(She removes an envelope from her pocket, opens it, produces a greeting card.)

On the front of the card is a picture of Dostoevsky well into his midlife, thin and balding. His scraggly beard looks like a costume piece. His gaze, which is directed away from the camera, is one of haunted reflection.

(She shows the audience the card, opens it.)

Inside, written with impressive penmanship, in black ink, it reads:

Professor Baird,

I heard you’ve been going through a difficult time. I hope you’re feeling better. You are missed in class.

Your replacement is a graduate student who thinks Dostoevsky was writing Christian propaganda and that Raskolnikov is a latent homosexual. He clearly loves listening to the sound of his own voice.

I’d rather listen to yours.

Come back soon. I miss our talks, too.

Sincerely,
Christopher Dunn

4

BELLA

(To the audience) The consultation with my oncologist yields only the grimmest of prospects. The tumors are rampant.

I ask him what my odds for recovery are. He says they are very low. I ask him for a hard number. He says, “Twenty to twenty-five percent, probably closer to twenty.” I tell him that I feel fine. I tell him that I can’t smell any rot seeping out of me. I say, “Maybe I’m closer to twenty-five percent.” He says, “You’re not.” I tell him that my bowel movements are regular; that the pain in my abdomen is practically negligible. I tell him how I recently had sex with a man; how everything in that department felt normal. He says, “Good.” I say, “Maybe that puts me at twenty-three percent.” He says, “It doesn’t,” and shows me my scans. He points to the healthy tissue, the unhealthy tissue.

I say, “Oh.”

“I’m being generous with twenty percent,” he says.

He wants to start me on a cycle of aggressive treatment immediately.

The following day, a male nurse leads me to a chemotherapy bay, which boasts a dozen oyster-gray pleather recliners, which are separated by orange shower curtains. There are three vacancies and I’m allowed to choose my very own.

I sit into it. It feels as if I’m accepting some sort of ergonomic, living-room-quality death sentence.

In a soothing voice the nurse asks me if someone is going to come by and pick me up after my treatment.

“No,” I say. “I planned on walking home.”

The nurse advises that in the future I should have someone come get me, that the medication can cause light-headedness and that the nausea will very likely get worse with each successive visit.

I’m only half hearing him. I’m too busy noticing all the other patients. The catheters attached to the backs of hands and forearms and collarbones and the prophylactic arrangement of the various tubes, ports and fluid bags that appear to be growing out of these weakened bodies, not feeding anything corrective into them.

Before my shower curtain is pulled for privacy I can see that I’m sitting beside a woman who is so frail and weak I have to resist the absurd impulse to reach over and break her arm. Her eyes are closed. Her mouth is sagging open. She wears state-of-the-art, noise-canceling headphones. She’s in agony. I get up and leave.