Medicine Men Page 14

  That day of blank gray driving seemed to last forever—until Dave announced that they were almost there. As things turned out, they were not: there was another hour or so of a highway, off the freeway, an endless area of used-car lots, garages, cheap motels.

  They were to stay in the hotel advertised as being closest to the hospital, a Hilton, which, after some confusion back and forth on this highway from hell, Dave managed to find.

  Twin beds (a welcome surprise). Molly fell onto one of them, the one closest to the window. “I forgot my toothbrush,” she said just before falling asleep.

  “I’ll get you another.”

  “Get two! Please.”

  “I’m going over to the hospital. Don’t worry if I’m not back right away.”

  Molly woke from a small unhelpful nap, happy to find herself still alone. For a moment she crazily thought, If I just moved to another room, and used another name, could Dave still find me? I don’t need any more radiation.

  Instead, she dialed Felicia, who asked her, “What’s it like there?”

  Molly considered, looking around. “Well, just outside my window there’re some palms, sort of scruffy, and there’s a big black sign that says SUNDAY CHAMPAGNE BRUNCH, ALL YOU CAN EAT $18.95.”

  “Oh. What an odd number.”

  “Isn’t it.”

  But then Dave’s key turned in the lock, and there he was. “I don’t know why they gave us twin beds,” he said. “I told them—”

  “I’ll call you later,” Molly said to Felicia.

  The hospital was a huge spread of arched and ivy-covered bright new stone, invitingly disguised as a motel. There was even a tall thin black man with a top hat out in front, greeting people, directing traffic. But once inside, in those greenish antiseptic-smelling corridors, anyone could tell that this could only be what it was—a hospital, and mostly for the severely ill.

  There seemed a great many middle- to late-middle-aged men in hospital robes, in wheelchairs, or dressed in street clothes and asking directions at some desk, or standing in line. “Prostate patients,” Dave whispered too loudly. “I hope that’s something I can escape. The statistics on impotence—”

  The main business of this hospital, the radiation-particle-proton therapy (all romantically subsumed under IMAGING), went on in the lower floor. In the basement, underground. Appropriately, Molly thought: a medical hell. Dangerous machines that cost fifty million dollars.

  But before they went down to all that: “First I want to show you some of the rooms,” Dave told her, pushing UP. “They’re really nice.”

  “Why? I don’t have to stay here.”

  What Dave found nice was the fact that the rooms were all two-person suites. “That way all patients get better care,” he chattered. “Less work for the nurses, see? Nice big shared bathrooms.”

  “ ‘Shared,’ how horrible.”

  “Jesus, Molly.”

  “Shouldn’t we go down for my appointment?”

  “You’re right, it’s just time.”

  As they whooshed down in the elevator, Molly thought as she had before that Dave was much less compulsive than she about times of appointments, as though in some sense he felt himself in charge. Which God knows she did not.

  The treatment room was larger and brighter than those for radiation at Mt. Watson, otherwise very similar: a white gurney-table, below the bright and infinitely complex machinery. Several technicians, low-key, friendly, and helpful.

  And the treatment took the same amount of time. Flick. A fraction of a second.

  “I don’t feel any different,” Molly told Dave, back in their Hilton room.

  “You’re not supposed to.”

  “Neither of us ever knows when the other one is kidding, do we. That’s not a good sign.”

  “Oh Molly, for God’s sake, let up.”

  If anything, she felt slightly worse in Alta Linda. A more pervasive nausea, an inability to eat that was almost absolute. Bathing, she regarded her naked white body, which seemed to jut sharp bones.

  • • •

  Dave’s elderly, invalid mother lived in Long Beach, with one of her daughters, Dave’s sister; Molly gathered that they did not get on and that Dave worried about this household. He felt that he should go to see them. “But I don’t see how I can leave you like this,” he said to Molly. “You’re not really trying to eat.”

  “Yes I am. And I’ll eat just as much if you’re in Long Beach. Or as little.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Please. You’re just adding guilt to my other problems.”

