A Reason to Live (Marty Singer1) (15 page)

"Jesus," she said. "Do I have to die before someone makes a move?"

"No. It might seem that way, but try to keep the faith. Wheeler doesn't know where you are and we're going to keep it that way. I'm looking for him non-stop and Kransky is hell on wheels when he gets a hold of something. We're not going to let him get you. It's that simple."

It was the lamest pep-talk I'd ever given, but something I'd said must've sounded good, because she nodded.

"Marty, I want to contribute something. No, really," she said as I waved whatever she was going to say away. "You're doing more than anyone could reasonably expect. Maybe I could chip in for food or something."

I thought about it. There are times when you can be more generous by letting others share a burden rather than taking it all for yourself. "Tell you what. You buy the coffee as long as you stay. I might not be able to drink any right now, but I'm going to celebrate with a pot and a half when I get back. That'll be your job."

She gave me a look. "Marty. Please."

"I'm serious. Coffee's important. You buy it and make it. I'll drink it and beat up the bad guys. And you feed Pierre. He's ignoring me anyway. Fair?"

She wrinkled her nose, not happy, but playing along. "Fair."

I glanced at my watch. Six-thirty. "I gotta get dressed. Can you be ready in an hour?"

"I can be ready in fifteen minutes."

Amanda was as good as her word, sitting on the couch reading over her notes for the day by the time I got downstairs, her damp hair hanging down over her papers. We'd been able to dance around each other without mishap as we each got ready for our day, despite the fact that my place only has one shower and, while standing in the hallway, you can reach out and touch every door on the second floor.

It was strange having someone else in the house. There were different sounds as she walked around the guest room getting dressed. Smells of flowers and strange spices wafted out of the bathroom after she'd showered and even the few things she'd left lying around--cosmetics, a damp towel, the extra coffee cup in the sink--reminded me of what a single, solitary human being I'd become. I couldn't tell if I liked it or not.

We jumped into the car and took off ten minutes early. I took a winding, complicated route away from my place, looking for a tail, but saw nothing. I started in on some small talk, but the attempt fell flat. There was the radio, but the chatter would put my nerves on edge. I tried relaxing, letting my mind wander, but my thoughts looped back to the upcoming chemo appointment every time. It was like being in a horrendous pinball machine. Cancer, chemo, death. Cancer, chemo, death. Not good. I stared at the bumper of the car in front of me in an effort to keep my mind blank.

Amanda, I assumed, was brooding over Wheeler and her own safety. Or maybe how, exactly, she was supposed to function as a teacher and a student when surely everyone on campus had found out by now that she was being stalked. News travels fast when your professor or colleague might get whacked in the middle of class. Her next few hours were going to be every bit as nerve-wracking as mine.

Her directions took us to the Fiddler building, another squat, unremarkable scholastic hall of learning. Knots of kids, looking bedraggled and genetically incapable of being up this early, moseyed along the sidewalks, trying to eke out a few more minutes of freedom before class. I circled the block until I saw a campus police cruiser parked nose-out in the delivery entrance. A young cop--white, close-cropped hair, wrap-around shades--sat in the car with the window down and his arm on the door frame. He watched as I eased in next to him. I rolled my window down.

"Hey," I said. "I'm Singer. This is Amanda Lane. I talked to Robinson last night about a protection detail."

He raised a hand. "Looking at it. Matt Przewalski."

"Anyone else?"

"Nope. Well, there're two bike cops that'll be around on patrol, but they're not assigned to this. I can pull them in if I need help."

I didn't like it, but it's not like GW had their own Secret Service. We were lucky that they'd put someone on it at all.

"You want to go in the delivery entrance?" he asked. "There's a fire door we can use, too."

"No. I want deterrence as much as protection. If we get Wheeler to make you, maybe he'll back off long enough for us to track him down. And the last thing we need is for him to jump the two of you in an empty stairwell or coming through a back door nobody uses."

We talked more about Amanda's schedule and when I'd be around to pick her up. I wanted a safe, smart hand-off. Przewalski--I made him spell it out so I could remember it--was young, but he seemed to get it and didn't have any of the attitude I'd gotten from Hatcher and, to a lesser extent, Robinson.

