Making Friends
Grace
Jace was supposed to be here half an hour ago to get me in for my MRI, but his assistant says she hasn’t heard from him.
At first, I was worried that I’d showed up late, but it looks like I’m off the hook. Still, there are better things I could be doing with my time.
“Is there any way I could have you give me a call if or when he shows up?” I ask her. “I’ve just got to step outside and make a phone call.”
“Sure,” Yuri answers. “He won’t be much longer.”
“Thanks,” I tell her, and walk out of the office.
I’m not feeling that great right now, thanks to my new round of chemo, but I take the stairs. My phone has trouble in elevators.
I dial the number.
“Grace?”
“How’s it going?” I ask.
“It’s going fine,” Andrew, my contact in Ohio, says.
“You know what I’m talking about,” I tell him. “Are we good?”
“We’ve hit a bit of a snag,” he says. “It shouldn’t amount to much, but my boss is on one of his down home values kicks and I want to shoot myself.”
“Is there a reason I’m supposed to care about that?” I ask, taking a break on the first landing and staring down at the Escher-esque view of the remaining stairs to the ground floor.
“Yeah,” he says, “when he’s in a mood like this, it’s hard to convince him to take on new out-of-state commercial clients. I don’t think he’s really in the frame of mind right now to even consider selling out to anyone.”
“I’m not asking him to sell out,” I tell him. “I’m not even asking him to change that much of his programming. I just want M.E. on the bottom left of the screen. We can worry about the programming later.”
“You’re going about this the wrong way,” Andrew says. “If you want a takeover, you’re going to have to come up with a firmer position than that.”
“Do you know how Romans used to pacify the countries that fell to them?” I ask.
“How?” he asks.
“It didn’t always work, and God knows there were plenty of insurrections, but the Romans found that if they allowed a conquered people to retain their culture, their religion, everything but the basic allegiance which the fallen group was required to shift toward Rome, taxes and all, that they could keep more of the people from rebelling most of the time,” I tell him. “Haven’t you ever wondered why Greek and Roman gods and goddesses seem to be so interchangeable?”
“I have never wondered that in my life,” he says.
“Well, first off, much of Roman culture itself was devised from earlier Greek sources, but the two remained relatively stable in a lot of ways for a pretty significant amount of time because it was enough for Rome, during that time, to conquer. They didn’t care so much that people worshipped different gods or had other forms of entertainment. They got what they wanted: they got more land, more trade, more taxes, more citizens to fight in their wars, and more innovation than they would have if they came in only as a conquering force without any regard to the basic culture of the people they conquered,” I tell him.
“Of course, one of these days, we’ll want to have every bit of our programming going every second of your broadcast day, but we’re not going to push that until you’ve had a chance to see that we respect what you’re doing. If we didn’t, well, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“That’s a pretty good tactic,” Andrew says.
“I think so,” I respond, sitting down on the top step of the next flight of stairs. “Not everyone here thinks that’s the way to do this sort of thing, but then again, not too many other people here are ready for Rome to expand, either, so-”
“That’s not what I meant,” he interrupts. “I mean it’s a good tactic to go off on weird shit like that. I still have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m ready to give part of my check to Caesar. You know what I’m saying?”
“Hardly,” I answer. “I guess we just click that way. So, you’re going to talk to him?”
“I’ll test the waters,” he says, “but I really think we’re going to want to wait until after sweeps when he’s good and depressed.”
“At some point, you’re going to have to stop dangling your feet and grow some balls,” I tell him, and hang up the phone.
I had more to say, but I didn’t want him to hear what’s about to happen.
What I’m doing right now can’t really be called running — it could barely be called climbing — but as quickly as I can with my tortured muscles and my complete lack of energy, I’m trying to make it at least to the trash can at the top of this flight of stairs.
A couple of minutes later and I don’t really feel all that much better. I just have a momentary reprieve from the hell that’s going to keep coming back until this shit is out of my system for a few days.
It’s worse this time.
Jace warned me that that’s often the way it works, but I didn’t think it was going to happen this quickly, and I certainly didn’t think it was going to hit this hard.
