Garrulous

“Um, are you going to be alright?” Dr. Pedersen asked. He was standing bent over me, one hand on my shoulder and the other holding a long, thin tube that blew a stream of cool air over my face – something to keep me alert and prevent me from passing out there in his exam room. That was a real possibility after what he had just told me.

And that was a difficult question to answer – was I going to be alright? – any way you took the scalpel to it.

To begin with, my lips didn’t work so well. Pedersen had sprayed an anesthetic up my nose to prepare for the scope he would then snake up my right nostril, though the nasal cavity, and down into my throat. He gave me a few extra squirts of the stuff when I told him I wasn’t sure I felt it taking effect; I didn’t want to take any chances, not after he told me where the business end of the scope would be heading. He had given me a Kleenex to catch any runoff (I still clutched it; he didn’t offer to take it or proffer a wastebasket), but some of the liquid had still managed to dribble down onto my lips and numb them too. Even if I tried, I couldn’t form a coherent answer.

And there was the vast new alien landscape to behold behind that question. Was I going to be alright? You tell me doc, this is brand new territory for me, I’ve never been here. I don’t know these trees, these mountains. I don’t know how to traverse this terrain. This is your land, not mine.

And I wasn’t even really there to provide an answer. Pedersen had finished squinting behind the eyepiece of his instrument, slid the hose out, said what he said, and suddenly I was gone, slipped into a secret compartment, curled up and hiding from the audience. I was alone with a passel of thoughts popping off like firecrackers, first among them, I think: No no no no no, wait wait wait wait wait, the other doctor said – and the one before him – no, this isn’t right. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go down. Wait a moment here. Let’s back up.

Let’s back up.

Two weeks before, I had shone a light into my mouth and seen for the first time the sores that had plagued me, at that point, for over three weeks and made talking an uncomfortable chore, eating painful and something I did less and less, sometimes only with the aid of pain relievers. The light illuminated a little nest of angry and alien-looking blotches at the right base of my tongue, red and purple and grey, ribboned with yellow. And the tongue itself strangely flared on the right side. I went online, added in the other symptoms – sore throat, earaches – and arrived at certain websites.

The next morning, after a terrible, sleepless night, sitting in an exam room at the walk-in clinic, I gestured anxiously to my mouth: “Cancer?”

“No, I don’t think so,” the clinic doctor said. “You’re pretty young. You don’t smoke that much. You don’t really fit the profile.” Like the other doctor I’d seen at the same clinic nearly two weeks before, before I’d thought anything but “well, this is annoying, guess I should get it looked at,” this one also thought it was just cankers, obstinate canker sores. Sometimes those suckers were stubborn. “Yeah, and that tongue does look pretty beat up. You might be chewing on it at night. You might need to get a retainer or bite-guard to sleep with.” That was all. At worst, the possible dorky indignity of a mouthpiece. So, maybe something bigger than a common cold sore but surely not the massive horror that had sprung up in my fretful brain. A huge relief.  I had overreacted.  I explained to the doctor, “Yeah, and my girlfriend just broke up with me. Just yesterday, actually. So, with everything, I probably just overreacted.” Still, the doctor asked, it had been nearly a month since things started? That was a little a strange. He didn’t think it was anything, really, but here was a referral to another physician, an ear, nose and throat guy, a specialist, a good one. Just in case.

Nearly two weeks later, I stood before the admitting counter of the specialist’s office, late and apologetic. I thought I’d given myself plenty of time for the trip, but the early morning traffic had been terrible, dense and crawling. Another visitor, an old lady, agreed, but the woman behind the counter regarded me unsympathetically. “You should have checked in over 20 minutes ago. Your appointment was ten minutes back. We’re busy here, there are other patients. I’m not sure we can fit you in now.” Fine, I thought. While sitting in traffic, I’d considered turning off and heading back. It wasn’t anything, really. Didn’t these things, even the most persistent, eventually heal on their own, anyway? Just give it some time and warm saltwater. I’ll go home and back to bed. Why not?

