The thin oncologist with the Bugs Bunny voice said the CA-125 number was still up in the stratosphere. He said it was up to her if she wanted to go on with this. What was holding her up? She didn’t know, and her own voice came from a can now. She heard herself say, “Doctor, what would you do…if you were me?”

He thought it over for a long time. He pulled off his wire rims and pinched his nose, world-weary. “I’d take the next treatment.”

It was the worst by far—square root to infinity. Five days: no sleep, pacing, lying down, pacing. Puke and diarrhea. The phone. She wanted to tear it off the wall. After all these years, couldn’t they make a quiet bell?—did they have shit for brains or what? Oh, hi, well…just fine. Just dandy. Coming by on Sunday? With the kids? Well…no, I feel great. No. No. No. I’d love to see you…

And then one day the thin-timbre voice delivered good news. “Your CA 125 is almost within normal limits. It’s working!”

Hallelujah! Oh my God, let it be so! A miracle. Hurrah!

“It is a miracle,” he said. He was almost human, Dr. Kildare, Dr. Ben Casey, Marcus Welby, M.D.—take your pick. “Your CA is down to rock bottom. I think we should do one, possibly two more treatments and then go back inside for a look. If we do too few, we may not kill it all but if we do too much—you see, it’s toxic to your healthy cells as well. You can get cardiomyopathy in one session of cisplatin and you can die.”

“One more is all I can handle.”

“Gotcha, Mrs. Wilson. One more and in for a look.”

“I hate to tell you this,” he said. Was he making the cartoons go away? “I’ll be up front about it, Mrs. Wilson, we’ve still got a problem. The little Grape-Nuts—fewer than in the beginning, but the remaining cells will be resistant to cisplatin, so our options are running thin. We could try a month of an experimental form of hard chemotherapy right here in the hospital—very, very risky stuff. Or we could resume the cisplatin, not so much aiming for a cure but rather as a holding action. Or we could not do anything at all…”

Her voice was flat. She said, “What if I don’t do anything?”

“Dead in three months, maybe six.”

She said, “Dead how?”

“Lungs, liver, or bowel. Don’t worry, Mrs. Wilson, there won’t be a lot of pain. I’ll see to that.”

Bingo! He flipped the chart shut and…whiz, bang, he was outta there!