I stagger back into the doctor’s office, and Yuri, no doubt accustomed to seeing people come in the way I’m coming in, walks over to the water cooler and fills a glass, bringing it over to me as I all but collapse into the chair by the office.
“You know,” she says, standing over me, “with Dr. Churchill being so late to the office, I really don’t think that we’re going to be able to get you in for the MRI at your scheduled time. I would just take you down there myself, but he prefers to sit in with the radiologist while they do the scan.”
“He seems to have a lot of time on his hands for an oncologist,” I mutter, curious as to whether Yuri knows about his other job, but not wanting to be too blatant about it.
“This is actually very unusual for him,” she says. “He’s never been late to the office since I’ve worked here. Can I get you anything else?”
“A mint,” I say, “or a stick of gum would be great — anything to get this rotten taste out of my mouth.”
“Sure thing,” she says, and goes back to her desk. She opens one of the drawers, pulls out a pack of gum and tosses it over to me.
I take two sticks and chew one while I let the other rest on my tongue, folded in half. When I go to throw the pack back to her, Yuri shakes her head.
“Keep it,” she says. “I’ve got a whole drawer full.”
“I guess it should be comforting to know this sort of thing happens quite a bit,” I say, doing my best to smile.
“You didn’t throw up in a trash can, did you?” she asks.
I hang my head a little.
“It’s okay,” she tells me. “Just with the chemo in your system, we need to make sure that maintenance knows they need to wear gloves and dispose of the bag in medical waste instead of the normal trash.”
“Top of the stairwell,” I tell her. “Sorry about that.”
“It happens,” Yuri says, picking up her phone, “trust me.”
She’s informing whoever that “one of Dr. Churchill’s patients” did blah, blah, blah, and I’m not sure whether I’m having so much trouble concentrating because I’m trying to block out my embarrassment, or if it’s a symptom of something.
Whether that something is the disease or the cure — I don’t know that, either.
Yuri hangs up the phone and turns back to me. “I’m sorry you’re having a rough go of it,” she says. “Did you drive today?”
“I took a cab,” I tell her. “I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be the safest driver this morning.”
“Well,” she says, “I’ll try Dr. Churchill again, but at this point, I think you’re safe to head home if you want to.”
I tongue the wad of gum in my mouth into my cheek and tell her, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to sit here for a little bit longer. I’m feeling a little weak.”
“Sure,” Yuri says. “You can stay here as long as you want.”
I sit and I take deep breaths, trying to get past this feeling I know I’m going to be stuck with for the next four days at the very least.
Some time goes by and other patients come into the office, but Yuri informs them that the doctor’s not in. She offers to set up an appointment with another oncologist for everyone, myself included, but nobody takes her up on her offer.
After a while, Yuri prints out a sign saying that the doctor had an emergency and that patients who would like a referral can simply call the number at the bottom to get in with Dr. Hoynes.
With that, she turns off the main light and closes the office door.
“I should probably get out of your hair, huh?” I ask.
“No,” she says, “you’re fine. Whether he shows up or not, I have some things I need to catch up on here, anyway.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“What’s that?” she responds, looking at me over the frames of her black plastic glasses.
“If this is what oral chemotherapy’s like, is it really that big of an improvement over the IV stuff?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I think any kind of chemo’s going to be really hard on your system. Some people do better with the capsules, some people do better with the IVs, but I don’t think anyone has a fun time with any of it.”
“Where are you from?” I ask.
“San Diego,” she says. “My parents moved here when I was a teenager, and I guess I just never really felt the urge to go back. What about you?”
“Delaware,” I tell her, and then I get to the question I really wanted to ask. “I don’t suppose there’s any way I could fire up a J in here, is there?”
“Sorry,” she says. “The administration frowns on that sort of thing in the hospital.”
“Bummer,” I answer.
“But…” she says, reaching into her desk, “and this has got to stay between you and me.”
She pulls a vaporizer pen from one of her desk drawers. “It’s strawberry flavored,” she says. “You can’t even taste the other stuff.”
“You just keep that in your drawer?” I laugh.
She smiles. “Let’s just say you’re not the first person I’ve been in here alone with who could use a little relief.”
“Do you have an alcohol wipe or something?” I ask. “It’s not that I don’t trust you or anything, I just don’t trust the other patients who’ve-”
“I meant me,” she says.
