It might not be hopeless. I once went to a Bernie Siegel workshop for nurses and cancer patients. One of the stories told there was about a guy who went to a hospice to die of his advanced liver cancer. Once there, however, he did very well; and finally he said he didn’t want to be there any more, he wanted to go home and work in his garden. And he did. Three years later, they could find no evidence of his tumor.

That wasn’t a brain tumor, though. But maybe it could happen with a brain tumor. We don’t understand everything. Really, we don’t understand anything.

I crawl under the covers, start to drift off, then jump at the sound of the phone ringing. I answer it and hear Chip’s voice, saying my name. Don’t let this be a dream, I think. But it is not a dream. It is Chip, asking if we could make a meal together, asking if I know how to make pie.

“Well … what kind?” I am squeezing the receiver, smiling so hard I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud.

“Lemon meringue.”

“Do you like the really sour kind?”

“Best kind.”

“We could make that. I use my Aunt Lala’s recipe: citric acid, that was her secret ingredient. Once I made it and ate the whole thing myself in the space of three hours.”

“Okay, so this time cut it in two.”

“This time … ?”

“I mean, how about tomorrow? Why don’t we make pie for dinner at your house and then go to the movie?”

“Well …” Yes. Yes.

“Myra, I need to get out of here. I need somewhere to go that isn’t so … hard. Why don’t you ‘evaluate’ me at your house? Could we? Why don’t we just do everything there?”

Why? Because it’s unprofessional. Because it will exclude his parents, who are part of my care plan. Because it will make what’s happening to me worse.

“All right,” I say.

“So tell me what time to come over. And where you live.”

He can’t drive. Surely he’s been told that. The possibility of seizures, for one thing.

“I’ll come and get you when I’ve finished seeing patients. You’re right on my way home.” Of course he is not. “It’ll be about five.”

“Good. And Myra?”

“Yes?” He might say anything, now. All these wonderful surprises. He could say anything.

“I’m having a problem with … I’m constipated.”

“Oh! … Well, see? If you’d have let me do an admission interview, we would have discovered this.”

“Sorry.”

“You have Colace, right? That’s one of your medications?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re taking it, right?”

“Well …”

“Take some milk of magnesia tonight. Take the Colace, too, and then keep taking it. It’s the codeine doing that, binding you up.”

“All right. I’m sorry to … you know.”