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When It's Not Tuesday
"Did you hear about the man who didn't want to lie but couldn't tell the truth, so he barked for the rest of his
life?" Joy says. "I wonder how long that guy's life was?"
"I don't want a sister who barks," I tell her. "I want a sister who tells me the results of her scan."
Joy narrows her eyes. She stopped wearing glasses a week ago, when she also stopped driving to her appointments.
"I think you can retire that Kleenex now. It's lived a good enough life."
I open my purse and add the tissue to a pile that has grown with the afternoon.
"I'm getting my options," she says, "and this is a decision for me only."
There's a harpist on commission, in the north wing of the Stanford Comprehensive Cancer Center.
I've seen her performing, mostly on Tuesdays. Part of me thinks it's lovely, and the other part wonders
if putting a harpist in a cancer center isn't what we used to call bad form.
"I am interested in the option where we stop coming here forever," I tell her.
She looks at me for a moment, before opening a Good Housekeeping Magazine. The date on the cover is March 2006.
It's nearly seven months old. Lately, seven months is a very long time.
"Did you know," Joy says, "that an untold number of deaths are caused by the aflatoxin in peanut butter?"
She lowers the magazine and peers over it.
"That's a lot."
"Yeah," she says. "Actually, it doesn't say 'a lot.' It just says 'untold'"
I watch as she lifts the magazine.
"Quit picking at your cuticles," Joy says, from behind the pages.
When they call her name, I get up with her, and then sit back down, before getting up again.
"Wait here," Joy says. "Don't go anywhere this time."
"Yeah," I tell her. "Ok."
"I mean it," she says.
The first time, I thought I could do it. It was seven months ago, before the first round of radiation.
I walked down the hall to meet Joy, and someone had left an examining room door open. You forget not to look,
in places like this. I didn't recognize my own sister in that room; she was wearing one of those cotton gowns
with the colorful flowers, daisies or marigolds, and her head was bent over in a sob, the voiceless kind,
the worst kind. I've done this today, I thought, and I knew I couldn't ever do it again.
This time, I asked to wait in an empty room.
"Let me get this straight," the nurse said. "You don't want to wait out there, you want to wait in here.
But you don't want to wait in that room. You want to wait in this room."
My sister is in the examining room four doors down. All brusqueness aside, they're very accommodating
, the staff here. They respect the sanctity of the wishes that are within their power to fulfill. Another thing,
the doctors take their time with you. I find this ironic. When you have all the time in the world, you see them
for three minutes, tops. But when time comes at a heartbreaking premium, you don't get anything less than forty
five minute visits. Sometimes in this life, you just can't win.
I tap my foot on the floor, until a nurse says," I'm going to have to ask you to stop that now."
When Joy came out of the exam room, she didn't see me. First, she walked right past the door of the room,
where I was sitting on the table, and then she made a left at the door to the waiting room, where she should
have made a right. I watched as the nurse with whom I'd spoken earlier, gently took her elbow.
"It's just this way," she said. Joy stopped and looked at her. I wasn't used to seeing confusion on my sister's
face, but what I didn't know about dying could have filled books in those days. The nurse rubbed her arm.
"Would you like me to bring your family back?"
I jumped off the table.
"You!" the nurse said.
Joy looked at me. "That's my sister," she said softly.
We walked down the hall together. It was 12:15, and there were many more hours left in the day.
She didn't say anything for a while. It was a Wednesday, and the harpist wasn't there, so the only thing
we heard down that long hallway was the sound of our footsteps.
Lisa Veyssiere has studied fiction with the Stanford Writer's Studio.
She works in public health surveillance, and lives in the San
Francisco Bay Area with her family, and sometimes in New York, alone.
She is currently revising a novel about finding lost things in Lower
Manhattan and Northern Nevada.
Email: Lisa Veyssiere
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