Hello everybody.
Guest: yeah, things don't look too good...
NoName: welcome! Seems like I can't stay away from these two.
Well, time to find out...and to remind everybody I ain't no doctor.
Dr Theodore Schultz was an oncologist.
Not that Gillian knew it, not as some kind of essential notion she was supposed to be aware of for some reason. She knew simply because after some moments of surprise and confusion in Cal's bathroom she had looked up what Interferon was, and a new scary - terrifying - piece had quickly been added to the puzzle she had been putting together.
The revelation of Dr Schultz's occupation accompanied her through the drive to D.C Central Hospital, as she kept reading bits of the man's profile on the facility website every time she had to stop at a red light. His profile was as impressive as his specialisation was depressing to read about under the circumstances: he was a renowned oncologist and researcher, top of his field and publisher of many papers on palliative care for terminal patients and alternative therapies for those who could only throw a Hail Mary and hope for the best. Certainly not the most encouraging background, which was the main reason why Gillian was still holding back in calling Zoe to share any update.
After all, she told herself while parking the car as close as she could to the big metropolitan hospital, what did she really know thus far? Nothing, at least not for sure: she had an empty envelope, an empty bottle of medication and the vague idea that Cal had packed a bag for the night. Of course her mind was running wild, but she was clinging onto something inside her and denying the scenarios coming to her mind.
When she was inside the hospital, she realised in a moment of panic that she had no idea how to take it from there. She might not have been a medical doctor, but as a psychologist she had a similar knowledge of the ethical duties and limitations coming with the profession and she doubted she could just stroll in, ask for patient Cal Lightman and be whisked in easily. What she did instead, playing all the cards she possessed about manipulative language and body gesture, plus her natural good person facade, was to get a private audience with the medical practitioner himself.
Making up some vague but convincing story, Gillian found herself sitting in the man's office and looking around to study the room while she waited for him to join her. There was nothing special in the room, just your average office with shelves packed with medical texts and journals, pictures of family on the desks and the odd branded gadget courtesy of flattering drug reps trying to push their products. Still, more than once Gillian's eyes landed anxiously on the x-rays reader board on the wall, empty and switched off at the moment, wondering if whatever was missing from the envelope she had found under Cal's bed had at any point been on display on that lit up board.
"Hi, sorry to make you wait."
All of a sudden, the middle aged man whose picture she had already gotten familiar with came into the room, discreetly rushing in with that 'I'm super busy but I'll try to be polite' brand of attitude that most physicians seemed to be equipped with. Dr Schultz came in and closed the door behind him, immediately walking around his desk and stretching his hand to her.
"Dr Foster, right?" Gillian nodded as she returned the gesture. "I've been told you're here for a consult?"
She bit at her bottom lip while pulling back and settling into the chair again, knowing that was the moment to come clean and feeling bad about it.
"To be honest Dr Schultz, it's not really a consult I am here for. But it is about someone who I believe is a patient of yours." The doctor pulled away slowly and laid back on his chair, his demeanour going from somewhat cordial to immediately suspicious, but Gillian knew if he was going to dismiss her and kick her out of there she might as well play all her cards. "Cal Lightman, he's-"
"Foster! I knew the name sounded familiar!"
To Gillian's utter shock, the man in front of her cut her off with a rather decisive voice, standing up as he spoke and exuding some strange enthusiasm as the identity of his visitors was being revealed. She looked at him baffled, her skilled eyes scanning the man's figure and face looking for an explanation of his sudden outburst. She knew what she was seeing - relief, a bit of curiosity and some guilt - but she couldn't figure out the reason for any of that in the current situation. Then her brain backtracked for a moment, thinking that there might have been some very simple and reasonable explanation for Schultz knowing her name: being a psychologist she wasn't entirely foreign to the clinical side of medicine, she had worked in counselling for terminal patients at the beginning of her career and published on the topics, perhaps the doctor had just read something and-
"I am going to be honest Dr Foster," the man sighed, taking off his glasses to massage the bridge of his nose, and Gillian immediately picked up on the fact that his the enthusiastic outburst had quickly vanished, replaced by the tired face of someone who had been carrying quite the weight on his shoulders. "You being here might just help me solve my ethical enigma."
