be just like that when I’m eighty,” says Ruth.
The WALK sign lights up, and Clara eases the wheels down to the street.
“What do you think?” Ruth asks. She’s a little breathless. Actually, they’re both a little breathless. Clara’s out of shape, hasn’t been hiking in Acadia National Park lately. Who is she kidding? She hasn’t been on a hike in more than a year. Her arms are shaking from the effort.
“Did you hear what I said?” Ruth asks.
“What?” Clara steers around a pothole the size and depth of a bowling ball.
“Eighty,” says Ruth.
“Yeah, amazing. She looks great.”
“You’re not listening to me!”
They’re on the corner of West End and 77th. Their destination, a holistic oncologist, just two blocks farther downtown. They should have taken a cab, but somehow that had seemed more daunting: folding the wheelchair into a cab’s trunk, holding on to Ruth to make sure she didn’t slip on the ice, sliding Ruth into the narrow confines of a backseat. That is, if a cab would even have stopped for them. Strollers, wheelchairs, walkers, canes, pets, suitcases—all these might make a driver speed on by, hoping to pick up a simpler, less demanding fare.
“I’m sorry,” says Clara.
“I’m trying to give myself some hope here. Can’t you understand that?”
“Hope,” Clara repeats. This is today’s news, a curveball. Ruth, it seems, is ricocheting around the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. At the moment, she has made a flying leap from acceptance to denial.
Or who knows. Maybe she knows something. Maybe, despite all the stark evidence on the Internet—eighty percent dead within eighteen months—Ruth has peered inside herself, inside the black caves of her own lungs, and seen herself rising above the statistics, climbing to the top of the highest curve of the most infinitesimal number and holding on, as if to a sturdy branch in a hurricane, waiting for the wind to die down all around her.
Who the hell knows. Clara rings a bell next to a brass plaque: ABRAHAM ZAMITSKY, M.D. A buzzer sounds, and she pushes Ruth’s wheelchair through the door, only to be faced with two steep steps down to the office door below. How can an oncologist not have a ramp? How many patients are trotting in here on their own two feet? A holistic oncologist, in particular, might well be the last stop—after the chemo, the radiation, the trials and pills and potions of regular doctors have failed. Clara summons her strength, then tilts the wheelchair back and eases it down the first step. The wheels teeter precariously for a moment on the stair, threatening to slip too quickly down.
“Good job,” says Ruth. As if this—the successful maneuvering of a metal contraption—is worthy of praise.
“Where did you find this guy, anyway?” Clara asks.
Their voices are deadened in the tiny vestibule. As soon as the words emerge, they are snuffed out. No echo, no reverberation. No sound at all.
“The Today show,” says Ruth.
“The Today show! Since when do you—”
“I’ve had a lot of time to lie in bed.”
A second buzzer sounds, and Clara pushes open the office door. The doctor’s waiting room is furnished in a soothing blend of earth tones. An enormous fish tank is built into the far wall. The artificial aqua-blue water appears to be a distant ocean, and all these people—sick people, waiting—are stranded on the sandy shore of some interior decorator’s idea of peace. Plants are everywhere, hanging from baskets by the windows, in terra-cotta pots in the corners. Low-maintenance plants. No African violets for this holistic oncologist. No ferns. Nothing that will die easily. A huge, hardy rubber plant spills out from behind a bald girl in her twenties.
“Can I help you?”
“Ruth Dunne, to see Dr. Zamitsky,” Clara says quietly. They’re on the Upper West Side, after all. Someone here will know the name, though it’s possible, in this environment,
The WALK sign lights up, and Clara eases the wheels down to the street.
“What do you think?” Ruth asks. She’s a little breathless. Actually, they’re both a little breathless. Clara’s out of shape, hasn’t been hiking in Acadia National Park lately. Who is she kidding? She hasn’t been on a hike in more than a year. Her arms are shaking from the effort.
“Did you hear what I said?” Ruth asks.
“What?” Clara steers around a pothole the size and depth of a bowling ball.
“Eighty,” says Ruth.
“Yeah, amazing. She looks great.”
“You’re not listening to me!”
They’re on the corner of West End and 77th. Their destination, a holistic oncologist, just two blocks farther downtown. They should have taken a cab, but somehow that had seemed more daunting: folding the wheelchair into a cab’s trunk, holding on to Ruth to make sure she didn’t slip on the ice, sliding Ruth into the narrow confines of a backseat. That is, if a cab would even have stopped for them. Strollers, wheelchairs, walkers, canes, pets, suitcases—all these might make a driver speed on by, hoping to pick up a simpler, less demanding fare.
“I’m sorry,” says Clara.
“I’m trying to give myself some hope here. Can’t you understand that?”
“Hope,” Clara repeats. This is today’s news, a curveball. Ruth, it seems, is ricocheting around the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. At the moment, she has made a flying leap from acceptance to denial.
Or who knows. Maybe she knows something. Maybe, despite all the stark evidence on the Internet—eighty percent dead within eighteen months—Ruth has peered inside herself, inside the black caves of her own lungs, and seen herself rising above the statistics, climbing to the top of the highest curve of the most infinitesimal number and holding on, as if to a sturdy branch in a hurricane, waiting for the wind to die down all around her.
Who the hell knows. Clara rings a bell next to a brass plaque: ABRAHAM ZAMITSKY, M.D. A buzzer sounds, and she pushes Ruth’s wheelchair through the door, only to be faced with two steep steps down to the office door below. How can an oncologist not have a ramp? How many patients are trotting in here on their own two feet? A holistic oncologist, in particular, might well be the last stop—after the chemo, the radiation, the trials and pills and potions of regular doctors have failed. Clara summons her strength, then tilts the wheelchair back and eases it down the first step. The wheels teeter precariously for a moment on the stair, threatening to slip too quickly down.
“Good job,” says Ruth. As if this—the successful maneuvering of a metal contraption—is worthy of praise.
“Where did you find this guy, anyway?” Clara asks.
Their voices are deadened in the tiny vestibule. As soon as the words emerge, they are snuffed out. No echo, no reverberation. No sound at all.
“The Today show,” says Ruth.
“The Today show! Since when do you—”
“I’ve had a lot of time to lie in bed.”
A second buzzer sounds, and Clara pushes open the office door. The doctor’s waiting room is furnished in a soothing blend of earth tones. An enormous fish tank is built into the far wall. The artificial aqua-blue water appears to be a distant ocean, and all these people—sick people, waiting—are stranded on the sandy shore of some interior decorator’s idea of peace. Plants are everywhere, hanging from baskets by the windows, in terra-cotta pots in the corners. Low-maintenance plants. No African violets for this holistic oncologist. No ferns. Nothing that will die easily. A huge, hardy rubber plant spills out from behind a bald girl in her twenties.
“Can I help you?”
“Ruth Dunne, to see Dr. Zamitsky,” Clara says quietly. They’re on the Upper West Side, after all. Someone here will know the name, though it’s possible, in this environment,
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