The Wrong Side of Intervention
Grace
I missed my first day with the trial, but I couldn’t stand to be in that hospital another minute.
That woman died in Jace’s office. I get that she was a lot worse off than I am now, but that hardly makes any difference.
As terrified as I’ve been, I guess I haven’t really allowed myself to let the harder truth sink in: I am going to die.
Yeah, it’s not going to happen as soon as it did with that woman earlier today, but I’ve seen the statistics. I’ll be lucky if I see 40.
Jace has been calling off and on all day, but I can’t bear to talk to him right now.
He’s an oncologist. He’s used to death. Me? I wasn’t in the room, but just hearing that man screaming at Jace to do something…
My phone rings again and I look at the number. It’s Jace again.
I could turn off my ringer, but I’m waiting to hear back from John on whether he’s going to stop being a pussy and take my plan for the Midwest to the board.
If I don’t answer the phone now, Jace is just going to keep calling.
“Hello?” I answer.
“Grace,” he says, “thank God. I’ve been worried about you. Where’d you go today?”
“I went home,” I tell him.
“Do you want me to come over?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay,” he says. “If you want, we can talk about what happened today. I know it was a bit of a shock, but maybe I can help talk you through it.”
If anyone could, it would probably be an oncologist. Still, I’m not really in the mood to think about what happened, much less talk about it.
“I’m good,” I tell him. “I could use something to take my mind off of it, though.”
“I can come over,” he says.
I sigh.
“Or not,” he says hesitantly. “I don’t want to crowd you. I’m just trying to help.”
“I appreciate that,” I answer, deadpan.
“Are you backing out of the trial?”
“I have no idea,” I tell him. “I’d rather not talk about it right now.”
“Well, if you need anything, just let me know,” he says.
“Hold on.”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Could we maybe just talk for a little bit?”
“Sure,” he says. “I know that it’s hard being there when something like-”
“Yeah,” I interrupt, “still not wanting to talk about that.”
“Okay, what do you want to talk about?”
“What are you wearing?” I ask.
Yeah, it’s stupid, and right now I couldn’t be any less interested in getting laid, but it’s about the furthest thing from that other conversation I can think of at the moment.
“You know what I’m wearing,” he answers idiotically. “You just saw me a few hours ago.”
“You’re really bad at this,” I tell him.
“Oh,” he says. “Geez, uh…”
“Really bad.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve never really done this before.”
“Oh, so you’re a phone sex virgin, huh?”
“I guess you could say that,” he answers. “Maybe you could teach me a few things.”
“I’m really not in the mood to be a tutor right now,” I tell him. “If you can think of something for us to do that has no connection whatever to doctors or patients or cancer or tumors, you go ahead and give me a call back, though.”
He’s quiet.
“All right, then,” I say. “I’ll talk to you later.”
I hang up the phone and flip on the television.
There’s nothing on that’s of the slightest interest to me right now, but I keep flipping through the channels anyway. I lie down on the couch and settle on an old movie with David Bowie as a prisoner of war, and I set the remote on the coffee table.
It’s not long before my eyes close and I’m drifting off into sleep.
My dreams are a circuitous nightmare where I’m in a long, brightly-lit hallway, looking for the door I’m supposed to go through. I don’t know why I’m there or what’s on the other side of the door, I only know that I need to find it as fast as I can. The lights flicker from time to time, but it’s just a mild annoyance as I continue walking down the hallway. There are signs next to each door, just like how the hospital has the room numbers on those bluish-gray plaques, but none of them are in a language I’m remotely familiar with, much less read.
Still, I keep walking down the endless hallway.
I get that feeling there’s something behind me, but when I look back, all I see is the white, sterile passage. Maybe I’m going in the wrong direction.
I turn around and start walking the other way, but the lights flick off completely and stay that way until I turn back around once more and resume my original path. My every footstep is echoing against the walls, a quarter of a second after each foot hits the floor. Off in the distance, I can’t be sure, but it almost looks like there’s an end to the hall. I keep looking at the signs next to each door, but the language written on them is becoming less akin to writing and more like scribbles and chicken scratches.
“Hello?” I call out, but my voice doesn’t even echo.
I take a step and I hear the reverberation.
“Hello?” I call out again, but my voice is lost in the enormous tunnel.
A moderate dose of fear enters me, so I start walking again, looking behind me every once in a while to check for anyone or anything following me, but there’s just the bright, empty hall. I walk a little faster and the signs next to the door are changing color and shape before my eyes.
What I’m looking for must be the other way, but when I turn back again, the lights go out just as they had before.
