The Breast Center
By John Mullen
Hank stared at the oil pastel, its red poppies listing on tall green stems as if nudged by a gentle breeze. Someone had chosen the print for its good cheer and specifically for this wall in this room. Perhaps it was here to elevate spirits, most likely that was it, or even to nourish hope in a place where none was possible. Hank wondered if those sitting here this day might feel in these blossoms the sweet charm of toddlers’ balloons tugging against green tethers, an enchantment as light as the helium that could lift them from the solid earth. He even considered whether these images might conjure such a day when a clear, steady wind moving through a sun-filled space could rid a life, if for a moment only, of the terrors that encased its future. He doubted that. In fact he was used to wondering what occupied the thoughts of others. It was his forte of sorts, though practiced in rooms with walls and smells and talk entirely unlike what surrounded him here.
In this room several weeks ago he had fixed upon an elderly man wearing a wool suit and starched white shirt, a man with short cropped white hair and rigid bearing but with surprisingly vague unfocused eyes. Hank knew the old man reminded him of his cop father, but there was something else, as yet unclear, that caught Hank’s interest. It was in those eyes that he found something familiar, though what specifically he saw there escaped him.
The wall hanging’s effect upon Hank was contrary to what he had imagined of the others, returning him, despite himself, to an almost forgotten dystopian film. No wildflowers there, nothing growing at all in its wilderness of asphalt and concrete, its citizens surviving on nutrient pellets of soylent green. What did remain of Earth’s absent overflowing were video clips of lush green, of ferns, flowers and tall conifers, films of ancient delights scored with the music of sweet birdsong, rustling leaves and gurgling brooks. All of this was, at the appropriate time, projected upon giant screens with huge speakers from every direction. It was a banquet to glut the starving citizen senses. But it was reserved only for the soon-to-be-gone, the heroic volunteers who marched prostrate, backs strapped to gurneys, into the chambers of their death. Hank’s mood this morning left a dry metallic taste on the walls of his mouth.
For today’s blood draw and later appointment with her beloved oncologist, Jane rejected the heavy prosthesis that scratched her flattened chest and pinched at her left shoulder. This look was no different than half the women in the center, except she covered her head this day with the Harley dew rag Hank had given her early after the initial verdict and well before her thick auburn hair surrendered to the poisons that were to be her final hope. They had laughed then at the orange and black cloth, at their imaginings of the delicate, erudite Jane as Harley Girl. They had laughed that day almost as easily as they had about so much else before the earthquake.
Increasingly in these last months Hank drew upon that airy laughter, recalling how it had held them to each other, creating spaces for each alone and also for their union. In the two years between that day and this, the passing of this laughter massed heavily upon him as if the atmosphere in which he breathed, and which pressed against his skin, had thickened into an almost viscous medium. Hank thought now of the potential of this new and unfamiliar gravity, its weight upon them. Could it, with all its serious resolve, hardened stares, promising tumor markers, budding spots on the liver, temporary highs, devastating results, while shared of course, ever become a force of binding? Could this new graveness, this blind determination that so defined the hours and minutes of their days, could it leave open a path that they could walk together? Hank pondered this, though he tried not to.
They had met first as Jane described her brief mugging, a tug at her purse, her resistance, a punch in her left eye and the boy was gone. She and Hank were at Baltimore’s third precinct. Hank was a careful, sympathetic, listener, tall with short unruly hair showing reflections of grey.
“What were you doing in that part of town?
“I work there, at Hopkins’ library, in reference. It’s what I do.”
“Tough neighborhood, but you know that.”
“You want me to travel in by helicopter?”
He did more than merely write up the crime for the file, dragging out what he knew was a futile investigation. That was how they began.
As he waited for Jane’s nurse, he thought of last night’s dream. It was only partially a dream in fact, a mixture as well of memory carved from the malleable half-sleep of awakening, from the beginnings of his inevitable mourning and from his hardness. Jane was over him, her body a tropical brown, her skin gleaming with the sweet mist of sex in the thick Caribbean air. It was late afternoon, that quiet time before dinner, and her hair, still damp from swimming, shone in the low sunlight and framed her small, soft breasts. It was their second vacation, now two years since they’d met.
Jane spoke to him in a low, gravel voice of delighted longing and with pride in Hank’s desire for her body. She said, “The twin towers,” and leaned forward as he lifted his head. These were easy times of careless talk, words issued and spun about like fireflies. Hank inhaled the sight of her, “Marry me, Jane, will you?” “Yes, my love, I will marry you.”
Months later, following the surgery, its cutting, its pain, its scarring, and after that the tattooed skin where her breast had once been and the radiation burns, Jane presented herself again, “How about it, Hank, La Tour Eiffel.” It was bravado, of course. Hank knew that. Yet there was something else, a challenge, “Here I am, Buddy Boy. Leave or don’t. Let’s not drag it out.” It’s what Hank heard. It wasn’t subtle, that wasn’t Jane’s way. But Hank noticed, as all good cops notice, the anger. A natural response, he thought, but it nagged at him, he could easily discern its source but its direction was a mystery. Jane rejected breast reconstruction outright, no discussion, no careful weighing of the pros and cons. It was her body, Hank thought, and so it was her decision. In point of fact his desire for her was unaffected. He would trace the long horizontal scar with his fingertips or with his tongue, as much a part of Jane now as an ear or the line framed by her closed lips.
