First she turned down the halothane dosage, then turned off the nitrous oxide. In about five minutes Joan began to stir. Helen removed the tube from her throat and administered pure oxygen. One of the nurses removed the EKG monitor. Another removed the blood-pressure cuff. Helen wheeled her out of the OR and into the recovery room, staying always near her head, ready to turn her if she vomited. In the recovery room Joan’s records were handed to the recovery room nurse.
“Her name’s Joan,” Helen said. “She’s had a modified radical mastectomy of the left breast. She expected it, I think, and was pretty well acclimated. I don’t think it will be a big shock when she comes to.”
For Joan the recovery room was fragmented and barely real. Helen Walsh was there. A nurse was there as well. Maybe Eliopoulos. Was he there? She didn’t know. Then Judy Marsh, and she realized she was in her room. She could not remember asking and being told, but she knew with her first coherent consciousness that her breast was gone. Hello, Jude. “Hello, Jude.” She felt the bandages on her left side. No great mounds of swaddled wrappings, just some gauze and some adhesive. The bandage extended over the breast area and around under her arm. It was not a very impressive bandage. She remembered Dan and his appendectomy and how insignificant a bandage he had come up from surgery with. She drifted in and out of sleep.
“Jude,” she said. “You know what?”
“What, Joan?”
She slept. She woke.
“Jude, is that you, Jude? You know what?”
“What, Joan?”
She went back to sleep. During one moment of awakeness she heard Judy say, “I’m going down and get your chart and see what the medication schedule is. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay, Jude. Take your time. I’m fine.” As she drifted off again she was like a drunk trying to be sober, trying to speak lucidly and intelligently and no one should know that she was zonked. The phone rang. Isn’t it good I got a phone, she thought. I can call anyone, and they can call me. But they aren’t supposed to call in now. I don’t think. I think the switchboard is supposed to intercept after surgery. Hello. “Hello?”
“Joan? This is Judy.”
“Bullshit, Judy just went down the hall. Who is this?”
“Judy Martin, Joan.”
“Well who the fuck is it, Judy Marsh or Judy Martin?”
“Joan, its Judy Martin. From Endicott. How was your surgery? Did they have to take the breast?”
“Yep. The bastards took it.”
“Oh, Joan, I’m sorry...” Joan let the phone drop and went to sleep. Judy Marsh came back to find it dangling at the end of its cord, humming its high-pitched warning. She hung it up. Joan never remembered the conversation. When she learned that Judy Martin had called in and that she, Joan, had used foul language, she was appalled. Judy Martin would never tell her what she’d said, but Joan knew no one less ready to admire the richness of her foul mouth than Judy Martin.
Judy Marsh sat and watched her sleep, on her back. The IV was still attached to her left hand, the needle in the vein.
Joan woke up. “And she drinks like a fish, Jude. A goddamned fish.”
“Who?”
Joan slept again.
A half hour after she was up from surgery Ace came in. He came through the half-open door, walking quietly. Unsure of what he would see. Joan was asleep, Judy was there, small and blond in her white uniform.
“How is she?” he said, softly.
“In and out. She’s asleep for a while and then awake, and asleep. There’s no pain.”
“She know she lost the breast?”
“Oh, yes. She’s been awake. She knows.”
He stood silently at the foot of the bed, looking at her. Above him high on the wall the television was on, but the sound was down.
“I’ll stay a while with her, in case she wakes up,” he said. “If you want to take a break or anything.”
“Okay. She’s not going to be awake very long and very coherently today. She’s very foolish. Ten minutes ago she woke up and said, ‘She drinks like a goddamned fish’ and went back to sleep.”
“When David was born,” he said, looking at Joan as he talked, “she was scared and had a lot of anesthesia and I came to see her right after the doctor called. I went in, twenty-six years old, the new father, and she was lying there on her back like that with her eyes closed. And I said, ‘How are you feeling?’ and she opened her eyes and looked at me and said ‘Lousy’ and rolled over and went to sleep. And I stood around with my thumb in my ear for about twenty minutes and went out and got myself some fried shrimp at Dill’s. And many beers.”
“I’ll leave you for a few minutes,” Judy said.
And she left him alone in the room. He felt her loss. He felt nervous without her. Christ, he thought, she’s so small you could mail her first class for thirteen cents, and I’m scared when she leaves me alone. He looked at his wife. She looks just the same as she always does when she sleeps. She had on lipstick. He wondered if she’d left it on during the surgery or put it on afterward. Probably the first thing she did when she woke up. With the hospital johnny on she looked no different. He couldn’t see any meaningful bandages. She looked as she had yesterday. She woke up briefly and they spoke. She went back to sleep and still he stood looking at her. He felt the strong craving in his chest and arms. He wanted to lie on the bed with her and put his arms around her. But he knew he should not. Yet.
In a while, Judy came back in and he went home.
Chapter 17
Several times he called the hospital and Judy told him Joan was still asleep. Shortly before the boys came home from school, he called again and Joan was awake.
“How long I don’t know,” Judy said. “But why don’t you bring them down as soon as they come home. She’s lucid enough when she’s awake.”
It was nearly three when he drove with his sons to the hospital. When they had gone to school he had not yet known if Joan had in fact had a mastectomy. Now, after school, on the short drive to the hospital was the first chance he had to tell them. There was no easy way. Both boys were in the front seat with him.
“Mom is fine,” he said. “But she had her left breast removed.”
Dan said, “She did?”
David was silent.
“The cyst was cancerous, and they had to take the breast.”
“Did you know they were going to?” David asked.
“No, we thought they might, but we felt you shouldn’t have to deal with the possibility, only with the fact.”
Dan said, “Have you seen her?”
“Yes.”
“Does she look funny?”
“No, you can’t tell really. There are bandages, but they don’t show and your mother has never been known as Barbara Bosoom.”
David said, “Has the cancer spread?”
“No. They took tests Monday and Tuesday, body scans.”
Dan interrupted, “What’s a body scan?”
“X-rays of various parts of her body. X-rays of her bones, liver, lungs, that sort of thing. Anyway the tests all came out negative. That is, there is no cancer in other parts of her body.”
“So she’s going to be okay.”
“Yes.” He wasn’t as sure as he sounded. “Probably. There’s a couple of other tests they will take. But everything looks good.” The details of lymph-node involvement and its implications were more than he thought he should ask them to deal with. If there was involvement they would have to deal with it, as he would. If there were not, there was no point in anticipatory fear. He could spare them that. If it were bad they would have the chance to be afraid and to sample the full measure of its badness. But not until they had to, and unless they had to. And what he had answered was true. It will make my fear no less if they are afraid too. It is not their job to help me deal with fear. That is my job. John Waynesque phrases resonated inside him that spring. He was aware that they were trite, but they were there, inside him, and he found that in extremes they were true, and they worked. There are things a man must do served much better than woe is me.