So, I just keep walking farther toward the white slab about a quarter mile down the way.
Maybe if I get to the end, I can turn around without being left in the dark.
With that thought, the lights begin to flicker with greater frequency. They’re only out for a second or two at a time, but it’s not long before they’re off longer than they are on.
Making my way through the dawdling strobe, even the echo of my footsteps begins taking more and more time until, like my voice, the sound simply vanishes, and I’m stuck in a soundless tunnel where the doors are visibly welded shut. The lights go off again, and this time, they don’t come back on. My heart is racing and I feel for the wall to guide me to the end of the hall.
The feeling I’m being followed returns, only this time when I turn around to see if anything’s there, I’m greeted only by the same complete darkness that’s ahead of me.
My hand grazes a door handle, and not knowing what else to do, I turn the knob. The door won’t open and, as I feel along the frame, it seems that there’s no door at all; the knob is just sticking out of the wall.
I keep walking and the lights come on for a moment, but the hallway ahead of me has changed. There’s color now, but it’s dark and washed out.
The end of the hallway is still there, so I just keep walking until even the handles attached with equal spacing along the walls vanish and I’m left with nothing but the smooth, darkened path.
“Is anyone there?” I shout. “I need help!”
I can’t even hear the sound of my own voice. Even my heart has stopped thumping in my ears.
Out of nowhere, the lights on the ceiling blaze into such a brightness that I have to shield my eyes, though that hardly does any good at all.
Eventually, I have to cover my eyes with my hands just to block out the blinding light.
What’s surprising, though, is that I can see the hallway standing before me. I’m not sure if it’s hallucination or reality, but I can even see my own body. I stretch a leg out and place my foot where it looks like the wall should be, and just when it’s supposed to, I can feel my foot making contact with the wall. The hallway starts to brighten again and so I start running, more afraid of the brightness than I was of the dark.
At the end of the hallway is a large door, the same color as the walls, but the silver handle is catching the growing light.
I’m running faster now, hands still over my eyes, my eyes still forced shut. The walls start to quiver and breathe, and in my head I know that it’s not going to be long until the whole structure above me collapses.
One hundred feet now from the door at the end of the hallway, I’m slowing down. My mind is pushing my body as hard as ever, but it’s getting harder to move with the increasing gravity.
Fifty feet now, and I’m slowed to a walk, using every bit of focus in my possession to keep putting one foot slowly in front of the other.
Twenty-five feet, and I’m barely moving forward. If I were to crawl anywhere else, I’d be going faster than I am now. Still, that door lies ahead of me and no matter where it leads, I know I have to walk through it.
Twenty feet left and I’m almost frozen in place. With a concerted effort, I can inch my feet, one at a time, forward, but it’s so difficult to even move that I’m beginning to lose hope entirely.
The walls haven’t yet cracked around me, but they can’t stand up to much more of this. They’re rippling like water, and the only sound I can hear at all is the dull groan of wood and metal straining against a force that won’t be much longer tearing them apart.
I take my hands from my eyes, but even with my eyes still closed, the brightness of the hallway burns my retinas to the point there’s an afterimage across the entirety of my field of vision.
It takes countless minutes before the hallway comes back into view.
I’m only 10 feet away now, but I’m forced to my knees. My legs can’t support the growing weight of the air around me, and I’m having trouble breathing.
Flat on my stomach now, I’m forced to take my hands from my eyes in a last-ditch attempt to keep working my way forward. I’m so close, though the intensity of the brightness of the hall has scarred me from the inside, so all I can see now is blackness. I open my eyes and close them again. It doesn’t make any difference. I’m not sure how, but I can still feel the proximity of the door even though I’ve all but ceased my forward motion.
The words come into my head saying I’m going to die, but the words are not my own.
For what feels like hours piled upon days piled upon weeks, months, and years, I strain to move forward, but as I reach forward again and again, I feel nothing but the floor beneath me.
The sound of the walls dies down, but something tells me that’s hardly an indication of safety.
“There’s nothing here,” I utter.
“There’s nothing here,” my voice echoes back at me.
“What the hell?” I ask.
“What the hell?” my voice returns.
With substantial effort, I pat the ground with my hand, but no sound comes off of the walls.
“Where am I?” I ask.
“Where are you?” my voice comes back.
“That’s not what I said,” I tell the nothing around me.
“That’s what I said,” my voice speaks.
“Open the door,” I tell the walls.
“The door is open,” my voice informs me.
“Help me through,” I command.
“I can’t see you,” my voice says.
“I’m right here,” I say, certain now that I’ve simply lost my mind.
