The entirety of the letter is nearly memorized, and your leg is cramping at the junction of the hip. Here you sit, pages pressed between your fingers, on the edge of your stiff bed, probably breaking down the mattress but unable to make yourself care. No sound but the ticking of the clock on your night-table and the whisper of paper on skin as you trace your hands over the words like a prayer.
Amber fluid catching empty light, a sluggish seep into fragile veins, burning slowly. Blood under the bed, a rusty stain on grey-white tile. Antiseptic that clings and bleaches lungs breathing refrigerated air. Monitors beep and whine, assaulting the ear as steadily as the march of the clock. Chill seeps into bone. Doctors speak, but never say anything.
Paper crumples and you scramble to smooth it out against your thigh. You fold it neatly into three parts along the folds your mother had made, and tuck the sheaf in the bedside drawer underneath fresh paper and pencils and the newest Mann Co. catalogue. Vitamins roll quietly on the wood inside as you slide the drawer closed.
Sharply, you sigh through your nose and rise, stretching cramped legs and spine. And then, you go, locking the door behind you. Your legs know where you're going even before your cloudy head does.
The double-doors are as imposing as ever, steel and sterile.
It's so quiet, you wonder if he's even inside. You stand there for a moment, just staring. You watch the quiver of fluorescent lights as they reflect on the doors, on the arm of every chair in the little hall. You hear their faint buzz and smell the lingering antiseptic. Your stomach turns, and that's what does it.
You push through.
"Medic?"
"In here."
To your right, the office door, labelled so neatly with his title, stands ajar. Medic stands behind a large desk absolutely papered in files, documents, and records. He appears to be digging through them, a pen in one hand, held high with a turn of his wrist, like he expects the thing to leak at any moment. He finds what he's looking for and tugs it out of a stack.
Then, Medic lifts his head, peering through his spectacles. "Well? Come in."
You shove down the surge of embarrassment and enter. There's a low chair on this side, padded and covered in what might be leather, and you can't help but wonder how it was procured when the rest of the furniture on the base is two steps from plywood and aluminum.
Medic makes a few short marks and then caps his pen. The only clear spot on the desk is beside a squat, bronze lamp at its angled edge, where he places the pen, and then, after removing and folding them, his spectacles. He settles in the high-backed chair beside him without needing to look. "Sit, if you wish."
You do, mostly because you feel strange looking down at him. You'd much rather see eye-to-eye.
Ha, there's some irony. Actually, this whole thing is-
"Well?"
Right. Why the hell are you here?
You do your best to meet his eyes, so strange without lenses to give you even an imaginary barrier. "What can you tell me about cancer?"
"I can tell you zhat you don't have it." He doesn't drop your gaze, just speaks readily. It's matter-of-fact.
"But can you, in theory, cure it?"
Medic's brows arch, and he shifts, crossing one leg over the other, folding his hands neatly in his lap. "As I said, Specialist, you show no signs of the disease. Do you ask personally, could I cure it, or in the hypothetical, is there a cure?" His diction is perfect, precise, and you might feel uncomfortable with the way he refuses to be the first to look away if this weren't so important.
"Both."
He unfolds his hands, rests his elbows on the arms of the chair, refolds them. "It was never my area of study." He says it like a warning. Like you're liable to argue.
Like he expects blame.
You swallow, mind ticking slowly. So strange, so out of place. A physician doesn't hesitate to lie, to spit venom of omniscience. Only one word comes to mind:
"Please."
Medic breaks contact, looking firmly down at the mess of the desk. His brow creases. "There are treatments."
WHAM.
His eyes snap back to yours, and you leave your fist where it has connected with the desk, still seated; you hadn't even needed to move. Your jaw clenches tight. You exhale slowly, through your nose. "I am aware." You don't picture your mother getting up from dinner, pale, telling you all, in an even voice, to continue. You don't think of the day she collapsed in the garden and your brother leapt the distance to catch her before she hit the ground. "They said that, too, 'treatments.' What you mean is poison. They always say she's getting better, even when she can't leave the house because she's throwing up in her own bed. It's always improved, always treatable. No one ever says cured."