But I didn’t. I was squeezed in. I was checked in quickly, shown to the exam room, and waited just a moment or two before Pedersen walked in. (Some past and future appointments had me waiting a quarter hour or more for whichever doctor to arrive; 15, 18, 20 minutes alone to consider the paper sheet on the examination table, the mysterious mechanics of an exam chair, the tubes and gauges of various wall-mounted instruments, the number and variety of small jars and boxes on the counters and in the cabinets, the medical hieroglyphics on certain charts and containers, the advice and admonitions and warnings of certain posters, and yes, that is a good idea there, I should do that! I wouldn’t want to catch that! And what does that mean? And how does that work? And what does that do? And, oh God, will he actually find something? Is there something to find? What is he going to find?!) Pedersen left me no time to question and consider the possibilities.

In my moment alone, I did register that the examination room, in a suite on the fifth floor, was the first I’d been in with windows, large west-facing windows that filled the space with morning light. And that here the posters were more specific than those in the walk-in clinic, which spoke of the flu and the cold, general malaises moving through the population. Here were cut-away profiles of the human head, its intricate pockets and passageways demarcated in different reds, pinks, and peaches. And here was Pedersen in white coat, tie, and dark dress slacks, different from the clinic doctors, who bounced hurriedly from room to room in cottony, pajama-like scrubs, attending to this and that, runny noses and upset stomachs, a little bit of everything. He was a specialist, an initiate in the particular mysteries of the ear, nose, and throat. Someone who would put his finger on my little problem and let me move on, all I wanted to do after everything that had happened with Gen, just move on. Enter the next part of my life. I had even found an apartment already, would sign and move in the following week.

Pedersen carried a clipboard that certainly held the reason for my visit, but still he asked: “So what are we here for today?”

He didn’t seem particularly interested in the question, perhaps a little rushed – at 8:15, perhaps already behind schedule thanks to me, this annoyance to ripple through the rest of his day – and I was no longer particularly worried when I explained, gesturing dismissively to my mouth, “Well, it’s just these stubborn sores.”

“Well, let’s take a look.” He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and had me open wide. He directed the beam from a small, slender light into my mouth and looked in. He reached in and felt my tongue and its base with one hand, and then with both pressed fingers behind my ears, along my jaw, and down my neck, landing and tapping out a final exploratory rhythm in the hollows above my clavicle.

“Um, I’d like to take a look down your throat,” he said and explained the scope. Oh, well… anything, I guessed, to find the problem and a remedy. To move on.

A moment or two after he set aside the instrument and as I was trying to shake off the novel and unpleasant sensation produced by the tiny black hose twisting and slithering its way through my airway, he said, “Well, I think it’s cancer. It looks like cancer, it feels like cancer, it smells like cancer. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am.”

Smells like – what? Wait a minute, what?

A curtain of fluttering, blinding white fell across my vision, and Pedersen would soon produce, like a magician, seemingly out of nowhere, that second hose, a wand of hissing air to wave across my face and conjure me back into the moment for, like a prop rabbit or dove, I had disappeared. Or it must have appeared that way to him. I was still there, beholding a string of thoughts igniting and exploding:

Cancer… cancer… CANCER?! But the other doctor said – and the one before him? Wait a minute here. This isn’t right.

And:

HA! I knew it! I was right. HA!

And:

Smells like cancer. Huh. I guess that explains why the floss didn’t help.

And:

I’m not ready to die. Please, I’m not ready.

And:

Good job, Gen! I guess you got out just in time, huh?

And:

HA! So right!

And:

Pedersen, poor guy, having to start out his day like this. I wonder how many times each week he has to break news like this to somebody?

And:

This can’t be right. The other doctor said – and the one before him? Whoa, let’s back up here.

But we didn’t. We were still in the present, part of my face numb, Pedersen blowing air into it, keeping me from pitching onto the floor. He wasn’t done with me. “Are you with me? Okay, I’ll need to biopsy the tumor, to make sure. Are you with me?” I guess I nodded, but I was only partly there. Though I’d felt all kinds of squeamish over the scope, I barely registered the next procedure and its escalating violence. He sprayed my tongue with one anesthetic; pricked it in several places with a lancet to administer another; and finally, produced a much larger needle that he proceeded to stab into my tongue, four times I think. I felt nothing.

Pedersen performed a final trick, a prediction of my future. “Okay, are you still with me? We can fix this. I didn’t see anything in the throat or feel anything in the nodes, so I think it’s just the tongue. That’s good. We’ll do some scans to make sure. If the tumor was smaller, I could remove it here, but I’ll have to send you someplace else. Maybe OHSU. A surgeon will cut out part of your tongue, about half I’d say, and replace it with tissue taken from elsewhere on your body, probably your arm. And then you’ll have some radiation. This is fixable, Okay?”

