All You Could Ask For A Novel - By Mike Greenberg Page 0,86

could feel her strength that afternoon and I grew to admire it more and more in the weeks that followed.

Perhaps the hardest thing for a strong person to do is admit to needing help, and what I think Katherine learned during our time together was that it was not a sign of weakness but rather of great courage to accept me, to lean on me, to allow me to be her health advocate, which is exactly what I became, right there over a second bottle of Burgundy.

Three days later, we were perfectly sober as we approached the entrance to the massive complex of Memorial Sloan-Kettering, where Katherine would spend two days on the nineteenth floor to have special biopsies performed, receive second and third opinions on all her diagnoses, and then begin her chemotherapy treatment program. Katherine had told me about the nineteenth floor at our first lunch. Apparently, it is an open secret among the rich and famous, like the island David Copperfield owns. It is a special floor for the world’s premier cancer patients. There isn’t anything different or superior about the treatment, the difference is in the way you are treated. Katherine told me to expect the Four Seasons, but when we arrived it felt more like a motel you’d find on a deserted stretch of road off a highway in a bad neighborhood. Even having money and knowing we would be going to nineteen didn’t save us from being caught waiting in the general area on the first floor, which was overrun with people trying to be admitted.

I had a meltdown.

Katherine was anxious enough without having to wait three hours because of a paperwork snafu and a nurses’ shift change. She kept trying to quiet me down, and then I thought to myself: If she is comforting me then what exactly am I accomplishing? Why am I even here? And so I took matters into my own hands. I ducked into a supply area when no one was looking and stole a gurney. I beckoned Katherine and before she could balk I said: “Lie down.”

Then I was wheeling Katherine past the nurses’ station and past security directly to the only bank of elevators I could see from where we’d been waiting. I pressed the button and held my breath. And, to my great relief, the first thing I saw upon entering the elevator was a placard on the rear wall.

SERVICING FLOORS 10 THRU 19

“We’re in business,” I whispered to Katherine, who seemed to be quite comfortable, stretched out on the gurney, her head resting on two pillowcases I had rolled together. “Going up!”

But then the button didn’t light up. Not when I touched it with my thumb, my forefinger, tapped it with a nail, or stuffed my entire palm inside the circle. Nothing. The doors just shut and then we sat there. It’s actually quite amazing how jarring it is to feel an elevator not move. It’s another of those things, like a refrigerator humming, that you don’t notice until it stops.

“I don’t think we’re moving,” Katherine said.

I looked down. Her eyes were shut. Her voice was muted, relaxed.

“I know,” I said.

“Why aren’t we moving?” she asked.

“All part of the plan,” I said, with a confidence I didn’t quite feel.

She didn’t open her eyes but she broke into a wide smile. “You’re funny, you know that,” she said. “Wake me up if we ever get to nineteen.”

We stayed in the elevator long enough for me to arrive at an idea. I unzipped my purse and dumped the entire contents on the floor. Then I kneeled down and waited, and as soon as I heard the bell chime and the doors open, I shouted, “Oh, shit!”

Two women in lab coats entered the elevator. “Everything all right?” one of them asked.

“Oh, I just dropped everything on the floor,” I said, frantically gathering my things. “Would you mind hitting nineteen for me?”

From where I was kneeling, my head was right by Katherine’s. And as I heard someone slide a card through a slot and felt the elevator begin to move, I could hear her laugh.

When we got off the elevator, a security guard had to buzz us in, which he did with only a mildly suspicious glare, and then the nurse spent ten minutes scolding me because we hadn’t followed protocol. I just kept apologizing and played dumb, happy because Katherine seemed to have fallen asleep, and also because no matter how browbeaten I was I was relieved no