Page 119

DR. BEN KALINSKY COMES into the room, having gone to get coffee for him and for Jimmy. He leans over and kisses me on the forehead, pulls up a chair next to Jimmy, and takes my free hand in his.

“But I am back from the abyss?” I ask Sam Wylie.

She looks fabulous, as always, in a navy dress. She’s even wearing pearls.

“Back from the abyss yet again,” she says.

She does her best then to simplify what I generally refer to as her doctor hooptedoodle. The first time I used the expression, she told me in her smart-ass way that it actually came from a John Steinbeck book. She even told me what book. Sweet Thursday.

The things you remember.

Sam tells me that fainting the way I did at Jimmy’s bar was the culmination of what she says was a perfect medical storm: the drugs in my system, fatigue, dehydration yet again, hypertension, dangerously low blood pressure, and the thing that she said was like a lit fuse for all the rest of it, anemia.

“Are there any boxes that I didn’t check?” I ask when she’s finished.

“Yeah,” Sam Wylie says. “A broken fucking leg.”

She further explains that the IV to which I’m attached has been pumping me with a cocktail of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fluids ever since I was admitted last night.

“So maybe drinking wine wasn’t the best idea I’ve had lately?”

Sam smiles again. “Yeah, but ask yourself something, Jane,” she says. “When has an extra glass of wine ever been a good idea for you?”

“So, I’m not dying.”

“Not today.”

“So when can I get out of here?”

Ben squeezes my hand. “Asks Miss Impatient,” he says.

“Just a bad patient, if you ask me,” Jimmy says.

“Look who’s talking,” I say.

“Mike Gellis is on his way,” Sam says.

My oncologist.

“Since you were already so nice to come to the hospital,” she continues, “Mike doesn’t see any reason to wait until next week to do more imaging on the tumor.”

“Hey, I’m fine with waiting,” I say.

Ben turns to look up at Sam. “What can I tell you?” he says to her. “The impatience comes and goes.”

“Oh, trust me,” she says. “I know.”

“I just want to go home and see my dog,” I say. “Who’s looking after him, by the way?”

“Kenny,” Jimmy says. “World-class bartender and world-class friend to dogs. It’s people he’s not very good with. Even for a bartender.”

“So we’re going to find out if the tumor has grown or shrunk since the last imaging?” I ask Sam.

“Quickly,” she says.

“And if it has shrunk a little more?”

“Then we throw another party,” she says. “Just without the extra glass of wine.”

I know the drill by now. “CT scan?” I ask.

She nods.

Now the only thing I can hear in the hospital room is the beating of my own heart. I look over and see a little jump in the needle on the monitor.

I want the tests and I don’t.

“What if it has grown?” I say finally.

“Shut it,” Sam Wylie says.