That brought me back fully into the present. Okay, okay. This is possible. This is real. This is what will be done to me. Okay. I’ll let you do whatever you need to do. Scan. Radiate. Cut away. The question then arose that inspired a sudden need to speak, quite difficult with tongue and lips nearly frozen: what should I do? I strained to move the stopped parts of my mouth and form and emit words.

I think he sensed the inquiry behind my facial contortions. “Oh, you’ll need to quit smoking, of course. And keep up your weight.”

What else? Give me the rules for this place, damnit! I wanted to demand. You looked in your eyepiece and waved your wand and moved me to this strange land, specialist, now help me out! Do what you do, but I’m in this, right in the middle, I need to do something, give me something to do, what do I do? How do I proceed from here? What do I do to keep from sinking, to pull myself out, to live?

I strained. “Waa elf thwoob I do?”

“Excuse me? Oh, just keep up your weight. Eat milkshakes if you have to. And don’t go poking around the internet, you’ll just scare yourself.”

Milkshakes? Surely there was more to it, but Pedersen had me up and out of the chair, patting my shoulder, on the way to the door, tissue still in my hand. I had been late to the appointment, after all, and they were busy. There were other patients.

We were only 20 minutes or so into our second counseling session with Charlotte when Genevieve jumped onto the subject and train of thought that would speed inexorably towards our end. We sat in a triangle, Gen and I in chairs a few feet apart and both facing Charlotte, carefully considering us from the other end of her small office. I’d been all for the counseling – anything to save the relationship – but speaking was a little painful; a cluster of canker sores had been troubling me for a few weeks, enough that I had gone seven days without a cigarette, my longest smoke-free stretch in years. I left most of the talking to Gen. Possibly a mistake. She looked from me to Charlotte, from Charlotte back to me.

“… and I asked Lilli a few days ago who she would like to live with if something happened to me and she said Granny, and then Linda, and then Eddie’s sister in California.”

“Come on,” I protested, “she’s only 10, and she doesn’t have to follow any rules at your grandmother’s or Linda’s, it’s all ice cream and Disney channel and…”

“No, it’s not that – ” And Gen was off, springing from that damning bit of information and sprinting again through the litany of charges against me, the issues that had brought us to this place, this counselor: over seven years we’d been together and her daughter and I still hadn’t formed a real father-daughter type of bond, weren’t truly close, not close enough that Lilli would want to live with me if something happened to her mother; seven years, and I still hadn’t been brave enough to flee bar and restaurant work, despite Gen’s complaints about our differing schedules (“We’re always two ships passing in the night!”) and mine about squandered potential; seven years, and we still weren’t married! Sure, I had put a roof on her house, but not a ring on her finger. I hadn’t made any sign to the world of how I felt about her. I hadn’t made any commitment. I was still hedging my bets. Seven years, and Gen still had to refer to me as her “boyfriend.” Think of her! And think of Lilli, at school talking to her friends and referring to her mom’s “boyfriend” back at home. God, it was trashy! And think about Lilli if anything happened to her, to Gen!

I remember her eyes narrowing as she wound up and sped furiously through her argument, and Charlotte’s eyes widening. I think that Charlotte – who reminded me of a younger Lili Tomlin – sensed what was coming, and I suppose I did too, but it still felt a surprise when the blow landed.

“No, you know what? I’m done! No more. I’m sorry, Brent, but I’m through. We’re through.”

Charlotte winced, as if struck too, and tried to reel her back, as if Gen hadn’t already leapt over the precipice: “Now wait, wait a moment here, can we talk about this some more? I don’t want something to happen here that can’t be taken back.” She tried, but it was like trying to hold back a bull, a truck, a speeding train. Good luck lady, I remember thinking: this was the girl who once expressed a desire for a window in the rear of the kitchen, a spot where there was only wall, and I woke one morning some days later to the sound of her attacking the back of the house with a crowbar and power saw. This wasn’t someone who devoted a lot of time to careful and considered planning, the weighing of options. There was no turning back.

Gen sat suddenly tight-lipped, shaking her head. There was no turning back.

Charlotte sighed and eventually conceded. The session apparently continued for the next half hour, and I believe there was talk of how to break the news to Lilli, how to respect each other, and separate gracefully, and honor the years we’d spent together and… I don’t know, I was in a daze, working to keep my stare fixed on the counselor and my head from bobbling drunkenly the way my vision was. At the end, Charlotte took my hand, fixed me with a regretful, pitying look, and offered her continued services – to me alone, should I want to talk about any of this.

