Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word
The air was thick in the room when I walked in. I was in a tiny room with a bed and a chair; maybe it was a room for the physicians to sleep in. I don't remember his doctor's name, but I do recall that he and Jeff were the same age. I could tell by the look on his face that I was going to get bad news. A nurse was standing behind me; I recognized her as one of the nurses assigned to Jeff. She was also very young in her twenties. The conversation began with, "we removed 18 inches of your son's colon." That was the good news. It was all downhill from there. Jeff had stage 4 colon cancer, meaning it was terminal. One in every four lymph nodes had cancerous cells. His liver was cancerous on both sides. The liver has two parts; one part can be removed, and you can survive. However, if the other side is affected, it can not be. I was trying to remain calm. I heard myself ask how long he would live. The doctor looked at the floor; he had tears in his eyes. I knew that stage 4 cancer patients could live up to a year. I asked, "a year?" The doctor shook his head no, "9 months?", the same response, "6 months?", headshake of no. I was getting a little wobbly in the legs, "3 months?" My voice was just a quivering whisper; I didn't even recognize it. "Possibly, but maybe not that long." The doctor had finally opened his mouth. My head was throbbing, and it felt like the noise of rush hour traffic roaring in my ears. Everything was black. Someone grabbed me and pushed a chair underneath me, and sat me down. I couldn't catch my breath. I wasn't crying; I wasn't doing anything. I felt devoid of any life function.
The doctor and I were just staring at each other. The nurse came in, and they gave me a pill to calm me down. Calm me down? I felt like I was dead; I was barely functioning. I took the pill because I knew that when I would go to Jeff's room, that reality would probably slap me across the face, and he was not going to see me upset. His doctor told me how sorry he was, and I had to keep looking at the floor to keep from crying. I knew if I started crying, it would be bad, and I didn't want that.
Jeff was heavily sedated but in obvious pain. He was grimacing, then he started talking crazy, but he looked like he was asleep. I tried talking to him, but it was pointless. Then he started moving around, trying to get everything off of him. I pushed the call button and didn't wait for a response; I searched for a nurse and found one. I told her I thought he was having some kind of medication reaction. We literally ran back to his room. He was flipping out. She ran out and came back with a needle and stuck it in the IV line. He immediately stopped moving. She paged the doctor. He was taken off of that medication and switched to morphine. He was fine, well as fine as he could be.
I stayed in the room until midnight to make sure that he didn't have any more problems. Right before I left, the nurse came in and gave him another shot and said he was okay and would sleep through the night.
I collected my things, kissed Jeff on the forehead, and left the room. When I passed the nurses' station, they all looked at me sadly. I would get used to that over time. They had told me that Jeff was the youngest person they ever knew of to get colon cancer. He would become an unwilling participant in medical curiosity. He was the talk of the hospital, and he knew it.
I barely remember driving home that night. I didn't call anyone; I couldn't. Every ounce of strength and self-control that I possessed was gone. I took the dog out, fed the rest of the zoo, and laid down. I fell asleep soundly. That would be the last night of sound sleep that I would get for the next few months. In the morning, I would have to make calls to bosses and family and friends, and I was dreading it. This was the last night of escape from The Twilight Zone; I would participate in it the next day.
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