All You Could Ask For A Novel

Person2Person

From: Samantha R.

To: Brooke B.

BreastCancerForum.org



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Well, you were right, I don’t understand.

You’re an intelligent woman, Brooke, no one could construct a life as perfectly in tune with her own wishes as you have without being very smart, but maybe in the same way that I could not see how lucky I was to quickly discover my husband was a scumbag, I don’t think you can grasp how deeply in denial you are. You cannot just pretend you don’t have cancer. Life doesn’t work that way. A specialist has told you that you need chemotherapy and radiation; you can’t just overlook that because you wish it were not true. You need to get fully well, you need to do that for your husband and your kids and, most important, yourself.

Do you worry that your husband will not be able to handle this? Do you worry that it will strain your marriage? Do you worry that he won’t love you anymore? Because it almost sounds to me like you do, and if that is the case I can answer your question about what more a woman could want. A woman could want a husband who can handle this.

You have to do this, Brooke. What can I do to help?



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Person2Person

From: Brooke B.

To: Samantha R.

BreastCancerForum.org



* * *



Help me?

What on earth has given you the impression you can help me? And, while I’m at it, where on earth do you get the nerve to judge me and judge my marriage? I don’t want to remind you that one of us in this conversation has been married a little longer than the other, so it seems if there is marital advice to be given, I’m the one who should be giving it.

You don’t know me, and you don’t know anything about my life. The fact that we were born in the same town does not make us alike. I thought perhaps it gave us the ability to understand each other, but it is clear to me you don’t understand me at all.

When I was in middle school, we went on a survival trip in the woods and I sliced my hand on a tree branch. The counselors tried but could not get the bleeding to stop, and so they told me I was going to have to come out of the woods to get it stitched up. But even though I have hardly any tolerance for physical pain, I was not going to be the one who let my team down. I gritted my teeth and doused the cut with alcohol to prevent infection, refused to scream, despite a sting that would have stopped an elephant in its tracks, and stitched it up with a needle and blue thread I found in my backpack. It was not until after we had won the competition that I went to the hospital, where the doctor looked at my hand, laughed, and told me to come back in a week to have the stitches removed.

As for my husband, what you are really asking is: How wonderful can this man be if he can’t handle what is happening to me? And my answer is that I never said he couldn’t handle it. It is me who cannot handle it. There is a big difference.

So, I ask you not to reply to this message. If you do, I am not going to read it. I need some time to make up my mind how to proceed and I already know where you stand. I am not telling you I never want to hear from you again, but I am going to have to first get past the way your last message made me feel. When I have done that, I will let you know, and I will tell you then what I have decided to do, and you can think of it whatever you wish. I don’t know how long this will take, all of it is just as new to me as it is to you, so I’ll just be in touch when I’m ready. Until then, be healthy, be strong, and please leave me alone.



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Katherine E.

BreastCancerForum.org

Greenwich, Conn

Date joined: 9/30/2011



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Hello? Is there anybody out there?

I am in such desperate need of someone to tell me I am all right, that the last three weeks of my life aren’t the beginning of the end of me. I am looking for someone to talk to, to understand. Do they have that here?

My name is Katherine. I just turned forty. And I just finally met the man who was going to change my life, to give me exactly what I am telling you I need now, a partner and a lover and a friend. Someone to take care of me in a way I’ve never been taken care of before. I waited all my life for him, and then a week after he showed up my life imploded. I suppose this is what they mean when they say it wasn’t meant to happen. I hate to think of it that way.

I have worked on Wall Street for twenty years, and without getting into detail I’ll simply say I’ve done very well. Money is not going to be an issue for me, even now. I suppose I should take some comfort from that, but right now comfortable just isn’t in my vocabulary. I have never been less comfortable. Never.

In the dog-eat-dog world in which I’ve lived my whole life, I have never allowed myself either of two things that I now regret. The first is weakness. I have not allowed myself any weakness at all. I have always felt that showing any sign of vulnerability would destroy me completely, and as a result I have lived in a rather solitary world. The other is that I’ve never allowed myself to get over the one man who broke my heart. Perhaps the two are related. Perhaps allowing myself to get past him would have opened the door to a new man, a real relationship, and you can’t have one of those without allowing yourself to be vulnerable, and so there we are, back at the beginning again. You can’t have love in your life if you aren’t willing to suffer for it, and so rather than take that risk I have chosen instead to suffer for a man who hasn’t loved me in two decades. It sounds so stupid, which is infuriating, because I am so far from stupid, but this is the way I have lived and that is why in addition to being afraid I am also regretful and angry. There is nothing more debilitating than regret, and no anger worse than that which is directed at yourself. And I have all of that going on now, in addition to cancer.

I guess what I’m saying is I’m a complete mess.

What happened is I turned forty and decided I needed a vacation. That may not sound like much, but I never take a vacation. I have worked practically 365 days a year every year since I got out of business school, because I never want the a*sholes I work with to feel like they are outworking me.

But this year I turned forty, and I went on a blind date, and I won’t bore you with the details of that except to say it was bad enough that I decided I needed a vacation. I went to the mountains in Colorado and fell in love, first with the mountains and then with a man named Stephen. I met him on a hike and then he took me to dinner. He took me not to a restaurant but to a joint, one where they served burgers rather than filet mignon, and the silverware came wrapped in a paper napkin and you ordered your drinks from a bartender, not a sommelier. Oh, and his dog came with us and waited outside. I loved every second of it. I ate burgers and french fries and coleslaw and pickles, I drank three beers and three Cokes and we played darts and watched baseball on television. When we were done, he said he wanted to show me his favorite place in Aspen and he gave me the leash and we walked, the three of us, down a huge hill toward a park just as the sun was setting over the mountain. We walked through a huge grass field where some kids were kicking a soccer ball and a group of teenagers rode skateboards. We kept going, through the soft grass, talking so easily, without awkwardness or long pauses. It was all so easy, in a way it rarely is when you are with a man you hardly know but are aching to sleep with.

