Dancing with the Dead

33

Though visiting hours were over, the nurse on duty allowed Mary into Angie’s room.

Angie wasn’t asleep. Her eyes were half closed, but she was propped up in bed, and when Mary entered she smiled at her.

The room was almost exactly like the one Angie had been in for detoxification two months ago-same drab, institutional green walls, same black vinyl chair near the bed, same blood-pressure testing equipment and mysterious, many-dialed gadgetry mounted on the wall. But the other room had smelled of iodine, and this one had a musty scent about it, as if rain had blown in through an open window days ago and nothing had quite dried out.

On the windowsill was a small wilted flower arrangement, probably from the gift shop in the lobby. Fred’s scrawled signature was visible on the card, but Fred seemed to be nowhere around.

Mary sat down in the black chair, hearing it sigh as the cushion was compressed. “So. When’d you find out about this, Angie?”

“About a week ago. One of Doctor Keshna’s tests picked up something was wrong, then I came in and had more tests. After they removed some polyps from my cervix they did a biopsy and it came up positive. I didn’t mention it to you ’cause there was no sense you knowing. Nothing to be done anyways.”

“Nothing to be done? What’s that mean?” Mary asked, with a mingling of anger and fear.

“Means my blood’s spread the cancer and I gotta go through this chemotherapy business.”

“So what do the doctors say? Will chemotherapy do it? Will that cure you?”

“They say it might. I’ll be in here a few days, to start treatment, then it’ll be outpatient stuff till a few weeks pass. They tell me I’ll get weak then and probably have to check in and stay for a while. I tell you, Mary, I’m lucky; thank God for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.”

Mary stared at her. She’d known people who’d undergone chemotherapy. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Cervical cancer. Oh, Christ! You might be dying, Mother, and your reaction is to thank God for your insurance.

“Don’t take all this too hard,” Angie said. “I told you I got great medical coverage, and it might be nothing.”

“Nothing? Cancer?”

“Don’t say it, Mary. I don’t like hearing the word.”

“I sure as hell don’t like saying it.” Mary wiped her eyes, which had welled with tears the second time that evening. These tears stung. “Dr. Keshna taking care of you?”

“No, not her specialty. Brainton’s my doctor. Yuppie type, looks about twenty-two. Cervical cancer’s his game.” Angie shook her head weakly. “You know, this didn’t have a damned thing to do with my drinking. Ain’t that ironic?”

“That’s supposed to be a comfort?”

“Worth drinking to.”

“I’m gonna talk to Dr. Brainton.”

“Go ahead, Mary. Maybe you can convince him I’m well and they’ll tell me to go home.”

“Don’t be so fucking sarcastic!”

Angie, very tired from whatever they’d given her, sighed long and loud and let her head drop to the side on the fluffed white pillow. She smiled resignedly and not with her eyes. “I was furious, too, when I first found out. Couldn’t be happening to me. Just ain’t goddamn fair…”

“Angie, chemotherapy has a lotta side effects, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, I’ll feel like shit for a spell. Hair’ll likely fall out, that kinda thing.” She was quiet for a while.

Mary heard people pass in the hall, soles shuffling. A woman laughed. How dare she!

“Duke went quick, didn’t he?” Angie said with an edge of envy and maybe resentment. “Saw the other car coming and suffered about two seconds, if he was sober enough to know what was happening at all. He was always lucky, the bastard.”

“Lucky when he married.”

“Ha! Tell you, Mary, I was gonna leave your father. Finally gonna take you and go. Then came the accident.” Her voice wavered and weakened, like a radio signal fading.

“Sure you were, Angie.”

“You don’ know…”

Mary waited for her to finish what she’d started to say. “Angie?”

Her mother was asleep. An old, old woman whose lips fluttered when she exhaled. Her soul might escape her like a feather.

Mary stood up from the chair. Angie was right; she was furious. At cancer, at herself, even at poor Angie. At fate. At the charlatans who assured people there was a reason for things. The parish priest she hadn’t seen in years. The nuns who’d taught her in the sweat-and-varnish purgatory of Saint Elizabeth’s. She paced from one side of the room to the other, faster and faster, whirling at each end of her short journey to prevent herself from striding into the wall. Stay mad, you won’t be afraid.

Finally she stood still, staring at Angie and listening to her faint snoring. Then she left the green, musty room and asked at the nurses’ station if she could talk to Dr. Brainton.

The doctor, she was told, had left for the day and wouldn’t be back until ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Mary thought of asking for his home number, but she knew the nurses would refuse, angels of mercy protecting a god. It wouldn’t be right, or informative, to try calling the doctor at home anyway; she’d no doubt get only his answering service.

She rode the elevator down to the lobby, walked through a maze of halls to Detox, and asked to see Dr. Keshna. Then she waited in one of the molded plastic chairs by the table laden with dog-eared copies of Time and Newsweek. A newspaper was folded sloppily in one of the chairs; did it contain something on the murdered dancers?

“You always seem to be on duty,” Mary said, when Dr. Keshna, in a rumpled green surgical gown, had pushed through the wide swinging doors and was standing calmly before her.

Dr. Keshna nodded solemnly, as if yes indeed she did live at the hospital.

“I’ve been upstairs visiting my mother.”

“How is she?”

“Well, other than a little cancer, she’s okay.”

Dr. Keshna had obviously dealt with shocked and angry relatives who were themselves stunned by whatever microbe had attacked their loved ones. She said nothing. Her large dark eyes were kind and knowing. Mary wondered if the doctor was what Hindus called an “old soul,” one who’d been reincarnated countless times and acquired a residue of wisdom.

In the face of her placidity, Mary realized anger was futile, illogical. It could change nothing.

She slumped down deeper in the hard chair, until the base of her spine ached. “Okay, I’m sorry. None of this is your fault.”

“It’s something that happens,” Dr. Keshna said.

“How much do you know about her condition?”

“Some. Not as much as Dr. Brainton.”

“He’s not here to ask. You are.”

“Yes.”

“Will she live?”

“Possibly.”

“What are the chances? The odds?”

“That I couldn’t say.”

“Did what happened to her have anything to do with her alcoholism?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. Human organisms work dependent upon each other. I don’t mean to be flippant, but nothing to do with cancer, or alcoholism, is perfectly predictable.”

“So, is a medical prognosis just an exercise in unpredictability?”

“Always, I’m afraid.”

“You don’t talk like most doctors.”

“Your mother’s not my patient now, and I couldn’t predict the outcome of her illness with any accuracy.”

“I’m only asking for your guess.”

“After she completes chemotherapy, then we’ll see.” The sad, wise smile. Old smile. “Until then, try to be patient.”

Mary felt her sorrow, her rage, rise up in her. And something else-hopelessness. She bowed her head and began to cry silently. The tears tracking down her cheeks felt hot, as if she were fevered. She wanted to pray but resisted. At least she had the courage of her nonconvictions.

Dr. Keshna’s fingertips touched her quaking shoulder. “I’m sorry. Do you want me to give you something to help you sleep?”

She nodded, and the doctor disappeared, then returned in a few minutes with a small brown plastic vial. “Take only one pill, just before bedtime,” she said.

Mary thanked her and accepted the pills. Then she stood up. Her right hip was partly numb and her legs felt as heavy and unresponsive as if she’d been dancing for hours. Dr. Keshna was gazing at her again with her very wise eyes, understanding and unfathomable pity in them; she seemed to know something about Angie and Mary but there was no way to impart the knowledge. She touched Mary lightly again, this time on the back of her arm, as if she might ease anguish with the laying on of her tiny, gentle hands.

Neither woman spoke as Mary trudged from the hospital into the night.