Charles Bock - Alice & Oliver

“Stay,” Alice told him.

Obedient, Oliver allowed his wife to lean in, nuzzle, and kiss her child on the crown. Alice inhaled, Doe’s vanilla scent expanding through her lungs.

“I just have to get on with it,” she said, but sat awhile longer.

Somewhere a driver was pressing on his car horn, not letting up, right until the moment he surrendered. Alice remained motionless, holding her child. Oliver promised that as soon as Jonathan’s wife came to take care of Doe, he’d be back. When Alice knew her schedule, they’d figure out the right time for the baby to visit. These were the confirmation numbers he’d gotten from the insurance people, the name Alice was supposed to use in case they gave her any problems.

He caught himself. “Everything’s going to be great.”

Now he put a hand on each of her cheeks and held her motionless body. “Tu est ma préférée.” And pressed his lips onto hers with the momentum of a rumbling train, until his fervency eased, his force subsiding, his lips strong but also patient, assuring, ice cream melting inside the scoop of a spoon, so soft, dissolving Alice with them.

—

Behind a desk stacked with files and folders, a largish woman had a phone jammed between her tilted head and raised shoulder. Chewing gum, sweating lightly, breathing through her nose in short whinnies, she stared without engagement in the direction of a computer screen. Her index and middle fingers kept pounding at her keyboard. Alice noticed the majority of her fingernails were formidably long, painted to form a fluorescent rainbow; but her two typing fingers were naked, their nails nubs, furiously pounding those small plastic squares.

Alice followed Tilda’s directions and did a breathing exercise. She squeezed Tilda’s hand, concentrated on the solidity and mass around her fingers, let herself be encompassed by that strength.

When a light started blinking on the desk phone’s console, the woman rolled her eyes, punched at the light, and greeted whoever was on the other end — a throaty and doubting “Mmmmn?” that granted permission to speak. Receiver pressed up against an ear lined with tiny jewels, the engine of her jaw seeming to chew that much harder. The receptionist listened. Black braids — thick as electrical cables — remained coiled, cemented in place around her head, even as the large woman shifted in her seat. Her face suggested a profound understanding of the problems of this hospital. “What in sweet Jesus we doing have this lady check in at the early light if she going to wait till the middle of the afternoon for her room?” she wanted to know. “Oh, you going to do something about it, Geraldine. Come on down then. Bring your paltry ass on down and look at this lady the shape she in. You tell her she got to wait. Geraldine — Geraldine. What orderlies on the shift? Diaz? Tell that lazy fool I’m on the phone. This woman ain’t going through enough already and we can’t get a bed cleaned? Go get Diaz for me. Sí. Sí. Pronto. Pronto ahora. ”

—

In an exam room on the fourth floor, once the nurse put the thin layer of paper on the bottom of the scale — yet another unneeded reminder of Alice’s delicate condition — the numbers showed that, since her last doctor’s visit — four days ago, at her primary care physician’s office — Alice had dropped three whole pounds.

“Wait until you read the book I’m going to do,” Alice said. “ The Chemo Diet. Women will be lining up for chemotherapy.”

Behind large plastic eyewear, the nurse looked confused. In her line of work, three lost pounds were not reasons to celebrate.

“You know what I always say,” Tilda broke in. “Cancer, schmancer. Long as you’re healthy.”

Beams of delight radiated from Alice’s face. “I adore you.”

—

Through the hallways and waiting rooms, word was spreading: the new IV expert lacked her predecessor’s delicate touch. And maybe there was more than cultural jealousy and suspicion to the rumors, for during Alice’s first awful visit here, Fatima had needed three sticks to find a vein. Beneath her thick head scarf, the demure lady now was visibly concentrating, ignoring Bhakti’s suggestion to use a vein finder, kneading the inside of Alice’s forearm. She tapped at a vein with two fingers, pressed with her thumbs. “Wrists and forearm look good only…” Her voice petered out; she kept rubbing.

“Dr. Eisenstatt’s going to see you a little later.” Dr. Bhakti’s arms were crossed and she was grinding a fashionable heel — those same boots as at Alice’s first visit. Was Alice just lucky enough to come in every day that Bhakti chose to wear those gorgeous things?

“And we have all sorts of positive news,” Bhakti continued, her words traveling in a line over the scarved head of the concentrating nurse. “Your aspirate shows an absence of leukemic cells in your blastocysts. Meaning your remission is still strong. That’s what we want going into consolidation.”

Loose sleeves covered Fatima’s arms to her wrists. She kneaded the soft skin in the crook of Alice’s right arm. Her head shook. “Nothing worth going in for.”

“Plus your counts are high enough that we can take you off the Coumadin. So no more blood thinners for you.”

“Even this feels collapsed,” Fatima mumbled.

Aware of the nurse now, Bhakti spoke politely. “You tried the cephalic?”

A glare in return: What do you think?

“Could someone go to the trouble of bringing me more blankets, please?” Alice asked. “It’s chilly in here.”

“Well, we have to get this line started.” Bhakti tossed her hair behind her ear and was apparently oblivious to how such a maneuver might be taken by a bald chemo patient. Recrossing her arms, she lifted a pen to her mouth. “You’ve got a blood transfusion scheduled, then nutrition.” She bit, gnawing at the pen’s end, an action incongruous with everything Alice had assumed about her. Now Bhakti’s voice sounded like someone consulting with a waitress about unfamiliar menu items. “The thing about the IV team, if we call, we’re committed. Then add two hours to whatever time they estimate for arrival.”

When Alice had been in New Hampshire, and it was time to remove the catheter from her clavicle area, the doctor had told her to hum. As soon as she started, he’d yanked. There had been a sting and it had been over, like that. “I had a central line the last time,” Alice said. “I’m sure you both know that.” She sought out Tilda, explaining. “First they tried to go into my wrist. This monstrous harpoon of a needle. I was horrified, but I don’t think I even had the energy to start shaking, that’s what kind of shape I was in. Oliver told me some stupid joke he loves — it doesn’t matter what, trust me, it isn’t funny.”

“Shocker there,” Tilda said.

“It makes him laugh,” Alice continued, “and that always makes me laugh, and so I love the joke. He brought it up because he knew I enjoyed his pleasure. And at that moment, it was so ridiculous, I couldn’t help be surprised. That helped me calm.”

Tilda’s eyes rolled upward; Alice recognized her skepticism. “I know you and he butt heads, Tilapia. But he’s always showing me new forms of love. It’s how we survived that horrid month.”

The overhead lights kept humming.

“Let’s just put in a central line and hook everything to that,” Bhakti said, shrugging at Alice. “I mean, you’re already scheduled for a port.”

—

She was rising, propelling herself upward from the bottom of the ocean, kicking against gravity’s pull, pressure on her face, her lungs burning, ascending through pockets of warmth, layers of freezing cold. Breaking out of the depths, into consciousness, awakening, gulping, taking deep breaths. Overhead light panels were graceless and harsh. Running across her clavicle, aftershocks were like electricity through thin aluminum bars.