“I’m right here,” my voice repeats.
A moment later, something is grabbing me by the shirt collar, dragging me forward across the floor. I’m still held down by the overwhelming force of nothing, but whatever has a hold of me doesn’t seem to be affected.
“Thank you,” I say to whomever or whatever is pulling me through, and I can hear a door closing behind me.
That’s when I wake up.
My apartment is quiet except for the television, which is still playing that same movie. I look at the clock on the wall. I couldn’t have been asleep for more than half an hour.
I’m relieved to be awake, and I get to my feet just to prove to myself that I still can, but when I hear the hard knock on my door, I climb back onto the couch.
“Who is it?” I call.
The only answer I get is the sound of my apartment door opening.
“Hey, you home?” that familiar voice calls out, and I’m on my feet.
“You scared the shit out of me!” I tell Jace as he closes the door behind him.
“You know,” he says, “you should really start locking your door, you never know what kind of creep’s just going to let himself in.”
“There’s a joke there,” I tell him, “but it’s way too obvious. What are you doing here?”
“You told me to let you know if I thought of something to do that wasn’t in any way related to — well, you know, and I think I’ve got it,” he says.
“I’ve got to tell you about this fucked up dream I just had,” I tell him.
“Do you like jazz?” he asks, and I’m wishing I was back in my dream, blind and crawling on the floor.
***
It took him a while, but Jace finally convinced me to let him take me to John Coltrane night at a local jazz bar I never knew existed.
I don’t hate jazz; I just hate nearly every modern person associated with it. I think it has something to do with the hats.
John Zorn’s pretty cool, though.
Anyway, we get to the club and Jace is kind enough to pay the cover. Okay, it was one of my conditions for accompanying him.
The place is pretty full, but we manage to find a small, circular table on the second floor balcony, overlooking the stage. There’s a group of six guys on stage, each one with a different saxophones. I’d always thought there were only two or three, but there they are.
It would be nice if there was some kind of rhythmic accompaniment, but as it stands, the six guys are watching each other’s feet to make sure they all come in on the downbeats at the same time.
Okay, so maybe it’s the hats and the pretentiousness.
Still, the music isn’t bad.
What’s better, where Jace and I are sitting, we’re far enough away from the wailing version of Cousin Mary.
“So,” he says, “what do you think of the place?”
“Do you think they’re going to get anyone on the drums sometime tonight?” I ask. “I’ve always been a fan of jazz drummers.”
He smiles. “The way you were talking on the way here, I got the impression you didn’t care that much for jazz.”
I can’t believe I have to explain this to him.
“It’s not the music,” I tell him. “It’s the self-important douchebags who profess to be experts on the genre like…” I look around, “pretty much everyone here tonight.”
“How do you know what people are ‘professing’ if you can’t hear what they’re saying?” he asks.
“How are you doing?” I ask, changing the subject.
“What do you mean?” he returns.
“Well,” I say, “we’ve kind of taken a step in a new direction, and I guess I’m just curious as to what you’re doing with that.”
“What I’m doing with that?” he asks.
For an intelligent man, I’m really finding myself explaining a lot of things to him.
“I mean, what you think about what’s happening between us,” I tell him. “Fuck, that sounded like it came from an after-school special, didn’t it?”
“I’m happy about it,” he says. “I thought I’d be more conflicted, but I’m really very happy about it.”
“Good,” I tell him, and look back at the stage.
Three of the six saxophonists are doing their own variations on the same head swagger — I really don’t know what else to call it — that the other three are doing as a unit.
“Do you think anybody in here has an original bone in their body?” I ask.
“It’s Coltrane night,” he says. “People aren’t going for original, they’re going for him.”
“I guess,” I answer, and look back at the stage.
“What do you think about what’s going on with us?” he asks.
“I’m good with it.”
“Well, that’s good,” he snorts.
I look up at him. “What?” I ask.
“I never know what to do with you,” he says. “Sometimes you’re so detailed and intense on a topic, but other times you’re just blasé about everything. The funny thing is I can never tell which way you’re going to react.”
“You know what I think we need right now?” I ask.
“What’s that?”
“A drink,” I tell him. “Any chance I could convince you to make a quick trip to the bar?”
“If we wait a minute, I’m sure our waiter will be around,” he says.
“You know what I think is funny?” I ask him.
“What’s that?”
“You invited me to a jazz bar, but not once since we sat down have you looked at the stage or seemed the slightest bit interested in the music,” I answer.
“I don’t really care for jazz,” he says.
I glare at him. “Then what the fuck are we doing here?” I ask.
