“Vitamin C is important for a good immune response.”
“Then let’s infuse Daniel with twenty gallons of Tropicana. How’s that for a protocol.”
Gus finished his Coke, and when he put the can down, there was a declarative sound to the impact. “I’d say two months. Tops. He tolerated the immuno-therapy like a champ. The chemo as well. He’s extraordinarily healthy, except for the cancer.”
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play.
And “tolerated”? That was not a word she would use to describe the way the man she loved had had to endure the brutal side effects of all the courses of drugs.
“Is there anything else we can try?” She put her hand out. “Except for… well, you know he doesn’t want Vita-12b.”
“I told you, I’m not going to argue with him about his decision.”
“You’re a better man than I,” she muttered. And yet could she blame Daniel?
“Here’s the thing.” Gus picked up the can and brought it back to his mouth, a hissing sound rising into the silence as he tried to find another sip in the empty. “He should be able to choose whether or not he wants to be a guinea pig—”
“I’ve never said the choice wasn’t his—”
“—but now that we’re out of conventional options, maybe he changes his mind. Or maybe he doesn’t.”
Drowning in frustration and sorrow, Lydia ripped the tie out of her hair. Then she recaptured everything she’d just freed and wound the loose bun right back up.
Sometimes you just had to do something with your hands. Other than throw things.
“Daniel has to make the call soon, though, right? I mean, he’s as good as he’ll be today—”
“Actually, he’s going to rebound some now that the immunotherapy’s going to be stopped. As I said, he’s a healthy man in his prime underneath it all, and we’ve always been on top of his symptoms and complications. And we can do CyberKnife on his liver again and put in a stent if we have to. The bone mets in his spine and hip are what they are, but they haven’t gotten much worse. Of course, his lungs are the real problem. Bilateral is a bad new development.”
No, shit, Dr. St. Claire.
Lydia pulled out one of the executive chairs and all but fell into the baseball-mitt-like seat. As she stared at the laptop screen, she wanted to cry, sure as if she were already at Daniel’s wake. She wanted to weep and gnash, pound the glossy table with her fists, stamp her feet, kick the glass wall, throw the computer so hard that it splintered into a Dell-branded jigsaw puzzle. But you only fought what you did not accept, and as a numb helplessness started to wrap her in cotton batting, she realized that she was finally putting down her sword.
How had it come to this, she wondered. Then again, if the pair of them were walking down the aisle together, her in a white dress, him all tatted up in a tuxedo, she would have had the same sense of confusion. Awed, rather than awful’d, of course.
“Do you tell him or do I,” she said softly. Then she looked up sharply. “And if it’s going to be a doctor, it has to be you, not one of those other… well. Anyway.”
“Not one of those über-compassionate, windup toy researchers? I’d be touched by your request, but they set a low bar at the bedside, don’t they.” He held up his forefinger. “They are exactly who you want in the lab, however.”
“I believe that.” Lydia shook her head. “I need to go tell him. Probably best coming from me.”
“You want me to be with you?”
“It’s not going to be a news flash.”
When Gus got quiet, she glanced over. The man was staring off into the distance between them, his eyes not really focused, like he was reviewing the case for the seven millionth time in his head and looking for something, anything, they could try.
“It’s not your fault,” she said.
“Sure feels like it is on my side.” He fired the Coke can across the space, pegging the wastepaper basket at the far end of the credenza like it was a basketball rim. “I’m going to grab a break. You can always text or call, ’kay?”
“You, taking some time off?” She tried to smile. “Unheard of, even if it is ten at night.”
“I’m going to get shit-faced, actually. Care to join me? You can invite that boyfriend of yours.”
“I’ll take a rain check, if you don’t mind.”
“Fair enough. And remember, call me. Day or night.”
As he headed for the exit, she murmured, “You’re a good man, Gus.”
He stopped with his hand on the door. As he looked over his shoulder at her, his dark eyes were grave. “But not good enough to save him.”
Before Lydia knew what she was doing, she was up and out of the chair. When she embraced the doctor who had been right on the front lines with her, there was a split second—and then he hugged her back.
“I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat. “This is not the outcome we want.”
A moment later, they parted, and he squeezed her shoulder before leaving. Out on the far side of all the glass, he made his way down the rows of workstations—and the other researchers stole glances at him, like he was a rock star striding through a public place, a unicorn among mortals.
The back of the t-shirt had a series of faded dates, like Pufnstuf was on tour. It was hard to know whether the top was an actual vintage one or something created to look period. Knowing Gus, it was probably the former. He seemed like the type who would blow off steam by collecting relics he’d hunt-and-pecked for.
Returning to the laptop, Lydia went through the chest images again, looking at the clear evidence of disease progression. There were other locations on Daniel’s body that had been scanned, but she had no interest in going through them, at least not right now. If there was nothing more to be done, it didn’t really matter how much things had advanced in his spine and hip. In his liver. The only good news was that there was still nothing in Daniel’s brain. The doctor with the anonymous features had led with that announcement, as if it had been preplanned. Or maybe it was just alphabetical, “brain,” starting with b, before “hip,” “liver,” and “lung.”
“Dr. Walter Scholz. That was his name,” she said absently as it came back to her.
Lydia closed the laptop.
When the best case was that you didn’t have cancer in your brain—yet—that pretty much said it all, didn’t it.
She needed to go find Daniel.
And tell him it was over.
TWO
A-B-AB-ABTHTH-THAAT’S ALL FOLKS!
As Porky Pig’s sign-off Looney-Tune’d around Daniel Joseph’s head, he poured himself a couple fingers of whiskey, and then tried to get the top back on the liquor bottle. As the cork-seated disk skipped around the open neck, he thought back to two months ago, when the tremors had started. The neuropathy in his hands was the kind of thing that had arrived without preamble, the side effect of the chemo like a houseguest who’d moved in without invitation for the holidays.
And was apparently staying through ’til New Year’s.
What he remembered most about the initial salvo of this particular concession of normal functioning was his frustration at its appearance. The trembling had kicked in at dinner one night, when he’d been trying to get a forkful of peas to his mouth. When the little fuckers had jumped off the tines and made like green casino dice on the plate, he’d rolled his shoulder and realigned the angle of his elbow. That had done nothing to help on his second try—and over the next couple of days, the extent of the disability had revealed itself. Each new discovery, from struggling to text on his cell phone or put the cap on his toothpaste or lace up his boots… had royally pissed him off.