  “Maybe a feeding tube,” he mused.

  “NO.”

  “If you can’t eat we’ll have to do something.”

  The something that eventually was done was to put Molly into the Alta Linda Hospital, into one of those two-person suites, with bathroom, that Dave had so admired (had he even then been making this plan? Molly later suspected that he had). At the time she even agreed; she was so weakened, so demoralized by weakness, that she had no choice, she felt. And, somewhere in her enfeebled consciousness she had a dim sense that getting Dave away to Long Beach—getting herself away from Dave—would be an improvement. A step.

  But that was not immediately true. The doctor in whose charge she had been left, Dr. Shepherd, was almost never there, and his brief appearances seemed hurried; he sounded harassed. He asked her, “How long have you had this anorexia?”

  “I don’t have anorexia—it’s from radiation. Nausea.”

  “Well—” His tone implied that one eating disorder was the same as any other. “Dr. Jacobs suggested a feeding tube,” he told her. “We could put it in right there—” He gestured at her stomach.

  “NO.”

  Startled—such a weak woman and so defiant, still—he hurried out.

  “My mother isn’t doing very well,” Dave told her, on the phone. “And Rachel, they just don’t get on. It’s pretty much of a mess—it may take me a couple of days to sort it out. You’ll be okay.”

  “Sure. I’m really much better,” Molly lied.

  “Great. I talked to Shepherd—he thought you were doing really well.”

  He never looks at me, Molly did not say. He must have me confused with some other patient, some recovering anorexic.

  “This is the worst place I’ve ever been,” she whispered to Felicia, over the phone. “You wouldn’t believe. Last night I rang for a sleeping pill, I really needed one, and I got it three hours later. I had a roommate, this very old Filipino lady, but they took her somewhere else. Or maybe she died. My doctor would like to get rid of me. If I’d just eat a couple of meals and go away, he thinks. This place reminds me of a women’s prison in some movie from the thirties.”

  Nurses, or maids, orderlies—someone kept turning the TV on, so that despite herself Molly watched wars, bombings, artillery attacks, tanks in deserts, and natural attacks of ferocious weather, floodings and tornadoes, freezings, earthquakes and fires. At some point a doctor muttered in her direction, “Sometimes I think I hate Arabs.”

  She whispered back, “Sometimes I hate doctors.”

  Dave called and she told him, “I really think I’d be better off in the hotel. This hospital food, and the television—I can’t sleep.” She knew that she must not say, I hate it here, it’s horrible.

  “How would you get back to the hospital for your treatments?”

  “Taxis! They’re all over!” Molly had not in fact seen a taxi in the area, but at this point there was no lie that she would not have told.

  “I’ll talk to Shepherd.”

  Then suddenly, in a bursting open of her doors, the next afternoon, good fortune arrived in the person of Felicia, windblown and tanned, with her ravishing smile, fair hair a beautiful tangle. She was laughing, out of breath. “God, you’re right! What a terrible place! I had to ask all these directions and everyone tried to lose me.” She laughed again. “Even the hills down here are hideous! Southern California!”

  They stared at
each other, and then Molly laughed too. “You’ve come to rescue me!—or at least take me back to the horrible Hilton.”

  “Sure! And I’ll do it in style! I’ve got my father’s new Lexus, they’re in Jamaica.”

  Dave had in fact called Dr. Shepherd, who, with more alacrity than Molly had so far seen, signed her out. “Lucky for you your friend showed up to take you,” he remarked. “There are no cabs. But maybe you noticed.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Half an hour later, standing in the middle of Molly’s hotel room, Felicia stated, “This is one of the most depressing rooms I ever saw. Even the view. Such ugly hills, and that billboard.” And then she asked, “Don’t you want to sort of unpack?”

  After a moment, and to her own surprise, Molly answered, “No,” and she began to smile—which felt unfamiliar, as though she had not used just those facial muscles in weeks. She said, “You know, there’s really no reason to stay here? I could just check out, and you could take me home?”

