Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors (19 page)

“I know I’m boring you, but this will only take another few minutes.  You’re being very patient with me, I thank you.”

With those two sentences he both sincerely apologized for his inability to contain his obsessions and cunningly mocked my complacency about the issues affecting my life.  John Randolph was one of the most incredible characters I’d ever met.  Walking down Forty-fourth Street toward Broadway with him was like strolling an electoral district with a born politician.

“Hello!  John Randolph, the actor,” he’d bellow, as he grabbed and shook the hand of anyone who might have vaguely made eye contact.  John Randolph didn’t worry about whether he was famous enough or not.  He
assumed
everyone knew who he was, and that they were all eager to meet him.

So, while I was happy to give up my one contractual perk to Mr. Randolph, I was ashamed to discover how intensely the sacrifice affected my enjoyment of the job.  Never mind that I was starring in a hit play on Broadway.  Forget the fact that many of those in the audience each night were well aware of the remarkable journey I’d made to get back on the stage.  And ignore the overpowering impression made on old friends when they traveled to the theater night after night, passing the dazzling lights and glittering names outside one theater after another.  None of this mattered to me.  I was depressed and frustrated by the fact that, for the first two months of my run, no one who stopped backstage to greet me would see me in the glorious surroundings in which they might have.  My discontent was akin to that of a silly prince who, although everyone knows he is a prince and treats him like one, can’t stop sulking on the days when his royal robes are out being cleaned.  Apparently it wasn’t enough for me to get to
be
on Broadway in a wonderful play.  I needed everyone to see me wearing the Broadway suit of armor in order to feel that my shortcomings were well enough hidden away.  I was aware of the grotesqueness of the ingratitude I was guilty of, and yet it seemed out of my control.

Once I had inherited the grand dressing room some weeks into my run, I learned that such irritations are rarely about the objects we project them on.  I continued to find fault with one thing after another while I performed that play.  It’s not that I complained or made a nuisance of myself to anyone else, I just ruined my own experience.  The safer I felt about my life and health, the more I demanded from the world around me, and within a very short amount of time, there was, once again, little that could please me.

Around this time, on a hot autumn day between appointments, I had a meal with my friend Ethan.  This was a day on which I was spinning out of control.  Furious.  Fed up, once again, with the world and the friction that it inevitably inflicts on us.  Ethan reminded me of another meal that we had shared, some months before, between hospital admissions.  On that day, according to my friend, I’d said, “Ethan, if I ever get through this,  I’m never gonna worry again.  I’m never gonna worry, and I’ll never hurry anywhere, ever again.  I’m just gonna sit someplace green and watch the sun go up and down.”

My friend Ethan reminded me of that, and all I wanted to do was punch him in the face as hard as I could.

I hardly got a chance to assess my friend Ethan’s observation or my response to it.  Almost two years to the day after the first diagnosis, I was found to have leukemia again.  There were no beds immediately available in the hospital, so I kept performing in
Broadway Bound
for about another week and gave my last performance on Halloween.  Jackie and I had a party to go to later that night and, in an attempt to imitate normalcy and nonchalance even greater than that shown by my going out onstage each evening, I went to the theater dressed as a rabbit.  I was still wearing my bunny nose and my top hat with giant rabbit ears attached on the subway after the show, when a drunk man stopped in the aisle in front of us.

It’s a terrible cliché, I know, but I’ve had a number of experiences where filthy, red-eyed, drunk prophets have given me profound messages.  Messages that seemed as if they couldn’t have been meant for anyone but me. This man on the train stared at us, bleary-eyed, as he swayed back and forth.  One hand held the handrail, as his other hand reached out and stroked the long, white ears that were growing out of my hat.  The man’s cracked lips twitched and grimaced as he studied me.  Then he screamed:

“Were you exposed to nuclear radiation?  You look like a genetic mutation.  You know that?  You look like a genetic mutation!”