We crossed a small bridge with a stream rushing past and then turned into a park, and our feet began to crunch on a gravel path that split into four directions. He pointed to the path on the left and told me to lead the way, he’d be right behind. He wanted me to see it quietly and by myself. He unleashed the dog and she ran ahead, and Stephen pointed and said, “Just follow her, she knows the way.” But I was much too conscious of how my ass would look if I walked before him, so instead I put my arm through his and said, “Let’s go together,” and we did, right into the John Denver sanctuary.

And that was when I entered the most stunningly peaceful, gorgeous, spiritual place I have ever been. There is gentle, rushing water, a trickle from the mountain stream, with large stones that you can sit on spaced deftly about a grassy field, and much larger stones standing proudly, engraved with the words to his songs. And the lyrics, if you do not know them, are beautiful, more like poetry than music.

We sat on the ground in the middle of it all and I closed my eyes and breathed deeply in the mountain air, and then I opened them and Stephen’s face was an inch from mine and he kissed me without asking permission. And I grabbed the back of his head and kissed him back, as hard as I could. We made out right there on the grass, with just enough sunlight left to see and the sound of the stream in our ears. And I thought to myself that I’d never had sex in a public place, but if that’s where this was headed I was in. I absolutely would have done it right there. I would have done anything he wanted, with no concern at all for what anyone might see.

But that wasn’t what he wanted. He kept kissing me for a while and then he scooted closer and wrapped a big arm around my shoulders and squeezed me. He felt so strong, so very good. His hands smelled a little of ketchup and his breath smelled a little of beer, and his shirt smelled as though he had sat in front of a whole lot of campfires in it, and he just held me that way until it was too dark to see the lyrics carved into the stones anymore, and then he kissed me again and popped up to his feet.

“What do you think of it?” he asked, looking around, and I knew he meant the sanctuary but I was referring to absolutely everything when I responded.

I said, “I think it is perfect.”

He smiled. “Shall I take you home?”

I surprised even myself with my answer: “You can take me anywhere you want.”

He took me all right.

He lives in a stunning house on Red Mountain, with startling views, immaculate décor, and a fully lived-in vibe. When we entered, he excused himself to go to the bathroom and as I waited I decided I wanted to marry him. I ran at him the instant he came back. There was never any chance we would make it to a bed.

I was still floating when I left in the morning. Veritably floating. It was almost ten when we piled into his jeep and went back into town, and he dropped me off with a long kiss and said he’d call me late in the afternoon and I knew he would.

I picked up a warm chocolate croissant and café latte from the Main Street Bakery and savored them as I floated back to my room, where the moment I had most been looking forward to was waiting for me. My girlfriend, who was traveling and staying with me, had not heard from me since I’d texted her the previous afternoon that I had a date.

She’d replied: IF U DON’T CUM BACK 2NITE I’LL KNOW U’RE EITHER GETTING YOUR HEAD CUT OFF OR YOUR BRAINS F*ckED OUT!!!

My apologies for the language, but she texts that way.

Well, I threw open the door as loudly as I could, hoping she’d be exactly where I found her, seated in the living room, reading a trashy magazine.

“I’m back, sweetheart,” I said, loud and sassy, “and my head is still on!”

I told her the entire story, and I think she was even happier for me than I was for me. And, really, is there anything better than that? If there is, I can’t think of it. I can’t think of a single time in my life that I was happier than I was right then, telling my friend Marie every detail of the fabulous sex I had just enjoyed, while drinking the last of my latte and tasting the butter and chocolate on my lips. What more could you ask for?

May I be filled with loving-kindness

May I be well

May I be peaceful and at ease

May I be happy

That is a meditation I have taken great comfort in over the years. I have strived to live by those words, used them as a beacon during my dark moments, but I had never really felt I had achieved them until that day. That was the day everything would change, because finally I was filled with loving-kindness, I was peaceful and at ease, I was happy. The only trouble was I wasn’t well. I just didn’t know that yet.

I went back to New York to quit my job, tidy up my affairs, and move back to Aspen for good. Maybe I would marry Stephen, maybe not, but either way I would hike and ski and ride horses and meet other men if this turned out not to be the right one. I was ready. I was expecting to be back in Colorado within two weeks.

When I arrived home, my first appointment was with my therapist, who applauded loudly when I told her my plan. I think she had a tear in her eye; I know I did.

“This is the best decision I have ever known you to make,” she said, “regardless of how it turns out. I will miss you very much, but I hope we will never see each other again.”

Before I left her office, I mentioned, almost off-handedly, that my back had been bothering me, more and more of late, enough that it was beginning to interfere with my exercise. I told her I’d been putting off seeing a doctor because I feared it was some sort of nerve issue or degenerative disc, which might require surgery, which would keep me off my treadmill for longer than I thought I could bear, but now the pain had risen to a level where I felt it was going to limit me sooner rather than later.

“Go see your doctor before you leave New York,” she told me. “Start your new life without anything like that hanging over you.”

Seemed like a good idea.

I saw my doctor the following day. She said I needed to see a physical therapist, that I could probably get an appointment before the end of the month.

“No, Sheila,” I told her, “I’m leaving town much sooner than that, and I don’t plan to be back for a while. We need to figure this out right now.”

She told me she didn’t think there was any way to figure anything out so quickly, but in the interest of skipping a step or two, she would take X-rays and send me for an MRI. She also wrote me a prescription for a painkiller, which she described as “Aleve on steroids,” and told me to take one if the pain got in my way. I took two that night, with a glass of white wine, and fell asleep looking forward to quitting my job.

I woke up feeling great. The painkillers were magical; I hadn’t felt so loose in months. I ran effortlessly and without pain on my treadmill for forty minutes before breakfast. I had a noon appointment with the radiologist, which left just enough time to summon my CEO and offer my resignation. (I should tell you that I was more eager for the opportunity to tell him to his face that I was finished than I was anything else. That’s a long story. A good one, by the way, filled with sex and betrayal, but I don’t have time for it right now.)

