Better Than None Read online

  “Well, I don’t have much choice, do I?”

  I shook my head. “Are you ready now?”

  “No, but I don’t think I’ll ever be.

  Tears rolled down my cheeks as I stood behind her with the clippers, making long smooth swipes across my mother’s scalp. That my mother, my mother, would let me do this to her was so much sadder than the actual loss of hair.

  When we finished, instead of shock at her reflection she ran her hands over her newly bald head and then shook it in disgust. She stared for a moment longer before letting out a long sigh, then shrugged her shoulders, turned around and walked slowly to her bed.

  “I’m going to rest honey.”

  “Ok, Ma. I’m going to unload the dishwasher and clean up some things and then I’ll check in on you before I go. Maybe we’ll go wig shopping this weekend?”

  “What difference does it make?” She said with such resignation, such utter indifference, that in and of itself broke my heart.

  I wasn’t going to push. There would be time for wigs, I hoped.

  CHAPTER 12

  I lied to Barbara and changed her next chemo appointment to Wednesday, which I knew from experience was Brad’s day at the hospital. I told her that I had a meeting I couldn’t move. I hated lying, but the thought of running into him was worse. I didn’t trust myself around him. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I’d already gone back to him more than I should have, not to mention the amount of time my mind drifted remembering things we’d done and what he’d made me feel. Every time I thought back, my body tingled and pulsed. But the man was a mess. I was a mess. There was no way that two wrongs could make a right. So I chose avoidance. I was running on fumes and couldn’t come up with a better plan of attack.

  We chose the chairs next to the woman we’d chatted with before. Once again, she was alone. I guess the good news was that she was strong enough to drive herself, I just couldn’t help but feel bad for her.

  “We’re back for more punishment.” I said trying to be cute, but there was something about her this time that seemed she was at the end of her rope.

  “It’s funny you say that. Sometimes, I feel like I’m being punished. Like I must have brought this on myself.” The way she said it made me think that there had to be more to this statement. I didn’t know this woman at all, but there was no way that anyone deserved this much torture, especially someone as sweet as she seemed to be.

  “Bad choice of words on my part. It isn’t punishment. Just a shitty side effect of life.”

  “Well, you’re not the one with the poison coursing through you. Or the one puking your brains out. Or the one you don’t recognize when you look in the mirror.” She said, and I think we were both a little shocked at her blunt talk.

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. I have no idea what you’re going through.” I didn’t really. I knew tangentially, but I wasn’t the one whose body was being ravaged. I wasn’t the one who wondered if even after all of this, if this disease would still kill me. I felt like a jerk as I looked down at the floor, embarrassed that I would have the audacity to offer advice to someone who’s clearly been going through this for a while.

  Just then, she reached out and put her frail hand on my arm. The contrast between her thin, bony, pale hand and my healthy, tanned forearm was startling, along with her touch. I raised my eyes to meet hers and she smiled sadly, “I’m sorry. You don’t deserve that.” She paused, “I’m Sharon, Sherri.”

  I shook my head, “Steph. And this is my mother Barbara. And please don’t apologize, Sherri. You’ve got every right to be pissed off. It’s not my place to tell you what you should or shouldn’t be feeling. I’m the one who should apologize.”

  This time, it was her turn to shake her head, “No more apologies. If there’s one thing I’m so sick of is people telling me how sorry they are. I know it’s not their fault and I know they probably do feel sorry, but, you get to a point where there’s just no use apologizing anymore.”

  I nodded in understanding, but again felt like there was a lot more that she wasn’t saying.

  “Your mom’s lucky to have you here with her. You’re a good daughter.”

  I smiled. “Thanks. I’m lucky to have her too. Do you have any kids?”

  She shook her head and just then her monitor started beeping indicating she was finished and I turned my attention back to my mom. Sherri was one of many people we’d met through this journey who told me I was a good daughter. Nurses, caregivers, Barb’s friends. I’d never been very good at taking compliments, but thanking someone when I heard this always made me feel bad. Maybe it was akin to survivor’s guilt. I didn’t deserve their praise.

