chest X ray the day she saw Dr. Herman. They gave her a slip to take upstairs, and gave her a room number on the sixth floor, and a little plastic tub that held a toothbrush and a cup, soap, and toothpaste, and just holding it depressed her. She felt suddenly like an inmate in a prison.
They went silently upstairs, amid the hubbub of the hospital, and Sam looked uncomfortable and pale, and Alex looked terrified as they got off the elevator, and walked past two people with IVs, asleep on gurneys. The nurses at the nurses' station told her where to go, and they walked into a small ugly room, painted in pale blue, with a poster on the wall, and a hospital bed that seemed to eat up the entire room. Nothing about it was pretty, but at least she was alone and didn't have to talk to anyone, except Sam, who was making idle chitchat about the view, and how incredibly expensive hospitals were getting, and how socialized medicine wasn't working at all for Canada or the U.K. She wanted to scream at him, but she knew he was making a frantic effort to cope, even if he wasn't helping. He was too unnerved himself just from being there even to try to help her.
A nurse hurried in to make sure she'd had nothing by mouth since midnight the night before, and an orderly shoved an IV pole into the room, and tossed a gown on the bed for her, and said he'd be back in a minute, and suddenly as she stood there, Alex started to cry helplessly. This was awful. And Sam took her in his arms and held her there, wanting to tell her he was sorry.
“It'll all be over soon. Just try to forget about it. Think about Annabelle, about going to the beach next summer … or Halloween …and before you know it, it'll be over.” She laughed at what he said, but even the thought of Halloween with Annabelle wasn't enough to block out the terror she was feeling.
“I'm so scared,” she whispered as he held her.
“I know …but you're going to be okay … I promise.” But he couldn't promise that, no one could. It was up to God. And she wasn't sure what He had planned for her. But for the moment she was scared stiff, and she looked it.
“It's so weird …we're both so powerful in our own ways. We're strong people, with good jobs, we move a lot of people around, make a lot of decisions that affect money and people and corporations …and then you get hit with something like this, and you're powerless. You're suddenly at the mercy of everyone, people you don't even know, and fate, and your own body.” She felt like a child, totally helpless to stop the nightmare in which she was living.
The nurse appeared at the door again, told her to undress and put on the gown, and someone would come in to start her IV in a minute. There was no time, no sympathy, no interest.
“Is that supposed to be good news?” Sam teased. “Like they're coming back with a four-course breakfast?”
“Nothing about this is good news,” Alex said, drying her eyes again, wishing she weren't there, or that she'd decided to ignore the shadow on her mammogram, but she knew she couldn't. Maybe Sam was right. Maybe it all was a lot of nonsense to keep the medical profession in business. She hoped so.
The nurse came back into the room then, while Alex changed, and she had her lie down so she could start the IV. It was just saline solution so she wouldn't be dehydrated. “And then we've got a line in, in case we need to give you anything else. You're going to be having a general today,” she said, like a stewardess announcing that they were going to be flying over St. Louis.
“I know,” Alex said, trying to sound like she was in control again, like she was part of it, and had made the decision, but this woman didn't care. That wasn't the issue for her, who had decided what or why. This was a body factory, a warehouse for bodies in disrepair, and she had to get them moving as fast as they could, to make room for the next ones.
The IV burned as it went into Alex's arm, but the nurse said that it would stop in a few minutes. She took