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“Yeah well,” he said, “I can’t worry about that right now.”

“Be open to love, Oliver.”

“Christ—”

“Be open to goodness.”

She took extra care with each word. “I guess I’m just trying to figure out how I want to live with what I have left.”

He looked away, felt himself choking up. “And that’s what Joey Keyboard was about?”

A flinch. Then her mouth rounded, forming the word
oh.
No sound escaped. Her hand rose, as if she might insert her fingernails and eat them. Her forehead and cheeks reddened, pupils shimmering.

She forced herself to keep eye contact—thinking, studying.

“I need to do something for you,” she finally said. “Come here. Sit.”

She did not wait but reached out, touching the bottom of his jacket, which she lifted, reaching for his belt buckle.

“What,” said Oliver.
“Hey.”

Clumsy, careful—still fumbling, for she was out of practice—she unlooped his belt, in a workmanlike manner, and ignored his rumpled shirttails. His extra flesh and flab must have registered, for he had never been heavy like this, but she did not acknowledge as much. Oliver remained tense, unnerved, mildly alarmed. But he wasn’t stopping her from handling his jeans’ top button, lowering his zipper, reaching in.

A musky scent rose into the room. He was warm, sweaty, oddly red, not limp but far from stiff. His jeans and boxers down now to the middle of his pasty thighs. He’d stopped breathing, still was shocked by the happening. When Alice’s hand closed around him, he moaned. Her pace increased and she worked as best she could; he gasped and stared at her hand on him. And now he was looking toward the corner of the bedroom, that spot between the drywall and the weird angle of the roof, where that sliver of space still let in sound and smells. He moaned again, throaty, approving.

It was not long before he could tell her arm was tired. But she wasn’t deterred, and didn’t hesitate in leaning forward and planting a kiss on his bulbous, crimson head, licking awkwardly, like a hesitant cat, around its ridge. Enveloping him, her mouth was warm, wet. His shoulders hunched and he let out an involuntary, high sound; his head leaned back and he shut his eyes; his right hand went onto the back of her head. Oliver felt the barren desert of her skin. The air in the room warmer, her breaths coming at shorter intervals. She went at him, gallant and resolute, going faster, her eyes shut, cheeks pulsing.

But he was not close.

He was careful in lifting her off him, and he brought her to his face, and kissed her with all the tenderness in him, and on her lips tasted his own heat and salt.

Oliver pulled Alice’s bird-frail body to him. He took her face into his shoulder, caressed the back of her head, and laughed, amazed, holding her to him.

She was sobbing by now, and her sobs continued for a time, their force increasing, sending her body into racked, great heaves.

“Favorito,”
he said.
“Favorito.”

Y
OU WORK NOT
to gawk at the man with no jaw, the one standing by the plants. That poor man with the back hump and the marble eyes wants you to focus, though, wants you to see him. As you pass some helpless pile of bones on a stretcher, it takes all the discipline you’ve got not to stare at those sarcoma lesions, dark and purple. You sit on some couch, waiting for your appointment. You try not to be disturbed by the row of future corpses hooked up to oxygen tubes, try not to think about the random nature of illness, the absence of reason as to who recovers and why. No, instead you come into contact with these unfortunates for fleeting seconds, and you cannot help but look, and it goes without saying, your heart goes out to them. But also:
At least I’m not that bad.

And then you are the one in the waiting area beyond your usual waiting area, and you feel eyes checking
you
out, recoiling, afraid.

I am at a juncture where I must summon my inner warrior goddess to stare at a mirror. It still brings tears. My hair has started growing back from this last consolidation, but it is mossy, fuzzy, almost translucently thin. Gray fills in more of the front than last time. My face is now a skull, dug up after thousands of years, my skin brittle and dry. As a girl I always wanted those large, anime puppy eyes. Now I have them. They’re trapped inside hollow sockets, searching for a way out. Drugs have swollen my cheeks like a botched face-lift. I used to pout about my extra baby weight, now I’m nostalgic for it, for those excesses of meat on my hips and thighs (my whole life I hated my fat thighs). My hip bones jut in jagged peaks that make me think of all those teen models I used to fit, though I look nothing like them.