I went straight to his office.

“I need to see Phil immediately,” I announced to his troglodytic assistant, loudly enough that anyone in the hall might hear.

“Oh, um, well,” she said, along with a lot of other meaningless words people use when they are startled and helpless.

“That’s insightful,” I said bitchily. “Just push the button and tell him I’m on my way in.”

What happened next was like a scene from a bad sitcom. The assistant, Danielle, rose from behind the desk and started to run to the door that separated her small office from the huge one she was there to protect. I was closer to the door than she was but she had a fairly good angle of pursuit and she wasn’t fooling around. In fact, she would have beaten me there had it not been for the five-inch heels on her Jimmy Choo Lizzy Leather pumps. (I’ve worn those and trust me they are not meant for running.) The woman took three quick steps toward me and then went sprawling face-first into the carpet, landing with a thump directly between me and the door. All I had to do was step over her, which I did with great relish.

But before I did, I knelt beside her. “Everything you may have heard about Phil and me is true,” I hissed, with a smile, “and if you already knew that but insisted on torturing me all these years anyway, all I can say is f*ck you.”

Then I went inside and told the man who almost ruined my life that I wasn’t working for him anymore. Now, you tell me, can a day possibly start any better than that?



I AM FEELING A little tired and a little sad at the thought of writing about what happened next. If there is anybody out there who wants to know, I will tell you. Write to me. I see there is a Person2Person feature here. If you use it, I will, too. I could use someone to talk to, someone who understands, someone who knows a little bit about days that start really well but don’t remain that way. Because right now I feel like I’m the only one.



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Person2Person

From: Samantha R.

To: Katherine E.

BreastCancerForum.org



* * *



I’m here.

I’m here to listen. I’m here to cry with you or laugh with you, whichever you need. I’ll be here on the lousy days and on the better days, and I promise you there will be those. And I will be here on the day you come out the other side of this, as I have, and I can promise you it is an even more glorious feeling than you imagine it to be.

My name is Samantha. I was first drawn to your profile because we are from the same town. I grew up in Greenwich, though I haven’t actually lived there since high school; I’m twenty-eight now. My life story isn’t so interesting, not nearly as much as yours. I don’t have a dreamy man waiting for me in Aspen, or anywhere else for that matter. I was married once, but that was brief and ended badly. I was diagnosed a few months after my marriage dissolved, and at the time I was feeling healthier, both physically and spiritually, than I ever had before and I am headed back to that now. In fact, I am going to be better for this. I actually believe this is going to wind up being a wonderful blessing in my life.

You see, nothing I have done has ever felt especially significant. I have been supported by my father all my life, and for a short time by my husband, and nothing I have done ever felt as though it really mattered.

Until now.

I was diagnosed with noninvasive cancer in my left breast. I was given a few options but immediately chose to have a double mastectomy and reconstruction. I wanted every shred of the disease out of me, and I was perfectly comfortable going to those lengths to assure it. When I woke up from the surgery, the first face I saw belonged to a nurse I had grown to like, named Jenny, a cute young woman, no older than me, maybe a year or two younger. She was kind and reassuring and made me feel like everything would be all right. I told her so before they wheeled me into the operating room and she smiled and promised me she’d be sitting by the bed when I woke up and sure enough she was. And she smiled at me, and as soon as I saw her dimples I knew it had gone well. And her first words to me were: “Congratulations. You no longer have cancer.”

I can’t repeat those words without crying and I don’t think I ever will. I’m choking up now as I type them. But what I decided that night, in that bed with those words still in my ears and the tears still on my cheeks, was that somewhere in the midst of this I had found my calling. I want to dedicate myself, however I can, to making other women feel the way I felt then. I don’t know all the ways that is possible yet, this is all new for me, but this is my start. I read the message you posted and here I am. What I am offering you is whatever I have that you need. An ear, a shoulder, a ride to the doctor’s office, or the hospital, or the airport, or a Broadway show. If I am able to make one moment of this suck a little bit less for you, I will feel I did my job.

It’s a modest plan, I know. I think of it as a support group without the group. Right now there is only me. I reached out to one other woman here, also from Greenwich, and we had a nice exchange for a while and I’m hopeful that we will go forward together, but for right now I am a group of one inviting you to make it two. How to do that is fully up to you.

Just say the word.



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Person2Person

From: Katherine E.

To: Samantha R.

BreastCancerForum.org



* * *



I am moved by your compassion and the generosity of your spirit. As a rule, I don’t have a whole lot of faith in the intrinsic decency of mankind, but you have taken a step toward changing that tonight. It may have been a small step for you, but it was giant for me.

I spend almost no time in Greenwich these days. My mother is still there, rattling about the halls of the house in which I grew up. Honestly, it feels more as though she haunts the place than lives in it. My mother has become the sort of person you can sometimes forget is in a room. It’s not the most cheerful time when I see her, and thus I hardly ever do.

I live in Manhattan and quite nicely, though I was—and am—ready to chuck all of it and dash to the mountains. I was about to do it. I was so excited.

Then I went for the MRI.

The first thing I discovered is that I am a tad claustrophobic. I don’t know how better to discover that than lying still in a tube like a sausage with the walls closing in while a horrific clanging deafens you. So that was pretty terrible. I just kept telling myself it was temporary, that I just needed to breathe and keep my eyes closed.

I went home after forty minutes of cylindrical torture and treated myself to a really fine bottle of wine, and waited to hear why my back was hurting me so. I was prepared for nerve damage, disc trouble, stress-related muscle fatigue, arthritis, even a tiny broken bone in a place I couldn’t find with my fingers. In fact, now that I think of it, I believe that is what I was expecting, a broken bone. An arduous rehabilitation. An admonishment to back off significantly from all my exercise. I drank a toast to my treadmill and how little I was going to miss it. So long as I could climb the occasional mountain, I was sure I would be fine.

