In waiting rooms people watch and read and talk. If it’s a crowd that starts to recognize itself they talk to skip over the uncertainties engendered just watching or reading.

Lynn has been looking at me but not saying anything for the last few visits. She wants the details. After our fourth consecutive Wednesday together she makes a move.

She’s 78, and was diagnosed with leukemia some months back. She wants to make it to 80. That’s all. She tells  me then she will go in peace.

Eighty is a nice number, Lynn says.

I agree.

Minutes into our conversation my name is called by a nurse and I excuse myself with a nod.

The new room seats six patients comfortably. Five seats are taken and the only open one is number four. It’s for me.
Beside each chair is a pole to hang bags of blood or chemicals or fluid. Across the room there is an old man who looks to be in his late eighties but maybe disease has eaten away and scabbed him over with something I’m mistaking for years.

Two plastic chairs flank his seat; one for his wife, the other seats his daughter.

The old man looks awful enough  that I can’t forget him. A round of chemo is running through an IV and he’s running a fever. His breaths are short and eyes hectic.

Towards the room’s center a nurse and his wife battle over how to get the fever down while it keeps going up. He’s shaking and muttering as the woman he’s been married to for the last half century demands he be given Tylenol and packed in ice and I can’t help thinking about fish and ice and gawkers at a crowded market.

Another nurse of higher rank joins in the argument and continues to repeat ‘ibuprofen works faster’ while her comrade nods in confirmation and the old man writhes in his recliner.

Finally his wife is handed a clipboard with a waiver acknowledging she has refused to follow their orders and they cannot be held responsible for what happens.

Her pen slides across the bottom of the paper.

Ten minutes after Tylenol the fever starts to drop. By time I leave the room an hour later he’s just below 100 degrees Fahrenheit. His breathing has calmed, his eyes are closed. His wife stands to his side. Her arms are crossed and her back hunched as she watches him sleep and breath.

____________________________

Six day’s later it’s a cold morning and the air hints at a storm. The drive back to the clinic is gray and crowded. After parking and hanging my jacket, I check in with the desk and take my place in the waiting room. The closest magazine is People and it accompanies my coffee nicely.

Over the top of my magazine I see Lynn. She is nearing her sixth and final round of chemo and looks sanguine. She catches me and smiles and I nod.

Her eyes sparkle. They tell the rest of us she no longer has a number in mind.

Some faces here are new. The old man is not. He still looks sick but not so sick. He sits in a wheel chair attentively watching the morning news where images of Haiti’s rubble and agony flicker across a television.

Next to him his wife grabs his hand and pulls it onto her lap.

That night I’m back home and up late reading by the glow of a little 60 Watt desk lamp leftover from college. Before bed I open my computer and watch a video a million and a half other people have taken the time to watch. It’s Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, delivering a commencement speech to the 2005 class of Stanford University. It’s one I’ve seen before.

His message is ripe for people graduating and looking to thrive and be filled. Don’t settle. Stay hungry; stay foolish.
Somewhere in the middle of his speech Jobs talks about his pancreas, its cancer and death. He says to the crowd:
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because Death is the single best invention of Life. It’s Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make room for the new….”

Tonight I don’t watch the rest. I shut down my computer and get into bed and fall asleep with my little lamp still burning.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post