The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [460]
Yet while Warren didn’t want to know much, he talked and talked about what he did know. “They’ve got a team of five guys, and it’s at least a ten-hour deal. She’s got the best care in the world. She got a letter from Howie that—no mother could get a better letter. She’s got a lot going for her. But it’ll be a tough ordeal. They’ve given her a lot of information, and she knows I don’t want the details. She’s told me what she thinks I can handle. I’m sure the doctors think it’s crazy that I’m not talking to them directly. But I can’t take that, so she’s sort of told me the key elements.”
A few days later Susie flew into Omaha to pick up Susie Jr., who was going to accompany her to Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York for her second opinion. Tests there gave them the good news that there was no indication that the cancer had spread, and they flew back to Omaha, where Big Susie was going to spend the weekend. But while there she had another episode of crippling pain from her abdominal adhesions. This attack, coming less than five months after the obstruction that had prevented the Buffetts from traveling to Africa the previous May, was disturbing. She had to stay over at Susie Jr.’s, but for once heavy doses of painkillers enabled her to avoid hospitalization, which had always been required before.
Haggard and pasty-faced, Buffett dragged himself to the office, then left in the middle of the week for a Coca-Cola board meeting in Atlanta. By the time he returned, Susie had begun to recover and went to pay a visit to Astrid. When she saw Susie, Astrid simply broke down in sobs, and, once again, it was Susie’s turn to comfort someone else.
After the weekend, when Susie flew back to San Francisco, Buffett’s mood turned dark again, his voice went gravelly, and he was clearly having trouble sleeping. The biennial Buffett Group meeting, which was being held a few days later, weighed on his mind. Susie’s doctors didn’t want her to travel to the meeting, which was taking place in San Diego. Thus, for the first time since 1969, Warren would be going alone. Not only would Susie not be there, but his friend Larry Tisch, an early partner and the head of Loews Corporation, also would be absent, because he was too ill with advanced stomach cancer to attend.
Buffett was obviously preoccupied with thoughts of what it would be like to go to this meeting without Susie. News of her illness was sure to cause a stir simply because many of the people attending were finding out about it shortly before the meeting. For five days he was going to have to answer questions about her, accept sympathy, and keep his emotions in check. He would have to perform his role of master of ceremonies, maintaining interest in what was going on without striking any false notes of excessive good cheer. Buffett had mastered the art of compartmentalizing to such a degree that these skills were second nature to him—but under the circumstances, it was still going to be a hell of a performance. Once he was back in his hotel room at the end of the evening, he would be alone in the dark with his thoughts and his dreams.
“I dream a lot,” he said the day before leaving for San Diego, and the dreams could be disturbing. “I have a multiplex going on in there. It’s a full-time occupation.” That evening he ordered a club sandwich for dinner and ate with a visitor in his office, wanting to fill the time until Sharon took over to distract him with a bridge game, then conversation till all hours. Now he sat talking, at first struggling through a brittle discussion about business and politics. Eventually, the conversation wound its way to what had been bubbling beneath the surface for days: the surgery that would take place shortly after the meeting ended.
For the briefest fraction of a second, a look of surprise flickered across his face. Then his face began to crumple, and collapsed into