Warm Wuinter's Garden (14 page)

Bett squeezed her breasts until the pain made
tears come to her eyes.

Why be betrayed? By something so useless. The
sound of the thought of uselessness reverberated inside Bett’s
head. Would she return to her home and her husband useless? If she
were to leave a breast here in this never quiet, never loud place,
what else might remain? She couldn’t imagine what it would feel
like to be wheeled down one of the beige and orange halls to the
front doors of the hospital while a part of her body remained
behind. She couldn’t imagine lying in bed at home being nursed.
Useless. If they took her breast, were there any guarantees that
they would not want to take more? What else might she have to give
up?

When she had given herself up to Neil, and
just as much, he to her, Bett had found that he did not dislike her
breasts. He intuitively had known of her sensitivity and, out of
respect and understanding, he had chosen to be circumspect until
she had chosen to make them a gift to him.

In the darkened hospital room Bett smiled in
memory at his enthusiasm. A collage of images of their intimacies
over forty years assembled in her mind. His tongue tip, made cool
by exposure, tracing wet rings around her aureoles. Looking down at
her breasts heaving, white loaves risen high from passion, as their
pelvises fused in sexual straining. Water cascading in a hotel
shower stall so steamy that their bodies were lost in the hot fog
while his soap slickened hands reached from behind her to lift her
flesh to weightlessness. His teeth nipping through a silk peignoir
until her nipples had so distended that the beige silk wrinkled
like a thread had been pulled. His mouth sucking unceasingly until
her heat and blood and reservations and desire and love had all
flowed out her nipples into him and she was left fuller by the
giving.

Mouths on her nipples. Neil’s. And Peter’s
and Dilly’s and Nita’s and Lise’s. They had all fed from her. She
had given comfort and sustenance through her breasts. And had taken
comfort and sustenance back. Hot breaths. A tiny, blindly searching
mouth took her nipple and her milk and gave back immeasurably more.
Sharp, half-crazy, mind-twisting, wave-after-wave of sexual
electricity had been matched in emotional weight by the slow,
steady ebbing of her milk into her babies’ mouths.

Age and weight, gravity’s inexorable pulling
on plastic flesh while she ironed or weeded, rough fierce youth sex
and the dreamy touching of less insistent times, the vacuum of
hungry mouths demanding their rights to her flesh, all these life
forces, had stretched, softened and distended her breasts. And now
another kind of force had insisted on its rights to her oft-used
flesh.

No. NO! NO!

The soft flesh under her comforting fingers
rose and fell as Bett cried.

In hours a tiny mass of mindless cells, not
all that much bigger than a pea, would be excised. And if that was
all it was, some small growth as benign, as innocuous as a pea,
even that excision would take more than the object itself. Even if
the growth were as smooth and as self-contained as a pea, a sense
of self, a sense of capacity, of possibility, would be taken, too.
And, in its place, would be a new and unforgettable, unshakable
knowledge of the shifting boundaries between life and its too often
ignored, willfully forgotten complement.

BBBB Bb bbb. DddDdd. RRRrrr. NnNNn . Nnn .
VvwWwwLLlsss. NNNn . VvwlllS. Bl ck SW rm. BL cK Dd . Nnn d vvV w
Llss. R h. R sH. tch. CH n DDDD VVVvwwWwLLlLsSSs. OWLS. OoOwWWWwww.
A. aChe. E. EaSe. EBb. eAt. I. I. III. O. OwE. OwWWhhh. U. U. YOu.
You.

Some vowels.

Bett came to. Her first feeling was that she
had been a long way away. Some place where oxygen and heat, silence
and gravity and time were all stitched into one quilt of comfort.
Parts of her, not all willingly, were coming out from under that
cover. She felt something twitch inside her half-closed fist. She
knew that it was Neil. She tried to understand the slight Morse
code of his kinetic fingers. What was the message? How long had she
been gone? If she could determine how long she had been away, she
might understand his fingers’ message. What had been taken? She was
not ready to open her eyes to see. She wanted to remain under the
quilt as long as she could. She tried to feel if her breast was
gone, but the weight of the cover’s comfort was so heavy that she
couldn’t discern her chest’s weight.

