The Unwinding of the Miracle - Julie Yip-Williams Page 0,44

UCLA, but I certainly knew no doctors at either place. So Josh and my siblings started alerting my cousins, first to let them know what was happening, and then to ask them for any leads on colorectal surgeons. No doubt my mother, true to traditional Chinese values, would have been horrified that we were publicizing the shameful details of my diagnosis, but it’s a good thing we did, because within the hour Cousin C called me—she had also come back to Los Angeles for the wedding.

Cousin C, with whom I grew up and who is like a sister to me, wasted no time with the emotional stuff—there would be plenty of time for that later. She was all business with me on the phone, as was I. We are Chinese. We are immigrants. Our ancestors escaped poverty and war by fleeing to Vietnam, and we and our parents did the same by fleeing to America, “on a sinking boat no less,” as my cousin N likes to say. Pragmatism flows through our veins. Cousin C lives in Westport, Connecticut, now, but for years she lived in Maplewood, New Jersey, next to a renowned gastroenterologist whose practice is in Manhattan. She hadn’t been in touch with him for years, but she would email him to see if he had any recommendations. Paolo was his name. I never learned what his last name was. Paolo responded promptly to Cousin C’s email even though they hadn’t communicated in so long, and it was Sunday of the Fourth of July weekend.

Yes, he wrote, one of his actor patients had gotten surgery last year from a Dr. James Y. at UCLA, and he’d been quite happy with the result. Could Cousin C please provide him with Josh’s cellphone number and he would reach out to Dr. Y.?

A couple hours later, while Josh was in the car with my brother, on their way to pick up some lunch and considering some unpromising leads for a surgeon, Josh’s phone rang. “Hi, Josh. This is Jim. Paolo told me about your situation. How can I help you?” A top surgeon at UCLA calling Josh on his cellphone on a Sunday during a holiday weekend and being so incredibly friendly and helpful—it absolutely defied all of our preconceived notions about arrogant, aloof surgeons. Dr. Y. told Josh that he would operate immediately, before seeing any biopsy results, because in almost all cases, something like this was cancer. He told Josh he would be glad to take me as a patient and that he would serve as the accepting doctor in the hospital transfer process. Josh and I were relieved and ecstatic. This was the first step in me getting out of that hellhole of a hospital.

A worsening obstruction with increasing pain and nausea, combined with the frantic desperation of knowing that I had a malignant growth inside me, made the few hours that had elapsed feel like days and weeks, and so we quickly moved (or at least we tried to quickly move) on to the next step in the process—getting through the hospital and insurance company bureaucracy to effect the hospital-to-hospital transfer, and by “we” I really mean Josh, because he was the only one capable of dealing with such matters at that point. Josh is not one of those people who likes dealing with the details of life (e.g., paying bills, buying soap, planning vacations, arranging for the fixing of broken appliances). He also hates talking on the phone, whether to order a food delivery or resolve the faulty cable. When there’s an issue of any sort, I’m the one who calls to complain and demand and take care of it. During the more than twenty-four hours it would take for me to be transferred, I would witness a new side to my husband as he extended himself to do what did not come naturally to him. He would call and harass the various parties involved as we waited and waited and waited—the staff at Garfield Medical Center, the staff at UCLA, the insurance company—as UCLA sought to assure itself that my insurance company (unfamiliar to West Coast medical providers) would pay the bills.

I was lying there forlornly late that Sunday afternoon, starting to realize that a transfer that day was looking less and less likely given the nonresponsiveness of my insurance company, when my room phone rang. It was someone calling from UCLA for me. The guy on the other end wanted to verify