Then the phone rang, and a voice on the other end said, “Katherine, I need to see you tomorrow.”

What’s funny now is that I didn’t recognize the voice at first. I thought it was Phil, my CEO, to whom I had resigned earlier in the day. I cackled into the phone at the very thought. I thought he was calling to say he needed me back, the firm could not survive without me, to remind me of the tens of millions of dollars in stock options I was leaving on the table, and oh by the way his wife just left him (which she did) and he realized it was, in fact, me he’d loved all these years and he was begging me to marry him.

Then the voice continued, “There are some things on your MRI that concern me and we’re going to need to get you to see an oncologist.”

That was when I realized it wasn’t Phil on the phone.

But the gravity of the moment did not strike me so quickly. I hardly ever get sick, so I really don’t speak doctor. I suppose I was aware that an “oncologist” meant “cancer,” but I didn’t put it together quite so quickly.

“What are we looking at, doc?” I asked, still thinking it was back trouble. “Something serious?”

“We should talk in person,” he said. “Tomorrow in the office.”

That was when I knew we weren’t talking about a herniated disc. I sat down and watched my knees begin to shake. I was gripping the phone really tightly. I didn’t want to let go, and I didn’t want to stop talking, either. I would be alone the moment he hung up and I really didn’t want to be alone.

“We need to talk now,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “You’re scaring me.”

“We should sit down and talk in person.”

“Okay,” I said. “My driver will pick you up in ten minutes.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Katherine, I don’t know if I can make that work,” he said hesitantly.

“Okay, that’s fine,” I told him. “Then all you need to do is tell me right now this isn’t something very serious and I don’t need to be that worried about it. Because, frankly, calling me at six o’clock in the evening and scaring the living shit out of me and then going on about your day isn’t my idea of bedside manner. If this is serious, doctor, I want to know and I want to talk about it right now.”

He paused again.

“What kind of car is it?” he asked.

“Holy shit,” I said. “I’m dying, aren’t I?”

“I have concerns, Katherine. No one is saying you are dying,” he said. “I’ll be outside the Madison Avenue entrance in ten minutes.”

A half-hour later, Dr. Armitage walked into my apartment with my driver behind him. My eyes went right to Maurice. I wanted to see his face, the way I always look at a flight attendant if there is trouble on an airplane. If the attendant looks calm, all must be well, right? But Maurice never looked at me, never lifted his eyes off the ground. He just shuffled to a chair and sat quietly, staring at his feet.

“I asked Maurice who your closest friend is,” the doctor said. “He said it was him.”

“He’s right,” I said, though the words caught in my chest. “Why does he need to be here?”

“We need to talk about what we found on the MRI, and some of it might get a little complicated,” he said. “Having another set of ears is always helpful.”

“Just tell me,” I said. “This drama has gone on too long. I can’t wait anymore.”

Dr. Armitage took off his glasses. “We see some things that concern me,” he said, “some abnormalities. It appears to be some kind of tumor on your spine.”

“I have cancer?”

“That is very likely, yes,” he said.

There was a lovely gentleness in the way he told me. Even though his expression was stoic and I was aware that he was making a speech he probably makes every day, there was still kindness in his voice.

“It is quite unusual for a tumor to arise in the spine,” he continued. “These things typically come from other places, most frequently breast cancer. Either way, I think you need to see an oncologist right away. I’ve spoken to my friend Dr. Richard Zimmerman, he’s the best in the city. He will be able to see you tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m going to give you something for the pain and something for your anxiety, and the best thing you can do is try to relax tonight as best you can. And call me if you have any questions at all.”

I didn’t have any questions.

Or maybe I had too many to think of one.

Either way, I didn’t say anything.

Maurice did. “Doctor, she has a prescription for Ambien. More than anything I think it would be best for her to sleep tonight. Would it be all right if I gave her one of those?”

“Absolutely,” I heard the doctor say, but I was already fading away. I would have slept without the pills. And I did, right there on my sofa, with all my clothes and jewelry and makeup on. Maurice didn’t move me, though when I woke up I found myself tucked beneath a soft blanket with a pillow from the bedroom beneath my head.

The next afternoon I met Dr. Z, the kindest man in the world. He explained to me, in his heavy Brooklyn accent, that he became a doctor because his beloved mother died of breast cancer and he decided, at her funeral, to dedicate his life to helping other women fight the disease. And I thought to myself that sometimes you meet the best people in the worst of circumstances. I wish I’d known that a long time ago. It doesn’t make any of it better, really, but in some ways it does.

After Dr. Z’s introductory speech, he brought out the MRI results and laid them on a table. Then he asked me to remove my shirt and bra and gave me a breast exam.

“Did you notice this lump?” he asked, as he kneaded an area just to the side of my right nipple.

“Not really,” I said.

I was too ashamed to tell the real answer, which was that I hadn’t noticed it at all. I know I’m supposed to give myself breast exams, but I do not, never have. I know that is stupid, but if you think about it it’s no more stupid than wasting twenty years of my life pining for a man. We do a lot of stupid things. That’s what I was thinking as he continued to manipulate my boob between his thumb and forefinger. For a really intelligent woman, I do a lot of stupid things.

Dr. Z leaned back when he was done and pulled off his eyeglasses. “Okay,” he said, his tone unchanged, nothing to read into at all, “here’s what we need to do. We need to get some blood work, we need to do some more tests, we should biopsy your breast lump, and we may need to do some other biopsies as well.”

“I’m sorry, doctor, but I thought we were worried about my spine and my bones.”

“Most cancers start somewhere else and they travel,” he said. “For example, it’s very uncommon to have liver cancer. Usually, cancer of the liver starts somewhere else, like in the breast.”

“So in this case, what you’re telling me is I have breast cancer that has spread to my bones?”

I thought I saw just a little bit of emotion then. He seemed to swallow especially hard before he answered. “That’s what we need to find out. We’re going to send you for a biopsy, we’re going to get a CAT scan of your chest and belly, and we’re going to do a bone scan. You’ll be back by the end of the week and we’ll go over the results.”