Bett stopped measuring to concentrate on
breathing. She wanted to be sure that any stray molecule of the gas
that had taken her so far away, any spare atom trapped within her
nostrils or caught on the sticky mucus of her cilia, might be found
and used to keep her covered. With knowledge of the lump had
brought restless nights. The anesthetic had taken her to a zone of
comfort beyond that of deep sleep. She wished that she could stay
longer in that place of peace. But, Neil’s fingers insisted that
she come back. They wanted to tell her something; however she
wasn’t sure that she wanted to know.

Bett gathered her strength to pass into a
place with clear bright light, knowledge, others and whoever it was
she had become. She squeezed Neil’s fingers hard to pull herself
across the gulf.

“Hi,” said a stranger as Bett opened her
eyes.

Bett twitched the corners of her mouth in a
return greeting.

The nurse stared at Bett as she rubbed the
back of Bett’s hand with her thumb. Bett felt the covers slide from
her. She waited for a report on her status. The nurse’s eyes,
although focused directly on her own, were empty of information
beyond a professional caring. Bett started to ask, “How am I?” but
the combination of a dry throat and the residual effects of the
anesthetic on her speech center kept the sentence from being
completed.

The nurse squeezed Bett’s hand.

“Still pickled?”

Bett gave a little nod.

“Want a sip?”

Bett nodded a second time.

The nurse fumbled with the glass of ice water
trying to bring it close enough to Bett so that the adjustable
straw would reach her as she lay flat on her back. Bett tried to
help by using her heels and elbows to push herself higher up on her
pillow. The pain that ripped through her right side when she put
weight on her elbow swept out most of the remaining anesthetic. The
sound that she made and the face that made it caused the nurse to
slop water over the top of the glass. Bett jerked as the icy water
splashed onto her collarbone.

“Gone?”

The nurse held her face rigid for a moment
before nodding yes.

Bett took a sip of the ice cold water. It
cooled the hot spot that had formed at the back of her throat when
the woman had nodded yes.

“Done?”

Bett nodded yes and the nurse removed the
straw.

“Can you wiggle your toes for me?

“That’s good. That’s a very good effort.
We’ll try again later. You’re coming along fine. You just lie here
for a little while and then we’ll get you to your room. The surgery
went fine. Dr. Falconi said that he’d be by later. Just relax.
Everything’s fine.”

In all of her planning Bett had imagined that
Neil would be the one to tell her how the operation had gone. She
had envisioned waking up to find her hand in his. She had even
practiced what her response would be if he told her that she had
had a mastectomy. Although she could remember being told that she
would go from surgery to a recovery room, she hadn’t incorporated
that information into her plans. It didn’t seem appropriate that
what might be some of the best or worst news of her life should be
delivered by a stranger. Now, when she and Neil first saw one
another, they both would know that her breast was gone. It would be
a fact. It would be old news. They wouldn’t have shared the moment
of change. She, or they, could begin to plan beyond that old
news.

Bett tried to pull herself into a tight tough
shape to begin to deal with that old news, but she found herself
dreaming of the quilt and wishing that she could stay longer in the
recovery room away from his knowing eyes.

The nurse came back twice more to ask her to
try to move her fingers and toes. She took her blood pressure. She
asked Bett her name, the day, and the name of her doctor. Ten
minutes after the third examination, she was wheeled out of the
recovery room and along the beige and orange corridors to her
room.

Neil stood in the corner of the room as the
orderly and two nurses maneuvered Bett into bed. As the nurses
chattered cheerily between themselves, to her, to Neil and to a
larger unnamed audience as to what they were going to do—”Here we
go. Upsy daisy. There you are. That’s nice.”—and as to how she
was—”You’re fine. Your color’s terrific. Any discomfort?”—Neil
tried to maintain eye contact with his altered wife. Each time that
a body blocked that connection, they both craned their heads as if
they were afraid of becoming lost in a crowd. When the nurses
finally finished with their ministrations and instructions, the
sudden removal of so much energy made the atmosphere of the room
seem to be a half-vacuum.

Neil came around the end of the bed to take
Bett’s left hand. She shook her head half in real and half in mock
exhaustion.

