Cullin Mitch - The Post-War Dream

As Debra watched television in the living room, Hollis stretched out for a nap, resting on their bed, staring at the yellow ceiling. He awaited the forgotten sensation to wash over him — that escape from unimaginable pain, that medicated reprieve he had relied upon so long ago — and soon his nerves settled, the trembling soothed by the medication as he began to drift. Shutting his eyes, he reached down, touching his left leg through his pants, pushing at the area where he had once been shot; but he felt nothing there which summoned his old injury, just hard bone and skin belonging to a badly scarred leg which had carried him into retirement and, for almost as far back as he could remember, had pressed against his wife every night — such an unassuming yet intimate mingling of their bodies, so comforting and, until now, so easily taken for granted.

Debra would not get better. “They've done all they can do for me, dear.” A final clinical trial, a few more drugs, with each subsequent exam or test confirming results which her withering appearance had already telegraphed: no signs of improvement, if anything a continued decline. But, her tired voice assured Hollis, she would be fine regardless of the likely outcome, and, as well, she insisted he must be fine, too. Yet following restless, anxiety-filled nights in which even medication couldn't induce slumber, her mood was erratic and depressed, the nails on her fingers chewed down to the flesh. And that once oval face was ravaged not just by sickness but also from a lack of sleep — the hollow cheeks, the deep-set eyes, the drawn lips devoid of color. Now alone in his garden, Hollis wonders if he hadn't done enough to save her, to find different solutions or investigate radical alternatives, making an effort to suggest other treatment options. Maybe he should've spoken up in Dr. Langford's office, pressing the doctor harder — rather than sitting passively by, unsure of what to do next, senseless from the continual bad news while Debra did most of the talking; yes, he should have pounded his fists on the doctor's table, confronting the woman: “This bullshit isn't good enough for us, and it isn't working! We need to cure my wife!” Except that kind of behavior would have only added to the stress and futility of the situation. No, he is convinced, there was reason for temperate, rational, straightforward talk: it kept them from immediately panicking when, in truth, they should have been hurling chairs at walls and cursing God at the top of their lungs.

Then last Wednesday Debra raised her head at the kitchen table and spoke almost as a whisper, so that Hollis paused and looked at her, his fork stopping midair between his open mouth and a large serving of barbecue-grilled portobello mushrooms. “Tell me about us,” she'd said; but her quiet voice had reached him with the clarity of a scream, and he had, in that moment, grasped both the direct and indirect meaning of what she uttered — her hushed request underlined by an expression which, as it appeared on her face, conveyed two different states: a pensive, half-formed grin; sad, gently blinking, smiling eyes. “Will you, please, tell me about us.”

“Of course,” Hollis answered, setting his fork aside. It didn't matter that only a few bites of his dinner had been swallowed, or that he had bothered to prepare the meal for them, or that he was, in fact, quite hungry; none of that mattered at all, especially when Debra — sitting directly across from him, her plate untouched and the food still steaming — could no longer share with him the illusion of having an abundance of time. Instead, her mind had gone searching backward of late, retreating into the past more frequently: perhaps, Hollis worried, because her present and her future had begun to merge, narrowing in so as to become nonexistent. With whatever future remaining for her close at hand, she had nowhere else to go but back to where those left-behind years felt tangible yet distant, and, to some degree, infinite. And while Hollis wished to think otherwise, there possibly could be no next year for Debra, no welcoming of the new century, no slow amble into old age for her; this was likely her future, the last of their future together, and the past now held more hope and promise than what might soon lie ahead.

Such an eminent feeling stemmed from yet another turn in Debra's failing health which, after so many months of trying to keep despair away, cast something of a portentous shade upon the optimism they had sought to maintain; it certainly marred Hollis's faith in her chances of, eventually, overcoming the disease. For even with the antiangiogenesis clinical trial under way, she became conscious of her midsection thickening, swollen and distended and hard, a severe bloating in her abdomen which, she knew, was an indicator of tumors blocking the lymphatic system from draining fluid. “At least I know how I'd look pregnant,” she half joked, staring at herself naked in the full-length bedroom mirror, her normally rapid-fire tone labored by a shortness of breath. “Better late than never, I suppose.”

“I don't think that's very funny,” Hollis said, moving next to her, studying her reflection as if that other version of herself was glimpsed in a fun-house mirror — the scarred stomach jutting bizarrely outward, supported in her palms where it curved downward from the navel, conjuring up the bloated, malnourished third-world children he had sometimes seen on late-night television commercials.

“I don't really think it's funny either,” she snapped.

“Ascites” was what Dr. Langford called the condition, although Debra was already positive of the name before the doctor confirmed its onset (derived from the Greek word askos — Dr. Langford had gone on to explain — meaning bag or sac): a further sign of advanced ovarian cancer, that point when the disease had infiltrated the lymphatic system and had grown well beyond the ovary — often leading to bowel obstructions, pain and pressure, nausea and vomiting, difficulty eating, sometimes requiring a nasogastric tube or gastrostomy tube to be surgically placed through the abdomen and into the stomach. But until the clinical trial was finished, any kind of surgery was to be avoided, and, instead, the excess fluid was removed like gasoline siphoned out of a car, temporarily alleviating the pressure while also robbing her body of much-needed protein and nutrients.

Within five weeks, Debra's stomach had been drained three times at an outpatient clinic, a thin cannula tube depositing between two to three liters of fluid inside a plastic drainage bag. Each of the paracentesis sessions brought on an increased loss of muscle mass — a visible physical depletion, sagging skin and pronounced bone structure — which caused her to look more haggard than ever before, more wasted away and enfeebled; the quick transformation bowed her body, making her stooped, somehow smaller, seemingly fragile and years older than Hollis. Her walk had become a hunched shuffle, her movements sluggish and wavering. She required assistance when going from the house to the Suburban, the Suburban to the clinics, the clinics to Dr. Langford's office. She couldn't grocery shop anymore, or run errands on her own — the frustration of which was sometimes expressed with tears, the occasional throwing of a drinking cup or a pen or a paperback. And as Halloween approached, she lamented the lack of children in Nine Springs, what would be the complete absence of trick-or-treaters on their street, because — as she noted — her appearance wasn't too far from the Wicked Witch of the West. “I bet I'd scare the living daylights out of them,” she'd commented. “Wouldn't even need a costume or any makeup. I'm just plain spooky.”

But last Wednesday morning was when Hollis realized their continually reduced optimism had already evaporated into thin air, coming shortly after Debra had finished the third paracentesis session and was informed by a young outpatient-clinic physician — not by Dr. Langford, not by anyone she had dealt with much during her cancer — that the ascites couldn't be managed any longer without causing serious problems. She would, naturally, collect fluid again in her abdomen yet receive no relief (to treat it further would only make her sicker faster, not to treat it would only make her sicker). Moreover, the clinical trial hadn't produced a single encouraging result, although it was an ongoing effort. All things being normal, they might have experienced a feeling of profound grief, of unfathomable fear, as if a kind of sword of Damocles had been hung above her head. Except they were accustomed to repeated setbacks, having forgotten what it was like to expect a breakthrough. “Oh well,” she had said at the clinic, shrugging indifferently. “It is what it is. That's life — at least what's left of mine anyway.”