Don't Leave Me This Way: Or When I Get Back on My Feet You'll Be Sorry Read Free Page B

too.
    “I RECOMMEND chemotherapy.”
    Nighttime again. For some reason there’s a doctor standing by the bed. He seems to think you know him—short, bald, red-faced, and fat, in a white coat. A baby who has been poorly extended into the dimensions of the adult world.
    So it’s you and the bed and the white sheet drawn across you and the window with the curtain drawn to block the night and the smell of antiseptic and Jim standing next to you, always Jim standing next to you, thank God, and then this impossible doctor-infant, pudgy and crimson-faced, clutching a ballpoint pen in broad fingers wrapped into a tight, shut fist.
    “I’m definitely recommending chemotherapy. Actually it’s not a recommendation. It’s your only option. There are sterility issues, but that shouldn’t be your concern anymore.”
    He seems to want one of you to say something. Jim stares him down.
    “People sometimes get emotional about the sterility issue. Don’t do that. You’ve got a good family already, yes? Anyway, first an echocardiogram, to confirm there was no damage to the heart, and make sure that wasn’t what caused your stroke. Then chemotherapy.”
    He is paid, apparently, to radiate a single red idea: I’ve made up my mind about this because I know more than you do.
    Dr. Jerk.
    “You have vasculitis. I’ve never seen it affect the brain before, but that’s definitely what it is. Normally affects the lower large organs. It’s incurable. Can go into remission, though, if you’re lucky. Not much luck so far, of course, in your case, but there you go. At any rate, the treatment is chemotherapy and high doses of prednisone. The physical problems, I’m afraid, are permanent. Bad news is, you’re going to have to get used to doing things very differently. Good news is, at least you’ll have better parking possibilities.”
    Silence.
    “What with the handicapped sticker, I mean.”
    Jim glares at him.
    “What,” you ask, “is an echocardiogram?”
     
    THEY ARE WHEELING YOU on a gurney through the halls. The metal railing of the gurney sends little shock waves down your whole left side, like the sensation you get when you bite down on tinfoil with a filling.
    “Why couldn’t they pad the railings?”
    The nurse is a huge linebacker type with a crew cut. He laughs—he thinks you’re kidding—and asks if you’re okay as he wheels you.
    “What, exactly,” you ask him, “is a drug-induced echocardiogram?”
    He tells you.
     
    JIM THERE, HOLDING YOUR HAND. You’re together, in this tiny over-lit room. The tinier the room, the brighter they make it. You hold Jim’s hand like you don’t want to let go of it.
    “Relax,” Jim says. “It’s not going to hurt.”
    You can’t believe he said that.
    “Jim, do you know what they’re about to do to me?”
    He puts his other hand on your hand and shakes his head no.
    You tell him. It is basically an induced heart attack. They want to make your heart go crazy to see if they can make whatever happened to you happen again. They shoot you full of something and make your heart race like you just ran an Olympic track race. They’re trying to confirm this vasculitis thing by coming within an inch of giving you a coronary and then stopping and bringing you back and monitoring what happened.
    The linebacker crew cut nurse guy comes in and tells Jim he has to leave. He is arguing that he wants to stay but the bright room wobbles and twists and Jim is gone and there are now four nurses rammed into this closet of a room and you are being lifted onto a slab and the nurse says, “Don’t let Dr. Jerk touch any of the equipment, he always screws it up.”
    You don’t want to be here.
    You don’t want to have vasculitis. You don’t want to have chemotherapy.
    You want to have another baby.
    You say, out loud, “I want to have another baby.”
    The nurses stop what they’re doing and look at you, then go back to setting up equipment and, evidently, dusting the tiny room for