  There was something about her chemo treatments that almost instantly put my mom to sleep. Whenever depression had hit her in the past, sleep had always been an escape, so perhaps that’s what this was. Or, the simple fact that she was so bone tired and weak. Whichever, she was already dozing off. Looking at her reclined in her chair, she looked oddly peaceful, getting chemo of all things.

  As I made my way down the hall to the bathrooms, I wished I hadn’t drank so much water. I hated using these bathrooms. They were clean and perfectly fine, but it was the plaque above the toilet that read “If you’re receiving chemo, please flush twice.” That made me shudder every time I was there. I wondered what happened if chemo patients only flushed once. Was the building trying to protect the next person or the plumbing? If the chemo was that bad for the pipes, what the hell was it doing to my mother’s insides? Of course, I knew what it was doing. It was poisoning her, but in a good way. That had become one of our inside jokes, “It’s the good kind of poison.”

  It was late in the afternoon and so much of the regular staff was already gone, it was eerily quiet. I was so lost in my thoughts about the plaque that I debated whether or not I should use a paper towel to open the door. After telling myself that I’d had more strangers’ dicks inside me that could do a lot more harm than a door handle, I was still shaking my head and chuckling to myself as I swung the door open to leave.

  “Someone in there with you?” Brad asked, leaning in all his pompous, jack-ass-i-ness glory against the wall opposite the bathroom. Was he actually waiting for me?

  “Huh?” I was confused and surprised. He wasn’t supposed to be there.

  “Looked like you were laughing and talking as you came out, so I wasn’t sure if maybe you had company.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” God, he was such a prick.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  I stared at him. I wondered how he could be so God-damned cruel as I shook my head and rolled my eyes before starting back to the chemo room.

  “Wait, Steph, I’m sorry.” He said as he grabbed my arm. I reflexively pulled it away but he didn’t let go. I should’ve known better than to think that the arrogant doctor would let go before he was ready.

  “Sorry? Sorry about what? Insinuating that I use your cancer office to pick up guys and fuck them in the bathroom? Um, yeah, sorry’s not really going to cut it.” I tried to get free from his grip again but he pulled me and turned me towards him. I tried not to see the genuine look of regret, or sadness or whatever exactly his look was. I didn’t know, because even after all we’d done, I didn’t really know him.

  “Yes, I’m sorry for insinuating that. I’m sorry for being a jackass. It wasn’t fair to you. I, I’m just…” as he trialed off, he finally let go of my arm. A smart woman would have taken this opportunity to leave. I was a smart woman. Just not when it came to men.

  “Well, you are a jackass. And you should be sorry.” Was all I could come up with, not nearly enough indignation in my voice.

  “Let me make it up to you,” He said sincerely.

  “What, you want to be the guy in the bathroom?” I spat back.

  He exhaled and crossed his arms over his chest. I don’t know what it was, he seemed so defeated, so exhausted. “Let me take you out to dinner.”

  “Dinner?”


  “Yeah, you know, like two normal people. Dinner. A date.” He said somehow a combination of sheepishness and arrogance, like duh, of course we would go out to dinner. Even though we’d never had a real conversation or spent any time with each other where both of our underwear stayed on.

  “We’re not normal people, Brad. We can’t date. We can’t do dinner.” I said with resignation, because even though I wanted to hear these words, now that he was actually saying them, I knew how ridiculous it was.

  “But we can fuck?” He spat back at me.

  “We shouldn’t be doing that either.”

  “But we do.” As he said it, a small smirk appeared on his face. How on earth could I find him sexy? What was wrong with me? I’d been with bad boys, I knew the allure. Not just the thrill but the notion that I’d be the one to tame them, or at least, have them want me. But that wasn’t it for me. I didn’t have any illusions of changing him when I still had so much work to do on myself. Work that simultaneously progressed and regressed with him. Intellectually, even though that sounded like treading water, I felt like I was doing anything but. If anything, I was exhausting myself, swimming laps back and forth.

