Because of the location of her tumor, Yolanda could look forward to loss of fine motor ability—goodbye typing, goodbye cooking—as well as of speech and balance and more primitive functions. Seizures. Personality change.
In the end Yolanda slid off the table. She folded the cotton cover neatly, snapping it. Dr. Mitchell and the med student watched her.
“I’m going home,” she told them both. “Back to New Mexico.”
“I don’t recommend that. We need to bring in a neurologist and should schedule surgery and start a course of radiation immediately. We should operate now, relieve the pressure on the brain.”
“I don’t live here!” Yolanda whipped her head around, afraid of being grabbed and wheeled away.
“We can see about arranging for a medical transfer.”
“I’m fine. I got myself here, didn’t I?”
Dr. Mitchell looked at Yolanda, then stood, pushing himself up on his thighs. He ran a hand through his molded gray hair. “I can’t keep you here against your will. But I need to impress upon you the severity of your condition. I urge you to get treatment immediately when you get home. And no driving—coordination, cognition, it’s all affected, and the risk of seizure is high.” He left the room, the med student hurrying after. When Dr. Mitchell came back he was alone, armed with a sheaf of papers, including an AMA, Against Medical Advice, which stated that she, Yolanda Padilla, had been informed of the risks of her voluntary discharge and was operating with full knowledge of those risks. She would not sue Las Vegas Medical when her seizures set in.
This was only the beginning of her medical journey, Dr. Mitchell said as he handed her a list of referrals in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. She should be in touch for as long as it took for her to find a doctor she trusted, and once she did, Dr. Mitchell would work with her team in New Mexico to sort out what was best for her. When he left, Yolanda flipped through the pages. On the last page, under the innocuous heading Further Resources, was “Hospice of New Mexico.”
Yolanda dropped the packet on the examination table. When she rubbed her arms, she found that she couldn’t feel her palms against her skin. This was why they kept it so cold in here, she realized. So that people would be too slow to react with violence against the news, too numb to feel despair.
Instead of telling Cal about the tumor, she paid a shocking amount for a dye job and dramatic jagged layers, packed her bags, rented an absurd convertible, and announced she was leaving. Poor Cal, baffled behind the steering wheel as she jumped out and slammed his truck door. He waited, watching from the curb as she went into the Hertz office, thinking she’d turn around, give him some explanation, and she did turn around, told him to just leave.
How good it felt to be driving yesterday! Top down, phone shut off, map flapping crazily on the seat beside her. She was, for the first time she can remember, completely untethered to anyone. As she left Las Vegas, the Mojave spread wide around her, Yolanda combed her fingers through her spiky new haircut, feeling like a starlet, like the lovely title character in some movie about rebirth and reinvention.
At first she truly didn’t think about her diagnosis. She sped over the blacktop as if her tires would stick if she slowed. Sage-scented wind caught in her hair, pressed her into the seat like firm hands against her chest. Higher crept the speedometer: eighty, ninety, ninety-nine, and then, for a moment, a hundred. The car trembled, buffeted by the wind, and Yolanda wondered if this was the kind of loss of self Anthony had been seeking all those years, driving fast, soaking himself in alcohol. It was exhilarating even to stop to pee in those dinky desert towns with their overpriced gas, and she found herself flirting with the grubby and slightly threatening men who seemed to be the only permanent inhabitants of these outposts. She could be kidnapped, Yolanda thought with an oddly light heart, murdered, left for dead among the sagebrush, and not a soul would know where she was!
But the thrill had worn off, and the vast deserts began to feel just desolate. The landscapes changed, from sage and scrub brush to agave, briefly to dry ponderosa forest, then back to stunted prickly pear and yucca, but to Yolanda, it all looked dead. Her brain was heavy in her head, her tumor pushing against the walls of her skull. She put the top up, then down again, hoping to recapture some of her earlier elation, but now the air just felt thin and dusty and too bright.