The Battle
by Hannah Kafree
The waiting room is filled with blue-robed bodies, deemphasizing our individuality. But each face reflects a separate soul's pain, fear, joy, or is altogether devoid of emotion, beyond feeling or caring. Nightmares are found in a room like this. Amidst the hopes, the dreams, the prayers, there are nightmares.
People thumb through magazines. Some are reading books; some are talking quietly. Others stare blankly into space. Couples sit together, a silent unit of support. Mothers sit with daughters; fathers sit with children. Young people, old people. Time passes slowly as we wait to hear our names called.
A young woman is chatting, laughing, smiling at her mother, an elderly woman in a wheelchair hooked up to an IV bottle, with placid eyes that manage to stare adoringly into the young woman's face. She is content with her daughter's company and does not notice the young woman's tension. But I see her daughter's forced smile, her lips twitching upward, her fingers moving rapidly as she speaks, dancing in the air above her head, weaving patterns with the strain of her voice. Her eyes blink back tears. She wants to protect her mother. When the old woman's name is called, she is wheeled out of the room, and the young woman, alone now, walks rapidly toward the elevator, the tears finally flowing freely down her face.
There is a young man, completely bald, with translucent skin and blue eyes, round and shining, with an other-worldly glow, his leg amputated. There are young, bald children, barely more than infants, playing with toys, oblivious to the expressions on their parents' faces. Their loud, joyful noises seem out of place, disrupting the soft-spoken conversations, the somber atmosphere.
So many people in blue robes! People from all over the world, I detect, from the many languages I overhear. All of us are different. We were all busy living our lives, separately, and now we are all joined together in this room. We all have something in common that forms an unbroken bond between us. Our blue robes unite us in our humanity, connect us in our mortality, in our singular vulnerability that makes no distinction between race, class, religion, sex, age, or nationality. We are one in a battle for our lives.
These are my thoughts as I sit in this room, with these blue-robed comrades, four days a week.
I always smile and say "hello" when I enter, for smiles are noticeably lacking. There is usually more than enough time to wait before my name is called. There is time to read, to think, to reflect, to pray. It seems bizarre, at times, that I am here, suddenly whisked away from the normal, hectic life of a university student.
Aside from the children, I am one of the youngest people in the room. Sometimes I notice the bewilderment in an older person's eyes as he gazes in my direction. I can almost hear him thinking, It is bad enough for me, Lord, but this young one, too? We communicate with our eyes. I try to tell them, "It is all right. It is okay for this to happen to me. I am learning a lot more here in this classroom of humanity than I ever would at university."
We learn so much from pain. When I first awoke from the long, grueling exploratory laparotomy, the physical anguish was unbearable. Through the hazy, throbbing fog, I heard myself call for help, for relief from the intolerable pain. But one thought seared through to put everything in perspective. I experienced a sudden, swift identification with the victims of the Nazi medical experiments. They, who received no anesthesia during their cruel torment, had suffered unspeakably. I will never forget that moment, when my pain paled in comparison with the horrors our people have endured.
And so I sit here, musing, until finally my name is called. I smile at my peers, hold my robe tightly around me, and walk briskly down the corridor toward the treatment room.
On the outside of the tall, wide door, there is a large black and yellow triangle — a warning label that radiation is used here. The door I must pass is ten inches thick.
Inside the room there is a huge structure that resembles a sewing machine. Underneath where the needle would be is a long, horizontal platform which I must lie on ten minutes a day to receive a life-promoting nuclear bombardment.
I step on a small stool and ease myself up onto the platform. Removing my blue robe, I lie beneath the "needle." The first time I removed my robe, when I came to be properly aligned, it took over an hour for the technicians to tattoo me with small black dots and paint large red x's across each mark. I cried from embarrassment, and the nurses ran over, anxiously asking, "Are we hurting you?"
Red laser beams stream down from points in the ceiling and walls. Each x must be reached by a bright red beam. All these strangers must peer and prod, and I am expected to adjust, to consider this normal, acceptable behavior.
A technician comes in, repaints the red lines that have faded, greets me warmly, smiles, and tickles me with her paintbrush. "How are you today, missy?" she asks.
I smile back bravely and answer, "Pretty good, Molly." Today we will have a short conversation about wheat grass juice. Tomorrow we will discuss taking megadoses of vitamin C.
Then a doctor comes in and arranges lead blocks shaped like lungs, kidneys, and other organs on a small, clear shelf just below the opening of the "needle," from where the radiation is emitted. The lead blocks are to protect my vital organs, shielding my ovaries, liver, and lungs from the rays that beam down on the cancerous parts of my body. When the doctor is satisfied with his arrangement, he turns on a switch, and he and Molly leave the room.
I am alone now. I am watched on a televison monitor in an adjacent room. I cannot see anyone, though I know they are watching. I am alone with the linear accelerator machine which I have nicknamed "Surgeri."
Surgeri hums to life, whirring and rattling. I feel nothing, but I can see up the chute of the "needle" as the shutter opens and shuts. I close my eyes and visualize a place inside myself. I see all my friends, the good, strong cells, vibrant and shining with life, taking long, slender swords, slashing and slaying all the bad, diseased cells. Some units are assigned brooms for sweeping the dead cells into my bloodstream to be washed away and out of my body forever. My body becomes a battlefield, with nuclear bombs being dropped from the sky, from Surgeri. I silently shout encouragement. "All good cells evacuate the war zone. Get out of the way! Destroy all enemy cells!"
Though I was raised in a home distinctly anti-war, these inner battles help me feel in control. I am doing all I can to encourage my body to fight, to survive. And we must win this war, because I have my whole life to live! I am working with the radiation treatment, which I originally feared more than the cancer itself. Even the naming of this cold, metal machine contributes to my mental well-being, for Surgeri is now an ally and not an ominous, threatening linear accelerator spitting out poisonous radiation. The images in my mind form a visual prayer: "Please, G-d, let me live. Let me live!"
The clanking, whirring noises stop. The thick door mechanically opens. The lights go on, and the technicians come back in. Treatment is done for the day.
The platform I am on automatically swings out from under the "needle." I sit up, wrap my blue robe around me, and hop off.
"Have a good day, Molly. See you tomorrow!" I call out.
"You, too, missy."
I walk slowly down the corridor wondering, Will I vomit today or not? When I reach the waiting room, faces turn to look at me. I notice the anxious ones looking to see if I appear the same as when I went in. They look for the fear, discomfort, red skin, loss of hair, which they have been warned about. I smile at my peers, my partners in this ordeal, and head over to my locker.
I change into my ordinary clothes and leave the blue-robed room. Beyond the confines of this room, of this building, of this particular reality, it is a beautiful, sunny winter day.