“Well,” he says, “from what I’ve heard, one of the coolest places you can take a date is a jazz club.”
“I guess it depends on the date,” I say, and look over at him. He looks disappointed. “It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, though.”
That perks him right up. I wield quite the power with this man, don’t I?
“You know what I think we need right now?” I ask.
“Drinks,” he says. “Fine, I’ll head over to the bar and-”
“No,” I interrupt. “I’m past that. What I think we need right now is a nice secluded or semi-secluded place where I can ride you like we’re back in the first year of the roaring 20s and I’ve just won the right to vote.”
His face is red. It’s hilarious.
“I don’t know if there’s anywhere in here that’s private enough for something like that,” he says.
“Lame,” I say, and add a fake yawn for good measure. “You know, it’s not every day a gorgeous woman like me offers to let a person into her holy of holies. That goes double for women in jazz clubs.”
He smiles at me again, and I slide my foot up the inside of his leg, winking at him when I get close to his crotch.
“I bet we could find a spot,” he says.
“Great idea,” I tell him. “You go scout locations. I’m going to sit here and watch the six faces of Coltrane and wait for someone to come by and offer me a drink.”
“How about we go together,” he says.
I look over at him and roll my eyes.
“Fine,” I tell him, “but you just bought yourself five minutes eating my pussy before I get anywhere near your dick — oh, hi,” I say, looking up at the waitress, who’s trying to pretend like she didn’t hear anything I was just saying. “I’ll have a ginger ale, please.”
Jace is redder than before, but he eventually manages to spit out an order for a martini; shaken, not stirred.
The waitress smiles politely and walks away.
“You know what you did there?” I ask him.
“What I did where?” he asks me.
“You just ordered a watery martini,” I tell him. “When you shake a martini, the ice in the shaker chips apart and gets into the drink, making it watery.”
“Maybe I wanted a watery martini.”
“Well, in that case, it looks like you did just the thing,” I tell him. “So, are we fucking or what?”
“I think we should talk about what happened today,” he says.
“Nah, that’s all right,” I tell him. “I think I could do without that particular conversation right now.”
“Death isn’t an easy thing to deal with. It’s not easy for me, and I’m an oncologist, for Christ’s sake,” he says.
“Well, I think that was a good talk,” I tell him. “We covered all the bases, and I don’t know about you, but I feel better now.”
“Grace,” he says, “are you backing out of the trial?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Can you just leave me alone about it so I can figure out what I want here?”
“Sure,” he says, “but if you don’t make a decision by tomorrow morning, you’re going to get kicked out of the trial anyway. I just wanted to make you aware of that.”
I can’t really explain why, but the idea of being kicked out of the trial sends a jolt of adrenaline through me. I have to put my hands in my lap to make sure Jace doesn’t see them shaking.
“Why would they kick me out so quickly?”
“People drop out,” he says. “This early, there are others on the waiting list who can still get in, but after tomorrow, the thing’s going to be closed to everyone but those who are already in it.”
“What do you think I should do?”
“I would have thought that was pretty clear,” he says. “I jumped through a lot of hoops to get you in there in the first place.”
“No pressure, then?” I snicker.
“I’m not trying to pressure you,” he says. “I’m really not. I was just trying to answer your question. Personally, I think it’s worth a shot, but if it’s not something you’re ready for, I’m sure there’ll be more trials down the road.”
“You wouldn’t be mad at me if I told you that I didn’t want to go through with it?” I ask him.
“No,” he says with a shrug. “I want you to have every opportunity to get better, but I’m not going to be pissed at you for backing out of a drug trial. If it was a known cure, I’d probably be pretty irate, but as it is, I don’t see anything to be gained by browbeating you over it.”
It’s strange that that’s what it’s taken to get me to make a solid decision since what happened in his office earlier today.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I’ll be there tomorrow. Same time?”
“You’ll want to show up about an hour earlier,” he says. “They did intake with almost all of the trial participants today, but since you missed that, they’re going to have to squeeze you in before everyone else starts showing up.”
“Okay,” I tell him.
“Grace,” he says, “I really do think we need to talk about-”
“Here are your drinks,” the waitress says, placing my ginger ale and Jace’s pathetic martini onto the table. “Is there anything else I can get for you?”
“I’m good,” Jace answers.
“Nope,” I tell the waitress.
She walks away, and before Jace can start in again, I preempt him. “What happened today is that a woman who had cancer died in your office,” I tell him. “Yeah, it was difficult, even though I didn’t actually see it happen, but that’s just something I’m going to have to deal with. She had something different than what I have, didn’t she?”
