A few moments later, while scanning the line where the waves were breaking offshore through her viewfinder, she heard the woman’s voice behind her. She spoke English, but with a distinctly German accent.
“Excuse me,” the woman said. “I can see that you’re busy and I am sorry to bother you.”
Maggie lowered her camera. “Yes?”
“It’s a little difficult to say this, but have you had that dark spot on the back of your shoulder examined?”
Maggie frowned, trying without success to see the spot between the straps of her bathing suit that the woman was referring to. “I didn’t know I had a dark spot there…” She squinted at the woman in confusion. “And why are you so interested?”
The woman, fiftyish with short gray hair, nodded. “I should perhaps introduce myself. I’m Dr. Sabine Kessel,” she said. “I’m a dermatologist in Munich. The spot looks abnormal.”
Maggie blinked. “You mean like cancer?”
“I don’t know,” the woman said, her expression cautious. “But if I were you, I’d have it examined as soon as possible. It could be nothing, of course.”
Or it could be serious, Dr. Kessel didn’t have to add.
Though it took five nights to achieve what she wanted from the shoot, Maggie was pleased with the raw files. She would work on them extensively in digital postproduction—the real art in photography these days almost always emerged in post—but she already knew the results would be spectacular. In the meantime, and though she tried not to worry about it, she also made an appointment with Dr. Snehal Khatri, a dermatologist on the Upper East Side, four days after her return to the city.
The spot was biopsied in early July 2016, and afterward she was sent for additional testing. She had MRI and PET scans done at Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital later that same month. After the results had come in, Dr. Khatri sat her down in the examination room, where he quietly and seriously informed her that she had stage IV melanoma. Later that day, she was introduced to an oncologist named Leslie Brodigan, who would oversee her care. In the aftermath of these meetings, Maggie did her own research on the internet. Though Dr. Brodigan had told her that general statistics meant very little when it came to predicting outcomes for a particular individual, Maggie couldn’t help fixating on the numbers. The survival rate after five years for those diagnosed with stage IV melanoma, she learned, was less than fifteen percent.
In stunned disbelief, Maggie made her first Cancer Video the following day.
* * *
At her second appointment, Dr. Brodigan—a vibrant blue-eyed blonde who seemed to personify the term good health—explained everything about her condition again, since the whole process had been so overwhelming that Maggie could remember only bits and pieces of their first meeting. Essentially, having stage IV melanoma meant that the cancer had metastasized not only to distant lymph nodes but to some of her other organs as well, in her case both her liver and her stomach. The MRI and PET scans had found the cancerous growths invading healthier parts of her body like an army of ants devouring food laid out on a picnic table.
Long story short: The next three and a half years were a blur of treatment and recovery, with occasional flashes of hope illuminating dark tunnels of anxiety. She had surgery to remove her infected lymph nodes and the metastases in her liver and stomach. The surgery was followed by radiation, which was excruciating, turning her skin black in places and leaving behind nasty scars to go with the ones she’d collected in the operating room. She also learned there were different kinds of melanoma, even for those with stage IV, which led to different treatment options. In her case, that meant immunotherapy, which seemed to work for a couple of years, until it finally didn’t. Then, last April, she had begun chemotherapy and continued it for months, hating how it made her feel but convinced that it had to be effective. How could it not work, she wondered, since it seemed to be killing every other part of her? These days, she barely recognized herself in the mirror. Food nearly always tasted too bitter or too salty, which made it hard to eat, and she’d dropped more than twenty pounds from her already petite frame. Her oval-shaped brown eyes now appeared sunken and oversize above her protruding cheekbones, her face more like skin stretched over a skull. She was always cold and wore thick sweaters even in her overheated apartment. She’d lost all her dark brown hair, only to see it slowly grow back in patches, lighter in color and as fine as a baby’s; she’d taken to wearing a kerchief or hat almost all the time. Her neck had become so spindly and fragile-looking that she wrapped it in a scarf to avoid glimpsing it in mirrors.
A little more than a month ago, at the beginning of November, she had undergone another round of CAT and PET scans, and in December, she’d met again with Dr. Brodigan. The doctor had been more subdued than usual, although her eyes brimmed with compassion. There, she’d told Maggie that while more than three years of treatment had slowed the disease at times, its progression had never quite stopped. When Maggie asked what other treatment options were available, the doctor had gently turned her attention to the quality of the life Maggie had remaining.
It was her way of telling Maggie that she was going to die.
* * *
Maggie had opened the gallery more than nine years ago with another artist named Trinity, who used most of the space for his giant and eclectic sculptures. Trinity’s real name was Fred Marshburn and they’d met at an opening for another artist’s show, the kind of event Maggie seldom attended. Trinity was already wildly successful at that point and had long toyed with the idea of opening his own gallery; he didn’t, however, have any desire to actually manage the gallery, nor did he want to spend any time there. Because they’d hit it off, and because her photographs in no way competed with his work, they’d eventually made a deal. In exchange for her managing the business of the gallery, she would earn a modest salary and could also display a selection of her own work. At the time, it was more about prestige—she could tell people she had her own gallery!—than it was about the money Trinity paid her. In the first year or two, she sold only a few prints of her own.
Because Maggie was still traveling extensively at the time—more than a hundred days a year, on average—the actual day-to-day running of the gallery fell to a woman named Luanne Sommers. When Maggie hired her, Luanne was a wealthy divorcée with grown children. Her experience was limited to an amateur’s passion for collecting and an expert’s eye for finding bargains at Neiman Marcus. On the plus side, she dressed well; she was responsible, conscientious, and willing to learn; and she had no qualms about the fact that she’d earn little more than minimum wage. As she put it, her alimony was enough to allow her to retire in luxury, but there were only so many lunches a woman could do without going crazy.
Luanne turned out to be a natural at sales. In the beginning, Maggie had briefed her on the technical elements of all of her prints, as well as the story behind each particular shot, which was often as interesting to buyers as the image itself. Trinity’s sculptures, which utilized assorted materials—canvas, metal, plastic, glue, and paint, in addition to items collected from junkyards, deer antlers, pickle jars, and cans—were original enough to inspire spirited discussion. He was already an established critical darling, and his pieces moved regularly despite their staggering prices. But the gallery didn’t advertise or feature many guest artists, so the work itself was fairly low-key. There were days when only a handful of people entered the premises, and they were able to close the gallery the last three weeks of the year. It was—for Maggie, Trinity, and Luanne—an arrangement that worked well for a long time.