I could go on and on about the subsequent tests I took and the chalky fluid I drank and the Ambien-fueled nights that passed, but there isn’t really much point in any of that. By Friday I was back with Dr. Z and he was telling me, in a matter-of-fact tone, that I have breast cancer that has probably spread to my spine.

What was amazing about that moment was that I had no reaction whatsoever. You know how when you see someone in a courtroom be pronounced guilty and sentenced to life in prison, they don’t ever seem to scream or cry or even flinch? I’ve always wondered how they manage to remain so stoic, but now I understand. It is because they already know. Just as I did. I knew what Dr. Z was going to tell me before I set foot in the office.

“Are you saying I have a terminal disease?” I asked.

“What I’m saying is that you have a disease we cannot cure,” he said. I could tell he’d made this speech many times. “That does not mean we can’t treat it, we can often treat it for years, but based on what we know now this is not a disease that we can cure.”

I wanted to ask him how long I had but the words got stuck inside.

“You should know, Katherine,” he went on, “that miraculous progress is being made in research every year, every day, every hour. We will treat this, we will make this as comfortable as we can for you, we will see to it that you will live your life however you choose to, and we will be comforted by the fact that five years ago there was a lot less we could do for you than we can today. And by that, I mean that there is every reason to believe that next year there will be more we can do, and even more the following year. So that is the game we are playing.”

I closed my eyes and asked, “How much time do you think we have to play it?”

He smiled. “How’s your sense of humor?”

“Some people say it’s my best quality.”

“Okay, then I’ll tell you that if you are asking me when you are going to die, I will tell you that if I knew I would arrange right now to take that day off, because there’s a lot of paperwork involved. And then you’d smile—just as you are right now—and I’d tell you I’m not giving any thought to when you are going to die. The only thing either of us needs to be thinking about is how you’re going to live.”

So, Samantha, that is my story. I haven’t been back to see him yet. I will go, probably tomorrow or the next day. I just haven’t been able to manage it yet. I haven’t been able to do anything. I haven’t left my apartment, have hardly eaten, barely slept. I can’t really describe the way I feel. But I can tell you that I’m afraid I can’t do what the doctor is asking. Because I am so alone. I don’t have a husband, a boyfriend, a sister, or a priest. I can’t involve Maurice in this. He’s a wonderful man but he’s my driver, and I can’t put all of this on him. You can’t ask people who work for you to do things like this, because the truth is you don’t know how they really feel about you and it’s probably better that way.

And while I don’t know if I can face this alone, I know I would rather try that than involve my mother. I haven’t told her a word of this and I don’t plan to. If I die, she’ll find out when someone invites her to the funeral.

So, what I’m saying is that I just don’t know that I am ready to go back to the doctor and hear all of it and ask the questions and get the answers and begin the treatment all by myself. I’m sure I will change my mind tomorrow or the next day. I’ll go back because I have to. But it would be a lot easier if there was someone with me. To take notes. And ask questions I don’t think of. And maybe hold my hand. No one has held my hand in a long time. I know we have never met, and so I am a little embarrassed to say this, but right now I think you may be the best chance I have. Probably because you’re the only chance I have. So if you want to meet in the city tomorrow, maybe I could buy you lunch and we could talk, and who knows what might happen next.

You just might save my life.



* * *



Person2Person

From: Samantha R.

To: Katherine E.

BreastCancerForum.org



* * *



What time and where?

SAMANTHA

I HOPE I DIDN’T do too blatant of a double-take when the maître d’ led me to the table. It’s just that if you had given me the choice of any of the women in the restaurant—Michael’s on the East Side—I think Katherine would have been the last one I’d have guessed. She looked so healthy, so well put together, she didn’t look at all unwell or uncertain, or un-anything. She isn’t a beautiful woman but she is striking, and younger than I expected.

“I’m Katherine Emerson,” she said, rising, as I approached. She had a deep voice, not masculine, more like she might sing opera in her spare time.

“Hi,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else.

She extended her hand and I shook it. Her grip was firm, the way my father shakes hands, but when it was time to let go she didn’t. She held my hand a beat longer than I know she normally would have. That’s what having cancer does. It makes you hold someone’s hand a beat longer than usual, no matter how fabulous you look.

“It’s good of you to meet me,” Katherine said.

“It’s funny,” I said, as I sat opposite her at a sunny two-top with a gorgeous centerpiece of white lilies, “I feel as though I should be saying that to you. I know that makes no sense, but somehow I feel like I’m the one who should be grateful.”

I laughed a little. Katherine did not, she didn’t even smile. Actually, she didn’t look like she smiled much, even before she had cancer.

“Here’s my story,” she said. “I’m a single woman. I quit my job the day I was diagnosed, literally the same day. The timing of that didn’t work out so well for me, but there isn’t much I can do about it now. I had plans to go out West to be with a man I just met, and that doesn’t seem to be in the cards now either. In a nutshell, I am all alone and I have to deal with this, and something inside of me is saying that if I don’t have someone to encourage me, then at some point I’ll just decide it isn’t worth it. So, I guess that’s what I’m looking for, someone to tell me it’s worth it on days when I’m not so sure.”

I heard a clinking sound and thought for a moment someone had dropped some change on the ground, then I realized it was Katherine’s silverware. Her demeanor was placid, her voice calm, her facial expression stoic, but her fingers were in a frenzy. She was puttering with the left side of her place setting, the forks rolling frantically in her hand, and I don’t think she even realized it, or heard the clinking, or anything. It made me think of when I was a little girl in the country and my father and I saw ducks swimming on the pond, and my father told me ducks were his role models.

“Their feet are paddling like crazy beneath the surface,” he said, “but you’d never know it.”

I reached out and put my hand over hers, and I heard her breath catch. She let her hand go limp beneath mine, and when she looked up again into my eyes, she was entirely different.

