a rough road ahead of her, but she can do it and we will all help. And Carli, in turn, will help us to see how to be brave, how to have faith, how to love, and how to receive love.
And what about poor Lindy? I don’t know.
For me and for Carli and for all the people we know, cancer is both less terrifying because we know a little about it and more terrifying for the very same reason. I have to trust that Lindy’s friends will rally around her just as Carli’s friends have. I have to hope that all the women and all the men who are diagnosed with some serious illness will learn what Carli learned in approximately one single hour—that they are loved, that they have friends who will help in all the ways that friends can, and that life is very, very beautiful.
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий