In the early days, she’d thought it might be predictive. But it was a dark fantasy that could never unfold in the real world.
Entering adolescence, she sometimes brooded about the persistent dream’s possible symbolic content. Because it recurred so often back then, she also wondered if she might be disturbed, psychologically unbalanced, as in crazy-waiting-to-happen. But no. No, that was the worst kind of young-adult-novel hokum: tragic young girl hiding her tri-polar psycho-paranoid true-werewolf nature from the world and from herself until she has a breakdown the very day before she would have been voted the Most Popular Girl in Ninth Grade and would have been kissed by the cutest bad-boy rebel in school. Even at that young age, she was remarkably self-possessed, confident of her right to be in the world and her ability to make her way on her own terms.
Now she dismissed the dream for what it surely always had been: nothing more than proof that finding the body by the dinette table had been traumatic—the abundance of blood, the blind and drooling eyes, the mouth gaping in a silent cry.
The bedside clock read 3:49 A.M. In little more than six hours, she would receive a diagnosis from her physician. She had no reason to fear Dr. Sanjay Chandra, just as she had no reason to fear the bearers of the dead in a dream. There were no boogeymen. She would be well, all would be well, all manner of things would be well.
Reclining once more, her head upon her pillow, she closed her eyes. She told herself where she would be a day from now, a week from now, a year. Soon she slept again, and this time her sleep was not sullied by a nightmare.
When the seizure struck Bibi, her body spasmed on the bed, and from her throat issued thick wordless grunts. The episode was mild and brief, however, and it did not wake her.
Room 456 had three chairs for visitors. They were cheap and only as comfortable as they had to be for the name chairs to apply.
Dr. Sanjay Chandra didn’t want to loom over Bibi as she lay in bed, reporting on her health from a superior height. He placed two chairs by the window, and they sat facing each other, with blue sky and scattered white clouds to Bibi’s right, as if she were receiving this news in the foyer of Heaven.
In spite of wearing a white lab coat over iron-gray suit pants, a pale-blue shirt, and a blue tie, and although he had arrived carrying an ultrathin laptop with which he could evidently access all Bibi’s test results, Dr. Chandra had none of the intimidating presence that was natural to some physicians and cultivated by others. Soft-spoken, with an air of serenity that suggested that he had made peace with this world of endless frustrations and with his own ambition, he seemed less like a doctor than like a counselor of the troubled.
In preparation for this meeting, Bibi had taken a shower, brushed her long, dark hair, applied makeup, and donned a sapphire-blue silk robe over her pajamas. If the physician had bad news to deliver, she intended to receive it with style, to appear in no way pitiable or in the least defeated.
The diagnosis proved to be bad indeed, her prognosis even worse. A year to live. A year of decline and suffering.
She knew now why Dr. Chandra had wanted to speak to her alone. Neither her mother nor her father possessed the emotional fortitude to watch her receive this news. Her reaction, no matter how stoic, would have undone them, and Bibi would have been too concerned about them to remain focused on her options as single-mindedly as she must.
With the gentleness and compassion of a caring chaplain in a death-row conference with a condemned man, Dr. Chandra explained why Bibi was without good options. Her cancer was far advanced. Even caught early, gliomatosis cerebri was too dispersed in the brain for surgery to be a permanent solution. At this stage, chemotherapy and radiation would gain her little time, if any. “And the side effects will make the days ahead harder, Bibi. Much harder, I’m afraid.”
“No offense,” she said, “but what about a second opinion?”
“I asked Dr. Beryl Chemerinski to provide one. She is a highly respected surgical oncologist at another hospital, with no connection to me. She concurs with my conclusions. I wish she didn’t. You can do chemo and radiation nevertheless. Only you can make that decision.”
She met his eyes for the longest time. He didn’t look away. At last she said, “I guess they call this the moment of truth.”
“I believe in truth, Bibi. And I know you do, as well.”
She looked down at her hands. She made them into fists. The left one would not close tight. “I want to fight it. Chemo, whatever. One year to live, huh? Really just one year? We’ll see.”