Lani was down in the hallways, talking to her relatives. Most of her old outfit had come down from the hills to see Olivia. They were powerfully built Polinesios who lavished their cousin Olivia with embraces and soft words in English and Samoan.
A knock sounded at the door before it swung open. An older doctor—black man, thin wreath of white hair—came in and sat down. He wanted to talk about how difficult it would be to take vincristine. “It might make your fingers and toes numb or your hair fall out,” he said. “And if you have a lot of cancer cells, it might hurt your kidneys.”
“You don’t think we should give her the drug?” Lopez asked.
“I want you to be aware of the options.”
“What are the options?” Lopez asked, his voice more heated than he had intended.
“We can treat any discomfort you two might have before you return to your heavens.”
“You two?” Lopez repeated.
“You are my patient as well.”
“I’m not reincarnated.”
The doctor blinked. He hadn’t known. “I see. That complicates things.” He paused. “But please consider, without the old technologies, vincristine can be dangerous.”
“So if the cancer doesn’t kill me, the drug might?” Olivia asked. She glanced at her father. “Might kill us?”
“We have to deal with a lot of uncertainty. You will want to talk it over.”
After the doctor left, Lopez sat on Olivia’s bed. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing.”
After a while Lani returned. Lopez reported what the doctor had said. “We have to try,” Lani said and looked from Lopez to Olivia. “Why wouldn’t we? We have to try. If we don’t, both of you will die.”
Olivia flinched and Lopez looked away.
“What’s going on with you two?” Lani wanted to know.
“Nothing,” Olivia said.
He agreed.
They started vincristine injections the next morning. Olivia had to spend the day drinking as much water as she could stand. The drug would kill many of her cancer cells, releasing toxic chemicals that had to be filtered out by her kidneys.
In the late afternoon, Olivia began to vomit. The doctors gave her a shot of something that reduced her nausea but made her groggy. She fell asleep soon after sunset.
Lopez and Lani walked down to the ground floor to talk. An electric light shone in the room with the sickest patients. “How much longer?” Lani asked.
“Four weeks,” he said numbly. “Then they need to look at her bone marrow again.”
Lani went back up to sit with Olivia. Lopez remained, standing at the edge of the fluorescent light. Something was breaking open inside of him. The numbness that had been sustaining him was being filled with something that made his fists clench and his throat tighten.
All the toil and action of his life—love and fear for his daughter, admiration for his wife, the long journey through the ruined city filled with fog—were only distractions. Now he felt as if everything he perceived was not real but rather had been painted onto the emptiness that his death, closer now than ever before, would deliver him into. He had to die, and die soon, while his wife would continue to live. He would go into unknown darkness, while his daughter would float up to her technological heaven.
He paced around the hospital trying to dissipate the anger that coursed through his veins like a drug. An hour passed as if it might be endless, and still his hands trembled. He went up to Olivia’s room. Lani was sitting at the bedside, stroking her daughter’s hair. He went to stand by the window. After a moment, Lani went to him and slipped her arms around his waist, hugged him close.
He tried not to stiffen.
Another week, another vincristine injection. Even though the doctors gave Olivia the medication to stop vomiting earlier in the day, she spent most of that afternoon heaving. The next day the doctors said there was too much nitrogen in her blood, meaning her kidneys were being damaged. They had to give her less vincristine.
In the hospital, most every hour seemed the same. In the hospital, there was no sense of the dry season progressing. No sense of season at all.
One morning, Olivia found small black nests on her pillows. She cried silently, then cried harder when Lani cut the rest of her hair off. Two more weeks passed, each with the horrors of treatment. Then they took another sample of Olivia’s bone marrow.
The next day a new doctor knocked before opening the door. He stuttered when he said that the bone marrow showed almost no improvement. Even so, they couldn’t increase the vincristine dose without destroying her kidneys.
“So what are our choices?” Lani asked.
“Continue treatment and hope there’s a change.” He paused before quickly adding, “That would be unlikely.”
“Or?” Lani asked.
“Stop and make sure she’s comfortable.”
Lani shook her head. “But there’s no hope with that option.”
The young physician looked at his lap and said they would want to talk it over. Trying not to hurry, he hurried out of the room.
Lopez looked at his daughter, her shaved head. She was staring at her palms. “Lani,” he said, “we can’t keep putting her through this.”