She realized that when she got right down to it, she wanted to live, more than anything, on almost any terms, so she took more cisplatin. But the oncologist was right, it couldn’t touch those resistant rogue cells; they were like roaches that could live through atomic warfare, grow and thrive. Well then, screw it! At least there wouldn’t be pain. What more can you do? She shouldn’t have let him open her up again. That had been the worst sort of folly. She’d let him steamroll her with Doctor Knows Best. Air had hit it. No wonder it was a wildfire. A conflagration.

Her friends came by. It was an effort to make small talk. How could they know? How could they know what it was like? They loved her, they said, with liquor on their breath. They had to get juiced before they could stand to come by! They came with casseroles and cleaned for her, but she had to sweat out her nights alone. Dark nights of the soul on Tylenol 3 and Xanax. A lot of good that was. But then when she was in her loose, giddy freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose mood, about ten days after a treatment, she realized her friends weren’t so dumb. They knew that they couldn’t really know. Bugs Bunny told her there was no point in going on with the cisplatin. He told her she was a very brave lady. He said he was sorry.

A month after she was off that poison, cisplatin, there was a little side benefit. She could see the colors of the earth again and taste food and smell flowers—it was a bittersweet pleasure, to be sure. But her friends took her to Hawaii, where they had this great friend (“You gotta meet him!”) and he…he made a play for her and brought her flowers every day, expensive roses, et cetera. She had never considered another man since John had died from can…cer ten years before. How wonderful to forget it all for a moment here and there. A moment? Qualify that—make that ten, fifteen seconds. How can you forget it? Ever since she got the news she could…not…forget…it.

Now there were stabbing pains, twinges, flutterings—maybe it was normal everyday stuff amplified by the imagination or maybe it was real. How fast would it move, this wildfire brand? Better not to ask.

Suddenly she was horrible again. Those nights alone—killers. Finally one night she broke down and called her daughter. Hated to do it, throw in the towel, but this was the fifteenth round and she didn’t have a prayer.

“Oh, hi. I’m just fine”—blah blah blah—“but I was thinking maybe I could come down and stay, just a while. I’d like to see Janey and—”

“We’ll drive up in the morning.”