My jaw actually drops.
“You’re serious?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says. “I’ve got a valid prescription and everything — it’s totally legal. I’m sure the doc wouldn’t be too thrilled if he knew I had it here in the office, but he’s never seemed to notice.”
With that, she gets out of her chair and locks the door to the office before coming over to me and handing me the vaporizer.
“You’re not going to join me?” I ask.
“I’m still on the clock,” she says.
I take a puff, and even though Yuri assured me that there wouldn’t be any illicit smell, it still takes me about 30 seconds before I feel comfortable exhaling. Even then, I breathe out into the sleeve of my sweater.
The phone rings and Yuri answers it, saying, “Dr. Churchill’s office.”
I take another puff and try to remind myself that what I’m experiencing right now is a reality. I’m sitting in a locked office with the assistant to my oncologist who just hooked me up with MJ extract.
“Okay,” Yuri says into the phone. “Grace is still here, should I send her home or should I call down to…uh huh…uh huh…”
I take another puff, forgetting my still-low tolerance for the fact that what I’m doing really doesn’t feel like smoking anything except candied strawberries, and I’m already starting to feel less nauseated, less sore, less pained.
“All right,” Yuri says, “I’ll tell her.”
She hangs up the phone, gets up from her desk, and takes a seat next to me.
I hold out the pen to her, as I’m already starting to feel the high coming on pretty strong, and she takes it.
“He’s not coming in today,” she says. “I guess he’s already called radiology and gotten you scheduled for tomorrow.”
Her wrist makes an elegant series of movements as she takes a long pull from the vaporizer and blows out a series of — I guess they’re still called smoke rings if it’s coming from a vaporizer, but I’m still pretty new to all this.
“Where do you live?”
I tell her, and apparently, we’re only a few blocks from each other. In this city, that’s a pretty big coincidence.
“Wanna split a cab?” she asks.
“I thought you had work to do,” I answer.
“It can wait,” she says. “Most of what I was going to do, I guess Dr. Churchill already took care of, and I’d rather know that you got home safe than stay here and sit on my thumb, you know?”
It’s probably the pot, but I can’t help but feel like Yuri and I are old friends who’ve just never really had the chance to get to know one another.
“All right,” I tell her. “It’ll be nice to have some company for the ride home.”
“Cool,” she says, and takes another puff before handing the pen back to me.
“Oh, I’m good,” I tell her.
“You sure?” she asks.
“Yeah, I’m still a cheap date with that stuff,” I answer.
She shrugs and takes another puff before going back to her desk and collecting her purse.
“You wanna hear something crazy?” I ask.
“What’s that?” she responds, pulling a small bottle of eye drops from her purse.
“I’m actually kind of hungry,” I tell her.
“It’s kind of nice, isn’t it?”
“It really is,” I answer.
Yeah, I just became pro-legalization.
She puts a few drops into each eye and then tosses me the bottle. I sit there for a minute, feeling the presence of the spout while not feeling any cold or wetness on my eye before I realize that the cap’s still on.
I chuckle to myself as I unscrew the cap, but I just sit there for another minute.
“I really like your hair,” Yuri says. “Where’d you get it?”
With that question, we both start laughing.
“There’s a place down on 12th,” I tell her. “They’ve got some good stuff.”
I finally get a couple of drops in each eye and I give the bottle back to Yuri, who then helps me to my feet, asking if I’m good to walk.
I tell her I’m fine, and I take one more look at the office, breathing in the weirdness of right now, before we walk out the door.
Yuri calls a cab from her cell phone, and we sit on a bench out front while we wait.
“So, what’s your prescription for?” I ask.
“Oh, I really don’t like to talk about it,” she says.
“Why not?” I chortle. “You know all sorts of disgusting details about me, how about a little reciprocation here?”
“Did you know,” she says, “that it’s actually against the rules to actually smoke as a method of delivery for this stuff?”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Well,” she says, “I guess a lot of people didn’t pay attention to this part, but in the Compassionate Care Act in this state, it’s actually stipulated that smoking cannot be authorized as the way to take your medical marijuana into your system.”
I ignore for a moment the fact that she’s dodging my question and say, “So, I’ve been breaking the law this whole time.”
