This was the mad logic of her illness, of course, and even as she understood it to be so, she took the same comfort and refuge in her thoughts of Nicholas as with the palliatives from her doctor, these new warm blankets of her life. Something had begun to happen to her body in the last weeks, and she recalled now what her doctor had warned of a month ago when she told him she was not going to see him anymore, that she was going away. Dr. Koenig said the pain would change and evolve, grow worse, much worse, and that eventually it would overwhelm her. She liked his frankness, even before she’d quit as his patient. When Dr. Koenig first informed her of the diagnosis of the stomach tumor she’d felt that horrid bleat arise in her throat, for she could tell by the grip of his unwavering stare that there was little hope for her. He wouldn’t say that, of course, Dr. Koenig being famous for his aggressive, innovative techniques, but also for his utter refusal to relent, no matter the circumstance.
June’s case was compelling, she was told by a resident, because the tumor in her stomach had insinuated itself in a manner rarely seen. She asked how and the young doctor told her, with unintended poetry, Like fingers in a jar. Eventually the cancer would spread to the other organs, but during the initial examination Dr. Koenig told her they would succeed, that they would first excise certain sections and then use other experimental regimens, some brand-new, and despite what she’d first seen in his eyes she very quickly came to believe him.
“You will realize I’m very greedy about life,” he said to her, in his stripped, weary baritone. “It’s life or nothing.”
For a time June was a model patient, and though not trying to be she became perhaps his “favorite,” a special case even among his special cases, a status she sensed whenever she had to stay a few days in the hospital, by how frequently his residents dropped in on her and wished to hear of her condition and even any complaints, none of which she ever expressed. She placed herself at his disposal, completely, never declining or even hesitating when he would request that she undergo yet another uncomfortable or painful procedure or submit to a new battery of tests. They drew blood from her as if from a tap. Of course she was encouraged by his doggedness, his decision to operate even when others believed it was no use, his aggressive regimens of radiation and then his constant calibrations of medicines, until one day, during a weeklong hospital stay, by then every strand of her lustrous black hair gone and her bones droning with a pain that was insidiously alive and the veins in her arms as brittle and ruined as Roman aqueducts and the right half of her back angrily stippled with an outbreak of shingles, June at last said no to a minor request by a resident to have an umpteenth CAT scan, for which she would have to drink a foul, metallic-tasting shake. The resident, a very smooth-shaven and bespectacled Pakistani fellow, had not quite heard her, or else believed that he had heard her assent, and ordered the nurse to prepare the concoction, to which June again said no, this time louder, and the young doctor paused for a moment before leaving her room without another word. Soon Dr. Koenig appeared at the foot of her bed with his hands splayed out as if he were a wounded suitor. His eyebrows, bushy and graying, were wilted with strain. He seemed already to know what she was going to say. Still, he quietly asked her what was the matter. “Has something gone wrong?” June shook her head. “Are you terribly uncomfortable? Are you suffering? We can address this.”
“That isn’t it.”
She was in fact suffering, but as yet still only in the corporeal sense. Her mind, she felt, was still sharp, and steely. It could still see each moment from every side. “Then I don’t understand, June. Why must you do this? Why thwart our efforts? You must appreciate how far we’ve come already.”
“Of course I do. You’re magnificent. Everyone here has been magnificent.”
“Then let’s keep on!” he said. She could tell he’d registered her appreciation by his rolling over it. More than anything else, she liked Koenig for this feature of his character.
“You should have a patient who wants to be here fully. There are dozens waiting, I know.”
“We’ll care for them in time. We are focusing on you now. We choose our patients carefully and we give everything we have and we don’t let go from day one.”
“But you knew then.”
“What? What did I know?” Koenig gasped, waving his hands.
“That I was already dead.”
“So aren’t we all!” he shouted angrily. The sudden flash of his feeling animated her and deliciously, if only momentarily, suspended the pain. “We cheat time, June, all of us, whether we’re ill or not. Most of us only realize it when we’re not well. But I don’t believe we have a certain allotment at birth or one fixed by fate or anything else. We can extend time for anyone who wants it. And I don’t want to hear about ‘quality of life’ or some such. Life is quality of life. If you can take nourishment and communicate and conceive of tomorrow, then another day is riches enough.”
He spoke as he always did, with the ample authority and startling egoism of a celebrated healer, and yet through his conviction and bombast June could discern the doctor as a less than invincible figure, perhaps a boy whose mother died young, or whose sibling grew up chronically sick, someone who had witnessed a wretched dwindling and instead of abiding the measured response or swift act of mercy had become an unceasing forge of the realm.
“I won’t disagree with you,” she said to him. “I can’t.”
“Then don’t give up now!”
“I’m not giving up.”
“You will be if you leave. We’re at a critical moment. We’re on the cusp of succeeding, but it’s perilous, and there’s no room at all for hesitation. Even the short time we’ve wasted this afternoon can make a difference. I believe this. Now, I’m going to call my resident back in here and you’re going to allow him to do his work. Do you agree that this should happen? I know you do. You do, yes? Today and tomorrow and the next day.”
He had held her by the points of her shoulders and his gaze was not so much searching as it was rallying her. Or attempting to. But even the gentle cupping of his hands felt as if he were abrading her skin, this wildfire skittering over her back and neck, and she could barely keep from grimacing. It was not that she meant to deceive him, though she knew she would be doing so. After he had gone and before the young resident could return, she dressed herself quickly and wrote Koenig a note:
My whole life I cheated days. Please give the rest of mine to someone else.
How she wished that she could take that note back. Somehow her condition improved dramatically after she left the hospital, her body lithe and loose and vigorous, but since the day she met Clines her condition had deteriorated. She was now more and more dependent on the painkillers Koenig had had his resident deliver to her, her mind feeling sharpest when she was counting up the pills and vials (which was a way of counting time), as well as the stack of forward-dated prescriptions he’d insisted on giving her. The last few reached well into the following year, and sometimes she shuffled through them with gratitude like they were unanticipated greeting cards, salutations from a future telling of a very different longevity.