I feel like the source

Early this morning at 6 AM, my coworker from the breast cancer center of Columbia University Medical Center calls. I reach over to the phone which is buzzing and blinking. In my daze, I forget that I’m back in CA and I reach out for my phone as if I am in my room in NYC. I slam my fingers into the wall, and my eyes shoot open with pain.

Fuck.

I see the number and I pick up.

Right away, he asks, “How are you doing?”

“Morning.”

“Oh, right. The time difference. Well,…. I’m not sorry. How are you doing?”

“Fine.” It is long and drawn out. More like Fiiiiiiiiiiine. He waits for more on the other end. I bite. “Do you ever feel like it’s contagious? Do you feel like it must be on you somehow and you’re just bringing it to everyone else because you’re surrounded by it all the time at work? That somehow you go out into the world and slough it off and the people you know and wouldn’t expect to have cancer, somehow pick it up and you hear about it and you think, Me. I did that. It follows me everywhere. I brought it to these people. They were just minding their own business, having a life, being a parent or child or accountant or oral surgeon, just being wonderful in general and I–“

He cuts me off. “Yes. I think that all the time. But I also know that I’m wrong to think it.”

I consider the logic and the truth. I have to visualize the face of everyone that I know who doesn’t have cancer to work my way around the idea. A running slideshow of the people who are not yet ill.

He can probably hear my thoughts–the click of the photos as they slide on and off my mind’s projection screen. He says, “You can’t ever think that as a medical professional.” He pauses a bit and weighs the words. “Or as a person who is sane.” Our conversation is on speaker phone and my phone is resting hotly on my chest. His voice booms through again, louder. “THAT IS A RIDICULOUS IDEA. YOU GOT THAT?” I feel the words vibrate through my chest, the question going on for a while. The message buzzing through my cells.

Into my chest, I say, “Yes.”

I belong here

I booked a flight home an hour before I left for the airport. I threw underwear [not enough], bras [too many], clothes [all mismatched and balled up], belts [for what?], makeup [missing parts], and shoes [that match nothing that I brought with me] into a dirty dusty suitcase. I flew down the streets to pick up the rental car. I came back and picked up EY and all of her suitcases and my own haphazard one. I picked up MML and TA so they could drive the car back afterwards. I sang songs on the radio and CDs. It seemed more like a vacation and more than once I felt shameful and hot with the guilt of it.

I did the crossword puzzle and watched the news, flipped through pages of magazines, unable to read. I was pleased with myself for getting home somehow. When I got to Oakland airport, all I felt was relief and familiarity, which was welcome after feeling nothing but out of place in LA last month.

At home were leftovers and difficult conversations. I texted coworkers about procedures that were floating around for my auntie. I faced my ignorance head-on and I let it cut me down.

The next morning, I woke up, showered, dressed, hemmed and hawed over flowers, purchased them, barked orders at the floral arranger, worried over the color of the bow, held the damn thing in the car while trying to find the hospital, ran through the parking garage, searched high and low for the oncology department, nearly jammed my finger waiting for the elevator, scurried around the floor looking for her room, found her room, triple checked the number on the door because Lord in heaven, that person was not my auntie. That person who lay there with other people leaning over her, their tears dropping into her lap like unlucky coins, was not the person I grew up with who would fill rooms and houses with her laughter, her sassy remarks, her quick and kind-hearted wit.

I walked in anyway and smiled. She held my hand and she squeezed it. She thanked me for coming home to see her. She knew, she had to know, that there is no way I wouldn’t have come home.

I am the kind of person who has an inner narrator. There is always a voice in my head providing commentary on my surroundings–the people, the situation, my reactions to either of those. There is always something akin to a person floating immediately above me, seeing those same things I see, experiencing the same things I’m experiencing, and saying something about it.

And for once, it was just silent. It was mute. It was horrified.

Instead, the words There is no death in this room; there is only love echoed in my head, felt ready to burst through my skull as I watched grown men weep and women pray under their breaths. I kissed her on her forehead. It is the softest skin I have ever known.

Three hours later, I drove another auntie back to work. Afterward, I walked down College Avenue. I bought an iced tea and a half dozen cookies at Cafe Roma. I walked outside and I saw a donut shop. I crossed the street without seeing a walk signal or the cars whiz by around me. I bought two donuts. I put the greasy bag in my purse. I walked back to the corner and I saw the ice cream store. I got two scoops: sesame praline crunch and burnt caramel. I asked for toppings: hot fudge and caramel. I declined the candied orange peel topping. I ate all of the ice cream first. And without thinking, I pulled out the bag of donuts and consumed those with little to no effort. I tasted none of these. I sipped some iced tea and then I broke out the bag of cookies. I ate three at first and began to feel queasy. I didn’t stop. I shoveled the remaining three into my stomach. I gulped the rest of the iced tea.

And then I stood up and walked. I threw away the iced tea cup and straw without stopping. I headed straight to the bathroom and vomited sugar. Pounds and pounds of sugar. And then I went to my car, cracked the windows, put my head against the steering wheel, and just cried.

I called my therapist who had no idea that I had left NY. Phenomenal, he says.

Afterward I went home, brushed my teeth, changed my clothes. Then I met a friend for dinner. Comforted instead of attempting to be comforting to others. I felt relieved.

I came home after a nice dinner.

KW calls. She’s worried. I don’t know how to be.

DJ calls. I ignore his call but call him back after KW’s call. I tell him why I’m back here. He says that’s bizarre because he kind of had to deal with something similar recently. I say Oh yeah? What? He tells me everything now. His father has months left, a year at best. It was caught so late. All procedures are experimental. He’s a part of a research protocol. I think of the protocol numbers we give patients. I try to imagine his father as a number and I can’t. It’s like imagining that my auntie is any one of the patient charts I review all the time. An impossible image. Even my imagination is no good for that.

Why didn’t you call? I’m demanding to know in the past. DJ says he thought about it many times but it’s hard to just call and say that kind of thing. I nod. And then I say yes into the phone. Yes, I get it. We talk about other things from high school. I think I might be ill again. He says he’s sitting on his porch. I flashback to years ago of us sitting on that porch. I picture what he must be looking at, the shapes of his backyard in the dark. I offer to bring him a snack. He declines. He has been robotic.

When I get off the phone, I feel myself covered in a thick layer of cancer. Most people I come into contact with on a daily basis have cancer now or are close to someone with it or work in it. I called EY. I wonder aloud if I should really go into health care at all. If, by being a nurse and opening up a clinic, I won’t be setting myself up for failure, for being unable to treat and heal and protect everyone I know.

At one point this morning, I remember staring at my auntie, and saying aloud, Lord in Heaven, take me instead. Give her all of my strength, all of my health and exchange it for her own. Take me instead. Take me instead. I have barely anything and she has a whole life. Take me instead. Take me instead. Mumbling until I felt everyone else’s eyes on me, the pressure high and sitting on my chest in a different way than I had ever envisioned.