“Sickness is such a carnival,” she said
throatily.

“The sickness part is over. This is the
wellness part.”

“True?”

“Dr. Falconi said that the surgery could not
have gone better. He said that he’d be by later. How do you
feel?”

“Stupid.”

“Don’t knock it. When you start feeling smart
again, you’ll probably start feeling pain, too. Does it hurt at
all?”

“It did once when I put pressure on my
arm.”

“You were in there a long time.”

“Was I? I have no idea. What time is it?”

“It’s almost two. That’s almost six
hours.”

“I couldn’t have guessed.”

After several more minutes of talk that dealt
with the minutiae of the day while ignoring the major issue, Bett
drifted off into a sleep frequently broken by moans, giggles,
fluttery lids and nervous fingers. After a long while Neil eased
himself from the edge of the bed and returned to the sienna-seated
plastic chair.

Neil was lost in his thoughts about various
futures when Dr. Falconi appeared in the doorway. The surgeon
studied Bett and her records for several moments before motioning
to Neil to join him outside the room.

Neil hurried after the physician as he
quick-marched halfway down the corridor. Dr. Falconi turned
suddenly and waited for Neil to catch up.

“Her signs are fine. How was she? How long
has she been sleeping?”

“We talked for awhile. Her spirits were
pretty good. We didn’t really discuss the surgery. I didn’t say
anything about the radiation.”

“You don’t have to. I will. I just wanted you
to know so that that you would be prepared to help her when it’s
time to tell her. As I told you after the surgery, the frozen
section didn’t look great, but we won’t really know everything
until the lab finishes its work, which usually takes three days.
We’ll wait to tell her about the radiation when we get the lab
results back. That gives her a couple of easy days to recover.”

“What is her prognosis?”

“Mr. Koster, cancer is a very complicated
business. We’ll know more in a couple of days. I’ve got rounds to
make. I’ll check in one more time before I leave to see if she’s
awake.”

“Thank you.”

Dr. Falconi nodded his head before he
accelerated down the hallway.

Neil wanted to be angry at the surgeon. He
wanted information, solid information, that would allow him to plan
his and Bett’s and their lives. The acid of anger began, but the
thousand memories of giving the same kind of non-committal
answers—to young couples seeking mortgages and business people
wanting loans—neutralized its corrosiveness. He walked back to
Bett’s room resigned to patience.

* * *

Bett worked diligently at being a good
patient for the first three days after her surgery. She endured the
massages and persisted at the elevating exercises that were
intended to lower the chance of lymphedema in her arm. Dr. Maurer,
Dr. Falconi and all of the seemingly endless number of nurses who
made up the various rotations each warned her of the necessity of
being very conscientious about preventing lymphedema. The surgery
that had been done on the axilla nodes in her armpit could affect
her arm’s ability to drain away lymph. If she weren’t careful, her
arm could swell to be two or three times its normal size. The
swelling could become a permanent condition. One nurse, Frannie,
who worked the night shift, told her that it had taken her own
mother more than a year to bring the swelling down after she had
given herself a slight burn while pulling a pan of scalloped
potatoes from the oven.

Bett tried to be a good patient, but it
wasn’t always easy to know how to do that. Maryann, a large,
extremely freckled and extremely friendly nurse who worked during
the day, cautioned her to go easy when she found Bett doing
vertical finger walks up the window that looked onto the parking
lot. She warned that if Bett were too energetic in following her
regimen, she might tear the stitching in the skin flap that covered
her wound.

Bett tried to be patient when the nurses
fussed over the drains that extended through the bandages that
covered her chest all the way to her waist. She remained silent on
the second day after surgery when both at lunch and dinner time the
food which arrived on the tray was different from what she had
ordered. She acquiesced to the insertion of the thermometer, the
frequent bondage of the blood pressure cuff and the presentation of
the nut cups of pain medication. However, after three days of
constant care, Bett had reached her limit for being the recipient
of others’ kindnesses and concern. She couldn’t remain any longer
in a room that was devoted solely to her well-being. She took the
pamphlet Dr. Falconi had left and her wallet and padded to the
cafeteria for a cup of herbal tea.