Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors (8 page)

Sometimes, the gifts Jackie and I were given were not terribly well thought out.  Luckily for me, Jackie was in a position where she could exist financially without full time work.  She had not only become my constant companion and guardian, but also, after working twelve-hour shifts by my side in the hospital, Jackie would stay up much of the night screening the books and tapes being brought by friends.  She was regularly passing on the materials that she thought would lift my spirits, while sifting out those stories whose messages weren’t consistent with the mind-set we were trying to create.  There was rarely any discussion of those books; they would simply disappear with Jackie for her nightly reading, never to return, and never to be inquired about.  The balance between the deception we were attempting to create for ourselves and our awareness of that deception was a delicate one.  The denial of all doubt-provoking stimuli was a job that required enormous attention and vigilance.

Occasionally, our defense would be caught off guard, or overwhelmed.  I was once given by a close friend a book called
We the Victors
, which I’d heard about and was eager to read.  It was described as an intense account of several individuals who had survived devastating cancers, and it was supposed to be an inspirational, life-affirming, remarkable testament to the human spirit.  After leaving the hospital late the night before, Jackie came back the next morning looking nervous and shaken.  While it was obvious that something was wrong, she wouldn’t tell me what it was.  I asked her if she had the book for me, to which she curtly replied, “No.”  Day after day, I continued to ask Jackie about the book.  Her answer expanded, somewhat, into “You don’t want to read it.”

It was weeks before I could get Jackie to tell me what she’d read.  Apparently, interspersed with stories of amazing recoveries, of hardships overcome, there was one tragic account.  As Jackie told me the story of a nurse who had fallen in love with a young leukemia patient, only to watch him die an extremely frightening and painful death, she started to cry.

“It was awful,” she said.  Her voice was startlingly high-pitched, the words barely audible amid the crying that had taken control of her breathing.  “It was really bad.”  It was the first time that Jackie had shown any weakness to me since the diagnosis, and I suddenly realized how ridiculous I had been to think that anyone could maintain her level of composure in the midst of everything she was dealing with.  I had never seen Jackie as upset as she was, and it terrified me.  I had come to depend on her totally to shield me from all those forces that could be controlled, all the more since there seemed to be so many over which we had none.  If Jackie’s strength were to falter, I wondered, who would be there to take her place?

Beneath the fear, I was overwhelmed by sadness.  I could see on Jackie’s face what I recognized as disappointment.  I watched her turn, in one moment, from my hero, who had convinced me that she (and therefore I) was invincible, into a frightened child who was ashamed of her failure to subdue her own terror.  I was able to recognize, as a result of my own disappointment over what I saw as my family’s lack of awareness, that just as I needed someone whom I could trust to catch me if I were to collapse, Jackie would also at times need to abandon her stance of strength and reveal the helplessness that she was feeling herself.  I held her as she cried and, with not a clue as to how I would deliver the goods, I promised her everything was going to be all right.

When communication between my parents and me had become almost nonexistent, when any attempt at conversation bulged with a tension on the verge of bursting, I got a card in the mail from my father.  The card was one of a series of Japanese-style black-and-white line drawings my father had made years before.  Many of the paintings in the series are hauntingly evocative, using the fewest lines possible to impart reams of emotional information about the subjects.  This illustration showed three faceless figures, obviously a parent and two children, due to the size of the figures and the pose.  The taller figure was in the center, while the two smaller figures, each with an arm draped protectively around their shoulders, were being hugged in toward the looming presence of the larger body.  Not only hadn’t I received a letter from my father in years, but I hadn’t seen his handwriting in nearly as long.  When I opened the card and read what my father had written to me, before I had even absorbed one word of his message, I was thrown back in time to my childhood, sitting at his desk, reading his emphatic notes.  The urgency of the words back then was so apparent, even though their meaning was lost on me.  This letter, though, I understood.

My Dear Son,

Although it shouldn’t wait until times like these to clarify our feelings for each other and of the lives we lead, this has happened to me and I assume to you as well.

