“I saw that man come out who was in here before,” Agnes said. “Does he really want to go on?”
“His body wants to. The body wants to live. It’s amazing what it will tolerate in order to keep going.”
“Please don’t let me live like that.”
He began to touch her gently. He always felt for her heartbeat with his fingers on her pulses and over the organ before he laid the cold stethoscope on her skin. He was one of the few men who’d ever communicated that her physical being was worth something. That was an assessment she’d mostly had to make for herself.
“You don’t know how he feels from the inside.”
“I don’t even want to look that bad. His poor daughter.”
“Yes. She’s not having much fun these days.”
“I did that, for about fifteen years. Not my favorite.”
“I have been doing it for nearly forty years, and it is my favorite.” He examined her scars so unobtrusively that she barely felt violated.
“Somehow it seems different in your case.”
“To tell you the truth, professionalizing the role only shifts it. The realm is the same. It’s the realm of life that doesn’t feature growth.”
“Cancer cells grow. Tumors grow.”
“You don’t say.” Bill smiled.
Agnes laughed. More than any other interaction, she loved it when someone wouldn’t let her get away with her stuff. “I’m a know-it-all, quite famously so.”
“That helps, actually. So how have you been?” he asked. “Actually, why don’t you dress and come to my office and we’ll talk there.”
“Thank you,” Agnes said.
He had a surprising office. Minimalist, serene, carefully thought through. It was a place of work, where nothing would interfere with his thoughts. Patients might think it was for their benefit, but he was for their benefit. His office supported him.
Childishly, she liked to believe that not every patient was invited in.
“So. What are you thinking about the future?” he asked.
“I want to finish my work. I want to defeat my enemies.”
“So you need energy and all your wits.”
“Yes. Perhaps not all my wits, but enough.”
“Do you have any pain left from the surgery?”
“A bit. As predicted. I can’t lift my right arm above my shoulder.”
“Is that bothering you?”
“I’m getting used to it.”
“Do you meditate, Agnes?”
“I walk on the land every day. Well—if it’s too stormy, I watch the storm. I keep company with a cat. And I write. Or I sit there and wait for words.”
“Do you ever think of bringing a love of your body into those thoughts?”
“Nope!”
The doctor smiled. “How did I know that?”
“I am fourteen at heart.”
“Did you like your body then?”
“This seems a bit more like therapy than oncology.”
“Which brings us back around to the mind-body problem. What would you like to do now?”
“Cancer-wise?”
“For starters.”
“I’d like to ignore it completely. What are my odds?”
“Without treatment, you have a chance of it spreading.”
“A good chance?”
“If you were young, I’d say yes. But cancer behaves differently in the old, and there aren’t as many statistics that I consider definitive.”
There was a pause. Agnes felt in her arms her own perennial urge to wage war, to be in combat. He wouldn’t meet her in such a spot, so she flopped and floundered until she discovered what lay over the hill.
“I’m inclined to let nature figure out the schedule. But… can you help me when the time comes?”
“As I said earlier, the body wants to live. It’s very hard to know when the time comes. People miss the moment.”
“No feeding tubes. No hospital.”
“Make a living will, and make it really clear. You can go into hospice.”
“Yes. I’m sure that’s just great. But I don’t want to lie around dying.”
“I understand what you’re saying, Agnes. I can only do so much. I can point you to people to discuss all this with and who can help you make decisions.”
“Remember Harold and Maude? When Maude made a plan to kill herself on her eightieth birthday?”
“One of my favorites.”
“You’re suggesting I emulate Maude.”
“No. I’m suggesting you think it all through. And tell your near ones.”
“I see.” She did. She had to figure out when her mind would still be in charge of her body. Once the body took over, she wouldn’t be in control anymore. “That’s very good advice. I think you’re gypping yourself out of some money, though, by not pushing treatment.”
“Funnily enough, it hasn’t worked out that way.”
“Hmm. A reversal of expectations. That’s my stock in trade.”
“You may be fine, you know. It wouldn’t be delusional to assume that.”
He meant this genuinely. He was the poster boy for male doctors who weren’t condescending.
“Thanks. Delusional or not, that’s what I’ll do.”
Robert was in the waiting room when Agnes stepped out. Rarely did she have so much male attention in one season, much less one day. It wasn’t really what she wanted or needed. But she was not averse, as it turned out. Not anymore.
“Ready?” Robert said.
She had a starry sense of being watched. She’d always liked that; it made her feel significant. Funny of her to choose a life of being anonymous for her painstaking oeuvre.
On the way out of the building she dropped her handbag near the newsstand. It just slipped from her hand. Both she and Robert leaned over to pick it up, and on her way down her gaze alighted on a copy of the Cape Deel Gazette. What it was doing in Portland she couldn’t say, but there were papers from all over. The picture on the cover was of a house on Cape Deel.
“I want to buy this,” she said, rattling the paper.
She made the transaction and tucked it into her bag. Now she really felt as though she were out in the world. She never bought newspapers!
“So what did you do while I was being examined?” Agnes asked. They walked to the car.
“Errands. This and that.”
“Sounds fun.”
“Pretty much everything is fun these days.”
“I wish you’d tell me more about it.” She buckled her seat belt.
“There’s nothing to tell,” he said. “It’s exactly like in the movies.”
“I’m sure it’s the opposite.”
“It is, actually. Prison is all about time. The passage of time. Two hours is no time at all.”
“But that is the one aspect of it I might be able to comprehend. The passage of time is my central subject.”
He considered this. “The thing is, everyone understands that that’s what it’s about. The least intelligent guards nevertheless understand that manipulating time is a more successful form of torture than beatings. Solitary confinement ruins people. Partly because it’s lonely, but I think more because with the lights on all the time you have no sense of day or night, or how long you’ve slept, or anything. People try to keep track but it isn’t possible. You don’t know if the sun’s up or the moon’s out. You know nothing.”