Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven? by Erica Orloff Read Free Book Online Page A

wasn’t the not knowing that was the worst of it. It was the knowing. I had cancer. Suddenly I had an oncologist named Dr. Morris. And my column was completely wrecked. I went from writing about kneading dough in a mammogram to writing about mortality.
    I still tried to be funny. With the doctors and nurses. With the guy who had come to suck the last pint of blood I had out of my arm for tests and more tests. With the insurance company even. I made them all laugh to show them that I wasn’t afraid.
    But, of course, I was.
    They just didn’t have to know that.
    No one did.
    A week or so after my surgery I had to go for an oncology consult. Dr.Morris wanted to discuss the lymph node biopsies, the whole thing. I knew I had cancer. Just not how bad. But Dr. Morris told me. I knew it wasn’t good, just from the way his large mitt of a hand enveloped mine. I noticed his gold wedding band was scratched and worn. I noticed the hair on his hands was pale blond mixed with gray. His watch was a Bulova, and it had the date in a little square where the three should have been and a burgundy alligator-skin wristband. I observed all this as he patted the top of my hand and then settled his to rest on mine. Dr. Morris seemed like the kind of guy who only holds hands when he has bad news. It was a dead giveaway.
    “Look, Doc, we must stop meeting this way.” A clock on his bookshelf went tick, tick, tick in the silence as he looked at me.
    “Lily…” his blue-gray eyes watered just enough for me to notice. Then he cleared his throat. “It’s an aggressive cancer.”
    My breath still left me, and I had to remind myself to inhale. Breathe, Lily, breathe. I felt like I had a case of the bed spins, my world twirling around me, confirming what I sensed. What I’d dreamed about at night since the surgery. Monsters and serial killers chasing me. Just like the cancer. Finding me no matter where I hid. I think I knew it even as they were scanning my body, and the faint hum of hospital machinery whispered around me, but I still blinked and stared at him. I still stopped breathing.
    “Fuck.” I exhaled unevenly. “What the hell am I going to tell my kids?” I heard the catch of self-pity in my voice and looked out the window at the expanse of parking lot behind the hospital.
    “You’ve made every one of my nurses laugh today. You’ve made Dr. Costas laugh. He told me how special you are…. You’ve got to keep a positive attitude.”
    “Easy for you to say, Doc. You don’t have the Big C. And no offense, but you have no hair—and I am rather fond of mine and it’s all going to go bye-bye.”
    He patted the top of his head. “Bald can be beautiful.”
    “Look at me. Do I look like the kind of woman who has cancer? I look perfectly healthy. I feel like…like I’m sleepwalking.” I paused. I had been telling myself that it would be all right. That it would be “good cancer”—whatever that is—less aggressive.
    “This really…is inconvenient.”
    He gave me a half smile. “I don’t guess there’s ever a convenient time to get cancer.”
    “Well, I’ll look in my calendar and pencil it in when I’m really old and decrepit. This just—God, it sucks.”
    “I wrestle with that in this job every day. People ask me how I can deal with cancer day in and day out. But honestly, it’s patients like you that make it bearable. You have a fighter’s attitude. But I don’t pretend to understand God’s plan.”
    “How bad is it? How aggressive?”
    “It’s in your lymph nodes. We have to schedule a body scan to see if it’s spread anywhere else. The lumpectomy got the cancer—but the edges weren’t well-defined. We biopsied lymph nodes under your armpit…um…it’s pretty bad. I have this report and we’re going to go over all of it. I don’t like my patients kept in the dark. I’d rather you know what you’re looking at so you can fight.”
    “So we’re gearing up for a battle?”
    “No. I won’t lie to you.