We finished and I turned to Amanda as Przewalski got out of his car and came around. "Looks like you're in good hands. I'll give you a buzz when I'm on my way. You stick to this guy until I show up, even if--"

"--I have to ride around with him for the rest of the afternoon in the cruiser," she said, finishing my sentence. "I got it, Marty."

"Right," I said. "You sure?"

She leaned over the console and gave me a quick hug. For Christ's sake, I blushed again. "I'm sure," she said, smiling. "Good luck at the doctor's."

Przewalski opened her door and the two of them walked to the front doors of Fiddler. A few students whispered to each other and pointed as the two entered the building. I waited to make sure they were inside, then backed the car up and drove around to the far end of the block. I shut the car off, hopped out, and backtracked as quickly as I could, picking a spot diagonally across the street to set up camp. I checked my watch. I had some time before I had to be on the road, assuming I'd break some speed limits to get to Demitri's office.

I scanned the sidewalks, the streets, and the building entrances, my eyes skimming over people and objects, letting my mind and my intuition do the work of looking for the break in the pattern, the thing that jumps out. I'd learned a while ago that trying too hard screws with your attention. You focus on a bright, shiny object and realize too late that it's a handbag when what you're actually looking for is a gun. I didn't let my eyes get lazy--though Lord knew I was feeling the effects of last night's circus--but I trusted heavily in my instinct with a nudge from my experience. When something seemed to snag my attention, I gave it a five second stare, then moved on.

Ten minutes into my one-man surveillance, the streets filled up as kids cut it close, rushing to make their eight o'clock class. I watched as the dreadlocks, the backpacks, the sandals, the piercings, the black eye-shadow, and the tattoos passed by, some kids scooting now as they tried to slip behind a desk at the last second, others sauntering along unconcerned. All of the kids dressed like felons to my aged eye, but nothing screamed "Michael Wheeler" at me. No one stalked along with a handgun and a mission. No one flung white carnation petals all over the sidewalk. In fact, the place became strangely empty before a new surge of kids, probably just getting off the Foggy Bottom Metro, crowded the sidewalk again. I glanced at my watch. I had to go. I'd done what I could for Amanda and had to trust that I'd delivered her into good hands.

Now I had to go do the same for myself.

Nurse Leah whisked me back to an exam room ten minutes after I walked through the door.

"Hey," I said, surprised. "Not this again. I thought I was supposed to go to the lounge?"

Leah smiled. "I'm going to check your vitals, then I'll go over the chemo procedure. After that, you get the easy chair. Same routine, every time."

I groused some but at least they hadn't made me wear a paper bag again. Leah took my temperature, blood pressure, and so on, then handed me a laminated pamphlet. It was entitled "The Folfox Protocol," which sounded like a Robert Ludlum novel to me. Underneath was a list of medicines and chemical names like I'd never seen, most of them ending in "zan" and "vorin" and "zine." Leah pointed each one out as she launched into a spiel worthy of any flight attendant. This one was for nausea, that one was to protect the stomach, this one killed the cancer, another flushed the last one out before it could kill the patient.

She took some blood through the mediport and disappeared with the little plastic tube. A minute later she was back to go over the same side-effects Demitri had told me about, the weird lineup of fatigue, cold sensitivity, and numbness, none of which seemed related. I nodded politely, tired of listening. There was a knock on the door and another nurse opened it to hand Leah a sheet, which she scanned quickly, bobbing her head as if to a song. She looked up, smiling. "All clear. Let's get started."

She led me back to the easy-chairs. Four were occupied. Leah put me between an elderly woman with an elaborate knitting project in her lap and a young black guy sound asleep with headphones on. Even through the headphones I could hear the tinny beat of whatever lullaby had knocked him out. Everyone who was conscious gave me a smile or a wave as I sat down. I was part of the club.