"I- Dr Schultz, I'm sorry but I don't-"
"Cal Lightman is my patient, and I want you to know the only reason why I am talking to you about him is that you are indicated as his emergency contact for medical reasons."
The fact that her name was on Cal's paperwork wasn't news to Gillian, she had to sign her agreement to it and she remembered well the day he had asked her to take on that responsibility. It had been not long after his divorce had become official, when he was still dealing with it mostly through alcohol binges and rants, and that had been the reason why she had declined. It wasn't a life-changing decision, but certainly one that needed to be made with a clear mind. And when he had gotten better, when he had been more lucid and ready to focus on life ahead rather than the past and he had asked again, she had accepted. Back then, she hadn't thought much of that signature: people signed that kind of thing every day, and as much as it might have meant a lot for him to ask, she hadn't thought she'd have to actually do something with it. Even when Cal had gone off on some of his crazy acts and put himself in danger, Gillian hadn't seriously computed that commitment might come back to her.
But she sat there now, in the office of an oncologist who apparently had been expecting her visit in some way, and the thought that the signature suddenly meant a whole lot made her head spin.
Far from being an expert in reading microexpressions, Dr Schultz could still tell the woman in front of him didn't have enough information to process his words and quickly recovered his professionality as he too remembered the circumstances of their present encounter. He raised his hands a little as if to apologise, then sat down again and gave Gillian his attention.
"I'm really sorry Dr Foster, I got carried away but- May I ask you what brought you here today?"
Gillian nodded slowly, appreciating the change of pace and the fact that apparently they were heading towards some explanations.
"Cal's family called me earlier today, they hadn't been able to get in touch with him during the weekend. They're out of town so I went to check his house and I found this." She took the bottle of medications from her purse and put it on the desk. "I appreciate there might be things you can't share due to doctor-patient confidentiality but-"
"That would generally be the case, yes, but as I said you are the person Dr Lightman indicated has to be contacted in case of medical emergency…and sadly I think we might have gotten to this point."
His statement was enough to let Gillian's blood run cold, despite the sincerely suffered way he spoke. At that point she knew that it wasn't going to be good news when she'd call Zoe back, but she still didn't know how bad they were going to be. Dr Schultz stood up and walked towards a big file cabinet, fishing inside until he brought out an envelope that looked a lot like the one she had found under Cal's bed. Then he took out the scan and put it up on the luminous board Gillian had lingered on previously, switched it on and motioned her to come closer.
"Are you familiar with this?" He asked, and she had to shake her head no: she might have been able to spot a broken bone on a x-ray, but complex brain scans were definitely out of her league. Then the doctor pointed at a small white blob on the scan which, Gillian knew without him needing to clarify, captures the image of Cal's brain. "This is middle cranial meningioma, or pineal tumour." Schultz gave her second, knowing full well the weight the word carried. "It's a benign tumour, and we found it soon enough to have options with regards to treatment. Not that it mattered much, Dr Lightman decided for surgery almost immediately."
Of course he did, Gillian thought at the doctor's words. He'd try to take it out himself if he could.
"He didn't want to try chemo, or radiation?" She asked and the doctor nodded, but what she wanted to ask was what kind of symptoms, if any, that ball inside Cal's head could cause; actually, what she truly wanted to ask, more to herself, was how she could have possibly missed them. "So what was the Interferon for?"
"That was to boost his immune system and help fight the effect of the infection caused by the tumour. It's not a cure, just something to hopefully slow down the symptoms and the spreading of the infection." Once again he gave her a few seconds to process. "It helped to keep things under control until we could schedule the surgery."
Somehow Gillian was still able to stand on her feet, but the dizziness was back and she felt at the mercy of an internal whirlwind of feelings, questions and realisations overtaking her ability to think straight for a minute. Eventually she was able to focus on one thing, a little detail that had been so far implied but overshadowed by the bombshell that Cal had a brain tumour. She opened her mouth to ask something but then changed her mind and instead went back to the desk to pick up the empty bottle of pills. Gillian had looked at it more than once since she had found it, but she had been too baffled by the name on it to really focus on the one detail that came to her mind then.
The prescription date.
She didn't know how many pills had been inside, or how many Cal was supposed to take, but the date on the bottle was over a month old. Gillian looked at Dr Schultz, who once again used his experience in one of the bleakest specialties in medicine to understand what she was thinking. He sighed and went back to the file cabinet, this time taking a thin folder and handing it to her with the first page on display.