I hadn’t realized it at first but she is a small woman. I suppose I didn’t notice because her appearance is so striking, her presence so magnified, but everything about her is small. Her hands are tiny, her fingers as narrow as tightly rolled dollar bills. Her facial features are small, her eyes, her teeth. And, looking closely, I had a sense her shoulders ended a long way before her blouse began. She was what my mother would have called “petite,” and with my hand on hers, her face told me she didn’t mind that I knew it, even if few other people did.

“Let’s talk about something else,” I said cheerily, giving her hand a squeeze and then taking mine back. “There’ll be plenty of time to figure all the rest of this out.”

“I like that idea,” Katherine said. “Do you want a glass of wine?”

“Can you drink wine?”

“You bet your ass I can drink wine, and right now it sounds awfully good.”

“All right, I’ll have a glass.”

“Perfect,” she said, “and I’ll have the rest of the bottle.”

This time, she smiled.

Two glasses later, she began telling me how bored she is.

“You know, I always wondered what I was missing by working all the time,” she said, slurring only slightly. “I realize now I wasn’t missing anything. Trips to Paris, London, Aspen, maybe, but you can’t do that all the time. This week I have been sitting in my apartment watching television. I have over eight hundred channels and there isn’t a single thing worth watching.”

“I love game shows,” I said.

Katherine almost did a spit take. “Oh my god, those are the worst of all!”

I laughed. “I love them. I love the people.”

“The people?” she exclaimed. “They are the worst part! I have to believe the stupidest people in the world are the contestants on these game shows. Because if there are actually stupider people out there, we are doomed as a civilization.” She refilled her glass.

“Oh, but they’re so earnest,” I said, “they try so hard.”

“Please.” She took a gulp of wine. “I was watching Family Feud this morning, the old version, when Richard Dawson used to kiss all the women—which is so gross, and could be a whole other reason I hate game shows—but anyway, after this woman gets finished kissing Richard Dawson he asks her to name a country in South America, and she says ‘Spain.’ And I’m thinking, ‘All right, she’s not Magellan, but it’s not the end of the world.’ Then her idiot brother is next in line and Richard asks him to name a country in South America and he looks up, totally cross-eyed, with an expression like a dog going to the bathroom, and he says: ‘You know what Richard? I really thought she was right, I’m going to have to say Spain too.’”

I burst out laughing.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head, though I could see my laughter was contagious, it was spreading toward her, and then she started to chuckle too. “I guess it is funny, if you think about it.”

“It’s hilarious,” I said, “and it’s so sad. I feel sorry for the people on those shows, they try so hard. It makes me cry sometimes.”

She looked me square in the eyes. “You cry watching game shows?”

“All the time.”

“I see,” she said, shaking her head. “Well, we’re going to get along just great.”

“That’s right,” I said, using the linen napkin to wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes. “We’re going to be BFFs.”

“I like that,” Katherine said. “Breast Friends Forever.”

KATHERINE

I LIKED HER IMMEDIATELY.

What is there not to like? She’s a sensitive, sweet, intelligent person. If she were a man, I would have fallen in love with her before the cork was out of the second bottle. Maybe I did anyway. Maybe you can fall in love with someone without wanting to make love with them. If you can, then I did. I fell in love with Samantha the first time I met her.

The only thing I told myself before she arrived was that I would have to be fully honest with her. It seems the time for playing games in my life is over, and even if it isn’t, there certainly isn’t anything to be gained by playing them with her. So I would answer her questions with truthfulness, whatever they might be, rather than the defensive posturing that has characterized pretty much every relationship of my adult life.

When finally we had stopped laughing over the tragic game-show contestants, I sighed deeply and tried to steer the conversation back to what I really needed to talk about with her. “I have been doing a little research on the Internet about the disease. There is so much out there that I feel somewhat overwhelmed. I don’t know what’s credible and what’s not.”

“I did the same thing,” Samantha said. “I felt the same way. I was all over the place. The truth is I got the most out of the social sites, like message boards and Facebook.”

“I’m not even on Facebook. I think that’s why I’m always behind on all the gossip,” I said. “I don’t know why I haven’t signed up. I guess I just figured if I haven’t heard from you in twenty years it’s probably for a reason.”

Samantha laughed at that, but I didn’t. That wasn’t honesty. That wasn’t what I promised myself I would bring to this lunch. That was my typical use of humor as a defense mechanism, and what good was that doing me here?

“Actually,” I said, glancing away, “that isn’t the reason. In all honesty, I think I never signed up because I was afraid no one would friend me. Even now I don’t want to go on and talk about my diagnosis. I guess I’m afraid there’d be no one who cared.”

I kept my gaze away, waiting for her reply, but she didn’t say a word. It was quiet for so long I finally had to look at her. She is a very pretty girl. Her eyes are deep blue and she has the sort of cheekbones people would pay anything to have surgically implanted. But her best feature is her compassion, her humanity. You can see it in her face. It oozes from her.

“My god, Samantha,” I said, “I am so alone.”

She put her hand back on mine. “Not anymore.”

I cleared my throat a time or two. I was afraid I might begin to cry. I wanted to keep talking but I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Do you need a minute?” she asked.

“Not at all,” I said. “Just talk to me. Tell me about yourself. All I really know is that you weep during game shows, and, frankly, if I’m going to put my life in your hands I’m going to need to know more than that.”

She seemed to get my sense of humor, which is nice, because I happen to think it is my best quality. Not when it is being used to deflect or to compete, in those cases my humor probably does me more harm than good, but in the right moments saying something funny is the best thing you can do for a conversation. I could tell Samantha could appreciate that.

Then, to my shock, she told me the story of her ill-fated marriage. I hope my genuine reaction wasn’t evident in my face, meaning I hope my jaw didn’t actually hit the table. It all just seemed so unlikely, so unlike the woman Samantha is. She seems so stable, so together. I don’t know what type of person you expect to have her marriage annulled after three days, but whoever that is she is the opposite of the woman who was sitting across from me.

