Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [116]
A barely suppressed gasp rang around the room.
That was me.
Cancer? I didn't even know the guy, but I was shocked.
An intense conversation followed, during which the doctor mapped out the road ahead, reeling off in a steady drone various facts about treatments, using the bleach of his authority to scrub away any last germ of hope the poor, confused man might have of survival. Once these ugly formalities were over and the doctor had left, I slid slowly back in between my sheets, watching Fox News with the sound down—it's the only way any of their arguments make sense, I find—and for the next hour, maybe more, listened to the man in the next bed sob uncontrollably into his pillow.
It was while all of that was going on that my BlackBerry went off.
Two e-mails arrived, one after the other. First, one of the show runners dropped me a line—aha!!—commenting, with tactical understatement, “Sorry to hear you're under the weather.”
Under the weather??
Are you insane? I've just lost an organ. I almost died, pal.
But of course his hands are tied. It's never your fault, even when it is.
The second of the two e-mails arrived less than twenty minutes later, and was even more startling. This one from the head of the network, of all people. Lovely man. I met him a couple of times during the up-fronts and he was never anything less than polite and enthusiastic. Like The Thumb, he sent his best for a speedy recovery. How thoughtful.
It wasn't his good wishes, however, that really gripped my attention; it was a comment at the end, which I read once, then twice, then a third time in utter disbelief. The two-line message, doubtless intended to lift my spirits during a difficult time, instead struck me like a baseball bat to the face, plunging me deeper into depression.
“If it's any consolation,” the e-mail said as I scrolled down, “I'm renewing the show for a second season. Congratulations.”
Wha???
Aw, shit!!!
1 Yes, Mark was with us again. Once you find yourself on this particular merry-go-round, it's hard to get off.
2 I do!! But at my own pace, that's all. And preferably not through sweltering untamed jungle, across ice floes, or around the rims of erupting volcanoes.
19
Twist of the Blade
I've been hot-air ballooning three times in my life. It's quite an experience, cruising fifteen hundred feet above the ground across open countryside, with no birdsong, traffic noise, voices, or anything else to disturb you, only your accelerating panic at being so high up, and the occasional deafening ZZZZZZZHHHHHHHHHHHHTTTTTT from the propane tank as the pilot heats the air inside the envelope while flicking madly through a handbook looking for how to land the thing, because chances are he'll have to at some point. What goes up must come down, right? I believe it's one of the fifteen laws of aerodynamics.
Trouble is, you don't really “land” a balloon. It's tempting to think you do. That it's some kind of primitive elevator, with a button that you press—G for “Ground”—and, after a slight bump on impact, you casually step out of the basket, adjust your hair, and go about your day. But it's not like that, which is probably why it never caught on and people still prefer to take airplanes instead. In fact, each time I've been hot-air ballooning, the basket just dropped out of the sky, period, the way meteorites do, or derailed roller coasters, smacking into the ground with a terrible force, and then, as I and the other passengers were heaving a sigh of relief at still being alive, and just as we were adjusting our hair and getting ready to go about our day, the wind picked up suddenly and dragged us with a jolt for another ten minutes or so, through fields, ponds, and hedges, slithering, hopping, and tumbling, until it shuddered to a stop in a ditch and tossed us out like slops. I'm shocked nobody was killed.