‘Hi, Vicky,’ Sarah said.
‘Oh, hi,’ Vicky said, abstracted.
‘Has he got you running around?’
‘He needs a prep kit, and he needs it last Christmas, you know?’
Sarah laughed. She had watched Dr Goodacre in action for the last nine months, and she knew exactly what Vicky meant. The quality that made him the doctor you wanted to save your life probably made him a nightmare as a boss.
Sarah sat at the edge of the exam table, watching Vicky flee from the room. She had wanted to ask about how long she had to wait, whether they could turn up the heat a little, but she held back. Her journey through illness had taught her to overlook certain details. She had trained herself to focus on the most important matters, let the small things fall into place.
Finally Dr Goodacre walked through the door. He was tall and extremely thin, dressed in a dark suit covered by a white lab coat. A pale yellow tie was visible at the neck. He had short dark hair, and in spite of his round wire-rimmed glasses and lack of beard, he resembled Abraham Lincoln. Without smiling, he reached into a compartment behind the door and pulled out Sarah’s chart.
‘Hi, Doctor,’ she said.
‘Hello, Sarah.’
‘Everyone seems so busy today.’
‘Mmm.’
Frowning, he began to read. Sarah was unafraid of his severe expression. She understood it was just his manner, the way he protected himself from feeling too much about his worst cases. Dr Goodacre had saved her life, and she adored him with all her heart.
‘Any pain?’
‘Only when I touch the scar.’
‘Numbness? Tingling?’
‘No.’
‘No more seizures?’ he asked, reading.
‘Not since July.’ Sarah closed her eyes, saying a prayer. She hated seizures. She had had three, including the one that alerted her that something was wrong. Nine months before, she had been perfectly healthy, running seven miles a day, training to run in her first marathon. One day she woke up on the floor of her shower. The hot water had run out. She couldn’t remember getting in, and she didn’t know how long she had been lying there. It took all her strength to crawl to the phone and dial 911.
At first they thought she had had a stroke. She couldn’t move, could barely talk. Her limbs felt heavy, and she had double vision. Cardiologists swarmed around her, hooking her up to heart monitors, ordering EKGs, CT scans, and EEGs. The EEG revealed seizure activity, and the heart doctors had handed Sarah over to the neurosurgery department for further tests. Within a day, they had found the brain tumor.
‘Okay,’ he said, laying down her chart. He leaned close to look into her eyes. She smelled his spicy fragrance and smiled.
‘If I had a boyfriend, I’d want to buy him that cologne,’ she said.
‘Sit up straight and close your eyes,’ he said without smiling back. ‘Hold your arms straight out in front.’
She did as she was told, knew he was watching to see whether she could keep her arms and hands steady.
‘Now hold them straight out to the sides.’
Like wings, she thought, like a plane flying to Maine.
‘Touch your nose with your left index finger. Now your right. Eyes closed! Very good.’
Sarah felt like a small child being tested by the school nurse. With her eyes closed, smelling Dr Goodacre’s familiar scent, she felt safe. She had first come to him for a second opinion. The first doctor, at a small hospital across town, had told her she had osteogenic sarcoma, the most deadly tumor possible. He had suggested that treatment would only prolong the inevitable, that even with surgery she would have only ten weeks to live. He had suggested she go to Paris, eat her favorite foods, say good-bye to the people she loved. Telling her this, he had held her hand. He was elderly and respected, and he had spoken in sonorous tones of regret.
He had sent her home. In shock, thinking of Paris and Mike and death ten weeks away, Sarah had curled into a ball. Was this what her mother had gone through? Crying, Sarah had prayed to her. Weak and sick, she had needed the visiting nurse to check on her. Meg Ferguson had come to call. Six days into her death sentence, Mike had left for Maine. Ten days into it, pouring her terrors out to Meg, Sarah had listened to Meg’s compassionate, logical reason: Get a second opinion.
A second opinion: the light in the dark, the hope after total despair. Suddenly Sarah saw with total clarity that she wasn’t ready to accept the prognosis. Her mother had been too isolated on the island to fight her disease, but Sarah wasn’t. Sarah was a mother, her son had run away to Maine, she didn’t want to go to Paris, she couldn’t be dying of a brain tumor. She couldn’t – could not – die just then. Sarah could not. She could almost hear her mother begging her to fight. And so Meg had gotten Dr Goodacre’s name and number. And Sarah had called him.
‘I’m thinking about taking a trip,’ she said to Dr Goodacre now.
‘You are?’ he asked, examining the back of her head.
‘To Maine. To see my son.’
‘Ah,’ he said, probing her scar. Her tumor had been located in the meninges, the lining between the skull and the brain. It had clung to the sinus nerve, making it a challenge to remove surgically without paralyzing or killing Sarah. But Dr Goodacre had done an amazing job: he had gotten ninety-nine percent of it out. To get inside, he had cut a large flap in her scalp. U-shaped, it looked like a big red smile on the back of her head.
‘Remember I told you about him?’ she asked. ‘Mike? He left for Maine right about the time I met you?’
‘At college?’ the doctor asked, squinting at the incision.
‘No, to live with my father.’ Sarah closed her eyes. She tried not to feel hurt. Just because Dr Goodacre meant so much to her, why should he remember the mundane details of her life? With all his patients, that would be impossible. But just knowing she had thought the word ‘mundane’ in connection with Mike made her feel worse, and she drew inward.
‘Are you asking me if you should go?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘I see no reason why not,’ he said. He leaned against a low cabinet, and for the first time since entering the exam room, he really looked at her: into her eyes, as if she were a whole person, not just a collection of parts to study and assess. ‘Have you asked Dr Boswell?’
‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘Should I?’ Dr Boswell was her oncologist. While she was very important to Sarah’s care, had administered two courses of chemotherapy and overseen the radiation treatment, Dr Goodacre was the One. He was the one who had identified her tumor as large-cell lymphoma, eminently less deadly than osteogenic sarcoma, offering her the possibility of long-term recovery. He was the one in whom Sarah had placed her faith, to whom she entrusted her hopes and fears.
‘I’ll have Vicky give her a call,’ Dr Goodacre said, making a note on Sarah’s chart. ‘If she has no objection, neither do I.’
‘Really?’ Sarah asked.
‘You know the road we face, Sarah. You’ve done everything we’ve asked of you, and you’ve responded well.’
‘I just don’t want a recurrence,’ she said, shivering. Did that sound dumb? Did anyone want a recurrence?
‘I know. We can’t predict … your tumor was very difficultly situated, and it is rather aggressive for a large-cell lym–’ He cut himself off. The look on his face said it all. Dr Goodacre gave Sarah credit for her intelligence and powers of intuition, and he didn’t have to spell it all out. She might