“All I can say,” I told her, when she finished her story, “is that this guy has got to be one of the most irretrievably stupid people on the planet to let you get away. And while I realize I barely know you, I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”

“That’s very nice of you.”

“What an a*shole,” I said, for emphasis, and she laughed.

“What about you, Katherine? Have you ever been married?”

“I’ve never been married,” I told her. “I was close one time. At least I thought I was, maybe I wasn’t as close as I thought. Actually, my history with men is something of a horror show. You’re either going to laugh or punch me when I tell you some of the crap I have put up with.”

“Try me.”

I took a deep breath. “Well, I once was dumped in the midst of a session with a couples therapist. I suppose being in couples therapy before we were married should have been a sign, but somehow I missed it. Another time, I cooked dinner for a guy, he arrived, we had sex, then he broke up with me, then he asked if he could still stay for dinner because if he left he would hit traffic, and I let him.”

Samantha started to respond but I cut her off.

“Then there was the time I tried to break up with a guy and he talked me out of it, and we went home and had sex and then, while he was smoking a cigarette in my bed, he told me I was probably right and we should break up.”

She was laughing again. Not the contagious, hysterical way she had earlier, but the knowing laugh of a woman who understands what complete scumbags men can be.

“But I didn’t almost marry any of those. They were like buses or trains, always another coming along if you miss one,” I said. “Phillip was different. We went to business school together. We studied together, traveled together, never actually lived together but may as well have. I don’t know that he was ever in his own apartment in the two years we were together. When we were close to finishing school, he told me about another woman he had met in Cambridge, a townie. She was stunning and she was easy. Not just in a sexual sense. She was easy on him. She thought everything he said was brilliant and funny, she thought every idea he had was genius. I did too, of course, but I was his equal and she wasn’t, and he acknowledged that there was something he liked about that. She worshipped him, and it was fun to be worshipped.”

Samantha was leaning forward now, perfectly still.

“I remember where we were sitting when he told me. In a diner, in a booth in the rear. He was drinking a vanilla milkshake and I was having coffee. I listened to every word, and then I said to him: ‘Listen, I love you as much as you will ever be loved and I will marry you this minute if you ask me to, but I am a Harvard-educated woman with plans to do exactly what you’re planning to do when we get out of here, so play me or trade me, Phillip, but don’t ask me not to be your equal.’”

I poured myself a bit more wine before I finished the story.

“I went home and waited. Three days went by, four days, five. I didn’t hear a word. Then he called. It was a Saturday. And he said, ‘I miss you so much it aches. Can I come see you? I have something important to say.’ And I cried with joy, because I knew what it was going to be. He was at my door twenty minutes later, and he carried me into the bedroom and made love to me before either of us said a word, and in the afterglow I could see tears in his eyes and so I started to cry again and I almost told him he didn’t have to ask me, because I knew, and I loved him, and I wanted to get dressed right then and run to City Hall and get married that night and decide what to tell our families about it afterward. Then he lit a cigarette and sat up, and his first words were: ‘Christ, Kat, I am going to miss you so f*ckin’ much,’ and all the blood just drained out of me. I didn’t even get angry, not immediately, or even sad. I just got small. I felt so small it was as though you wouldn’t even be able to see me, as though I practically disappeared. And in some ways I guess I’ve stayed that way for almost twenty years.”

A tiny tear rolled down Samantha’s cheek.

“He married the townie?” she asked.

“He did indeed. Less than a year later.”

“Oh no.”

“Wait,” I said, “you haven’t even heard the worst part yet.”

SAMANTHA

I CAN’T BELIEVE SHE worked for him all these years.

I can’t imagine going into an office every Monday and asking Robert how his weekend was. I don’t care how much money was involved, there isn’t any amount that would make that worth it.

What I admire most about Katherine is how aware of herself she is. She has an excellent understanding of herself, and she is acutely aware of how unhealthy her life has been since Phillip and even more aware of the crisis she is facing now. She understands what she is up against, and she is strong. I could feel her strength that afternoon and I grew to admire it more and more in the weeks that followed.

Perhaps the hardest thing for a strong person to do is admit to needing help, and what I think Katherine learned during our time together was that it was not a sign of weakness but rather of great courage to accept me, to lean on me, to allow me to be her health advocate, which is exactly what I became, right there over a second bottle of Burgundy.

Three days later, we were perfectly sober as we approached the entrance to the massive complex of Memorial Sloan-Kettering, where Katherine would spend two days on the nineteenth floor to have special biopsies performed, receive second and third opinions on all her diagnoses, and then begin her chemotherapy treatment program. Katherine had told me about the nineteenth floor at our first lunch. Apparently, it is an open secret among the rich and famous, like the island David Copperfield owns. It is a special floor for the world’s premier cancer patients. There isn’t anything different or superior about the treatment, the difference is in the way you are treated. Katherine told me to expect the Four Seasons, but when we arrived it felt more like a motel you’d find on a deserted stretch of road off a highway in a bad neighborhood. Even having money and knowing we would be going to nineteen didn’t save us from being caught waiting in the general area on the first floor, which was overrun with people trying to be admitted.

I had a meltdown.

Katherine was anxious enough without having to wait three hours because of a paperwork snafu and a nurses’ shift change. She kept trying to quiet me down, and then I thought to myself: If she is comforting me then what exactly am I accomplishing? Why am I even here? And so I took matters into my own hands. I ducked into a supply area when no one was looking and stole a gurney. I beckoned Katherine and before she could balk I said: “Lie down.”

Then I was wheeling Katherine past the nurses’ station and past security directly to the only bank of elevators I could see from where we’d been waiting. I pressed the button and held my breath. And, to my great relief, the first thing I saw upon entering the elevator was a placard on the rear wall.

SERVICING FLOORS 10 THRU 19

“We’re in business,” I whispered to Katherine, who seemed to be quite comfortable, stretched out on the gurney, her head resting on two pillowcases I had rolled together. “Going up!”