I look more like a prisoner in a concentration camp; I hate to say it, but it’s the unavoidable association.

Included in this diminishing is what is happening with my thin, gorgeous band of simple gold. Six months after my wedding, my ring finger had expanded to the degree that, there was no question, the band was never again coming off. This thought—
No way that’s coming off—
always ignited a satisfaction inside me. In the middle of some long manual stitching job, I’d look down and see my ring, that quick gleam, and I’d think:
I have more than just fashion.

But now, if I even point down, that band slips off.

—

The cusp of autumn. Chill infuses the air, night’s dominion coming earlier and earlier. I try and focus on the task at hand. We’ve received the call. We’ve been promoted. This new waiting area has different artwork—those familiar Impressionist retrospectives replaced by Lichtenstein. Each bank of chairs retains the same dull layout, the same dusty plants and ancient magazines. Still, when I recognize my favorite nurse-practitioner, I feel a charge: something like hope.

My hands grip, pushing against the cushioned metal armrest. I plant and propel, and manage myself, somewhat, upward, into a squat. Still, the wheelchair is too low. My thighs can’t push my body into the standing position.

“Usually I can get it,” I tell Requita.

“I know,” she says.

“Just not this time.” I smile.

Watching, Oliver twists in place. I know he’s irritated, why do I insist on expending unnecessary energy? He ducks in, reaches beneath my pits, holds me lightly. “Ready,” he says, “steady, and—”

We ease upward; he makes sure I’m balanced.

“One more,” he says. “Ready?”

Steady
never makes it from his mouth. I’m already sliding over, onto the exam table, doing it on my own.

—

Easy mannerisms and lanky height, bouncy hair feathered down the middle, the doctor immediately makes me think of some tennis star or surfer from the nineteen seventies. “Sergio Blasco,” he says. His accent is European Spanish—obviously cultivated through decades of boarding school education. “I’ll be taking over your treatment. I’ll still consult with Eisenstatt,
naturalmente.
But from this point forward, through the transplant and then afterward, consider me your physician.”

The hint of dismissal when he says
Eisenstatt—
what might even be disdain—endears him to me that much more.

I cough approval; he halts, his brow knitting.

“How long, that cough?”

Oliver answers: “A few days.”

Blasco stays focused on me, thin brows crumpling together. “Two days? Five days?”

“She had it last Friday for her appointment,” says Requita. “It sounds deeper now.”

“May I?” Blasco approaches with his stethoscope.

A nurse comes from the side and wraps a warm thin blanket around my shoulders so it hangs like a poncho. She puts a cup of water to my lips. I nod, whisper thanks, and keep the cup. Blasco presses to my chest, listens, does not move. Taking the instrument buds out of his ears, he heads back to his chart. He reads, flips. “Right,” he reads: “History of stomach virus.”

I can see he’s considering what he’s heard from inside me, what he’s read, cross-referencing…

“Nose and throat,” he tells Requita. “We need cultures. Make sure to have that today.”

His small gray eyes dart, back and forth, taking in as much as possible, yet they remain calm. When he fixes on my face, I feel humanity—not just doctor training and generic sympathy. I feel my shoulders and neck going rigid—this also may have to do with the attention of a handsome man on me. Probably that is too simple. Something more is taking place. For all his easygoing athleticism, Blasco is a thinker, delving, measuring. How can his calculations do anything but put me on edge?

“All notes here point to what an impressive woman you are. This is very good for our purposes. You have held on through induction and—
four?
—four consolidations. Quite a gauntlet. And finally a donor has come through. This is tremendous news. You have had very bad breaks and a very hard slog. But to have this donor come through this way—getting marrow withdrawn so soon after discovery—we are fortunate.”

