Cancer to the Question (revised)
“It’s cancer!” the doctor said gleefully, handing 12-year-old George a bundle of helium-filled balloons.
I must be dreaming, thought George. This makes no sense.
“Why the down-in-the-mouth look? You lucked out, kid.”
“Are you nuts, doctor?”
“You mean you haven’t heard? I thought everyone knew by now, those of us still alive.”
“Heard what?”
“The pandemic, for God’s sake.”
“Covid?”
“Where have you been? What have you been watching? Have you been off-the-grid?”
“I guess so. Mom and Dad got spooked by the news before I was born and moved from New York City to a small town in Maine. I’ve lived there all my life.”
“And how did you wind up here at the Dana-Farber Center?”
“When I felt bad, Mom looked up the symptoms in a book. She thought I might have cancer, so she drove me here, right away.”
“An actual printed book? Not a web site?”
“Yes, a book. Maybe you should read one sometime.” George was getting impatient. What kind of doctor was this?
The doctor laughed. “So, you never heard?”
“I know that Covid was bad. A million died in the U.S. alone.”
“A million and a half.”
“But we were as isolated as we could be, off in the woods. It never got to us. We were safe.”
“This has nothing to do with Covid. I’m talking about the pandemic, the big one, the really bad one.”
“Worse than Covid?”
“Not in the same league. 90% mortality rate. Airborne. It spread quickly, and people dropped dead before showing symptoms.”
“How many died?”
“They stopped counting the cases long ago. Now they only count those of us who are still alive. That’s a far smaller number.”
“You mean …”
“You probably didn’t run into much traffic driving down from Maine.”
“Like everybody’s dead?”
“Not everybody. But close. Scary close. We nearly lost the entire human race.”
“Well, you look okay.”
“I was one of the lucky ones, lucky like you.”
“Lucky?”
“I had cancer. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you — you have cancer, too.”
“Yeah. You said that. You’ve got a weird sense of humor, congratulating me on my death sentence.”
“On your life sentence, kid.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Indeed, you didn’t get it, and you won’t get it. You are immune to PAN-5 because you have cancer. Only people who have or have had cancer are immune. Cancer we can treat, but the pandemic not at all. You lucked out kid. Maybe someday researchers will figure out how to give people cancer, and that will be the end of the pandemic. But you are one of the lucky ones. You are immune by nature.”
A bright light flashed. By reflex reaction, George shut his eyes tight. When he opened them again, the room was the same, and the doctor was still beside his bed. But the doctor looked concerned.
“Why the sad face?” asked George.
“I just told you,” the doctor replied. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the truth is the truth.”
“What bad new?” asked George. “I’ve got cancer. That’s great. You know what that means. You just told me. I won’t catch PAN-5.”
“PAN-5? What’s that?”
“The latest pandemic. The one that’s killing everyone but those of us who have or have had cancer. What’s wrong with you? You’re scaring me. Do you mean you didn’t say that? Do you mean I dreamt that?”
A bright light flashed again. George shut his eyes again. And when he opened them, the doctor was smiling with delight. George screamed and shut his eyes, then opened, then shut, over and over again, so fast he didn’t have time to tell if the doctor was smiling or grimacing.
Maybe he was in a coma, not knowing what was real and what was dream. Or maybe he was having a cascade of dreams inside of dreams. Maybe he was trapped in a series of endless repetitions. Or maybe this was like boxes inside of boxes inside of boxes.
Maybe he was dying. Maybe he was dead already. Maybe this was what death felt like, at least to him.
Maybe there are different kinds of death. For some, it may be going toward the light.
For others, seeing yourself from above. And for some it may be getting closer and closer to an end point, but never reaching it.
For George, death may be never knowing if he’s dead.