But then the button didn’t light up. Not when I touched it with my thumb, my forefinger, tapped it with a nail, or stuffed my entire palm inside the circle. Nothing. The doors just shut and then we sat there. It’s actually quite amazing how jarring it is to feel an elevator not move. It’s another of those things, like a refrigerator humming, that you don’t notice until it stops.

“I don’t think we’re moving,” Katherine said.

I looked down. Her eyes were shut. Her voice was muted, relaxed.

“I know,” I said.

“Why aren’t we moving?” she asked.

“All part of the plan,” I said, with a confidence I didn’t quite feel.

She didn’t open her eyes but she broke into a wide smile. “You’re funny, you know that,” she said. “Wake me up if we ever get to nineteen.”

We stayed in the elevator long enough for me to arrive at an idea. I unzipped my purse and dumped the entire contents on the floor. Then I kneeled down and waited, and as soon as I heard the bell chime and the doors open, I shouted, “Oh, shit!”

Two women in lab coats entered the elevator. “Everything all right?” one of them asked.

“Oh, I just dropped everything on the floor,” I said, frantically gathering my things. “Would you mind hitting nineteen for me?”

From where I was kneeling, my head was right by Katherine’s. And as I heard someone slide a card through a slot and felt the elevator begin to move, I could hear her laugh.

When we got off the elevator, a security guard had to buzz us in, which he did with only a mildly suspicious glare, and then the nurse spent ten minutes scolding me because we hadn’t followed protocol. I just kept apologizing and played dumb, happy because Katherine seemed to have fallen asleep, and also because no matter how browbeaten I was I was relieved no one asked anything about the gurney.

Ultimately, we were led into a suite that, in my wildest dreams, I would never have imagined could be found in a hospital. It was every bit as fancy as my honeymoon suite in Hawaii, with marble in the bathroom and two flat-screen televisions, comfortable leather chairs, lush carpeting, and a menu that read as though it was taken from a Fifth Avenue bistro. Cornish game hen, rosemary potatoes, sautéed broccoli, apple tart with crème anglaise, raspberry sorbet.

“Pretty swanky,” I said, as the door shut behind the attendant who’d led us in.

Katherine popped up off the gurney and strode confidently to the window. “Thanks for getting me here.”

“I thought you were asleep,” I said.

“Meditating.”

She was in a small wooden chair, looking out over the skyline. The day was cloudy and dramatically gray above the sea of skyscrapers.

“If you don’t mind, what does this cost?” I asked.

“Three grand a day,” she replied, her back to me, staring out the window. “Insurance doesn’t cover it.”

“It’s worth it.”

“I wouldn’t have gotten here without you,” she said, still not looking back at me.

I went over and rested a hand on her shoulder. “Pretty comfortable place to spend a couple nights,” I said.

“Aside from that,” Katherine said, and motioned behind me.

I turned and immediately saw it, the one thing in the room you wouldn’t find in a luxury hotel. The bed. It looked like one you might find in any hospital room. I felt a lump in my throat.

“I’m going to Barneys,” I said, “and buying out the bedding department.”

“No,” she said, and put her hand on mine, held me there. “Just stay with me.”

KATHERINE

SAMANTHA SLEPT IN THE room with me that night. They made up a sofa for her with fluffy pillows and a down comforter. It looked more comfortable than the bed by the time they were through. That made me feel good. I didn’t want her to be uncomfortable.

The following morning, Dr. Z was in my room early. I asked Samantha to stay and hear what he would say, partly because my head hasn’t been right since this all began, and also because I just didn’t want to be alone.

Dr. Z reiterated the program we would begin that day, told me I would only be in the hospital a few days, and explained that I would then begin my treatments at the chemotherapy center near my apartment. Samantha, bless her, took notes the whole time. I listened with my eyes closed.

Then Dr. Z asked something that stirred me. “Katherine, is there anything you are excited to do?”

I opened my eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I mean excited to do.”

“What kind of thing?”

“Well, some people want to go on a safari, others want to learn to play the piano. It could be either of those or anything in between.”

A bit of panic spread through me. “Are you telling me if there is something I haven’t done I’d better hurry up and do it?”

“Not at all,” he said, and placed his hand on my foot gently, reassuringly. “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. I mean I like to work with a goal in mind. The next few weeks aren’t going to be a lot of fun, so if we can say, ‘Nine more days until I see a giraffe in the wild,’ it usually makes it a little easier.”

I lay back again and looked over at Samantha. She was staring at the doctor, her hair matted down where she’d slept on it, a pencil between her fingers.

“Can I think about it?” I asked.

“Of course. It isn’t mandatory,” Dr. Z said. “Sometimes it just helps.”

He really did have a lovely smile.

When he was gone, Samantha came and flopped down beside me on the bed. At that moment I felt as though I had known her all my life.

“Did that scare the shit out of you?” I asked. “Because it scared the shit out of me.”

“Yes, that scared the shit out of me,” she said. “But when he explained it I felt a lot better, and I believe he was telling the truth.”

“I do too,” I said.

“It makes sense,” Samantha said, “at least it does to me.”

She went into the bathroom and brushed her teeth and her hair. It took her all of two minutes to get herself together. When she emerged she looked terrific, healthy and pretty and radiant.

“You are very naturally beautiful,” I told her, as the sun shining into the windows illuminated her from behind. “I am very envious.”

Samantha laughed. “Are you kidding? You’re twelve years older than I am and I bet people think we’re twins. You’re the one who looks fabulous.”

“Sweetheart, it takes me an hour to look like your sister. You were in and out of that bathroom in a minute. If you only gave me that much time, people would think I was your grandmother.”

“That’s not true and you know it,” she said, and rubbed her chin as though she was thinking it over. “Or maybe you don’t know it. That’s why I’m here, to make sure you do.”

“That’s why you’re my BFF.”

“That’s right,” Samantha said. “That’s why I’m your BFF.”