  I took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah, we do.” I admitted and leaned against the bathroom door.

  Facing each other, it was like we were in a weak standoff of sorts. Though with both of us leaning, it was as if neither had the energy to hold up our own bodies… yet somehow we found the energy to do that which we shouldn’t.

  “Come on, Steph. Have dinner with me. Take your mom home and then have dinner with me. I need more than just a fuck.”

  I actually laughed. “That’s your line? Seriously? Jesus…” I shook my head and again started towards the chemo room.

  “Please, Stephanie. I didn’t mean it like that. Honestly. I don’t want to hurt you, I just want to be with you. But for whatever reason, everything I’m saying is coming out all wrong.” He said to my back, which stopped me in my tracks. He’d never asked anything of me before. He hadn’t needed to. I knew I was an idiot for falling for it, and yet I turned around.

  “Why?” I asked, way too softly.

  His smirk reappeared, like he knew he got me. “I’ll tell you at dinner.”

  I shook my head and rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t hold back the small smile that turned the corners of my mouth up. I exhaled dramatically. “Text me the address.”

  ****

  Once I got Barb home, I took time to make sure she was comfortable, feed the cats and dog, empty the litter boxes… in a nutshell, my routine at her house.

  “Ma, let me make you something to eat before I go.”

  “No, no honey, I’m not hungry. I’m just going to rest.” She said weakly. It seemed to be all she said lately. I used to hate her weakness, but she was never weak like this. I didn’t hate his weakness. This weakness broke my heart.

  “Are you sure? I can make something and have it ready for when you do get hungry.” I said in vain, knowing she just wasn’t going to be hungry. Chances were, she’d probably get sick in the next few hours, and I was the heel who was stalling for time before my date.

  I was nervous as I’d ever been, maybe even more than in that damn elevator with him, which was crazy. Completely and totally irrational. I was going out to dinner, on a date with Brad, Dr. Rosenberg, a man who’d I’d already been intimate with. In fact, the only man I’d truly been intimate with. Yet he was also a man who I routinely referred to as a prick and a jackass. And for some fucked up reasoning, I was petrified. Most women got nervous wondering how the date would end. All of the ‘is he going to kiss me’ or ‘are we going to end up at his place and finally do it.’ At least I think that’s what they wondered since I’d never actually gotten to that point. The doing it point, yeah, I got there first, eliminating any of those typical questions.

  But my nerves weren’t about the ‘will we or won’t we’ because of course, we already had. No, the nerves were part of the old Steph. Nervous that I wouldn’t know how to talk with him. Nervous that once we actually talked in a real conversation rather than just one-liners and quips at a bar, that he wouldn’t like me. Nervous that once he truly got to know me, he wouldn’t want to anymore.

  Once again, curiosity won out over nerves. That, and the idea that Brad was part of my growth, my experiment with the new me. It was less than ideal, but it was still progress. For all his faults, he made me feel so much more than I ever had before. After having been numb for so long, I finally felt like I was beginning to thaw out.

  ****

  “When I first started out, I cared. And it nearly ended my career, almost as soon as it started. After my first patient died, I was a mess. I thought I’d failed him. I knew there wasn’t anything more I could have done, but still, I poured over his charts day and night to see if there was something, anything that I missed.” He paused and shook his head, clearly reliving the memory.

  “The idiot was a chain smoker. And as if that weren’t bad enough, he worked in an industrial cleaners. The chemicals they used to use were so toxic, and back when this guy had started, there weren’t any safeguards, there was no OSHA, so these guys breathed in all kinds of shit. But I still blamed myself. Like I could somehow undo years, decades of what he had done to himself.” Brad took a big sip of his scotch.

  “After that first case, I stopped accepting new patients for a month. And the ones I still had I treated like an over-zealous crazy man. I visited them at their homes. I enrolled them in every clinical trial that existed. I phoned them more than I called my own family.” He shook his head and rolled his eyes, but when they came back and settled, the pain that was there was only deeper. “And you know what? Some of them still died.” He chuckled tightly. “They still fucking died!”