I nod.

Without warning, he claps his hands, creating a small dry explosion of sound, a signal for attention. “This procedure we hope to perform.
Allogenic bone marrow transplant.
Allo,
Latin,
from the outside.
Practical terms. The donor has surgery on the lower back. The marrow is harvested over five days and taken from the spine. We use these stem cells to grow you new bone marrow.”

He waits, making sure I am following. “A very complex procedure. Many factors are involved. But we have reasons to believe it can be successful.”

“That’s all we need to know,” says Oliver.

We need to know quite a bit more than that,
I want to say; instead I feel Oliver’s eyes moving to me, searching.

“You’re not going to draw on a whiteboard, are you?”

My first words to the doctor; naturally, my voice has the chirp of a baby bird.

The doctor freezes, doesn’t understand.

“Private joke. Go ahead.”

Half-embarrassed, Blasco raises his hands from his lap. He places a large knuckle on the bottom of his chin. Now his eyes go steely. I smell a faint residue, something I cannot place.

“Your bone marrow, as you know, is producing the leukemic cells. We therefore hope to replace that marrow. We hope to do this using the healthy marrow from your donor. But replacement means something unfortunate. We must first remove, or eliminate, your cancer-producing marrow.”

My eyes shut. I perform a quick visualization, embrace darkness. “Release me from my suffering,” I say. “And from the cause of my suffering.”

The room goes silent, as if no one knows how to take this remark, let alone respond. Then the doctor clears his throat. “Mrs. Culvert, what lies ahead of you is not an easy task.”

My eyes open. Blasco is waiting, patient. “You have been through very much, I know. But this is a species unto itself. You are undergoing a marathon of sprints. Have been sprinting and sprinting. Now there is a new separate marathon of sprints. This will require its own fortitudes and endurances. I want you as strong as you can be. I want us all prepared.”

My mouth is a desert road. I cannot manage enough moisture to swallow.

“Our first step”—Blasco speaks with caution—“high-dose radiation therapy. Three days is usual. Two doses a day. Sometimes we do three. It depends on how you are doing. If you are having problems, and need to go slow, we add the fourth day.”

“The rooms are much nicer on the transplant floor,” volunteers Requita. “It’s a good place to recover.”

“So we’ve heard.” Oliver doesn’t look up from his notepad.

“After radiation, the next step is a high-dose chemotherapy regimen. Thyatemper. Cytoxan. Daunorubicin. Other drugs and steroids to help with the effects. Four days of this. Then you rest a day.”

Oliver is writing as fast as he can; however, I am trying to unclench my knotted innards. I feel fear leaking through my eyes. I try to exhale, remember how to breathe.

Blasco’s concern is apparent. “You are all right?” Once I nod, he continues. “Following rest, we give you the stem cells. This part is not bad. The stem cells are delivered into your bloodstream intravenously, usually through a central catheter. Very similar to the blood transfusions you already have. The stem cells travel through the blood into the bone marrow, where they take root. We wait while you recover and the marrow takes hold, so it can start growing inside your bones. Usual stay, four to six weeks.”

A ballpoint is removed: the doctor’s large thumb clicks and unclicks and clicks again, an obvious tic. “I am not one for sugarcoating. How thin you are is a very large concern. I worry your body will not be able to withstand the rigors of the transplant. I worry your heart will not be able to take the stress. This is not a reason to not try. We will run you through tests. Either you handle it or you can’t.”

It is hard to know which direction to turn, where to focus. I notice that Blasco’s long legs are out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. His shoes have been cobbled at the toes and heels.

Requita hands the doctor a new clipboard, which he takes without a thank-you or acknowledgment, explaining to me there are perfunctory questions before we can start moving forward. While Oliver squirms, we cover the usual greatest hits: family history, how I was diagnosed, have I used recreational drugs, any huffing? Then: “Have you had unprotected sex with a prostitute in the past five years?”