Back inside Sloan-Kettering, I climbed into my bed in the corner room at the end of the hall and isolated myself from everything outside it.  I accepted the fact that this time through the treatment would be much more painful because I had no intention of investing in any positive attitudes again.   Since the length of the remission had been twice the average, I had allowed myself to believe that there would be no more troubles.  I had regained some of Jackie’s trust in the last year, partly by not keeling over and dying on her; I had gotten the Neil Simon industry to trust me with the lead in his latest play; and I had just begun to trust the world again, myself.  When my worst fears for my future became my reality, I found that I couldn’t even allow myself the small measure of faith I had gained in my previous battles.

As far as I was concerned, I had suffered the very worst of the downsides of the self-actualization/healing philosophies.  I’d allowed myself to believe I had the power to change the personality that inhabited the body that had bred the disease.  I had believed that by “heeding the warning” of a drastic illness, I would be ensuring my safety in the future.  I’d made changes; I’d learned to open myself more to love; I’d made great strides toward learning how to live.  Why had I been stricken again?  Already angry about the sense of failure I felt, I became even more enraged by the alternative “gurus” I had followed when I watched them gloss over the fact that this was a real risk in the programs they outlined.

I saw Bernie Siegel and Louise Hay questioned together on an afternoon talk show, and I heard them state their beliefs that people were stricken with and died from diseases when they lost the ability to love themselves, or to feel and experience love in their lives.  A young woman called into the show and, shyly, but with determination, she tearfully appealed to them for some understanding about the death of her brother.

“My brother died six months ago of leukemia, and before he died I bought him Dr. Siegel’s book and he really loved it; it was great and he kept thinking positive.  He thought he was going to be okay.  He had all the love in the world from the family, from all his friends, all the support.  He had everything going for him.  He knew what he wanted from life but he didn’t make it and he never finished the book.  So I want to know, why doesn’t it work for everybody?”

It made me cringe to hear this woman begging a stranger to recognize her brother’s love and knowledge of his own worth.  Regardless of whether there was a point to be made or whether Bernie Siegel and Louise Hay have valid and important messages for patients – and I believe, to a large extent, that they do – I wanted so badly to see Dr. Siegel address the issue the woman had raised: that the statements he has made can and do make people feel that they may have failed somehow.  Failed to feel and express love themselves, or failed to recognize the deprivation in those they care about.  To my mind, no more proof was needed that this danger existed than the woman on the phone.  If she felt the need to defend the level of love in her family, then something he said must have made her feel threatened.  It may not have been his
intention
to do so, but I certainly expected to see him acknowledge that he had.

And the solution seemed so simple to me.  I watched the pixels on the television screen as they imitated the image of the doctor, and I wished I could have whispered into his ear.  I wanted to say, “Tell her people get tired.  Sometimes people work as hard as they possibly can, and they learn lots of lessons and find a great deal of peace and happiness, yet, eventually, they get so tired that they just need to take a rest.  And when you’re sick, taking that rest can mean the end of life, as it will for all of us eventually.”  I know that when I thought I could no longer continue to fight, that was the reason.

Instead, Dr. Siegel simply stated “The only thing that works for everybody is love.  Then a part of her brother stays alive…if she has loved her brother she has done what she can and now she has to go on.”  In all fairness to him I should say that I have heard Bernie Siegel state that none of his techniques or beliefs should be used to impart blame or promote guilt, and I believe he spoke the words at some point on that program.  But I knew, as I watched that day, that many people
would
interpret his words that way, regardless of his disclaimer.  And I knew that many would have devastating feelings of failure without any conscious interpretation at all.  I knew that people would, in many cases, be left to wrestle with those feelings — by the author’s intent or not — because I had become one of them.

