Chapter 1
CLICK.
Cancer nurses have kind eyes. Kindness must be their superpower. How else could they continue to smile when most of the time they are treating people who are dying? Because while there is all this talk about survivors, everyone knows cancer is a death sentence. It takes longer to kill some people. And, of course, the good ones like my mother, Sophie Corielli, go down too swiftly.
Click.
Today even the softhearted cancer nurses can only summon up pity smiles for Mom and me as Dr. Chen clears his throat to deliver the dire news.
Click.
Throat cough.
“I’m sorry, Sophie,” he begins.
My mom squeezes my hand, the one she’s held since we sat down. It’s the only thing keeping me from ripping the New York Memorial Hospital pen out of his hands so I don’t have to hear the goddamn click again. A nurse swishes by, the soft shoe sweeps on the marble adding slightly different vibrato.
Click.
Throat cough.
Shuffle.
It’s a bad Broadway musical beat where the disease is the conductor. It’s the disease—the mutating killing cells—that directs the players. Today the tone is somber.
The last time we saw Dr. Chen we were all high-fiving each other. Even the looming medical bills couldn’t diminish the happiness we’d felt when he gave us the all clear three years ago.
“Your MCL is back, and it’s unsurprisingly aggressive. We’ll need to start an immediate round of chemo. Last time we didn’t need to do stem cell treatment, but I think we’ll have to and we should do it right away.”
I stare wide-eyed ahead because I don’t want to see the fear that is in Mom’s eyes at this news. Or maybe it’s my fear I’m hiding from. The first time we discovered she had cancer, she was an endless well of optimism and for three years I’d been convinced right along with her.
But while I’ve inherited her light brown hair and her green eyes, I’ve always been more pragmatic—which she tells me I got from Dad. I wouldn’t know. He died when I was three. My memories of him are dim and incomplete. For twenty-two years it has been my mother and me.
The Corielli girls. Indestructible. Not brought low by men, disability, or disease.
As Dr. Chen explains about more treatment, including the eight hour chemo drips Mom will have to endure and the likelihood she isn’t going to be able to work for the next two months, my hand starts to get squeezed as if she is attempting to make lemonade out of my fingers.
In my peripheral vision, I see the skin draw tight around her skull. Even optimism can’t hide the deep lines illness has drawn on her skin, aging her far past her forty-seven years of life. Her face is closed down, her gaze fixed at some point over Dr. Chen’s shoulder.
My own mind is preoccupied with our ugly financial picture. We’re still trying to dig our way out of the medical bill black hole we found ourselves in the last go-around. The spot I’m worrying in my cheek may ache for days but that’s better than having a meltdown over the unfairness of the universe. A lament I’m sure sounds too often in these rooms.
It’s not that I don’t have options. I do. It’s that I had been able to successfully avoid those options in the past, choosing honest struggle with debt over a more lucrative under-the-table career. My foolish pride isn’t going to provide food or medicine. I take a swallow, pushing down the grief and anger, and pulling up my resolve.
“We’ll see you tomorrow,” Dr. Chen wraps it up, and we all stand. “I’ll have Donna call in the prescriptions. Take the steroid and the anti-nausea before tomorrow. And remember,” he shakes a finger at my mom, “don’t forget to eat.”
“Thank you, Dr. Chen.” Mom gives him a wan smile and takes the checkout sheet. As she walks out, he grabs my arm.
“Tiny,” he says low, “a minute?”
“Sure, Dr. Chen.” My fingers clench the strap of my sling backpack as I brace myself for more unpleasantness.
“I saw on the nurse’s notes that you’re living in a fifth floor walkup?”
I nod. “Mom and I moved in together when she was sick and the midtown apartment didn’t make sense for the both of us.”
Clearly not understood by Dr. Chen was that we could no longer afford the midtown apartment with its lobby and elevator access to the upper floors. He had to know that many of his bills from three years ago, during my mother’s first bout with mantle cell lymphoma, were still unpaid. Medical bills are astronomical if you had insurance and if you didn’t? The bills were crippling and every little luxury had to be excised, so Mom lives with me in a tiny one bedroom apartment that has no doorman and no elevator and sits over a greasy spoon restaurant.
He shakes his head and frowns. “She’s never going to be able to make it up a flight of stairs, let alone five flights, after her chemo treatments. You really need to do something about your living arrangements.”
I laugh but it’s a hollow, ugly sound because nothing about today is funny. “I’ll get right on that.”
“I know times are tough for you and Sophie, but I’m serious.” He shifts on his feet and clicks his pen a couple of times. “Maybe you can talk to public housing assistance. I don’t know how that works but perhaps there’s some kind of exigent circumstances clause. I’m giving you a handicapped worksheet for Sophie. Use it.”
There’s no point in telling Dr. Chen we’re broke. From the look of his Hermes tie and his hand stitched Italian loafers, he’d think that meant shopping at Macy’s and carrying your own bags instead of having Barney’s deliver your purchases to Ralph, your doorman.
“I’ll go down to the City Housing Authority tomorrow,” I promise and tuck the doctor’s handicapped note into my backpack.
“She’ll beat this,” Dr. Chen says and pats me on the back. “Don’t let her get down. You need to be the voice of optimism at all times. Mental wellbeing is as important as physical wellbeing.”
WE CATCH THE BUS BECAUSE the subway stop is too far away. Mom is swaying and looks exhausted even though she doesn’t start treatment until Monday. The mere thought of IV drips, surgery for ports, and long needles constantly stuck into your most painful places is crushing. I want to pick her up and carry her the short distance to the bus stop, but I know better.
“We should cancel our trip to Vermont,” she says as we ascend the three stairs onto the bus.
“If you want.” I’m not sure if she really doesn’t want to go or is saying that for my sake. Our stilted interaction pains me. It’s as if the cancer is now eroding our ability to communicate as well as killing her healthy cells. Already she is withdrawing. Her arms are folded against her sides, her lips are pressed flat and thin, and tension is visible in every line of her frame.