Barefoot: A Novel

“Half a pound.”

“Since Tuesday?”

“Yes.”

“Has she been vomiting? What does her hair look like?”

“No vomiting. Hair looks the same.”

“Your father and I should be there.”

“How’s your leg, real y?” Brenda asked.

“When al was said and done, it would have been easier to amputate. But I’m final y off my painkil ers.”

“Good,” Brenda said.

“How are the kids?” El en said. “And Melanie, poor thing. How is she doing?”

Brenda was in no mood to comment on poor Melanie. “Why not ask how I’m doing? You have two daughters, you know.”

“Oh, darling, I know. You’re such an angel to be there for your sister. If you weren’t there . . .”

“But I am here. And everything’s fine. Vicki is fine.”

“You’l have her cal me as soon as . . .”

“I’l have her cal you,” Brenda said. “I always have her cal you.”

“I worry so. You don’t know how I worry. And your father, although he doesn’t say it as much, worries just as much as I do.”

“Everything’s fine, Mom. I’l have Vicki cal you.”

“Everything’s fine,” El en Lyndon said. “You’l have Vicki cal me.”

“There you go. You got it.”

“Oh, Brenda,” El en Lyndon said. “You have no idea what this is like, sitting here a mil ion miles away, unable to help. God forbid you ever have to go through something like this.”

“I am going through it, Mom,” Brenda said. “She’s my sister.” Repentance, Brenda thought. Atonement. “Good-bye.”

“Have Vicki cal me!”

“Good-bye, Mom.”

N eedlepoint Christmas stockings, flossing, the score of the Red Sox game, corn silks clogging the kitchen sink, corn silk hair, clumps of it, clogging the bathtub drain, poison ivy, the weather, the outlandish price of gasoline, Homeland Security, money, erections, sex.

At first, the chemo was no more painful or inconvenient than a trip to the dentist. The Oncology Unit at the Nantucket Cottage Hospital was smal , with a close-knit staff—or, as they liked to cal themselves, “the team.” (They al played summer league softbal and had been champions three years running. When you see what we see, day in and day out, the head nurse, Mamie, said, you need an outlet for your aggression. ) The team consisted of Mamie, a woman about ten years older than Vicki who was single-handedly raising four boys, and two other nurses: a young black man named Ben and a heavyset girl with a pierced lower lip who was just out of nursing school named Amelia—and the oncologist, Dr.

Alcott. Dr. Alcott, by happy coincidence, was an acquaintance of Dr. Garcia’s back at Fairfield Hospital through years of tireless conference-attending.

We have a few drinks together now and then, Joe and I, Dr. Alcott said when Vicki first met him. I promised him I’d take good care of you.

Dr. Alcott was probably fifty but he looked about thirty. He was blond and tan, with very white teeth and expensively tailored clothes underneath his white jacket. He told Vicki he liked to fish, loved to fish, actual y, and that was what had brought him to Nantucket from Mass General in Boston

—the potential for late-night and absurdly early morning trips to Great Point in his yel ow Jeep Wrangler. Three or four times a summer he chartered a boat with Bobby D. to hunt down shark or bluefin tuna, but at heart he was a solitary catch-and-release man—a bluefish was good; a striped bass, false albacore, or bonito even better. Dr. Alcott was the softbal team’s secret weapon, an ace pitcher whom no one in the league could hit. Vicki was half in love with Dr. Alcott, but she supposed everybody was.

When Vicki got to the hospital, either Ben or Amelia weighed her, took her blood pressure, and drew a blood sample to check her white count.

Then Vicki waited for Dr. Alcott to appear.

Just checking in, he said. How are you? How do you feel? You’re okay? You’re hanging in there? You’re a trouper. Joe told me you were going to be a star patient, a real fighter. The blood counts look okay, they look fine. You’re okay. I’m proud of you, Vicki. You’re doing a great job.

These words of encouragement were ridiculously important to Vicki. She was used to excel ing at things, though never once had she considered chemo something that a person might be good or bad at. It was random, the luck of the draw, how a body reacted to the chemicals. But she appreciated the cheerleading from Dr. Alcott nonetheless. He was going to save her.

The chemo room was smal and pleasant, with three recliners and two partial wal s for privacy. Vicki chose what she hoped was a lucky chair—it looked like the chair her father had relaxed in al his life—and waited as Mamie hooked her up to the poison. There was one TV, always tuned in to ESPN’s SportsCenter because the oncology team took the Red Sox scores very seriously.