The Wendy to my ‘Peter Pan’
On the worst day of my life, the best thing happened to me.
A woman whom I loved, loathed, then loved again told me she loved me back. She lay next to me in the hospital bed at Robert Wood Johnson in Hamilton and tried to take my attention away from the devastating news I had just received.
My testicular cancer was back, and it had spread all over my body. The doctor who delivered the verdict in that shamefully decorated emergency room waiting area placed her hand on my leg to console me.
I took the news slack-jawed but in stride. But Kathleen’s face dropped. Life went out of her for a moment. Her eyes moistened. A single tear streamed down the left side of her face.
After the doctor left the room, she got out of her chair and settled down next to me on the hospital bed. We joked about the hideous décor of the room, yellow and blue wallpaper that was as ghastly looking to us as the cancer appeared to the doctors on my CAT scan.
Kat, as I’ve come to call her, and I are found of exaggeration. We’ve had a complex, on-and-off emotional relationship since August, complicated by perceived conflicts in our jobs that became trivial postscript to our relationship once I was diagnosed with metastatic cancer in December.
A talented attorney with enough quirks to fill out a law library, Kat has been there continuously since my diagnosis, spending many nights with me at the hospital and rising early the next day to try to make it on time to work.
We’ve joked that judges in Mercer County have to give her the courtesy of an extra 15 minutes because of her motherly, and cancer-boy, obligations. I’m in awe of her, how she juggles my bullshit, children and convicts, comforting the afflicted at the hospital and afflicting the comfortable in the courtroom, while still finding time to comfort her young son when he cries for his mom.
Our paths crossed for the first time two years ago, in an elevator at the Mercer County criminal courthouse.
It was a few months after I started working as the court reporter at The Trentonian, in November 2014. I didn’t really notice her when I got in the elevator, too busy in my own head as I leaned against the rail while riding to the second floor.
But Kathleen, standing maybe 5 foot 3 inches in heels, forced you notice her. She got my attention.
“You’re the reporter for The Trentonian,” she said, snapping me out of my early-morning trance. I nodded my head. “I like your articles. You’re a talented writer.”
She introduced herself as Kathleen Redpath-Perez and said she was a public defender. I remember thinking her name sounded Native American and it was nice people still read our tabloid rag.
I hadn’t been at the newspaper for that long, and most of the articles I’d write, holding judges and attorneys accountable, weren’t well-received.
A lot of times, I was the villain. So it felt nice to have an admirer, offsetting the negativity that was part of my job.
We didn’t interact much after that day in the elevator, other than some cordial and professional pleasantries in the hallways.
I’d come to know of Kathleen for her courtroom theatrics. She was a short and strident hit-woman of hyperbole, known in the legal community as “Warpath.” She was always blazing a bloody trail, taking the hard path rather than the easy one.
Before we started dating, I listened to her make ridiculous arguments. She stuck her neck out extra far for her clients, an admirable trait that has endeared her to the people she represents. She was willing to do, and say, tough things to uphold clients’ constitutional rights.
In putting on an entrapment defense for a former Motor Vehicle Commission clerk nabbed for selling people’s personal information during an undercover sting, she referred to the fat-rat cooperator, Luis Cisneros, as a “Peter Pan for undocumented people.”
After Kat drove me to RWJ and I was admitted, I wished I could be like Peter Pan, flying aimlessly and mischievously through the air in Neverland, not a care in this world.
In some sense, I was like the Peter Pan from J.M. Barrie’s book, marooned on a rock in a lagoon with the tide rising and the promise of impending death. “To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
My friend Anne, a fellow journalist turned lawyer, texted me that passage this week as I prepare to start high-dose chemotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia.
It was fitting. In those perilous moments at RWJ, with Kat by my side, an oncologist told me I was going to die, and that they could only make me comfortable.
Another doctor couldn’t bring herself to talk to me; she took my father out in the hallway to let him know how bad the scan looked.
When he asked whether he should fly my mother out, she tearfully responded that she thought it was a good idea. I didn’t witness the heart-wrenching interaction. Kathleen told me about it later, tearing up as she recounted the conversation.
These days, my outlook isn’t as grim as it was at RWJ. Within days, I transferred to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where I underwent four rounds of standard-dose chemotherapy. It killed most of the cancer in my body, but there was still some left.
My doctor recommended undergoing additional chemotherapy at UPenn, under the watchful care of Dr. David Vaughn, a renowned physician who has consulted with Lawrence Einhorn, the doctor who helped cure the cyclist Lance Armstrong of testicular cancer.
