Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [62]
Add to these fears the fear of a surgeon’s knife.
Some years back on a routine physical examination my doctor found a tumor in my chest, maybe the size of a baseball. It was lodged between my lung and aorta. A few days later I was in Denver unpacking a small suitcase at Rose Hospital, with surgery to commence after several days of tests.
Val and I were separated at the time. We had to split every so often; a week, two. We always got back together. I was in Denver with Georgia, a screwball divorcee who had been married to a musician, among others. Musicians, as we know, did much pioneering in the use of uncontrolled substances. Georgia was a very classy lady, one of the first female oil executives at that period. She loved a wild time and had a real thing for writers. We were very comfortable with each other, never talked of marriage or heavy-duty commitments.
When the tumor was found, I talked the doctor into letting me out of the hospital every night so I could cuddle in with Georgia. What the hell, the surgeon must have thought, the poor bastard is probably loaded with cancer, so why not?
The only drug of note going in those days was marijuana. New Wave stuff. Georgia had a lot of musician buddies and a source of pot. At first I thought it grew hair in your teeth or made you jump from tall buildings. There was a movie about it in the old days called Reefer Madness and it scared the hell out of me as a kid.
Cancer? So, why not a little marijuana? I reverted to a lot of macho, Marine Corps bullshit. If I was going to die, I was going out with bravado.
Every night I jumped the hospital and Georgia and I would get high and hit every sleazy joint in Denver. Don’t laugh when I say Denver. It was still part cowboy town and knew how to take care of a fellow who had had a long dry spell on the dusty cow trails. Raunchy as it gets.
The day before surgery I conned my way out of the hospital on the promise I’d be back by early evening. So, who watches time? Georgia and I always loved playing fantasy and we had pretty fertile minds. We made up a wish list and damned if she didn’t go up on the runway at Jake Foxe’s, the local strip joint, on amateur night. And Georgia put on quite a show. I got off watching the guys at the front table and she got off watching me get off and damned if we didn’t pick up another stripper—but that’s another story.
What has this morbid tale of lust and vulgarity to do with the resolution of fear? I recall the exact fraction of a second it happened. The three of us were crossing Colfax Avenue. We were making for a little private club-type hideaway of black musicians to find more substance.
As we were waiting for the signal lights to change, the thought of tomorrow’s surgery flashed through my mind. I said to myself, If I could magically change my condition and trade places with anyone in the world at this moment, who would it be?
Churchill? Babe Ruth? Clark Gable? Who would I be? The answer was Gideon Zadok. Facing an operation with less than a fifty-fifty chance of survival, I just wanted to be me ...with a girl on each arm getting blasted and heading for a whorehouse motel. I was satisfied with what I had done with my life ...won a big battle ...written some very fine stuff ...never compromised as a writer. I had remorse for my sins and tried to pay them off by being a good man. I faced the rotten side of me head-on. In sum, I was damned pleased with myself and I guess I was ready to die.
In this very strange, wonderful moment waiting on Colfax Avenue for the lights to change my fear vanished. No regrets. What a wonderful way to go into an operating theater.
Sometime after midnight and before dawn I returned to my hospital room. The anesthetist was in a rage. I confessed to the various ingredients I had ingested.
“You’ve got some milkshake in you, Zadok. One more night like this and you won’t need surgery.”
The operation was postponed until I was detoxed—with an armed guard on my door.
But the main thing was—I wasn’t afraid!