After we stepped out of the sprawling old home that housed Charlotte’s office and into the dull spring afternoon, Gen asked if I wanted to talk about any of this.

I declined. I wanted to go home. And cry. This was the worst thing that had ever happened to me.

This was not even close to the worst thing that had ever happened to Gen.

And there it was, one of the towering differences between us, a thing she had long fretted over and I was prone to shrugging off: the wide gulf between our experiences. I was a little older, but she was years more worldly. She was my first girlfriend, really, but she entered the relationship with a three year-old daughter and one failed marriage already behind her. The loving and supportive parents who’d given me a functional, pretty un-dramatic upbringing were still married. Gen’s father was on his fifth wife, her mother was once imprisoned for shooting her stepfather, and both were responsible for neglect and leaving their daughter vulnerable to unspeakable abuse as a child. She’d fled home as a teenager. She once almost died in a horrible automobile accident. She’d lost brothers, cousins, an aunt, friends… No one close to me had ever died. I’d broken a few fingers and toes and once developed an irritating little cyst over my tailbone but had otherwise always been in good health. My story? A gentle situation comedy. Gen could write epic poetry or an Oprah-approved novel about the pageant of adversity and affliction she and her family had endured. It’s the stuff of Faulkner or Morrison, a multi-generational saga filled with fortunes won and lost, divorce and adultery, abuse and addiction, death and disease, and so on and so forth.

She could lose sleep worrying about where Lilli would end up should something happen to her (anywhere but with Eddie, her degenerate ex!) because in Gen’s world, things, terrible things, did happen to people. I approached the question indifferently: “What? Oh geez, c’mon, you’ll be fine.” Nothing really bad had ever happened to me. I was soft and secure. I had an unspoken faith in the safety net and always believed deep inside that no matter what horrible traumas befell other people, things would always turn out at the very least OK for me and mine.

This isn’t to say I didn’t worry. Oh, far from it. I could agonize over small decisions and overreact to trivial inconveniences. For example:

Sometimes while driving, I’d make a certain noise (let’s call it an “alarming squawk”) that made Gen start in the passenger seat and look for the oncoming car, the tree, the pedestrian about to roll up the hood of my Civic and into the windshield. Failing to spot any imminent crushed metal, shattered glass, or torn flesh, she would look at me, hand over her suddenly racing heart, and demand: “What? What is it?” And then I’d have to admit, sheepishly, that I’d only missed a turn, entered the wrong lane, remembered the wallet left on the desk at home. She’d growl in frustration and get a look that said if crumpling car parts weren’t about to cave in my skull, she’d gladly do the job. And then I’d get an injunction –

“Stop doing that! Just… stop it!”

– and a lecture on proportion. Which I lacked. Obviously. You didn’t make these noises of animal panic over a forgotten wallet – you saved them for when the wolves were actually at your heels, about to devour you. You saved them for the real thing.

And so, every so often in the car, my girlfriend had opportunity to give my self-image a swift kick in the groin. I liked to think of myself as a cool customer, the kind of man who could stare down crisis with an Eastwood squint and maybe even a bit of a Bruce Willis smirk, but I knew she was right. I could disintegrate into a sweating, sighing, hand-wringing mess of nerves and indecision when shopping for t-shirts or a new toothbrush. And faced with something bigger, like a camera purchase? I lay awake several nights in a row anxiously weighing the pros and cons of a few select models.

Gen was right. I’d been living in her house for years paying half the mortgage (sometimes more), putting money into repairs and remodeling, parenting her daughter, playing at married life, but I’d never gone all in. I’d just sat there forever fidgeting my chips, hedging, worrying, weighing.

And for that, I lost a fortune. The worst thing that ever happened to me.

I went home from the counselor’s office. I lay on the couch and cried. I got up and, for the first time in a week, smoked a cigarette.

It hurt, the cigarette. I found a flashlight, went into the bathroom, and, for the first time since the sores began, I looked into my mouth, really looked to see what was happening in there.

I went online. I called Gen at work, crying, to tell her my fears. She told me later she thought I was just being a melodramatic asshole. Crying wolf.

Two weeks later I was diagnosed with cancer.