Kat has been by my side since delivering me to the emergency room at RWJ. She’s a strong Dominican woman — stronger than me — who helps raise her two kids and still holds down an intellectually demanding career.
She’s a foodie with a discerning palette, pursing out the tastes in dishes and never parsing words in her reviews on Yelp — “terribly terrible” — if she isn’t satisfied with her meals. Her favorite food is chicken parmesan, done right.
She’s not afraid to send back dishes, which to some people, makes her a picky eater. I’m glad she’s picky and that she picked me.
Her biggest defense, perhaps, has been dating me. We were on parallel professional tracks that happened to intersect.
We weren’t on each other’s romantic radar. We didn’t seek out each other; this just happened, making me think the universe brought us together, despite immaterial things that threatened to keep us apart.
I almost interrupted the universe’s rotation. I remember the first time we hung out in June. She and I, along with my friend Esteban, went to a restaurant near my home. We drank Sangria outside and talked for hours.
Kat, a hyperactive and hyper-imaginative chatterbox, did most of the talking; that’s how our relationship works. She talks and I listen. It’s that way because, in journalism, you’re taught to listen twice as much as you speak. With Kat, I probably listen four times as much as I speak, and I love every minute of it.
I was enthralled with her that day, in her pink blouse, jean shorts and curled brown hair. She had on lip gloss, bringing out the olive skin in her innocent-looking face.
She looked about 15 going on 32, and the clerk naturally asked for her identification when we went and bought more alcohol at a liquor store next to the restaurant and went back to my house.
I had just purchased a black faux leather couch and an entertainment set for my barren apartment. Even as the alcohol set in, Esteban, ever the handyman, worked diligently by himself, putting the entertainment set together while me and Kat talked on the couch.
He left to go to the bathroom for a second, and in my faded and oblivious bliss, I decided now was my chance to make a move. I tried to kiss Kat; she pulled away and told me we were just friends.
I apologized for my brashness. My ego took a hit. She stayed for a bit longer even though I made her uncomfortable, which was big of her. I walked her to her car and gave her a hug.
I walked back into my apartment and settled down on the couch, next to Esteban.
“I fucked up,” I told him in my tipsy state, explaining that I had tried to kiss her too soon. “It’s a shame because I really like her.”
Esteban didn’t believe me. How could I have known I liked her that much after hanging out once? He thought it was the alcohol talking.
Her and I didn’t really talk for a while after that. The short of it was that Kat got scared off by my forwardness.
I felt stupid because it was uncharacteristic. Weeks later, we saw each other in the courtroom at one of her colleagues’ trials. I had avoided her in the courthouse, ashamed of my boorish behavior. She sat next to me and told me I didn’t need to act like she didn’t exist.
It’d be awhile before we hung out again, following a period of false starts.
One night, we were set to meet up when her boss at the public defender’s office accidentally butt-dialed, which she viewed as a sign that she shouldn’t go out, friends or not. So she canceled on me.
I remember being annoyed and crushed. I promptly went to Parx Casino in Bensalem and lost $600 in about 30 minutes playing high-end blackjack.
Kat has cost me a lot of money.
We started dating at one point last year but stopped after an article was published in The Trentonian about a city cop who was being investigated for having sex on duty with a prostitute.
The story made a national splash when the cop took his own life after the story was published on our website. I was only a co-author on the piece, but it was enough to scare off Kathleen. I was apparently an ill-timed kisser and, she thought, would be her kiss of death.
I had always found myself in controversy at The Trentonian, which is what attracted Kat to me but also repelled her from me. I was too radioactive to continue to have a relationship. She was easily swayed by public perception, and I couldn’t blame her.
I came across to a lot of people as an absolute prick, obsessed with my job and taking down judges. I wrote hard-hitting stories that some felt hit too hard or were low blows. Others enjoyed reading my articles and thought I strived for fairness.
I existed in people’s minds as one thing or another, not both. That’s what stung about Kat’s decision to leave, because I thought she saw my duality and could separate Isaac the reporter from Isaac the person, the same way we separated church and state at our jobs. She had her reasons for why she couldn’t, and I tried to respect them, hard as it was.
We had intermittent bouts where we’d start talking again. She had left clothes at my place, and a jacket in the closet in my living room, a constant reminder of her presence.
This purgatory in our relationship went on for weeks, until I had enough. I returned her clothes one day. She told me over text that she thought I was a good guy and didn’t deserve the indecisiveness.
