I didn’t want to know.
She didn’t want to talk about it.
But it was there with us. My friend of 20 odd years was tiny and wizened, her hands trembling slightly, and I noticed how the skin on them had changed, become more translucent.
“I was so mad at him,” she said, speaking of one of our less responsible and more scattered friends. “When I told him I had cancer he said ‘How could you do this to me?’”
And I nodded, because that was exactly what he would say, and it was a horrible thing to say to someone who was going to die. And it was horrible that he was going to lose her.
I knew she was sick in October. My husband called her when the dog died. My friend consoled him, a lover of dogs herself, then told him of her own diagnosis. Now, in March she was telling me about that same conversation. “He called to tell me about the dog,” she said and the tone of her voice was flat and unforgiving. And I said, “He didn’t know you had cancer,” because that was true. None of us had known. For a few moments we sat quietly and I tried to reconcile the wisps of hair on her head with the woman I had last seen a year and a half before in the nation’s Capital fresh from a day’s sightseeing, when we drank martinis in a wood paneled piano bar.
“I didn’t want to talk to anyone here,” I said, finally. “I wanted everything to be the same. The last three years have been too hard, with too many moves and too many changes. I needed everything to be okay here. I couldn’t face it if it weren’t. I keep having to forgive myself.”
It sounds lame, but I was trying to tell her a terrible and real truth. I loved her and I didn’t want to talk to her on the phone. I hardly wanted to come see her in person while I was in town. I was too worn out myself. I wanted only happy news. I wanted the world to stop. I needed her to be well because she was my rock. We sat in two leather wing back chairs in front of the fireplace, waiting for her husband to come home. The cushions were patched with green duct tape. The puppy, I thought.
“His name is Rascal,” she told me. “I knew it the first time I looked into his eyes.”
While I was there, I gave her two long careful hugs, conscious of how fragile she had become. For 20 minutes or so we talked about the support sock she now needed to wear as a result of a recent blood clot in her leg.
“I’ll have to bathe in the evening,” she said. “I can’t put it on by myself. I usually bathe after he’s gone to work in the morning, but I’ll have to change that now.”
And I heard how upset she was by that shift in routine and I was struck by how small her world had become, that a bath in the evening would put such a wrench in it, and I could feel my heart cracking a little bit. It was supposed to be a short visit, but her husband was late coming home. And she told me a about the tumor and where it was and why it made eating difficult, but her husband later said they only figured that out the day she died. It doesn’t make any sense how what she told me and what he told me could both be right. Maybe I didn’t understand.
She told me of all the people who disappointed her, wanting her to talk about it – the cancer. She didn’t want to talk about it. And I listened to her very carefully as she didn’t not talk about it for an hour. Then she talked about her husband.
“It’s too much for him to do. Go to work. Take care of me,” she said. And here’s where I can’t get it right. I think heard her say she wanted to go ahead and die, but I don’t know what the words were that she used. I don’t think she actually said she wanted to die. I don’t think so, but I knew that’s what the words meant and I ached to leave and to tell her everything would be all right and that it was okay. Even when I know I couldn’t, and it wouldn’t and it wasn’t.
I took my glass into the kitchen at one point and looked in the backyard at the dogs. Rascal was facing into the fence, intent on what was out in the larger world. His elderly blind companion was soaking up the sun, enjoying the late afternoon spring day.
I don’t think she said it, but she wanted to die. Three weeks later she did.
I was in town for the birth of my granddaughter. My daughter had complications, but the baby was born fine and hail. After that visit I spent a whirlwind of days in and out of the hospital. I know all the elevators, and the secret ways to the parking lot. I know which cubicles in the ER are for the high risk patients and the right words to use to get assigned to one. I know that cafeteria closes between 3:00 and 5:00 in the afternoon and that the best thing to order is the pot roast. I know where all the towel heaters are on three floors. I learned to be cheerful with 17 different RNs and endless nurse techs. I spent my days on conference calls with work, putting the phone on mute when the IV beeper went off or a code blue sounded. Mostly.
At five that night, give or take, we heard one called for ICU: a code blue. My daughter and I were sitting in the dark, she in the bed, me on the horrid convertible couch thing I had learned to sleep on. We were watching Food network, our newly minted ritual. I think it was Food Genius we were waiting for, but I could be wrong. She was holding the baby, who had been dropped off for a visit. My daughter and I were happily contemplating her release the next morning, toting up the additional appointments to be made, cooing at the baby. I made an agreement with myself that I would visit my friend the next afternoon, though I was still peeved at her for scaring me. The code blue sounded, and a few minutes later the all clear sounded. No big deal.
At ten that night, I got a call from a local number I didn’t recognize while the baby's dad and other grandma came to her up. There was such a bustle while I grabbed the phone and put it to my ear. I wondered who wanted what from me now.
“Oh no,” I said. My daughter looked at me. All it took was the flatness of my voice. “Oh, no.” And I picked up my purse and got the keys and said some words and I left the 9th floor and followed the signs to the south exit and took the elevator down the parking structure to the car. “Oh no,” I thought.
Driving to my friend’s house I stopped at a green light. It took a honk to get me moving again, a slow motion surfacing – the realization of error, a correction. At the house those same wing back chairs were in front of the fireplace. I sat in one of them while close friends spoke in calm voices and began to make plans.
“I’ll go with you tomorrow,” one said to the new widower.
“I’ll make some phone calls,” said another.
“Can I get anyone a Scotch?”
“I heard the code called.” I said, and “I’m so sorry,” I said. And I called my husband and told him to get in the car to drive the 12 hours to get there. And I forgave myself for not being at her side. Or at least I mean to real soon.