By Suzanne Travis
Room 4502
The Catholic grandmother with gastric carcinoma knows there’s no miracle waiting for her. Curled up in a fetal position, she rubs her well-worn rosary beads with bent fingers, waiting for the inevitable. When people ask if they can get her anything at all, she can’t say what she really wants, craving it so much she can taste it, feel it in her bones. Guarding her secret from family, friends, her oncologist, and God himself, she doesn’t tell a soul that if taking one’s own life wasn’t considered a mortal sin, she’d be long gone by now.
Room 4504
The twenty-something influencer has more than ten thousand followers now that she has breast cancer. Whatever works, she tells herself. Now she can impact people with her unwavering enthusiasm, handing out hope like free concert tickets. At the end of each podcast, she whispers her mantra: Together we can beat this! Adjusting her neon-pink sparkly wig, she whips up a ginger blueberry smoothie in a blender and cheers to her devoted audience.
Room 4506
The cynic hated this unfair world before the lymphoma diagnosis. No, he doesn’t want a social worker or a therapist or a palliative care specialist or a pain management consult, thank you very much. What he wants is his old life back. His boring accounting job sounds like heaven right now, better than lying in a hospital bed getting chemo. And no, dying of cancer doesn’t help him savor the simple moments. If he never saw a damn rainbow for the rest of his life, however long that may be, he couldn’t care less.
Room 4508
The marathon runner with a bone marrow transplant is stuck in an isolation room. One day he’s finishing a 10K and now he’s pacing back and forth like a dog at the pound. At least he’s able to talk his nurse into covering for him when he sneaks outside for a while. Otherwise, he’ll literally die of boredom. With the COVID-19 pandemic raging, no one will think twice about the skinny guy in a hospital gown (wearing two masks and a Go Dodgers baseball cap) speedwalking down the street. He swears no one will find out and he’s right, giving his nurse a wink and a discreet head nod before slipping back in his room.
Room 4510
The mother with end-stage ovarian cancer applies makeup, adjusts her silk scarf, and makes a farewell video, sharing memories for her first grader to listen to when she’s not
here anymore. Remember when you were in kindergarten and I let you pack your own lunch and it was an entire block of cheese? And the teacher called and said you also packed a knife? And I told her it wasn’t a concealed weapon, you just wanted to be independent? Funny things like that. No tears, no way. Maybe she’ll throw in a pep talk about courage, trying not to remember the living hell of fertility treatments so she could have a child—and what a miracle it was when she finally got pregnant.
Room 4512
The yoga instructor with melanoma is at peace with her poor prognosis, grateful even. In her past life, she must not have learned an important lesson, that’s all. Now she has purpose, an opportunity to get it right, teaching the other patients about acceptance and gratitude in between grueling radiation treatments. Crystals and lavender aromatherapy fill the room, a healing space for her to meditate. In her spare time, maybe she’ll write a best-selling memoir called “Second Chances.”
People often ask how oncology nurses do it. Isn’t it depressing? Are you some kind of angel or what? There’s no easy answer except for the angel part, telling anyone who asks nope, far from it. I also don’t have an answer for the ghosts, the ones I remember well when passing by their rooms. The angry ones, hopeless ones, hopeful ones, and the fighters. The ones who never gave up until their last breath. The ones I laughed with and cried with, the ones I loved. The ones whose hands I held, the ones I listened to without saying a word because there were no words. The ones who sometimes visit my own room in the middle of the night asking why me?
And then there are the ones who surprise us all by beating the odds. Like the marathon runner who brings the nurses See’s candy every Christmas, taking me aside to thank me for sneaking him out that day. Maybe that’s the answer, the reason I keep coming back for more.