Bibi took her lunch by the window. She ate every bite. Other than surgery, treatments for cancer often caused prolonged bouts of nausea and a depressed appetite. She needed to forget about being svelte and pack on several pounds of reserves to get her through the coming battle. She supposed that eventually she should shave her head instead of waiting for her hair to fall out in a mangy fashion. The more she took control of her appearance, the better.
Poor Paxton would come home from war to find that his fiancée had morphed into a bald sumo wrestler. Well, he said he would always love her, through the bad times no less than the good, and she believed him. If she had him all wrong—which she didn’t, but if she did—then she was better off knowing the truth sooner than later. The only plus to having brain cancer might be that it provided the ultimate test of your guy’s true intentions. Given a choice between putting herself through gliomatosis cerebri and putting Paxton through a lie-detector test, she would of course have chosen the latter; but she hadn’t been given a choice.
A perky blond volunteer in a candy-striper uniform, smelling of a lemony perfume, came to collect the lunch tray. Bibi arranged for the girl to go to the cafeteria and buy a supply of PowerBars in various flavors. “I want to look like John Goodman by next week.”
“Who’s John Goodman?”
“A large actor. He played Roseanne Barr’s husband on TV.”
“Oh, yeah. He’s in lots of movies. He’s cute.”
A nurse arrived to get a urine sample. A phlebotomist drew five vials of blood. A woman “from legal” had papers to be signed.
Bibi engaged in only minimal small talk with them, though for most of her life she had been a fountain of words. Everything in this world amazed and fascinated her—from the fragile beauty of a lily to the mysteries of quantum mechanics—and she usually had to share her wonder or burst. Being named Bibi had encouraged her to chatter away because, even as a child, she had been determined to impress upon everyone that, in spite of her name, she wasn’t a toy, not frivolous, but a keen observer of the world, a philosopher by the time she graduated from the potty chair. She had never been for long struck speechless—until she received a diagnosis of brain cancer.
Her mother returned at five o’clock with everything that Bibi had requested, and her father phoned minutes later to say that the three of them should have dinner together in her room, not hospital food, but whatever outrageous high-calorie fat-rich takeout she wanted. Cheeseburgers and milk shakes. Burritos. Four-cheese pizza. Anything, anything.
“No, Dad. Mom’s exhausted.” Nancy began to protest, but Bibi raised one hand to quiet her. “You both are. These two days have been hard on all of us. You and Mom have dinner, just the two of you, with a good bottle of wine. I’m okay. I’m not going anywhere. I just want to do some research on my laptop while I eat, then early to bed. I hardly slept last night. I’ll ask for a sedative. I want to be dreaming about a certain Navy SEAL by seven o’clock at the latest.”
To get Nancy out of the room and off to dinner, Bibi had to escort her along the hallway to the elevators. Alert for any tendency of her left foot to drag, determined not to become Quasimodo with boobs, she walked with her shoulders back and her head up.
“What about the tingling?” her mother asked. “The fifty-cell-phones-on-mute head-to-foot thing?”
“It’s quieter. And I haven’t had that rancid taste all day.”
“Baby, I can see your left hand’s still weak.”
“So I’ll use the other one to scratch my butt.”
In the elevator alcove, the doors to one of the cabs slid open. Nancy didn’t get aboard. “This is so wrong. I can’t just leave.”
As the doors started to slide shut, Bibi blocked them. “Mom, we have to stay as normal as possible. The three of us can’t group-hug twenty-four/seven. We’ll melt down if we do.”
When Nancy tried to speak, she couldn’t. Her mouth trembled.
Bibi kissed her mother’s cheek. “You’re a sweetie. Now go. Eat too much. Drink too much. Live, Mom. Live. I sure intend to.”
In her hospital room again, she sat at the small table by the window and used her laptop to learn about anticancer and cytotoxic drugs. Alkylating agents. Nitrosoureas. Antimetabolites. Mitotic inhibitors. At least her disease was enhancing her vocabulary.
As the March afternoon dressed itself in scarlet to approach the evening, a nurses’ aide brought a dinner tray. Suitable reading with dinner did not include an article about the side effects of chemo. As she ate, Bibi watched amusing dog videos on YouTube.
The bad thing happened when she got up from her chair to wash her hands. A sudden pain of migraine intensity split her skull.