  “But—” But Felicia was smiling too, not really making an objection. “But why not!” she then said. “Great!”

  “Could we possibly drive up the coast, do you think?”

  “Sure. Highway Five is really deadly.”

  “I know.”

  At the coast the fog had lifted, and there, below the furrowed, dangerous cliffs was the roiling, fierce bright sea, all brilliant greens and blues—wild free water. Molly, dozing since they had left the hotel, since Alta Linda, came wide awake, exhilarated, and very slightly afraid.

  She said, “Of course there’s no reason for me to have any more radiation.” She knew that she was talking to herself; metaphorically, she was whistling. “After all, I had six weeks of it at Mount Watson, and another week here.”

  “Seems like a lot. I wonder if we’ll see any whales—this is the season for them.”

  “It’s so beautiful,” Molly breathed. And then, “Dave will be totally furious.”

  “Let him be furious. He’s an angry person. And he left you alone in that ghastly place. Really, was seeing his mother all that important?”

  “Well, it was, but it’s also been going on like that for years.” Molly suddenly laughed. “He’s probably back in the hotel by now. Big surprise.” (It turned out later that this was exactly the case: Dave came back earlier than he had said he would: “I left my mother, just to take care of you.”)

  “Big surprise for him.”

  They both giggled like high school girls, there in the fresh clean salt air, sun-streaked, smelling of sea.

  But in addition to the childishness, that foolish triumph, even more strongly Molly felt a clear and adult certainty: she had taken charge of her own life, she had listened to her own clear inner voice. She had freed herself, at least temporarily, from the ruling tyrants, from Dave, from doctors.

  From hell.

  FIFTEEN

  “Childish! Irresponsible! I don’t see how a woman of your age and general intelligence could be so—” Dave’s tirade went on and on—with occasional lulls, small pauses for meals and other necessary business—for several days.

  According to him, Molly had greatly inconvenienced, and alarmed, everyone at Alta Linda Hospital, and almost everyone at the Alta Linda Hilton, never mind that she had checked out, given credit cards, all that. She had not said exactly where she was going. She had, as he said, alarmed the hospital and the hotel—not to mention what she had done to Dave himself, and his mother, who was much too old for such shocking surprises. And his sister. Also old.

  Although Molly was not feeling very well, she made what seemed to her quite logical responses: only for one night had anyone not known her whereabouts, the night when on the way home (driving up the gorgeous, glorious coast!), she and Felicia had stopped off at the Mission Inn, in Carmel. Which was hardly hiding out. Both the hotel and the hospital had her home address; why did they need to know where she was the next day? Why did Dave’s mother need to know anything at all, or his sister?

  She might as well not have spoken. Dave, never a good listener, on this occasion chose not to hear or to acknowledge a word she had said. Were all or most or many doctors poor listeners? Molly and Felicia had discussed this question, and had only, fairly, decided that both Dave and Sandy listened poorly, if at all. However, the same could even be said of nice Dr. Macklin, and certainly of Dr. Gold, the dentist. Dr. Shapiro listened, but then that is what he did: shrinks listened.

  “… as well as danger to yourself. Possible recurrence … best possible medical opinion … fifty-million-dollar machine, perfectly aimed and accurate … take advantage … never expected any thanks … danger to the brain stem … don’t know how lucky you are …” Even his strong teeth looked menacing, and his shining head.

  But I only left a few days early, I’d already had a lot of their perfect radiation. Molly did not even bother to say this—again. Nor did she really listen to whatever he was saying. Perhaps from him she had learned (in which case she should indeed be grateful) to tune him out, so that his words had no meaning, and the sound of his angry voice as he paced her bedroom barely grazed her tired consciousness. She stroked the sleek purring black cat by her side and she wondered, How could anyone possibly not like cats? Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler—Dave. Well, it figures, she thought.