The depth of my love for you astounded me.  So instead of just hitting a new low in pain this past month I also hit a new high in awareness.  Not only of myself but of you and your life.

I see you now as a man with extraordinary inner strength, with the capacity to look into yourself and bring to an extreme situation all that the mind and heart can muster.  More than that, you brought all of us up by your words and actions when you were most down.

I admire you more than any person I have ever known.

Thank you for being my son.

Dad.

I cried when I read it.  I still have it, and I cry every time I read it now.

* * *

As I continued to get sicker and sicker, with one infection after another, the hospital clergy started bidding for my soul.  On every doorway to every room there was a nameplate to identify who was inside.  These nameplates also indicated whether each patient wanted a newspaper delivered to their room, if so, which newspaper, and included a letter to indicate what their religion was.  C,P,J,M.  That kind of thing.  I guess they got tipped off by the doctors, because whenever my condition deteriorated, I started getting visits from the rabbis.

The rabbis would bring Welch’s grape juice, instead of wine, and they’d ask permission to say some prayers with me.  They would try to get me to come downstairs to the services in the chapel, and I’d balk and make excuses, all the while thinking that they must also somehow know about my lust for my psychic — as if there was some kind of spiritual information-exchange program, a conspiracy, and they were trying to lure me away from her.

They did propose one thing, however, that I thought was so sweet and innocent that I agreed right away.  In the Jewish religion there is something known as the Book of Life.  Every birth is recorded in this book, and every event of that life is preordained.  Also in the book are the date, the time, and the manner of that person’s death.  When the time comes, the angel of death is sent, and the soul is escorted to…wherever Jewish souls go with the angel of death.  In cases of serious illness or injury, a ceremony is sometimes performed as part of the weekend synagogue service.  The individual’s life is discussed, and a new name is assigned.  A birth certificate is filled out, using the date from the Hebrew calendar, and
presto
: with a new name, the person is safe.  Unidentifiable.  The angel of death goes looking, but he is fooled!  Fooled by the cunning of a rabbi from Great Neck.

So I became Chaim.  A small price to pay, I thought.  But I wondered how many times you could pull that trick before the angel of death caught on.  Or, was there more than one angel of death, and were some of them harder to fool than others?

On October 16, 1985, I came walking down the hallway of Sloan-Kettering’s twelfth floor.  I had gone down to the coffee shop with my sister and Jackie, to try to eat a cheeseburger, French fries, and a chocolate milkshake to make up some of the eleven pounds I had already lost.  I’d never weighed more than one-hundred thirty-three pounds in my life to begin with.  Down to one-twenty-two, I was sporting a decidedly scarecrow-like appearance.  I was met in the hallway by Debbie Brown, a short, roundish nurse who had been as consistently friendly and encouraging as others had been abusive.  Debbie had a huge smile on her face, and she was bouncing up and down like a ten-year-old girl with a secret.

“The doctors are looking for you,” she said.  “They’re in your room.”

Earlier that day some bone marrow had been “aspirated,” or sucked out, from the back of my hipbone to be examined and checked for any leukemia.  If the marrow was clean, then the first, or the “induction,” course of chemotherapy, (as in “inducing” remission) would be considered successful.  Then I could go home and take a month off before moving on to rounds two and three, known as “consolidation chemo.”

This bone marrow aspirate and bone biopsy was a procedure that I had first experienced on the day of diagnosis with Dr. Nixon.  In the five weeks since, it had already gone a long way toward becoming what it would remain for the next few years: something like the overgrown six-foot psychotic bully from third grade who decides one day, out of the blue, that you’re his best friend and can never be out of his sight.  You walk around everywhere in the shadow of this hulking beast, always fearful but never knowing exactly when he’s going to snap and punch you in the face.

