Read Online A Happy Marriage by Rafael Yglesias - Free Book Online
Authors: Rafael Yglesias
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Enrique of the other time the self-confident doctor had been knocked off his perch by Margaret.
They had met him only four months ago, when Margaret had to maneuver awkwardly back into Sloan’s service in order to be treated by this maestro. They had been told he was the best specialist in New York to fix her gastroparesis, the best to keep her nourished while they searched for a third or fourth or fifth experimental drug.
He had breezed in with an entourage of four, his white doctor’s coat billowing on his short frame, to announce that he had delayed a surgery to see her on short notice because of the entreaties of his good friend the head of oncology. He demanded, without so muchas a hello, to know why she had refused to enter the Phase 1 trial offered by the intractable urological oncologist.
Margaret had fixed herself up for this audition. She had worked meticulously on her wig to make its replica of her short black hairdo seem as natural as possible, and she had put on a pretty green floral skirt. She wore a white silk T-shirt smooth to her torso except for the bumps of the three access ports to the catheter installed above her right breast for TPN feedings and other intravenous medications. Her white teeth, bonded over twenty years ago into pretty and seamless proportions, shined a bold and cheerful smile at the Iraqi’s stern countenance. “Because I was just being used as a guinea pig,” she answered.
“So?” he scolded. “You have metastatic cancer. You’re incurable. Your only chance to survive is to be a guinea pig.”
“I don’t mind being a guinea pig,” she shot right back at him, aloft on an examination table, rocking her slim, pretty legs, like a girl on a swing, teasing the boys. “I mind being a guinea pig in a failed experiment.”
“What do you mean—a failed experiment?” he said, pronouncing the phrase as if it were contemptible and possibly not English. “How could you know—?”
She interrupted him. “It was obvious. It was a terrible drug. I would have been the last patient to enter the trial. They already knew the drug didn’t work. They needed one more guinea pig for their last cohort so they could finish the study and get the rest of their funding. The drug had only helped one patient live for six months, but she didn’t even have my kind of cancer—she had ovarian cancer. Everyone else dropped out before completing three full cycles because they said the drug took away hedonia.”
“Hedonia?” he mumbled, and now he seemed sure he was hearing something that wasn’t English.
“All pleasure from living,” Enrique explained softly. He had been told that if anyone could help Margaret out of this nightmare of vomiting every four hours with the regularity of an atomic clock, and keep her alive while they resumed treatment with the newest cancer drug available, Avastin, a drug that hadn’t been shown to help bladder cancer but might (why not? why couldn’t the unexpected happen?), it was this man. Enrique was sure these grandiose assertions about the Iraqi’s skill were the requisite exaggerations made in the desperate world of terminal patients, and intensified by New York’s culture, obsessed with celebrities to whom mythic abilities were ascribed. Although Margaret made fun of herself for believing in such claims, she was a devout. She was raised a nice Jewish girl from Queens, and in that enclave, having the best doctor was considered a basic necessity. She had been told by the powerful head of oncology to believe in this man, and warned that he was above being pressured by anyone. So Enrique did his best in tone and manner to appear submissive, especially because he was aware that, although Margaret respected authority, she was too brash, too demanding, too abrasive at times for men like this one, men who liked to walk astride the world, especially astride the female world. “Half the patients in the study stopped taking this drug before they got the full
They had met him only four months ago, when Margaret had to maneuver awkwardly back into Sloan’s service in order to be treated by this maestro. They had been told he was the best specialist in New York to fix her gastroparesis, the best to keep her nourished while they searched for a third or fourth or fifth experimental drug.
He had breezed in with an entourage of four, his white doctor’s coat billowing on his short frame, to announce that he had delayed a surgery to see her on short notice because of the entreaties of his good friend the head of oncology. He demanded, without so muchas a hello, to know why she had refused to enter the Phase 1 trial offered by the intractable urological oncologist.
Margaret had fixed herself up for this audition. She had worked meticulously on her wig to make its replica of her short black hairdo seem as natural as possible, and she had put on a pretty green floral skirt. She wore a white silk T-shirt smooth to her torso except for the bumps of the three access ports to the catheter installed above her right breast for TPN feedings and other intravenous medications. Her white teeth, bonded over twenty years ago into pretty and seamless proportions, shined a bold and cheerful smile at the Iraqi’s stern countenance. “Because I was just being used as a guinea pig,” she answered.
“So?” he scolded. “You have metastatic cancer. You’re incurable. Your only chance to survive is to be a guinea pig.”
“I don’t mind being a guinea pig,” she shot right back at him, aloft on an examination table, rocking her slim, pretty legs, like a girl on a swing, teasing the boys. “I mind being a guinea pig in a failed experiment.”
“What do you mean—a failed experiment?” he said, pronouncing the phrase as if it were contemptible and possibly not English. “How could you know—?”
She interrupted him. “It was obvious. It was a terrible drug. I would have been the last patient to enter the trial. They already knew the drug didn’t work. They needed one more guinea pig for their last cohort so they could finish the study and get the rest of their funding. The drug had only helped one patient live for six months, but she didn’t even have my kind of cancer—she had ovarian cancer. Everyone else dropped out before completing three full cycles because they said the drug took away hedonia.”
“Hedonia?” he mumbled, and now he seemed sure he was hearing something that wasn’t English.
“All pleasure from living,” Enrique explained softly. He had been told that if anyone could help Margaret out of this nightmare of vomiting every four hours with the regularity of an atomic clock, and keep her alive while they resumed treatment with the newest cancer drug available, Avastin, a drug that hadn’t been shown to help bladder cancer but might (why not? why couldn’t the unexpected happen?), it was this man. Enrique was sure these grandiose assertions about the Iraqi’s skill were the requisite exaggerations made in the desperate world of terminal patients, and intensified by New York’s culture, obsessed with celebrities to whom mythic abilities were ascribed. Although Margaret made fun of herself for believing in such claims, she was a devout. She was raised a nice Jewish girl from Queens, and in that enclave, having the best doctor was considered a basic necessity. She had been told by the powerful head of oncology to believe in this man, and warned that he was above being pressured by anyone. So Enrique did his best in tone and manner to appear submissive, especially because he was aware that, although Margaret respected authority, she was too brash, too demanding, too abrasive at times for men like this one, men who liked to walk astride the world, especially astride the female world. “Half the patients in the study stopped taking this drug before they got the full
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