  “I had already started pushing my wife away. Or maybe just ignoring her at first. But my caseload was dwindling and I had a choice to make. Either figure out a new career, or toughen the fuck up.”

  “So I stopped caring. I couldn’t. I mean, how could I possibly care more about my patients than they had cared about themselves their entire life?”

  “Brad, my mom didn’t do anything to get pancreatic cancer. She didn’t get this because she didn’t care about herself.” I felt like I had to defend my mom. How could he possibly think that some people got cancer because they didn’t care? What about kids?

  He looked up at me and something softened, even though his words were still harsh. “I know that, Steph.”

  I rolled my eyes and shook my head. It was like he couldn’t help but be a dick, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell I was doing there with him. But he kept talking. I didn’t know why he felt like he needed to explain himself, but he obviously did.

  “I just, I had to distance myself if I was going to be able to do my job. And then…” Again, he shook his head and this time, drained his drink. He looked at me with glassy eyes, “and then of all people, my wife gets cancer.” He laughed a tight laugh. “And the kicker? Know how she found it?”

  I shook my head, almost afraid to hear. His voice was both angry and sad.

  “The guy she was fucking found it, that’s how.” He laughed once. “Some other guy felt the lump in my wife’s breast. How’s that for karma, huh? I’m the fucking oncologist and I don’t even find my own wife’s cancer.” He signaled the waitress and ordered another scotch. I’m not sure what I was imagining, but this evening was not turning out at all like what I’d envisioned. I didn’t have a clear picture, but hearing about his wife, his wife’s cancer and her lover were definitely not top of mind. Perhaps I didn’t have it wrong for all those years, because if this was what people talked about on dates, I hadn’t been missing out.

  “Want to know why he found it and I didn’t?” The way he asked me, it was like he was threatening me to answer, daring me. So I just shook my head.

  “Cause I hadn’t touched her in months. Probably more than a year. And she goes and gets fucking breast cancer. And th
e best part? Cause, yeah, it gets better, Steph. Guess, go ahead.”

  I shook my head again. I was actually scared. Scared and sad. I felt sorry for him, which was hard to do considering what a jerk he usually was.

  “The best part of this incredibly fucked up situation? She goes to another oncologist. She doesn’t even come to me!” He shook his head again, smiling that tight smile. “It wasn’t bad enough that she was cheating on me, but then she has to stick the knife in further and see another fucking doctor.”

  The waitress brought his third drink, and I thought, I wish he wouldn’t drink any more, but the way this evening was going, there was no way I was going to say anything.

  “And you know what? I don’t blame her, for any of it. I don’t blame her for the affair. I hadn’t been there for her. I honestly don’t know why she didn’t just leave me.”

  When he said that, I couldn’t help but wonder why I wasn’t leaving him. I think because now, this man who had been such a prick was vulnerable, human like the rest of us.

  “She was too afraid to come to me, as a doctor, not even as her husband. But she was too afraid that I’d blame her for getting cancer.”

  I didn’t want to be there. I thought I wanted to get to know this man, but I didn’t want this. He was too damaged, and I had my mother to deal with. There was too much shit. I thought I wanted him to talk, I thought I wanted there to be more than just sex, but this was too much.

  “Why are you telling me this, Brad?” I asked softly, afraid to say anything, but couldn’t think of what else to say.

  He shook his head again and drank his drink and shrugged. “I can’t win with you, can I?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m trying to open up to you, and you, you act like you don’t want to hear it.”

  “Don’t you dare pull that. Up until an hour ago, all we had was a physical relationship, and as far as I could tell, it worked, kind of, for both of us. So don’t you dare blame me for not being able to follow along whatever the fuck it is that’s going on in your mind.” This time, it was me who paused, took a deep breath and took a healthy sip of my cocktail.