The procedure is done most often by a doctor working alone, or with a nurse assisting.  A table is laid ready with a set of several slides, and a package, sealed for sterility, is snapped open.  Inside are the tools, the instruments, that the doctor will use.  While you lie on your stomach, with your pants pulled halfway down the length of your backside and your head turned to one side, the doctor presses firmly on either side of the base of your spine to find an easily accessible bone outcropping.  If you reach back and feel the bones that stick out on either side of the spine, right below your pant waist, that’s the spot they’re looking for.  The doctor then injects into the skin, with a hypodermic needle, an anesthetic called lidocaine.  This produces an intense, but short-lived, stinging sensation, after which the doctor pushes the needle in deeper and deeper, injecting more lidocaine and causing more stinging, until the needle is pressing against the bone.  The needle is then removed and set aside, and, while the doctor vigorously rubs the flesh under the injection site to hasten the effects of the anesthetic, he will attempt to engage you in conversation.

Now is the time, you see, when all the warm patter, the compassionate human contact, that has been so craved but absent from the brusque daily visits to the bedside is offered.  Now, with the doctor behind you and out of sight.  Now, with your face smashed into a pillow, and your naked ass sticking up in the air.  And without fail I accepted, gratefully, every time.

With the appetizer finished, the main course consists of a long, thick needle being
screwed
, first through your skin, and then into the back of your hipbone, with the doctor, often a two-hundred-pound man,
pressing
down on you with all his strength.  This isn’t so much terribly painful as terrifying.  I was never able to stop myself from imagining the needle somehow snapping off inside me, or, worse still, suddenly meeting a soft spot and smashing all the way through me until it ripped out the front side.

But those things never happened.  When the needle was in deep enough, the doctor would screw on a large syringe, and pull back, to suck some of the marrow out from inside my bones. 
That
was painful.  No anesthetic had reached inside my bones, and, since there is a pressure vacuum inside these bones of ours, the deep, dull pain would reach down, down, down the leg, into the foot, into the insides of the very inside of the self.  Yes, into the very marrow of one’s bones, as the saying goes, the doctor would go drilling, tunneling to find a lode more precious than any gem deep inside the Earth.  If you can imagine what it might feel like to a bowl of chocolate pudding if you sucked some of it up through a straw, that’s what it feels like to have a bone marrow aspirate.

For dessert, the bone biopsy.  Many doctors also find it a useful diagnostic tool to break off a tiny piece of bone to examine under the microscope.  For this, another tool is screwed into the needle already in your body, and, once it’s in place, the doctor
shakes
the whole gizmo, with your body attached to it, quite vigorously.  I have discovered, through my experiences with leukemia, that I have got very, very tough bones.  I’ve had them complimented by several doctors in several different states.  I’ve been told how lucky I am to have such strong bones, how tough it would be to break such strong bones, as I’ve been tossed and thrown around like a doll impaled on a spear.

When I walked into the room I saw, in separate corners, Dr. Zweig and my parents.  Everyone in the room was standing.  My marrow had been drawn several hours earlier, and we had all been waiting, like a death row prisoner and his kin, to hear whether I was to be granted a stay of execution or not.  If the results showed that remission had not been successfully induced, there would be no choice but to begin the month-long process over immediately and try again.  Either that or go home to die.  I tried my best to mask my awareness of what I was asking, as I faced Dr. Zweig and said, “Good news?”

“Yeah.  Pretty good,” he barely squeaked.

“What do you mean ‘Pretty good’?  Is it in remission or what?”

“Yeah, yeah.”  He seemed to be answering begrudgingly, using as little breath as was required to make a sound that might be accepted as a reply.  “I’d say we have a very young, new remission marrow.  Don’t get your hopes up too high, though.  Still a
loong
way to go.”

Then he added, “You know, that was one of the easiest inductions I’ve ever seen here.”

I couldn’t tell if he was congratulating me on a job well done, or telling me “You just wait.  We’re gonna get you next time around.”

At the time when I wound up in the hospital, I wouldn’t have considered myself to be the most widely loved or lovable actor on the planet.  My way of dealing with the frustrations of the business, the inevitable envy and resentments of watching others transcend my own success, had become the habit of telling anyone who would listen that I was
the
single-most brilliant actor alive in New York City.  It was just that I had to have
someone
speaking about me in those terms, even if I was the only one that I could get to do it.