“Okay,” I tell him.
“Grace,” he says, “I really do think we need to talk about-”
“Here are your drinks,” the waitress says, placing my ginger ale and Jace’s pathetic martini onto the table. “Is there anything else I can get for you?”
“I’m good,” Jace answers.
“Nope,” I tell the waitress.
She walks away, and before Jace can start in again, I preempt him. “What happened today is that a woman who had cancer died in your office,” I tell him. “Yeah, it was difficult, even though I didn’t actually see it happen, but that’s just something I’m going to have to deal with. She had something different than what I have, didn’t she?”
“I can’t really talk to you about other patients,” he says, “even deceased patients.”
“Okay,” I respond. “How about this: am I going to need a wheelchair and an oxygen mask sometime down the road?”
“It’s hard to say,” he answers. “It depends on the progression of your-”
“Okay, I was trying to get you to tell me without actually telling me, but I don’t think it really matters. I’m going to assume that the woman either had a different diagnosis than what I do, or she was a lot farther advanced than I am.”
“Okay,” Jace says, taking a sip of his martini. He pulls a face and looks up at me. “I used to love shaken, not stirred martinis, but now it just tastes like slightly alcoholic water,” he says.
“It’s always nice to know I can still ruin things for people,” I smile. “Anyway, what freaked me out wasn’t that I was seeing the ghost of brain tumor future. What freaked me out was the knowledge that there’s really nothing any of us can do about the day we die — once it’s there, I mean. I didn’t hear any of the conversation between the three of you before that guy started screaming, but I’m guessing — and no, I’m not asking for you to confirm or deny this — that when she woke up this morning, she didn’t say to herself, ‘huh, I think I’ll head to the doctor’s office and die today.’ Hell, maybe she did. I don’t know. What I do know is a slight but profound variation on something I’ve known most of my life.”
“Which is?”
“That we’re all going to die someday. Maybe it’s going to be the oligodendroglioma — I’m seriously getting good at saying that now, by the way — maybe it’s going to be a car accident, maybe it’s going to be something else entirely, but when you’re going to die, you’re going to die. I think people who think they ‘cheat death’ are just kidding themselves. I don’t believe in fate, but I also don’t believe that a person is going to see each and every thing coming. There’s no way.”
“What’s the variation?” he asks, “Or was that it?”
“The variation,” I tell him, “is that even if I go through this treatment, who’s to say I don’t go into your office one day for a checkup or an update or just to bother you while you’re working and something happens, maybe a reaction from the medication, maybe something else, and I end up falling to the ground dead?”
“Who’s to say you don’t?”
“Nobody,” I answer. “I was freaked out, and I can still hear that guy screaming at you, but I just knew that I didn’t want to be like her, still making every appointment even though I’m half a breath away from my last. I want to do something more. I’m not saying I want to start a charity or do the fun run thing — I’m not a masochist. I just don’t want to spend all my life in a hospital while the rest of the world just passes me by. Who knows, maybe when I’m supposed to be walking into oncoming traffic because I’m not paying attention, I’m in the hospital getting a needle stuck in my arm.”
“I think that would be the better option,” he says.
“Yeah, maybe,” I tell him. “At the same time, though, maybe I’m supposed to be out doing something that I’ve never done before, something that’s going to add a once-in-a-lifetime experience to this little world of mine, and I’m just in there, again, getting a needle stuck in my arm?”
“There’s no way to know that kind of thing,” he says.
“I get that,” I tell him, “and your saying that isn’t the first time the thought’s crossed my mind. Every time I get that far in my inner dialogue, though, I just think of that woman wheeling past me, her son walking behind her with his fingers gripping the handles of his mom’s wheelchair so tight his knuckles are white.”
“Like I said,” he explains, “I’m not going to fault you whatever you choose here. Obviously, I wish you’d go through with the trial because-”
“I know the reasons,” I interrupt. “We’ve talked about the reasons, I’ve read about the reasons, and I’ve thought about the reasons so much over the past while that I could jot them down with my eyes closed. And I know exactly what you wish I’d do; you made that pretty crystal when I was in your office this morning.”
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“Does it not occur to you that you never really indicated that you would respect my choice before that woman died in your office today?” I ask. “I’m not saying that’s why I didn’t go to the first day of trials, but it’s not like it didn’t change anything.”
“What did it change?”
“It changed the way I felt about you,” I tell him. “I’m going to do what I’m going to do, just like you’re going to do what you’re going to do and everybody else is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but it started to feel like you weren’t taking me seriously. When it started to feel like you were just discounting what I had to say because you thought it was just fear and nothing else — I didn’t like that. I don’t like that. It looks like you’ve come around, and I’m not saying this is a permanent mark on your record or anything, but — I don’t know. I guess I just thought you should know that.”
He looks down at the table and then back up at me, sipping his drink and making that same disgusted face he made a few minutes ago.
“You’re right,” he says. “I’m sorry.”