I don’t know if time flew by or stood still, but before I can figure that out, the biopsy is done. As terse nurse removes the head contraption and gets ready to wheel me to the recovery room, the robot video neurosurgeon tells me that the results will be sent to Dr. Divyaratna early next week. The drill-wielding orthopedic surgeon tells me that I have the thickest, lumpiest skull he’s ever seen. And Mama tells me that she could hear me butchering the bejesus out of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” all the way down the hall. Somewhere en route to the recovery room, I fall into something like sleep.

In my doped-up, post-procedure, post-nap stupor my eyes flicker, then fall on the carefully preserved old fossil of a woman in the bed next to mine. Tiny eyes peer out from beneath her pencilled-on shiny black brows and folds of alabaster wrinkles. Thinning coils of blue-tinted hair have been coerced into co-operation by too much Aqua Net. A frail frame is smothered in a burgundy velveteen dressing gown. Nobody has the heart to make the old fossils wear johnny coats.

I notice her giving me the hairy eyeball. Is it my relative youthfulness? My baldness? My quasi-stoned blaséness over the mouthful of yellow slime I just spit all over my bed?

“Whatever you were dreaming about certainly tickled your funny bone,” she says in a voice dry and dusty, but not unpleasant.

“Damn drugs,” I say with a groggy grimace.

“Cancer?” Her voice is still not unpleasant.

“Just had the biopsy. Probably.”

“Shaving your entire head wasn’t necessary, you know. They only take a patch about the size of a postage stamp. Nothing a little creative hair styling can’t hide.” Her craggy hands flutter nimbly to her own curls, reassuring them of their beauty with a tender pat. They spring back obediently. I fix my glassy gaze on her hair in a vain attempt to distract myself from the blackened grey and bile-yellow splotches now crowding my field of vision.

“Bald is my creative hair styling.” Trying not to sound like her intrusiveness is starting to get on my nerves.

“It’s unbecoming on a lady with your husky bone structure,” she says, her brow furrowed and her mouth pulling into a puckered half-smile. “My friend Joan makes gorgeous wigs. With real hair. Blonde is quite fetching. Gentlemen prefer fair hair, especially once a woman has passed her prime. You should call Joan. She could even make it work with your ruddy skin tone.” There’s an unmistakable smack of scorn in her passive-aggressive benevolence, and my head can’t handle anymore sage advice.

I turn to face the wall, and moan. “This sucks. I feel like a bag of smashed assholes.”

“Mouth like a mine rat. Also unbecoming.” The old bat sharply enunciates each word with the precision of an icy-eyed, strap-wielding Catholic school nun.

“Better a mine rat than a heartless old vulture,” Mama’s voice snarls from the doorway.

Even through my post-op distorted eyesight I can clearly see the old woman’s face change. The tightly pursed lips part ways, the lower one slipping down in disbelief, drooping over the puckered chin. Her eyes are wide open and alive, crackling with something nasty as she stares down my mother.