"The initial diagnosis was more than two months ago, nearly three by now. Chief complaints were headaches and eyesight problems, and he was a little reluctant but eventually mentioned something about behaviour changes."
Gillian was speechless, in complete shock, wondering where the hell she had been when all of that had been happening. Sure, Cal was no stranger to keeping things from others and hiding his plans and feelings…but medical conditions serious enough to convince even him he had to get it checked out? How could she have missed- This time the dizzy spell was strong enough to seriously mess with her ability to stand and she had to sit down again, closing her eyes and inhaling heavily through her nostrils as memories of the past months assaulted her mind. Cal being more edgy than usual, taking things too far one too many times, sometimes seemingly just out of spite; and then Cal being unable to focus on writing his new book, even though writing - bragging really - about his science was usually something he couldn't wait to do, while also getting deeply invested in cases way more than usual to the point of being obsessed by them and take everything personal; and how to forget some big faux pas like hissing at her for preserving the company's finance, totally falling for the charming thief and compromising his integrity - and God know what else - with the dodgy detective?
But she hadn't missed those things, not really: she had just thought it was Cal being Cal, a more difficult version of him but not that far from the original, not enough to raise alarm. But what about the eyesight problem? She scrambled, trying to think if he had perhaps been less accurate in his reading, struggling… The first thought was no, not that she could think of, then again he had let his sciences being fooled by a good looking woman, he had struggled with John Stafford and never really gotten over the fact that Dr Grandon had nothing to do with Wayne Dobar's difficult mental recovery, and he had likely seen nothing on Mosley that would foreshadow violent tendencies.
In a way, Gillian could understand why Cal wouldn't have mentioned anything about feeling less than sharp with his work. It was a matter of pride, of survival even for someone like him, and he certainly wouldn't have wanted her or anybody else at work - not to mention his daughter - to know that he was failing at the one thing he had dedicated the biggest part of his life to. But the overall symptoms, the idea that something was wrong with him on a medical level… Had those things been part of what had pushed Cal to seek help, other than blinding headaches? And why had he not come to her if he thought-
It was a silly question, at least considering their recent interaction. She had still enabled and indulged him, but she had never been shy about voicing her disappointment when he crossed a line. Maybe that was the reason Cal had not mentioned anything with her, fearing she might dismiss it? No, she didn't think so; as a psychologist she knew that it was much more likely he had simply been too afraid of the truth to open up with someone close about it. It was very human, stupid but human: it was much easier to go to a stranger who could - hopefully - do something about it without getting too personal.
Of course there was the small fact that they had been distant lately, that she had been distant, albeit with justified cause, so perhaps after all she shouldn't have been surprised. No matter what, Gillian then realised that there was something else she couldn't quite figure out.
"When was he admitted?"
"Friday, just before lunchtime. Surgery was scheduled for the later afternoon."
"If I am his emergency contact," Gillian managed to continue in a low voice after a while, seeing the timeline in her head, "why didn't you call me earlier?"
"Dr LIightman left a series of instructions, before we put him under for the surgery." The doctor paused for a moment, knowing what he was about to say wasn't going to be easy. "He requested that we didn't contact you if things went…a certain way."
Gillian nodded slowly, appreciating the physician's delicate approach but also finding it a slow torturous way to a truth that she felt was going to be horrible anyway. She knew the what, the where, the who, but it was clear that there was to it and that the doctor was taking his time to get there, perhaps with good reasons. Cal had a tumour, he hadn't told anybody and had chosen the radical option to have Schultz rummage inside his brain to get it out: that checked out, frighteningly so but it did. What she still couldn't figure out, or simply refused to, was why her unannounced visit had made the doctor so happy for a moment despite Cal's apparent instructions not to inform her.
"A certain way?" She repeated, and this time it was Schultz who nodded slowly and gravely. Gillian clenched her jaw and let the gesture settle, coming to her own conclusion in the deadly silence that had overtaken the room. Then she nodded to herself and stood up, looking down at the doctor with the steady face of someone who wasn't going to take no for an answer. "I'd like to see him now."
I guess you're gonna have a lot of questions...