I sat in the churchyard of Little St. Marys on a golden day, staring at the profusion of wildflowers and bracken, the assorted jumble of gravestones moved to make a path. If I could have had a wish I would have wished myself well. But there is nothing so frivolous available and when the clock chimed two I had to walk back toward the city to catch a bus.
The driver argued with me, said that I should move back and catch a shorter route. But I wanted to be on the winding lost bus to nowhere. I was in no particular hurry and sat looking at the city through the window.
Waiting in the reception area at the hospital I could hear a small child screaming. The other patients sat dully around me, reading or talking to companions. The baby wailed — not in fear, oh no, much worse — the cry of someone who knows exactly what is happening and rages against the reality.
Hours passed and I sat, trying to read a book, listening to the baby howling, remembering my own lost childhood conducted in hospitals. Finally I was called back, the junior doctor stumbling over my silly name. She explained the procedure once again and asked if I had any questions before signing the consent form. What could I ask? It would surely be a metaphysical plea rather than a practical query. I shrugged.
I folded my glasses and set them on a chair next to my coat and book, hopped up on the operating table and settled under the blazing lights. I closed my eyes. Surgical drapes were placed across my body and clipped around my head.
The doctor swabbed the left side of my face with a cold solution that rolled down into my hair. She took a pen and drew a line across the critical area. She called out to check that the correct scalpels and sundry surgical tools were all at the ready. The doctor said the injection would be the worst part as she thrust the needle in. The nurse reached for my hand, offered me comfort, but I waved her off and mouthed that I was okay. I am okay. I am always okay.
I could hear the flesh being cut away, could smell the instruments cauterizing my flesh. The people in the operating suite gossiped about work and the weather; the sunshine had given way to a torrential rain storm. Occasionally someone informed me of their progress.
I started to wonder if the procedure was strictly necessary, wished fiercely that I had stayed on at Little St. Marys instead of catching the bus. The muscles of my back and neck seized and I realized that my jaw was so tense I might crack a tooth. I consciously moved to stop the process of panic, started to relax all the muscles and bones ready to jump off the table, and the doctor paused to ask if I was okay. Yes. Yes, I am okay.
Memories surged through my mind. The smell of the gloves, the tingle of the anesthesia, the blinding light. The pressure against my face as a doctor pressed in, digging away to remove yet another tumor. I slipped into a familiar meditative calm, perfectly relaxed, breathing lightly, as the doctor pressed against my face, smashing the nose slightly to the right as she sliced away at my skin.
I have been diagnosed. I have been treated. I have had over three hundred cancerous lesions removed from the exterior of my body, not to mention the diseased interior. But I still do not believe that this can be true; it is so improbable, so inconvenient, so odd.
Wouldn’t it be better to be whole, to be well?
The doctor started to sew me back together, threads trailing across my face. She tugged to make a knot and my cheek and upper lip lifted away from my skull with the force. I held my head still, observing the movement, feeling the twitch.
Finally it was done and I could sit up. The doctors skittered off to attend other patients and the kind nurse told me that I would need the stitches removed in five days. She suggested that I take a pain medication I have never heard of, recounted the essential rules about treating wounds. I was dizzy from shock and the pressure on my face but I nodded, tried to look intelligent. I refused the drugs, thanked her, and wandered out of the room.
The clinic was already closed so I could not schedule my follow-up appointments. I walked down the erratically constructed hallways to the toilet and looked in the mirror. A massive bandage conceals what will be my newest scar. I’ve not been bandaged so extensively in over twenty years, and realized with a jolt that they had not asked me about any allergies. Because, you see, I am allergic to surgical dressings.
I pulled on my cap and walked out to the bus stop with my head down. I remembered with a sense of wonder exactly why my hair is so long; I grew it out to cover the scar after my eyelid was slashed open in 1988.
I looked down at my clothes and shoes, all chosen for similar pragmatic reasons. To cover scars. To relieve pressure on wounds. To cosset broken bones. To prevent the sun from shining on my skin. Always, always in service to the disease.
Other memories drifted through my mind. Whenever possible I forget, but the fresh cut reminded me of an adolescence constrained by surgical procedures. I was not allowed to bathe after surgeries and my mother washed my hair in the sink for years, carefully folding towels across my neck to protect the incisions.
The sun came out again as I stood at the bus stop with my bandaged face turned away from fellow passengers. In my adult life in the states I would never have considered using public transportation after surgery, but now I have no car.
The night before I had reasoned that I rode the school bus throughout the most intense parts of the disease years, but standing at the bus stop I realized this was a fiction. I stopped riding the school bus in the eighth grade when the other kids started throwing rocks at me after school, and once attempted to set my hair on fire on the long ride home. Not that there was much for kindling; that was the year half of my hair fell out.
On the bus I wanted to hunch over and let my hair swing across my face like a curtain but sat straight up. There is no point in acting like a victim.
When I was young and frail I had to learn to stand up and keep moving; it was a survival strategy. I wasn’t strong enough to fight but I learned how to create an illusion of lethal intent. Because people do stare, and they do comment, and some people exploit weakness when they see it.
I have cancer. This is my permanent state. I do not choose to meet the gaze of the people who stare and I do not accept that anyone has the right to look at me. But I will in fact go wherever I like.
In her wisdom my mother always insisted that I live as normally as possible, that I move right back to regular activities as soon as I was strong enough to go. This was the best thing she ever taught me, and I thank her for giving me the strength and knowledge to walk out of surgery and go to the grocery store to purchase ingredients for dinner.
To walk through my newly adopted city and look at the church spires, the college buildings, the brick walls, the sunshine on one side and dark storm clouds on the other.
I unlocked my bicycle and pedaled home to my boat.