Yes, I would endure much more pain this time around, I decided.  But it would be the pain of a painful experience, lived honestly, without the narcotizing comfort of emotional sleight of hand.  Now, those who came to visit me – those who were allowed admittance – were met by a mass of bitter, vengeful energy.  I no longer made any effort to comfort the uninitiated, and if anyone tried to cheer me up, to brighten my mood, I mocked them mercilessly.  I challenged them to defend the most inane polite chatter, daring them to come up with just one way things “…could be worse,” or to explain exactly why it was “good to see me.”  I spoke out loud my violent fantasies, pledging my future to a boxing career, openly relishing the thought of pummeling future opponents.  I described in gory detail the bloody punishment I intended to inflict upon anyone unfortunate enough to come up against me.  I was aware of the absurdity of these diatribes, coming from someone known to be, if not gentle, at least nonviolent — and weighing in at just over the weight of a moderately sized dog.  So there was a kind of humor in my attacks.  But it was always a testing humor, testing the limits of what the intruders could take.  If they couldn’t handle the depths of darkness to which my acrid asides would plunge, then I would become disgusted, and end the visit and the friendship in the same dismissive puff of breath.

I started to pride myself on this new outlook.  I drew strength from my anger, deciding that it was now my mission to survive as a testimonial against all the comforting theories that had let me down.  “Imagine,”  I would tell Jackie.  “Imagine surviving leukemia with no faith in anything at all.  An open admission that the world is a cruel, random place, where nothing matters beyond luck and ruthlessness.”  Those were the rock-hard thoughts out of which I carved my new will to live.

My new roommate was a young man named, if you can believe it, Willie Dingle.  The first time I heard it, I thought, as far as his grade school existence must have gone, his parents might as well have named him Penis Penis.

Willie was somewhere close to my age, and he was a nice, friendly guy — but he was not doing well at all.  He’d already had a bone marrow transplant, the procedure I was working my way toward, but Willie was not recovering properly.  He was suffering from just about every complication one could hope to avoid, short of actually up and dying.  Willie’s hands and arms were wrapped in loose bandages, covering the sore, swollen tracks left by the endless attempts to locate his scarred veins, and he was constantly receiving some kind of blood transfusion.  No matter how many platelets they pumped into poor Willie Dingle, his blood counts remained the same; no matter how many units of packed red cells they slipped under his skin, his body just burned them up without making use of them.  As a result, one or the other of Willie’s eyes was always stained an ugly, bloody red from a burst blood vessel.  As soon as one eye would heal, the other would spring a leak.  With the bandages on his arms, his weary, plodding walk, and blood running out of his eyes, Willie looked like a full-color version of one of the zombies from
Night of the Living Dead
.

As a precautionary measure, the nursing staff had consigned Willie to strict bed rest.  The platelet problem put him in extreme danger of hemorrhaging from the slightest bump or bruise.  Regardless of the facts, every day Willie would get up to go for a walk, and quickly be led back to his bed by a gently scolding, soft-voiced nurse’s aide.

“Now you know you not supposed to be out of bed, Willie.  If you fall down or bump yourself, they ain’t not one thing we gonna to be able to do for you.”

It never stopped Willie, though.  If he couldn’t  walk the halls, he’d wander around the room.  I’d watch Willie round the corner of my curtain, making his way toward the bathroom we shared.  He would lean heavily on his IV pole for support, sometimes stopping mysteriously to rest, or just to stand and think, somewhere along the eleven-step expedition.  Whenever Willie parked himself near the foot of my bed, or stood staring wistfully out the window in the dead center of my line of sight, the silence in the room grew too real to tolerate.

“Hey, Willie,”  I’d say, just to be saying something.  “How’s it goin’?”

Willie would snap out of his trance, always looking surprised to remember where he was and that there was someone else there with him.  Then he’d slowly drawl, his tired voice still stuck in whatever faraway place the rest of him had just returned from,  “Ohhhhhh…You know,” and he’d start back on his way, refreshed for the final leg of his journey across the barren desert of our semiprivate (whatever that means) hospital room.

That was pretty much the extent of our communication, Willie and I.  Day after day, and sometimes several times within one.

“Hey, Willie.  How’s it goin’?”

“Ohhhhhh…You know.”

Not that there wasn’t variation within the form.  Even without any other words than those, there is a respect and an intimacy that develops between people sharing in each other’s illness and experiencing the looming possibility of each other’s death.  Willie and I never exchanged stories, we never gave each other a rundown of our personal histories.  We never complained to, or relied on each other.  We overheard, and we witnessed, all of the very worst things that could possibly be happening to the other one.  And once or twice a day I would say, “Hey, Willie.  How’s it goin’?”

