“Grace,” he says as I’m wheeled back into place, “are you all right?”
“I have no idea,” I tell him. “What happened? I mean, I know I had a seizure, but…”
“I don’t know,” he says. “One minute you were sitting there talking to me and the next, you were on the floor convulsing.”
I’m not entirely sure why those words make me cry.
“You’re going to be all right,” John soothes. “You can have as much time as you need. Just focus on getting better, all right?”
I would argue with him, but I’m still too tired to make much of a showing.
“If we don’t take risks,” I tell him, “we’re not going to survive.”
He just smiles at me. “Why don’t you just get some rest? We’re not going to make a move on anything for a while anyway, so you just focus on getting better so you can be back in my office, monopolizing my lunch hour soon, okay?”
My eyes start to close on their own, but I’m still muttering, “…got to get out there… people should know who we are…”
The last sound I hear before falling asleep again is John’s laugh.
***
I don’t know what time it is, but it’s got to be the next morning when I wake up, again with Dr. Jones standing next to my bed. This time, though, he brought a colleague: a tall, tan, almost statuesque man with a lab coat, covering what I’m imagining to be a toned upper body.
“Hey, I’m sorry to wake you,” Dr. Jones says. “This is Dr. Churchill.”
“No relation,” the other doctor says. I’
m assuming it’s a reference to the British Prime Minister. “Grace, I’ve looked at your slides, and we’ve found an oligodendroglioma, stage two.”
I’m expecting him to say more, but it looks like he’s waiting for my reaction.
“You’re going to have to give me a little more than that, doc,” I answer, my throat sore. “I don’t think I can pronounce that, much less have any idea what that is.”
The doctor smirks, his hazel eyes intent on mine. “I’m surprised that I could,” he says. “Basically, it’s a small tumor in your brain. You’ve probably had it for years, as oligodendrogliomas are particularly slow-growing.”
“A brain tumor?” I ask. “You seem pretty calm about that. What’s the plan? Someone goes in and digs it out, or what?”
“Unfortunately, due to its location, surgery isn’t a viable option,” he says. “That said, I think we’ll be able to combat this with a mild course of oral chemotherapy.”
I think about those words for a minute.
“A mild course of chemotherapy?” I ask. “If I’m not mistaken, isn’t chemotherapy poison that’s just as likely to kill healthy cells as it is to kill cancer cells?”
“Chemo is serious stuff,” he says. “There’s no way around that, but I think that we can approach this with a five-day regimen, once a month. Like I said, oligodendroglioma is particularly slow-growing.”
“So the seizure shouldn’t worry me?” I ask. “That’s a relief. I was thinking that I had a major medical event because of something in my brain that shouldn’t be there.”
Dr. Churchill sighs and runs his hand through his short, black hair. “I know this is a lot to take in,” he says.
“How long do I have?” I ask. “I mean, assuming that the chemo doesn’t wipe it out entirely.”
“We’ve found that patients in your stage of oligodendroglioma have a very good shot of making it past 10 years,” he answers.
“Oh, good. I was thinking this might significantly shorten my lifespan, but hey, I wasn’t planning on living past the next decade, anyway.”
“It’s difficult to say precisely what’s going to happen in your specific case,” Dr. Churchill says. “Every case is different. I’ve seen people live out full lives with this diagnosis, and I’ve seen people who have had their lives considerably shortened-”
“So if you can’t tell me anything, why are you still talking?” I snap.