For the first time since you met, you've pinned him beneath your gaze, unwavering, fueled by months of keeping quiet, months of blind trust, never arguing, sitting and fighting tears in windowless, soulless rooms holding too-cold hands and listening to the drone of doctors that said everything was going so well.
And Medic wets his lips. "Zhat is because there is no cure, as such."
Your fist relaxes, returns to your lap like it's been banished. You release his gaze, dropping your eyes for just a moment. A chill seizes your stomach. "What about the medi-gun?"
He shakes his head, almost imperceptibly, and the weight of it threatens to bow your shoulders. "The nature of cancer is—like so many things—to reproduce." He shifts in his chair, considering. "It is like… a parasite. What do you do to a parasite? You kill it." Medic leans just slightly over the desk, catching your eyes again, serious. "But, the diabolical genius of cancer is that the parasite is you."
Your eyes drop back to your hands, to the deep, crescent-moon impressions scattered across the heel of your palm. You hear the high-backed chair scrape upon the floor as Medic rises and paces around the desk, speaking softly, musing. "Your own cells become the parasite, and to kill it, you must kill yourself."
There's a hard lump in your throat that you studiously ignore and stare harder at your hands. At your fourth finger where the skin has thickened over the years, cradled against the grain of a pencil your mother taught you how to use. The scar on your wrist from where you'd fallen against the asphalt in the tenth grade, and your mother had come early to take you home and clean up your face—which didn't scar; you'll never know why—and tell you to be more careful. The new callous across your trigger finger that evidences every check that returns home even when you cannot.
The palm suddenly on your shoulder pulls your gaze away. "But—to prevail…!" You meet Medic's eyes—alive, dancing, enamored of some idea, just within his grasp. "To bring yourself so close to death that you survive, while zhe parasite withers away and dies...! This is excellence. This is not a cure, this is victory!" He offers a hand.
Victory. The idea stirs something in your breast. A smile and flippant joke as the nurse connects the IV with its saline and poison. Bright scarves, warm colors in every hospital bed because she insisted on bringing them. Flowers that still bloomed when she finally came home, like they knew her hardworking hands anywhere. You can, because you must.
With a breath, you accept, folding your fingers in his.
The distance you travel is short, across the medical suite to the windows on the opposite wall, where the carriers for Medic's doves sit, to where the medi-gun rests, perched in its harness like some gliding bird of prey, fixed mid-air. "This is my finest work. But it does not do what your mother will if she is to survive-what she has done. I can rebuild men from almost nothing!" His hand tightens around yours before reaching up to roam the instrument with a passion. "But cancer…" He rests his palm along the barrel. "My machine rebuilds cells. Tumors are built from cells, your own cells, and the cancer has captured them down to the DNA—unless the cancer were completely removed, it would simply be rebuilt, regrown." He turns to you again, intent, your gazes even now, unbarred by any obstacle. "Cancer cannot be cured, Specialist; it must be killed."
The More You Know: The chapter title, Pharmakon, is a term in ancient Greek for "drug"-but is used to describe both poisons and remedies
Previous to the 20th century, patient rooms in hospitals were built with large windows to give access to both sunlight and fresh air. Before good sanitation systems were in place, this helped control the spread of bacteria. In fact, even the linen closets and corridors had many windows in them for the same reason-and the practice was very effective. The only downside was that this created a sprawling building where staff would have to walk long distances from nursing stations and storage to patient wings.
It was not until 1937 that prioritizing efficiency over direct access to sunlight was suggested, wherein a hospital floor would use ⅓ less space. So, by the 1950s, with antibiotics and improved aseptic practices, physicians believed they could maintain patient health without so many windows, and some even preferred the new temperature controlled environment with air conditioning, heating, and electric lights.
And so, windowless, air-conditioned patient rooms began appearing in the 1960s and 1970s. Because cancer treatment was going through new advances at the time, I imagine the Specialist's mother would have gone to a newer hospital, perhaps a research facility, to receive treatment. Thus, the air conditioning and cold electric lighting that we find familiar today.