  At other times, though, she felt that he was probably right, and that she was in fact irresponsible, a causer of trouble. Ungrateful, as her parents had more than once pointed out. And in church, the General Confession: “… done those things which we ought not to have done, and left undone those things which we ought to have done, and there is no health in us.” The Confession resounded in her mind, especially that last: no health in us. For, as though in punishment for her flight, her misdeeds, she felt worse and worse. Barely sustained by vitamin pills and chicken soup (Felicia’s, homemade), she was not getting appreciably stronger, or better, so far. She lay weakly in bed. She slept fitfully, poorly, plagued by bad dreams.

  “My mother’s worse,” Dave told her. “My sister. You can’t live here alone. I wish you’d put that goddam cat down—he’s probably feeding you germs.”

  But Dave’s voice was beginning to fade out, even as he said, quite clearly: “… move in here? You don’t have good sense. You have to be taken care of … get married?”

  At this Molly came out of her fog to say very distinctly, “But we don’t even like each other.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly.”

  But sometimes, and for increasing lengths of time, she felt all right. She could bathe and dress and walk around in her living room, admiring that bright spectacular view, the bay and the melodramatic bridge, all that water—or from her bedroom she could look out onto her deck and think of more flowers. Of going to a nursery, planning and choosing, even working a little in all that potted soil.

  She was all right being up for a while, but then she had to get back into bed, or at least to lie down there. She felt that she was magnetized by her bed, in love with it; going to bed was her true and only aim in life these days.

  Felicia said, “Sandy must be stalking me, I know it. I couldn’t just happen to see him as much as I do. But who could I complain to? He’d deny it, and as he knows, he’s perfectly safe. I’d sound such a fool if I went to the cops about Dr. Raleigh Sanderson. They probably even know who he is. Oh, this is interesting: I also saw Connie the other day. Remember Connie, the fat Boston drunken wife?—the perfect excuse for Sandy, and for me? Well, I knew who she was, somehow, but so thin, I couldn’t believe it. I have to say, she really looks good. A lot better than he does, actually.”

  “Where’d you see her?”

  “At the Cal-Mart, down an aisle, so we weren’t exactly confronted with each other. But I’m sure she recognized me too. Anyway, she looks great. Do you have to be an alcoholic to join AA? I thought I might try.”

  Molly laughed. “I don’t know—you could give it a whirl.”

  “Connie just looks like a very nice, not very happy w
oman. When I think how I used to bad-mouth her, so terrible. I guess I was just excusing myself. With a lot of loud talk, so I wouldn’t hear any inner guilty voices. Well, I’d never do that again. Not that that’s going to do poor Connie any good. Though I’m hardly the only one.”

  They were sitting in Molly’s bedroom, Molly in bed, Felicia in the bedside chair. And Felicia’s warm presence was cheering to Molly, no matter what she was talking about. Molly felt a little stronger, and the soup that Felicia had brought, this time a fish broth, was especially good. Molly actually was able to sip it with no effort—and for dessert there was a little pot of baked custard.

  “And this really weird thing’s been happening again,” Felicia continued, and she frowned in a concentrating way. “I told you: Someone comes into my garden at night, not always at the same time but every night—God, I’ve got to get a new gate put up back there, one that locks. Anyway, he comes in and he walks around a little, and then, then he takes a leak, he pees—honestly, that’s what he must be doing. I can hear it. Sometimes I think it’s sort of funny, but then I don’t, and I’m scared.”

  “Sandy, do you still think?” But even as she said this it sounded unimaginable to Molly: Sandy, Dr. Raleigh Sanderson, performing such a personal, private act as urination out in the open air of someone’s garden, late at night?

  “Well, of course at first I thought it’s got to be Sandy. But now I’m not so sure. It just doesn’t seem like his kind of gesture. He’s too much of a snob, if you see what I mean. He wouldn’t do something so ordinary. So lowly.”

  They both laughed, and Molly choked a little on her soup.

  “Just eat,” Felicia told her. “Don’t try to talk, just listen, and finish your soup.”