“I can’t say why the CT scan didn’t show it,” he said. “But when I opened her, I found a total of three visible tumors in areas around the intestine, as well as the intestinal lining.” He added, “I did my best to clear them out.”

I heard myself say, “What?”

“We’re changing the prognosis here a little,” the surgeon said.

I said, “Okay,” but it came out like a cough and I cleared my throat.

“I’ll keep her in ICU for a few days, see how she does.” His palms became a steeple he lifted to his mouth. “Then we discuss chemotherapy.” In my hand, my phone buzzed. I swallowed over the clump in my throat, the same feeling I got when my mom called and I knew it would be a fight. It buzzed again and I looked. It was Leah.

“In the meantime,” the surgeon said, “let’s get you in to see her.”

I nodded, lowered the phone, grateful the conversation was over and I could stop trying to respond the right way.

A nurse arrived and led me down a new tunnel of parted curtains, the bodies behind them in postures of violent repose. Flayed skin and vomit. A dull moaning. My mother, yellow as an Easter egg forgotten in a jar of dye. She had a breathing tube and it forced her face into her neck. I wondered what I had looked like when I woke from anesthesia.

“She’ll be unconscious for a while,” the nurse said.

“How long is a while?” I asked. “I have her stuff.” I lifted my mother’s giant turquoise bag, conscious of my hand shaking from the pills I’d taken or from the sight of my mother’s body, I wasn’t sure which.

“You hold on to that. She won’t be up until tomorrow.” The nurse fussed with my mother’s tube. “No sense sticking around.”

“She wanted me to tell you she has a history with addiction,” I said. “Painkillers, a long time ago.”

“Well, she needs medicine,” the nurse said, eyes on the tube. “There’s no way she can take the pain without it.”

“She just wanted me to tell you.”

“I’ll look at her chart.”

It was my cue to go but I lingered in the doorway. I wanted to be asked in. I wanted to get close. I wanted the nurse to talk to me gently, as she would a child. It’s a feeling I still have sometimes, around women.

11.

Back safe in the Princess Suite, locked behind the deadbolt. I put the room service tray on the bed, take the robe off, toss it in a corner like it’s dirty. Henry’s wine kicked my pills up a notch and now everything is doubled.