“I was nine when I was told I was dying,” he says plainly, and again I feel that expectation hanging in the air, shimmering droplets, as though everyone has just leaned forward a fraction of an inch. “That’s when the seizures began. The first one was so bad I nearly bit off my tongue; during the second seizure, I cracked my head against the fireplace. My parents were concerned.”
Something wrenches in my stomach—deep inside, underneath the layers I’ve built over the past six months, past the fake Lena with her shell and her ID cards and the three-pointed scar behind her ear. This is the world we live in, a world of safety and happiness and order, a world without love.
A world where children crack their heads on stone fireplaces and nearly gnaw off their tongues and the parents are concerned. Not heartbroken, frantic, desperate. Concerned, as they are when you fail mathematics, as they are when they are late to pay their taxes.
“The doctors told me a tumor was growing in my brain and causing the seizures. The operation to remove it would be life-threatening. They doubted I would make it. But if they did not operate—if they let the tumor grow and expand—I had no chance at all.”
Julian pauses, and I think I see him shoot a momentary glance in his father’s direction. Thomas Fineman has taken the seat his son vacated, and is sitting, legs crossed, face expressionless.
“No chance at all,” Julian repeats. “And so the sick thing, the growth, had to be excised. It had to be lifted away from the clean tissue. Otherwise, it would only spread, turning the remaining healthy tissue sick.”
Julian shuffles his notes and keeps his eyes locked to the pages in front of him as he reads out, “The first operation was a success, and for a while, the seizures stopped. Then, when I was twelve, they returned. The cancer was back, this time pressing at the base of my brain stem.”
His hands tighten on the sides of the podium and release. For a moment, there is silence. Someone in the audience coughs. Droplets, droplets: We are all identical drips and drops of people, hovering, waiting to be tipped, waiting for someone to show us the way, to pour us down a path.
Julian looks up. There is a screen behind him on which his image is projected, blowing up his face by a power of fifteen. His eyes are a swirl of blue and green and gold, like the surface of the ocean on a sunny day, and behind the flatness, the practiced calm, I think I see something flashing there—an expression that is gone before I can find a name for it.
“I’ve had three operations since the first one,” he says. “They have removed the tumor four times, and three times it has regrown, as sicknesses will, unless they are removed swiftly and completely.” He pauses to let the significance of the statement sink in. “I have now been cancer free for two years.” There is a smattering of applause. Julian holds up a hand and the room once again goes silent.
Julian smiles, and the enormous Julian behind him smiles also: a pixelated version, a blur. “The doctors have told me that further surgeries may endanger my life. Too much tissue has been removed already, too many excisions performed; if I am cured, I might lose the ability to regulate my emotions at all. I might lose the ability to speak, to see, to move.” He shifts at the podium. “It is possible that my brain will shut down entirely.”
I can’t help it; I am holding my breath too, along with everybody else. Only Thomas Fineman looks relaxed; I wonder how often he has heard this speech.
Julian leans forward another inch toward the microphone, and suddenly it is like he is addressing each and every one of us individually: His voice is low and urgent, a secret whispered in our ears.
“They have refused to cure me for this reason. For more than a year we have been fighting for a procedure date, and finally we have arranged one. On March twenty-third, the day of our rally, I will be cured.”
Another smattering of applause, but Julian pushes through it. He is not done yet.