The nurse beckoned us from our cold, hard chairs where, for the past three hours, we had sat with our silence and our caffeine highs, while life in the surgery waiting room buzzed around us. Headline News had been droning repeatedly on the TV about some terrorist's bombing in London, about bad weather churning over the Midwest, a near-miss on a Dallas runway.
Daddy said, "I believe she means us," as he nudged me to look up at the nurse in the doorway. Her face seemed all at once, kind yet commanding. Daddy and I rose in unison, like marionettes, and went toward her:
"This way," she said, guiding us six steps down the hallway.
She stopped at a blond oak door; smiled at us, and used a key on a chain around her waist. The door was one you would just walk right past under normal circumstances, supposing behind it was a storage room or something equally as nondescript, as you hunted your way down this corridor, eyes lifted toward the signs -- ICU, Surgery, Nurse's Station -- leading you through the starched white hospital maze.
"The doctor will be with you shortly," the nurse said. She stood with her back plastered against the heavy door, holding open the pneumatic hinges for us to pass. "Make yourselves comfy."
We stepped into a small rectangle, not much bigger than a walk-in closet, a plush cubicle of spongy off-white carpet that my sandals sank into. A chintz-covered, overstuffed love seat lined one wall, a wall papered in blue paisleys. A picture in a green frame hung there, all shades of blue, hints of lemon and lavender -- a balcony window on a Tuscany street maybe. Soft light fell from a ginger jar lamp on the end table. A pink box of Kleenex rested there, too. I chose the deep-seated wing chair of mauve and mahogany against the other wall. Daddy took the love seat, perched himself on the edge, holding himself away from its cushiony folds. Both of us sat numb and hovering for a few seconds, taking in the antiseptic air around us.
"Usually they just tell you out in the hall." Daddy teetered a little on the edge of the love seat.
"That's what I was thinking." I eyed the Kleenex box, and also Daddy's stout hands locked together. His elbows rested on his knees. "I didn't even know they had these little rooms," I added.
"Me neither."
He had a habit of sucking at his teeth, just a little popping suck you mostly ignored, something to do with adjusting his ill-fitting partial plates. But he made that noise just then and the sound of it saturated the room. His face stayed frozen on the carpet. Silence settled again between us.
When the door burst open, we both jumped. Dr. Jackson, a tall bounding man, suddenly filled up the room with his rustling white coat, his clipboard and his energy. He called me by my first name, said hello with a nod, then sat down on the love seat beside Daddy. The size of Dr. Jackson made Daddy seem small.
"I'm afraid I've got bad news this time," he said to Daddy. "It's cancer."
"Aw, heck," came Daddy's reflexive answer at that straight-forward word: cancer.
I felt a knot double in my gut. I eyed the Kleenex box again.
"It's already metastasized throughout the lymph system." Dr. Jackson pointed with two fingers at his own collarbone, the place where Mother found her lump. "I went ahead and removed the tumor, but the primary source is somewhere else."
Daddy's head kept nodding like a bobble-head doll. I reached for his hand. He clasped hold of mine tightly. We weren't the hand-clasping sort, and immediately the gesture felt awkward to me. When do you let go? How long is long enough to hold on? Ours was a good-luck family, a family of benign tumors and false alarms, and long lives. We didn't have need of soft, cushy rooms, or pink boxes of Kleenex, or prints of Tuscany -- or of tightly clasped hands.
"The next step," Dr. Jackson said, his voice pingponging around the quiet room, "will be to run more specific tests to determine the exact type of cancer it is, and the location. I'm recommending you to Dr. Barnes. He's the best oncologist around. I've already contacted his office."
"Does Mother know yet?" I asked, my voice finally finding itself, but an octave higher.
Dr. Jackson's bright eyes shifted to me. "She's still waking up in recovery."
"Will you be the one to tell her?" Daddy sounded anxious.
"If you'd like me to," Dr. Jackson answered.
Daddy grinned, an almost skeletal grin, and completely out of place. "I believe you could do it better than me. I don't think I'd know how to say it right."
"All right, then." The doctor started up from the love seat, finished with us and ready to put his energy somewhere else. Daddy and I stood, too. We shook hands, politely exchanged some empty words.
"Take your time in here," Dr. Jackson said, from the open doorway. "The room's yours for as long as you need it."
"I believe we're done. Aren't we, Sister?" Daddy looked at me, and I nodded yes. We were done. Absolutely done. Yet we both stayed still and let Dr. Jackson exit without us. The door hissed shut behind him.
A sucking pop came from inside Daddy's mouth. I stared at the blue paisley wall, trying to imagine the near future. How much Mother would hate being sick. How hard on us all she would be. Cancer: such a mean-sounding word. I wanted to hope, but somehow I couldn't. Those paisley walls, all that blue softness meant for comforting, kept hope from me.
"I knew it wasn't going to be good news," Daddy said. "As soon as they brought us in here, I knew it."
I reached for the box of Kleenex, unused, the first sheet not even threaded through the plastic slit. "I'm taking these with us," I said, an act of defiance. A way to make the hospital pay. Someone should pay. For the falseness of this room. For the changes it would bring. Had already brought. I could see the surrender in the slope of Daddy's shoulders.
We filed together, him first, holding the door for me. I wedged the pink box of Kleenex beneath my arm. We peered up and down the long corridor, like two moles freshly out from our warm digs, both of us unsure which way to go, or what to do, now.
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