“What have you been doing?” she asks. “How’d you even get the green stuff?”
“A guy in my building’s been trying to get me to try it out for a while now, and so I thought I’d finally take him up on his offer,” I laugh.
Our cab finally arrives and we get in, but Yuri’s not done with her questioning.
“So,” she starts again, “what did you do with your script?”
“I just never got it filled,” I tell her. “I figured if I could just get the same stuff from a guy in my building, it’d be a time-saver. I didn’t know it was such a no-no.”
“Here,” she says, pulling the pen out of her purse and handing it to me. “Why don’t you hang onto this and whenever you run out of your stash at home, just go get that prescription filled. This stuff’s better for you anyway.”
“I can’t take that from you,” I tell her, and I start to laugh. “It’s your little buddy. I can’t get between the two of you.”
Either she’s not as high as I am, or I’m not nearly as funny as I think I am.
“Seriously,” she says, “take it. It burns cooler than what you’ve got, and it’s actually got a higher content of-”
“Sorry to interrupt your drug talk,” the driver says, “but is one of you going to tell me where I’m taking you? If not, I’m happy to sit here while the meter runs.”
I give the man my address, and making no effort to be discreet about it, I scoff and say, “What a dick!”
“Whatever,” the driver says, and pulls onto the road.
“So,” I say, turning back to Yuri, “you never answered my question.”
“No,” she says, “I’ve tried telling patients before. It just bums them out.”
“How do you bum out cancer patients?” I ask. “I mean, other than by telling them that they’ve got cancer. I mean, I’ve got a fucking brain tumor. It’s not like-”
The driver scoffs in the front seat, and I’m caught in that brief moment before fight or flight kicks in where it hasn’t quite sunk in yet that the man in the driver’s seat thinks that me having a fucking tumor in my head explains something.
“I’m sorry, but what the fuck is your problem?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says, keeping his eyes on the road.
“Really,” I persist, “if you’ve got something to say, why not just say it instead of being a fucking pussy? Besides, if there’s something funny about my oligodendroglioma, I’d love to hear it because it hasn’t been all that funny to me.”
Yuri puts a hand on my knee and leans toward me, whispering, “He was clearing his throat.”
“He scoffed at me when I mentioned my fucking brain tumor!”
“I really didn’t,” he says. “I would never do something like that.”
Well, don’t I feel like the perfect little piece of shit right about now?
The rest of the drive to my building is quiet, but as I’m reaching into my purse to pay my portion of the fare, I ask Yuri if she’d like to come up for a minute and show me how to change out the fluid in my new pen, but she says that she’s got to get home.
She’s kind enough to give me a crash course in the back of the cab, though.
I get to the door, and Boris holds it open for me.
“How did the scan go?” he asks.
“We’ll find out just as soon as the doctor who was supposed to get me in turns up,” I tell him.
Boris mumbles through an empathetic response to my bad luck when my phone starts to ring. I’m not entirely surprised to see that it’s Yuri’s boss and my doctor/late night friend calling.
“Sorry, I should probably take this,” I tell him. “Hello?”
“Hey, I’m sorry I missed our appointment today,” Jace says. “I was wondering if there was any way I could swing by for a little bit.”
“Why?” I ask, pretty irritated that he left me high and dry and has the nerve to ask a favor.
“It’s Melissa,” he says. “I don’t know if you were joking with what you said about her, but I need some advice.”
“I don’t suppose this is something we could discuss through an intercom, is it?” I ask.
“It’s really something I’d prefer discussing face-to-face.”
“All right,” I tell him. “You know where I live.”
“Great, I’ll be right there.”
I hang up, and Boris asks who called. I just tell him it’s an old friend that’s going to be stopping by for some advice.
Truth be told, I’m actually glad that Jace is coming over. I don’t know that I could really handle walking into my apartment alone. Since my diagnosis, I’ve started to realize just how alone I am.
I’ve put so much time and effort into being a success in my professional life that I’ve neglected cultivating relationships with anyone outside of a business context.
Sure, there’s Mags, but she’s not really the kind of person that’s going to be able to handle this sort of thing. So, for now, I guess I’m just stealing moments with the people that I can.