When I awoke, I was in my apartment and there was a ribbon of spit on the pillow next to me. I checked it for blood, but it was clear. My head throbbed as usual and I felt the familiar dull ache behind my eyes. I crawled out of bed and turned the TV on as I dressed. CNN was going on about some flareup in the Middle East (I had long ago stopped caring about such things, there was always a flareup somewhere or other) and I flipped it over to «Scooby-Doo» on the Cartoon Network. It was one of my favorites from the first year (the best year before they got into all that guest star nonsense and then brought in Scrappy-Doo — who the hell ever thought that was a good idea?) with the space ghost that had the glowing, laughing head. I remember how that scared the piss out of me as a kid. A lot of things scared me back then, before I learned that the only real scary thing in life was stuff like cancer and brain tumors. There weren't any gods or monsters. Not in the real world. Here we had sickness and disease instead of vampires and ghosts.
I brushed my teeth and took my medicine. Looking at the clock, I had about an hour to get to work, so I knew I'd have enough time. I sat down and watched the rest of the show, waiting for that great «Scooby-Doo» ending where they unmask the villain. I always loved that.
At work, I tried to pretend that I cared about what I was doing, but it didn't really matter. I was just another clerk in just another bookstore. Nothing special. Nothing unique. I had 'Help Desk' duty, which everyone knew was the worst. Listening to blue-haired old ladies trying to describe what they wanted. 'I don't know the name but I saw it on Oprah. It had a black cover.'
The other clerks tried not to look at me too closely. My hair had grown back, more or less, but there's still something about a cancer patient that sets you off from everyone else. Maybe it's a smell or some invisible «early-warning» system, but no one looks at you the same way afterward. That didn't bother me too much. Most of them weren't worth knowing anyway. Weird, trendy people of questionable sexuality. I'd never had much in common with them nor they with me.
Lovecraft's ghost followed me through the reference section, pointing out books with errors in them. I hate it when he does that.
'The tumor's getting larger,' intoned Dr. Lyons with all the seriousness of a hanging judge. He held up two cat scans. 'As you can see from the earlier one, it was only about the size of a grape. Now it's getting close to a plum.'
I'd never eaten a plum, so had no idea about its size. I figured that it wasn't a good comparison.
'So none of the treatments have done anything?'
Dr. Lyons sighed. 'No. The radiation treatments barely seemed to hold its growth. Since we stopped doing those, it's gotten bigger. The medication doesn't seem to be working either. Surgery, although not recommended, is still an option.'
'You told me before that it was too dangerous.'
'It is. But I don't really see any other way.' He got up from behind his desk. 'Michael, you have to understand that without surgery this is going to continue to grow.'
Apparently I wasn't impressed enough by this.
'Michael, you will die without this operation.'
I thought about this. Dying wasn't necessarily the worst thing.
Chemo was certainly on an equal footing. Poverty was right up there too.
'How long?'
'If the tumor continues to grow at this size, maybe four to six months, on the outside. But, Michael, they won't be comfortable months.'
He went on to describe how, as the tumor grows, I would begin to lose brain functions. My speech and sight would be affected. My coordination would deteriorate. In short, it would be a living death.
I thanked him and left. Dr. Lyons was confused and followed me out into the hall. He wanted to know why I didn't want to schedule the operation immediately. I looked at him.
'Because I can't afford it.' I turned away. He didn't stop me.
Robert E. Howard made a writing career out of stories of strong rugged men who tamed their worlds and bent others to their will. It was a universe of barbarians with strong sword arms and evil sorcerers who plotted magic schemes of conquest. Not once do I recall an REH character dying of cancer or an illness. Of course, that probably would have been too personal a thing considering how his mother died.
'Don't forget,' Lovecraft said, 'Two-Gun Bob killed himself.'
'Yeah, well, there's plenty of ways to do that. Sometimes doing nothing works just as well.' I replied.
There had been an article in the paper not too long ago about a doctor doing work on cancer treatment. It wasn't one of those peach-pit things, but it was an herbal remedy. Supposedly some type of combination of herbs and diets. I'd read a lot of those books, including the one by Norman Cousins. Sometimes they seemed to work, most times they didn't. I'd never had the discipline to see them all through but, considering the alternatives, I didn't have a lot of choices.
At work, I looked up the doctor's book. To my surprise, we actually had a copy. Glancing through it, it looked more like a cookbook than anything else. The medicine was a blend of herbs and vitamins (supposedly available at any health food store), and there was a special diet that focused on macrobiotics and avoided things like meat and oils. It seemed to be typical stuff, but the doctor's photo had a kind and gentle face, so I bought it. I enjoyed making my manager nervous when she rang it up. It was obvious why I was buying it, but no one dared to mention it.
'You know,' Lovecraft said to me in a horrified whisper, 'someone once said that my Shub-Niggurath was a representation of sexual disease. Can you believe that?'
I heard this at least once a day. It was one of the things that really bothered him, given his upbringing and personality.
'Yeah, I can believe it,' I replied. My manager didn't even look at me. She had gotten used to me talking like this.
On the way home, I bought the herbs listed in the book at the only local health food store. I didn't recognize most of the names and the clerk wasn't much help either. Several of the ingredients weren't there, so I had to substitute. The clerk thought that the other herbs and vitamins were just as good and, even though I didn't believe him, didn't have anything else to go on.
I stopped at a local restaurant and had a big steak meal with a plateful of french fries. My farewell to meat. I avoided the seafood platter out of deference to Lovecraft who, as always, kept looking around and exclaiming, 'Gad, how these birds do eat!'
At home later, I read through the book some more. The doctor believed that the steady use of his herb/vitamin combination, along with the diet, was able to curb the growth of cancer. In a few instances he described, the cancer had disappeared completely. I laid the pill bottles on the counter. I mixed the herbs together. There was a specific pattern on what to take, how much, and when. I took the first dose and followed it with Dr. Lyons's medication. It had a long clinical name that I couldn't pronounce but it was 'the latest in cancer treatment.' Couldn't hurt to keep taking it. I'd paid for it, after all, and it hadn't been cheap. The cost of being poor and sick in America.
That night, there wasn't much on TV. The cable channels were all boring so I put an old
'Disease, disease, disease. That's all they keep talking about. According to some critics, everything I wrote came from a fear of disease, either sexual or mental. Why couldn't it just be a story? Why did it have to be
'You think that's bad,' I replied, 'you should read Hodgson. Now
