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CHAPTER EIGHT
We had a big Cancer Team Meeting a couple days later. Every so often, a bunch of doctors and social workers and physical therapists and whoever else got together around a big table in a conference room and discussed my situation. (Not the A ugustus Waters situation or the
A msterdam situation. The cancer situation.)
Dr. Maria led the meeting. She hugged me when I got there. She was a hugger.
I felt a little better, I guess. Sleeping with the BiPA P all night made my lungs feel almost normal, although, then again, I did not really remember lung normality.
Everyone got there and made a big show of turning off their pagers and everything so it would be all about me, and then Dr. Maria said,
“So the great news is that Phalanxifor continues to control your tumor growth, but obviously we’re still seeing serious problems with fluid accumulation. So the question is, how should we proceed?”
A nd then she just looked at me, like she was waiting for an answer. “Um,” I said, “I feel like I am not the most qualified person in the
room to answer that question?”
She smiled. “Right, I was waiting for Dr. Simons. Dr. Simons?” He was another cancer doctor of some kind.
“Well, we know from other patients that most tumors eventually evolve a way to grow in spite of Phalanxifor, but if that were the case,
we’d see tumor growth on the scans, which we don’t see. So it’s not that yet.”
Yet, I thought.
Dr. Simons tapped at the table with his forefinger. “The thought around here is that it’s possible the Phalanxifor is worsening the edema,
but we’d face far more serious problems if we discontinued its use.”
Dr. Maria added, “We don’t really understand the long-term effects of Phalanxifor. Very few people have been on it as long as you have.”
“So we’re go
“We’re going to stay the course,” Dr. Maria said, “but we’ll need to do more to keep that edema from building up.” I felt kind of sick for
some reason, like I was going to throw up. I hated Cancer Team Meetings in general, but I hated this one in particular. “Your cancer is not going away, Hazel. But we’ve seen people live with your level of tumor penetration for a long time.” (I did not ask what constituted a long time. I’d made that mistake before.) “I know that coming out of the ICU, it doesn’t feel this way, but this fluid is, at least for the time being, manageable.”
“Can’t I just get like a lung transplant or something?” I asked.
Dr. Maria’s lips shrank into her mouth. “You would not be considered a strong candidate for a transplant, unfortunately,” she said. I
understood: No use wasting good lungs on a hopeless case. I nodded, trying not to look like that comment hurt me. My dad started crying a
little. I didn’t look over at him, but no one said anything for a long time, so his hiccuping cry was the only sound in the room.
I hated hurting him. Most of the time, I could forget about it, but the inexorable truth is this: They might be glad to have me around, but I was the alpha and the omega of my parents’ suffering.
Just before the Miracle, when I was in the ICU and it looked like I was going to die and Mom was telling me it was okay to let go, and I was trying to let go but my lungs kept searching for air, Mom sobbed something into Dad’s chest that I wish I hadn’t heard, and that I hope she never finds out that I did hear. She said, “I won’t be a mom anymore.” It gutted me pretty badly.
I couldn’t stop thinking about that during the whole Cancer Team Meeting. I couldn’t get it out of my head, how she sounded when she
said that, like she would never be okay again, which probably she wouldn’t.
A nyway, eventually we decided to keep things the same only with more frequent fluid drainings. A t the end, I asked if I could travel to
A msterdam, and Dr. Simons actually and literally laughed, but then Dr. Maria said, “Why not?” A nd Simons said, dubiously, “Why not?” A nd Dr. Maria said, “Yeah, I don’t see why not. They’ve got oxygen on the planes, after all.” Dr. Simons said, “A re they just going to gate-check a BiPA P?” A nd Maria said, “Yeah, or have one waiting for her.”
“Placing a patient—one of the most promising Phalanxifor survivors, no less—an eight-hour flight from the only physicians intimately
familiar with her case? That’s a recipe for disaster.”
Dr. Maria shrugged. “It would increase some risks,” she acknowledged, but then turned to me and said, “But it’s your life.”
Except not really. On the car ride home, my parents agreed: I would not be going to A msterdam unless and until there was medical
agreement that it would be safe.
* * *
A ugustus called that night after di
gajillion pillows and also Bluie, with my computer on my lap.
I picked up, saying, “Bad news,” and he said, “Shit, what?”
“I can’t go to A msterdam. One of my doctors thinks it’s a bad idea.”
He was quiet for a second. “God,” he said. “I should’ve just paid for it myself. Should’ve just taken you straight from the Funky Bones to
A msterdam.”
“But then I would’ve had a probably fatal episode of deoxygenation in A msterdam, and my body would have been shipped home in the
cargo hold of an airplane,” I said.
“Well, yeah,” he said. “But before that, my grand romantic gesture would have totally gotten me laid.”
I laughed pretty hard, hard enough that I felt where the chest tube had been.
“You laugh because it’s true,” he said.
I laughed again.
“It’s true, isn’t it!”
“Probably not,” I said, and then after a moment added, “although you never know.”
He moaned in misery. “I’m go
“You’re a virgin?” I asked, surprised.
“Hazel Grace,” he said, “do you have a pen and a piece of paper?” I said I did. “Okay, please draw a circle.” I did. “Now draw a smaller
circle within that circle.” I did. “The larger circle is virgins. The smaller circle is seventeen-year-old guys with one leg.”
I laughed again, and told him that having most of your social engagements occur at a children’s hospital also did not encourage
promiscuity, and then we talked about Peter Van Houten’s amazingly brilliant comment about the sluttiness of time, and even though I was in bed and he was in his basement, it really felt like we were back in that uncreated third space, which was a place I really liked visiting with him.
Then I got off the phone and my mom and dad came into my room, and even though it was really not big enough for all three of us,
they lay on either side of the bed with me and we all watched A NTM on the little TV in my room. This girl I didn’t like, Selena, got kicked off, which made me really happy for some reason. Then Mom hooked me up to the BiPA P and tucked me in, and Dad kissed me on the forehead,
the kiss all stubble, and then I closed my eyes.
The BiPA P essentially took control of my breathing away from me, which was intensely a
made all this noise, rumbling with each inhalation and whirring as I exhaled. I kept thinking that it sounded like a dragon breathing in time with me, like I had this pet dragon who was cuddled up next to me and cared enough about me to time his breaths to mine. I was thinking
about that as I sank into sleep.
I got up late the next morning. I watched TV in bed and checked my email and then after a while started crafting an email to Peter Van
Houten about how I couldn’t come to A msterdam but I swore upon the life of my mother that I would never share any information about the