I remember her telling me in one of her last texts, after I dropped off her clothes but forgot her jacket, that she guessed this was goodbye forever. I was too hurt to respond. I didn’t talk to her for a month. She never bothered trying to get her jacket back and bought a new one.
During that time, I went out with a woman I met on Tinder.
It turned out to be the worst date I had ever been on. The woman seemed nice enough.
We met at a restaurant in downtown New Brunswick. She immediately began ordering and pounding expensive martinis as soon as we sat down at our table. She wanted me to drink with her, so I ordered up a round.
We ordered $30 entrees. She asked to share off mine. While waiting for our food, she talked about making boatloads of cash as some sort of consultant but said she had taken a hiatus.
She continued downing drinks, until she was six deep. She ordered up dessert.
I’m pretty chivalrist, still believing men should pay for meals. But the check took me aback. It was $150, on a first date. She didn’t go for her purse or offer to pay a portion of the meal.
It came out to $180 with tip. Afterward, she asked me to go to another bar. While we were at the bar, we ordered drinks. She went to the bathroom. I stayed watching the World Series on the bar’s big screens.
When she returned, out of nowhere, she accused me of staring at another woman at the bar.
“I’m hot,” she thundered, excoriating me for something I didn’t do. I’d admit it if I eyeballed the woman at the bar. But I hadn’t, and I was shocked by her allegations.
“Are you serious?” I said.
She said she was and asked for the tab. When the check came, a whopping $10 tab, the accusation-making woman turned to me and asked if I had any singles for a tip.
I was incredulous. I had just paid $180 tab at dinner, and this woman, after condemning me for a phantom one-over of another woman, had the audacity to ask for more money.
I told her she needed to get her eyes checked and walked out of the bar. This is what I meant about Kat costing me a lot of money.
If she had been around, I would have never went on that date.
Regardless, something, an external force I can’t describe, always brought us back together.
A day before I landed in the hospital Dec. 14, I texted Kat for the first time in a month. She responded almost right away.
I wanted to know how she was doing. She tried to rehash our relationship. I told her I wasn’t going there. We exchanged a few more text messages. I knew I still had feelings for her but tried to repress them.
The next day, my whole life turned to shit. I collapsed while walking with a friend and colleague, Anna, to a café in Trenton.
I felt like the weight of the world was on my chest. I could hardly breath, and it took all the energy I could muster to peel myself off the concrete. Anna went to get her car to come pick me up.
While waiting for her, I talked to my colleague Penny Ray, who was filling in for my boss, and told him I wouldn’t be filing a story that day. He jokingly chided me, thinking I was mailing it in two days before my vacation was set to start.
I never mailed it in; I was the mailman, always delivering.
I didn’t have health insurance at the time. Penny Ray texted me the number to Teladoc, a service provided free to Trentonian employees, and a stop gap to real insurance.
Anna picked me up and drove me to my car. When I got home, I phoned the Teladoc and set up an appointment. He called back 10 minutes later, advising me after hearing my symptoms to immediately go to the ER, that he couldn’t do anything for me over the phone.
I called my parents and told them what was going on. I still thought I’d be able to handle this health hiccup and make in to my plane in two days, bound for Albuquerque to see my family for Christmas.
I remember feeling scared, helpless and weak.
For some reason, I texted Kat. I told her I didn’t feel well, had been coughing up blood and was fearful something was wrong with me. I’m still not sure why I told her this, only maybe that I felt comfortable with her.
She immediately called me, and not giving me an option, told me she was leaving work to come pick me up and take me to the hospital.
That same foreboding feeling that I had in December has returned, two days away from the start of my high-dose chemotherapy. The doctors give you all the boilerplate and the warnings.
One percent of patients develop life-threatening reactions to having their stem cells infused back into them following high-dose chemo. The stem cells are supposed to help you recover quicker from the treatment, which is up to seven times stronger than standard-dose chemotherapy.
Kat got on me the other day for missing some of my Neupogen shots. She said I needed to be as strong as possible for this next round, which will likely take a lot out of me. She told me I wasn’t doing what I promised, when I told her that I loved her and would do anything to beat this disease.
She was right. She has been a stalwart in my life since we overcame our early adversity. I know she’s nervous about the treatment.
After all, she’s dealing with the Peter Pan of testicular cancer patients. I’m 28 years old, but I can be immature, and it seems like I never want to grow up.
Peter Pan was the leader of the Lost Boys. I try to assure Kat, that despite the difficulty and potential dangers associated with this next treatment, she won’t ever lose this boy.
And one day, I’ll grow up and be a man. The man she was stupid enough to love despite all the controversy and risks.