Leah introduced me to the woman, whose name was Ruby. The other lucky suckers were Jim, a phone line technician; Mandy, a cake decorator; and Leroy, who slept in a chair for a living. I got the sense it was fine to mention this was my first time, but maybe not so cool to ask how far along everyone was, for the obvious reason that the question would reveal where they stood with the disease. But I was spared making conversation when Jim and Mandy went back to their books.

Ruby, on the other hand, had waited her whole life to talk to me. I told her I'd been a cop and those were the last words I managed to get in that hour, interrupted only by Leah coming in and switching some tubes around. I learned about Ruby's favorite police TV show, her favorite police novel, the best police film ever made, and so on until I was ready to rip the tubes out of my chest and sprint for the door. In one of the few lulls in the monologue, I asked about her knitting to change the subject. That was the second sentence I uttered and definitely the last one I remembered as the previous night's hijinks caught up with me. My last conscious view was of Leah coming in, shooting me a sympathetic look--for the chemo or for having to listen to Ruby, I'm not sure which--and changing my lines one last time. After that, Marty Singer was on the fast-track to La-La Land, helped on his way by Ruby's non-stop vocal drone.

. . .

Aside from two concussions I'd received in the line of duty, I awoke feeling more stupid and dizzy than I ever had in my life. This was comparable on the wooziness scale, but those other times I'd also experienced massive pain on waking, which is what happens when you've been hit with a pipe (the first) and a fist (the second). This time, at least, there was no pain, but it was as if someone had taken my brain out, scrubbed it, then put it back upside down by mistake.

I focused on the room around me. Ruby and her knitting were gone, thankfully. Jim and Megan had also finished, and apparently Leroy had woken up long enough to walk out. He'd been replaced by a woman in her forties or fifties, also wearing headphones and with her eyes closed, but drumming her fingers on the arm of her chair. My brain commanded my arm to lift and I glanced at my watch. It was after eleven. I groaned out loud. I'd promised Amanda I'd be picking her up after class about now.

Leah moved into view. "How're you holding up?" she asked. "You've been out for a while."

"I feel…I feel weird," I said.

"Weird like sick?" she said, looking around. For a bedpan, I assumed.

"No. More like you did a lobotomy on me."

"We tried," she said. "But we couldn't find anything to take out."

I wanted to laugh, but nothing came out. Instead, I said, "How much longer is this going to take?"

She grabbed a small plastic cup off a cart and handed it to me. "Here. It's apple juice. What's the rush, sport?"

"I have to pick somebody up," I said. It sounded stupid even to me, seeing as how I was having trouble keeping my eyes from crossing.

She looked at me quizzically. "You're kidding, right? What part of ‘have a friend to take you home' didn't you get?"

I shook my head. What was I supposed to say?
I didn't think it would be this bad?
"Can't help it. I gotta."

She shook her head. "Sorry, but you're not going anywhere. I'm serious. Maybe later, when you know your limits with the treatment, but you're in no shape to hit the road. Is there any way your friend can get a ride from someone else? Or can we call a cab?"

I shook my head again, not to disagree, but because I suddenly felt numb all over. Useless. Helpless. It was as though someone had ripped away the proverbial curtain, showing me that what I'd been thinking and what was real were at complete odds with each other. I'd been treating cancer like it was the flu, an inconvenience that I'd have to put up with temporarily. Except cancer wasn't just a sore throat and a fever, and chemo wasn't just a shot in the arm. Cancer wasn't a bump in the road, it
was
the road, and I'd better make plans to treat it that way. My life, as I knew it, had changed for good.

Leah put her hand on mine. Her fingers were cool, dry, and soft. She smelled like soap and fabric softener and flowers and a bunch of other things that were solid and good.

"It's real, now?" she asked.

I swallowed. "It's real."

"That doesn't mean it's over, okay?" she said. "It's going to be the number one thing in your life, but it's not going to be the
only
thing, got it?"

"I think I figured that out," I said. "Took me a while."

"Do you have anybody at home we can call?"

My face froze into a mask and I could feel my throat tighten up. "I have a cat. Pierre. And he can't drive."

She smiled, then squeezed my hand. "What's your friend's name, the one you have to pick up? Let me give them a call, see if they can make it without you. Maybe they can even swing by and help you home."