“I can’t really talk to you about other patients,” he says, “even deceased patients.”
“Okay,” I respond. “How about this: am I going to need a wheelchair and an oxygen mask sometime down the road?”
“It’s hard to say,” he answers. “It depends on the progression of your-”
“Okay, I was trying to get you to tell me without actually telling me, but I don’t think it really matters. I’m going to assume that the woman either had a different diagnosis than what I do, or she was a lot farther advanced than I am.”
“Okay,” Jace says, taking a sip of his martini. He pulls a face and looks up at me. “I used to love shaken, not stirred martinis, but now it just tastes like slightly alcoholic water,” he says.
“It’s always nice to know I can still ruin things for people,” I smile. “Anyway, what freaked me out wasn’t that I was seeing the ghost of brain tumor future. What freaked me out was the knowledge that there’s really nothing any of us can do about the day we die — once it’s there, I mean. I didn’t hear any of the conversation between the three of you before that guy started screaming, but I’m guessing — and no, I’m not asking for you to confirm or deny this — that when she woke up this morning, she didn’t say to herself, ‘huh, I think I’ll head to the doctor’s office and die today.’ Hell, maybe she did. I don’t know. What I do know is a slight but profound variation on something I’ve known most of my life.”
“Which is?”
“That we’re all going to die someday. Maybe it’s going to be the oligodendroglioma — I’m seriously getting good at saying that now, by the way — maybe it’s going to be a car accident, maybe it’s going to be something else entirely, but when you’re going to die, you’re going to die. I think people who think they ‘cheat death’ are just kidding themselves. I don’t believe in fate, but I also don’t believe that a person is going to see each and every thing coming. There’s no way.”
“What’s the variation?” he asks, “Or was that it?”
“The variation,” I tell him, “is that even if I go through this treatment, who’s to say I don’t go into your office one day for a checkup or an update or just to bother you while you’re working and something happens, maybe a reaction from the medication, maybe something else, and I end up falling to the ground dead?”
“Who’s to say you don’t?”
“Nobody,” I answer. “I was freaked out, and I can still hear that guy screaming at you, but I just knew that I didn’t want to be like her, still making every appointment even though I’m half a breath away from my last. I want to do something more. I’m not saying I want to start a charity or do the fun run thing — I’m not a masochist. I just don’t want to spend all my life in a hospital while the rest of the world just passes me by. Who knows, maybe when I’m supposed to be walking into oncoming traffic because I’m not paying attention, I’m in the hospital getting a needle stuck in my arm.”
“I think that would be the better option,” he says.
“Yeah, maybe,” I tell him. “At the same time, though, maybe I’m supposed to be out doing something that I’ve never done before, something that’s going to add a once-in-a-lifetime experience to this little world of mine, and I’m just in there, again, getting a needle stuck in my arm?”
“There’s no way to know that kind of thing,” he says.
“I get that,” I tell him, “and your saying that isn’t the first time the thought’s crossed my mind. Every time I get that far in my inner dialogue, though, I just think of that woman wheeling past me, her son walking behind her with his fingers gripping the handles of his mom’s wheelchair so tight his knuckles are white.”
“Like I said,” he explains, “I’m not going to fault you whatever you choose here. Obviously, I wish you’d go through with the trial because-”
“I know the reasons,” I interrupt. “We’ve talked about the reasons, I’ve read about the reasons, and I’ve thought about the reasons so much over the past while that I could jot them down with my eyes closed. And I know exactly what you wish I’d do; you made that pretty crystal when I was in your office this morning.”
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“Does it not occur to you that you never really indicated that you would respect my choice before that woman died in your office today?” I ask. “I’m not saying that’s why I didn’t go to the first day of trials, but it’s not like it didn’t change anything.”
“What did it change?”
“It changed the way I felt about you,” I tell him. “I’m going to do what I’m going to do, just like you’re going to do what you’re going to do and everybody else is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but it started to feel like you weren’t taking me seriously. When it started to feel like you were just discounting what I had to say because you thought it was just fear and nothing else — I didn’t like that. I don’t like that. It looks like you’ve come around, and I’m not saying this is a permanent mark on your record or anything, but — I don’t know. I guess I just thought you should know that.”
He looks down at the table and then back up at me, sipping his drink and making that same disgusted face he made a few minutes ago.
“You’re right,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” I tell him. “Now, is there any way we can move past this conversation?”
“Yeah,” he says. “If you want to talk more about it later we can; if not, that’s okay, too.”
“Sounds great,” I tell him. “So…”
“What?”
“You owe me no less than five minutes with your face between my legs,” I tell him. “What up?”