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By Root 2243 0

universe to the other and back again. I remember that day as a Morse code of waiting and testing, a dash-dot-dash-dot-dash of long periods of waiting punctuated by brief periods of frenzy and terror, time spent with the doctors, with their scientific languages and ear-needling machinery. I remember holding and squeezing Lydia’s hand—more for my own comfort than for hers, I’m afraid—as the doctors turned off the lights, and in the darkness proceeded to clip black sheets of glossy film to a white glowing plate on the wall. I remember the doctors pointing to certain areas of the images. I remember the wobbling sound of the film sheets in the doctors’ hands before they clipped them to the plate of light. These floppy sheets of shiny black film, when pressed flat against the glow of the plate on the wall, contained pictures that were thus: a bright white outline of a person’s head, emerging sharp against the darkness around it, and inside of the outline, an intricately branching lump of gray cauliflower. Inside the lump of cauliflower, in one cluster of its fat lumpy branches, was a dark blot. The doctors pointed to this blot as they spoke. I remember these doctors bandying about a certain very beautiful and musical polysyllabic word that nevertheless was a word to be said in a low voice and with a grave face on, which was “oligodendroglioma”—this complicated eight-syllable song of Greek roots lilting many times from the doctors’ lips.

A brain tumor had been found in the left frontal lobe of Lydia’s brain. This tumor may well have been there for years, said the doctors. Years! They guessed this is probably what happened: a “benign” tumor, which had caused no “noticeably debilitating symptoms” (those words I remember clearly, as that is an exact quote from the mouth of one of these doctors: “noticeably debilitating”), had, for reasons unknown, recently begun to blossom into a “malignant” one. It had decided it was time to grow, and was currently in the process of chewing up part of Lydia’s brain, and was getting fatter and fatter, crowding out and pushing around all the good and needed matter of her front-left cerebrum. The way the doctors described it to us, I imagined Lydia’s tumor as a grotesquely fat man rudely shoving his way into a crowded elevator, squishing everyone else against the walls until they cannot breathe. There were several options, said the doctors, none good. They were united in the opinion that surgery—fucking brain surgery—was the best way to go, although they acknowledged that it could prove to be difficult, as apparently the tumor was located in a particularly inconvenient spot in her brain that would make it tricky to scrape out. So they advised first surgery—that definitely—and then a period of chemotherapy to follow it up. The chemotherapy was optional but strongly recommended. Lydia was told to think it over carefully, but that the brain surgery was a must if she hoped to live.

(Note: Gwen has just called to question the accuracy of certain elements of my narrative. She asked whether the woman from upstairs was at all surprised to hear me speak. Wasn’t I not supposed to talk to strangers, anyway? Did they really allow me into the hospital? And etc., etc. I admit, as always, to embellishments here and there in servitude to the interests of drama, though I suggest you not worry too much about them. If I ever stray from the letter of the truth, I never do in spirit. Let’s move on.)

XXIX

About a week later Lydia underwent surgery. They had to shave her head so they could saw her skull open to get at the tumor. As it turned out, the surgery wouldn’t do much good. It would be a squandered effort. Lydia had no health insurance; so Mr. Lawrence paid for the surgery, a last act of kindness to us. But before we get to that, there’s one more thing I must tell you about. Our readers probably already know about this part of my story, which has been well documented in texts other than this one, so I won’t dwell on it overmuch.

That day at the hospital wasn’t over yet. Or maybe this happened on another