After their Caribbean vacation there had been brief mentions of wedding dates, some planning, but nothing seemed urgent. They shared toothbrushes, a parent’s funeral – his father’s with full cop pageantry – comingled bank accounts and a ski co-op in Vermont. Marriage was the backdrop within which they carried on, its outlines remaining indistinct.
Several weeks after the chemo began they were in the car, with Jane barely keeping down her breakfast, Hank said, “Jane, how about we get married.”.
“What?”
“Get married, you know, real soon. This weekend. Will you marry me, Jane? No wait, I’ll pull over, we can …”
“Jesus, Hank, I’m fighting for my life here.”
“You’re …? Look, the point’s that we should of …”
“Hank, stop, it’s a nice thought but let’s drop it, huh.”
“You’re fighting? We’re not?”
“Hank, I don’t want … “
“You’re fighting? You’re the only one here? In this thing? Tell me then. What do I do? It’s fuckin’ metastasis. If you die. What do I do then? Huh. My life. My future. Everything’s gone. Every fuckin’ thing is …”
Jane stared at the road lines as they passed under the car. Hank said, quietly now,
“I want us to be married.”
Jane said nothing.
That night, as most other nights, Hank watched TV well past midnight while Jane lingered on her cancer blog. She was joined there by other metastatic “metsies”, Murial from Oneonta, Sherry form Iowa City, Judy the daughter of a cancer patient, Jane’s intimate, unseen friends.
Murial: “I hate the Oxycontin. I’m all spacey all the time.”
Sherry, the acknowledged expert: “Enjoy it while you can, Girlfriend, the nice part will pass. Just keep the bowels going. Colace should do the trick.”
Jane: “Has anyone heard of the new trials at Dana-F?”
Judy: “Mom’s on that, takes temps and BPs four times a day, feels awful, it’s only a stage two trial, a waste.”
As Hank fixed again on the poppies in front of him him, an old woman shuffled back from the treatment area. Hank had seen her before and then as now she perspired under a stiff blond wig that was artlessly carved into a June Allison pageboy and reflected the room’s fluorescence like a cheap sweater. The starched old man, today dressed in an argyle sweater and rimless glasses, had hardly moved since Hank and Jane arrived. He at first did not notice the woman’s return but then stood, almost coming to attention, and whispered, though loud enough for the room to hear, “What did they say?”
“Oh, Frederick, it’s fine.”
“But the tiredness?”
“Just the pills. Let’s go home, can we?”
`
“Then what about the back pain?”
He was struggling to catch her eyes, she to avert his.
“Will you get my coat, Frederick? I’m so tired.”
“But the pain, what …”
“Frederick please, let’s go home.”
Frederick said, “If you’d only tell …”
The old woman sent him a hard stare that slapped him like a mother’s lost temper.
Hank watched Frederick who was slouching now, the breath gone out of him. There was a vast vacancy in the old man, visible through empty dead eyes, devoid of sparkle and so of any sign of life within. And there was an exhausted loneliness that weighted and pulled down at the skin of his face. He retrieved the worn, woolen coat and helped her into it. The man said, “Okay, let’s go home.”
Hank watched them leave, the woman’s arm through Frederick’s, holding her man steady as he listed into her. Hank’s eyes were glued to Frederick’s rounded back until they turned left to the hallway with its bank of elevators.
He was quiet for a while, imagining Frederick’s ride down the elevator, its silence, the thick, heavy wall of illness that separated them, then his walk to the valet parking, and …
The nurse arrived, “Jane, shall we get your bloods?”
Jane started to rise but Hank leaned into her, “Ah, Jane, I’ve got some things I gotta do. You know, at the precinct. Can you catch a cab home?”
Jane’s head angled imperceptibly – except to Hank.
“Jane?”
She turned to him and was silent. The nurse waited. Hank watched her eyes. The pastel poppies pulled at their long green stems. Jane whispered, “Goodbye, Hank. I’ve loved you dearly. I mean it.”
He started, “I’m just …”, but he knew she wouldn’t hear.
Hank turned once, caught her back as she walked with the nurse into the lab. She hadn’t turned to look and he walked out the door.
John Mullen’s Kierkegaard’s Philosophy: Self-Deception and Cowardice in the Present Age is perhaps the most widely read introduction in English to the ideas of Søren Kierkegaard. His stories and flash fiction have appeared in various literary journals, for example, “The Coprological Visions of Judy Dallas: A Retrospective” in The Cynic Online Magazine, “Gone Dad” in Boston Literary Magazine , “Loving Marilyn Maples” in City Lines Magazine, and “The War on Terror” in Diddledog: A Miscellany of Flash Fiction. His many book reviews can be found online at Metapsychology Reviews.