And Willie would say, “Ohhhhhh…You know.”

The doctors made their bedside visits at the crack of dawn.  In the spooky illumination just beginning to seep through the window, the clomp of three pairs of shoes would penetrate my sleep just before the lights would snap on.  The timing of the visits, I’m sure, was decided  on for reasons no more malicious than effecient scheduling.  But I couldn’t help suspecting that, on some level, the doctors were glad to visit the patients when they were still asleep; the better to find them docile and undemanding, the better to drop their bombshells and make a quick getaway.

Early one morning, before the sun had even begun to rise, Willie was visited by one young female doctor, traveling alone.  She padded around my bed, pulling the curtain to make an even tighter enclosure to seal me off from the other half of the room.  She spoke to Willie without turning on the light.  The doctor’s voice was as hard and sharp as the floor tile in the predawn room.  Her heavy suburban New Jersey accent was knocked off-kilter by an insistently sing-song perkiness and cheerful over-enunciation she tried to inject into every sentence.  The attempt was unfortunate.  Instead of making her seem friendly, she only sounded bored.  Instead of compensating for a lack of intelligence on her patient’s part, she only called into question her own.

“Good mawning, Mistuh Dingle, how are you today?”

That question always got me.  I never knew how to answer it myself, at five A.M., after being woken from a drug-induced sleep that I might have fallen into only a few hours before.

The doctor plowed on.  “Mistuh Dingle, I’m Donna.  Doctuh Gee’s new fellow.  We met yestuhday, remembuh?”

“Hnnn?”  I heard Willie whine.  I didn’t think he was even awake.

“Mistuh Dingle, remembuh the CAT scan we took yestuhday?”

“Hnnn???”  Willie’s whine had tightened into a pleading whimper.  It was the sound of someone fighting to stay hidden under the covers on a frigid morning, safe from the cold, and safe in sleep from life and its infinite indignities.

“The pictures, Mistuh Dingle, with the machine, of yuh head?  Remembuh the pictures we took, Mistuh Dingle, of yuh head?”

“Hnn-nnnn…”  I heard Willie make the sound again, but this time it was a surrender.  A reluctant acceptance of the inevitability of whatever might be waiting for him.

“Well, Mistuh Dingle, there was a mass, okay?  The pictures showed you have a mass.  So we can’t give you any more treatment until we find out what it is, okay?  Mistuh Dingle?  The pictures showed you have a mass.”  The way she said the word “mass” made me dig into my mattress with my fingernails.  She honked the word out, with a harsh, compressed nasality that threatened to shatter the window panes and lightbulbs in the room.  I heard Willie move in his bed.  I couldn’t tell if he was sitting up to pay more attention or pulling the pillow over his head, trying to pretend this woman was just a monster in some bad dream.

“Mistuh Dingle, I have a form here for you to sign.  Since you have a mass, Mistuh Dingle, I need you to sign this form for us.  Do you unduhstand?  The form tells us what to do if you become incapacitated, okay?  Do you unduhstand?  Mistuh Dingle?  The form tells us what to do if you become incapacitated.  The form tells us if you want us to take extraordinary measures to resuscitate you, if you become incapacitated.”

The word “incapacitated” had lost all its meaning for me.  She said it so many times, in such a brief span, that it had become nothing more than a chunk of six-syllable gibberish.  I assumed that Willie was at least nodding his head, because then the doctor said “
Good
, Mistuh Dingle!  I’ll leave the form here so you can talk it over with your family, okay?  We can come pick it up latuh.”

Then, in a remarkable and rare display of compassion, she lowered her voice and said, “I know this is hard, Mistuh Dingle.  It’s a difficult decision.”  She turned from his bed and started walking around the curtain, past me, toward the door.  Striding by, as if she just couldn’t release herself from the last line of the pathetically predictable script, she called back, “Have a good day, Mistuh Dingle.”