in the nose so hard that blood shot out like a red geyser. He staggered backwards into the house, his eyes wide with surprise, and I bull-rushed him. I got my shoulder into his chest, grabbed the backs of his thighs with both hands, lifted his feet off the ground, and drove him into the floor with a loud thud just inside the doorway. I heard at least one rib crack, and he let out a pathetic groan as the air rushed out of his lungs. I could hear myself talking, yelling, cursing, but I wasn’t conscious of what I was saying. As soon as I got him on the ground I pinned his hips with my knees and got my left forearm under his chin and against his jawbone. I turned his head and pinned it sideways against the floor and started hammering him with my right fist and elbow. I hit him in the temple, in the side of the face. My forearm slipped once and he turned his head towards me, so I hit him square in the mouth. I hit him until he went limp.
Something in my brain told me to stop, but I couldn’t. I just kept on hitting him, over and over. My knuckles were smashing into the hard bones in his face and skull, but I couldn’t feel a thing. Suddenly, I was lifted off his body and dragged backwards, my butt skidding along the hardwood floor. A voice was saying, “Enough! Enough!” Strong hands lifted me to my feet and pulled me through the doorway into the night air.
A familiar voice said, “Jesus Christ, Dillard…”
I stood there gasping for breath, temporarily unable to recognize the face in front of me. It slowly came into focus, like a ship emerging from a thick fog, and I realized it was Fraley. I turned and looked inside the house. Godsey was lying on his back, his legs spread. I walked back in and stood over him. He was breathing, but he wasn’t moving, his eyes staring up at the ceiling.
“I didn’t know you were going to go ballistic on me,” Fraley said. “Were you trying to kill him?”
“Can you hear me?” I said loudly to Godsey. He blinked. Both of his eyes were swelling, and his nose was smashed sideways onto his cheek. He was bleeding from the mouth, nose, and a cut above his left eye. I shoved his shoulder with my foot and he groaned.
“Don’t ever come near her again,” I said. “Don’t call, don’t write, nothing. She’s gone. She’s out of your life. Do you understand?”
“Let’s go,” Fraley said.
“Do you understand me, you piece of shit?”
“He understands,” Fraley said as he pulled me out the door and towards the truck. “I promise you he understands.”
Later, as we drove east on I-40 towards home, I heard Sarah stir in the passenger seat. I was driving her Mustang while Fraley followed in my truck. She hadn’t said a word since I loaded her suitcase in the trunk and we started towards home. I turned to look at her, and in the dim light from the dashboard, I could see the ugly purple lump where her left eye should have been.
“Joe?” she said in a soft voice. “Did you hurt him?”
“Not too bad.”
“Seriously, what did you do to him? Tell me.”
“The truth?”
“Please.”
“I don’t know, maybe a broken nose, a couple of fractured ribs, maybe a fractured jaw or something, maybe a concussion. He’ll probably live.”
She was silent for a couple of minutes. I saw her chest rise and fall as she let out a long, slow breath.
“Thank you,” she said, and she leaned her head back and went to sleep.
It was after two in the morning when I finally crawled into bed next to Caroline. I could see the outline of her face in the soft glow of the night-light. She looked beautiful sleeping so peacefully, and once again I found it difficult to believe that she’d been afflicted by such a horrible disease.
In the week leading up to her first chemotherapy treatment, she’d seemed distant and resigned. The night before she was scheduled to go to the cancer center, she bought a bottle of wine and drank it in less than an hour. While I didn’t think it was the healthiest thing she could do, it was at least good to hear her laugh for a little while. Unfortunately, the laughter soon gave way to tears of fear and frustration. She fell asleep on the couch with her head in my lap. I sat there stroking her hair and wondering what the next few months would bring until I finally drifted off to sleep sometime early in the morning.
I drove her to the cancer center early that Friday, just under two weeks after her first surgery revealed that the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes and had invaded the skin above the tumor. The stitches had been removed from her breast and underarm only the day before, but the cancer was aggressive and quickly advancing, the doctors said. They didn’t want to waste time getting started.
As we walked into the room where the chemotherapy was to be administered, I looked around and was immediately struck by the atmosphere. The place was set up like a beauty salon. Five reclining chairs were aligned in a space no more than thirty feet long and ten feet wide, all facing a television perched on a shelf high on the wall. The floor was shiny white linoleum, the walls gray. Frosted plastic sheets in the drop ceiling concealed banks of fluorescent lights. To the right was a long counter, behind which sat three nurses in colorful smocks. One of the nurses, a gray-haired woman with a gentle face, took Caroline into the hallway and directed her to a set of scales. After recording her weight, the nurse led Caroline to a room where another nurse stuck a needle in her arm and withdrew blood. They would use the blood sample for a variety of things, she said, but of primary importance were Caroline’s white and red blood cell counts.
An hour later, after she’d been returned to the beauty parlor and her blood had been analyzed, another nurse wheeled an IV tower up behind Caroline. The surgeon who had removed part of the tumor and the sentinel lymph node had installed a port just beneath the skin next to her collarbone. Into the port the nurse stuck an oversized, hook-shaped needle, and I saw Caroline cringe. A plastic bag containing clear fluid was suspended from the tower. A tube ran from the end of the bag and was hooked into another tube that was attached to the hook-shaped needle. For the first thirty minutes, the medicine that flowed through the tube into Caroline’s port was to prevent the nausea that the chemicals were sure to cause. Once the bag was empty, the nurse switched to a drug called Adriamycin, a cytotoxin designed to kill fast-multiplying cells. The doctor had explained that cancer cells multiply quickly, as do many other cells in the body. Adriamycin would kill the cancer cells, he said, but in the process, it would also kill other fast-multiplying cells, including those that grow hair and fight infection. After the Adriamycin finished dripping into Caroline’s vein, the nurse switched to another drug, cyclophosphamide, which was supposed to attach itself to the cancer cells’ DNA to keep them from reproducing.
I sat by Caroline’s side for three hours that first morning. We talked, played cards, watched television. As I tried to distract her, I watched the nurses go about their duties in a starkly efficient manner. All of the chairs were filled, and I’d discovered there were private rooms off the hall. Those too were full. Ninety percent of the patients were women, all in varying stages of treatment. Most wore caps, some nylon, some knitted, one crocheted, to hide their baldness. There were dark circles under their eyes, and their faces were sullen and seemed to be deflating. I was shocked by how many there were. One would finish the treatment and leave, and another would immediately take her place. The business of cancer was booming.
After an hour, I noticed a distinct change in the smell of Caroline’s breath. It was a mixture of metal and almonds, different from the one caused by the anesthesia a few weeks earlier. It reminded me of the smell of cyanide. The irony was undeniable: in order to save her, they had to poison her.
We drove home in the afternoon and waited for her to turn purple, to faint, to vomit. Nothing happened. She felt fine Friday night and most of Saturday, and we began to tell each other that maybe she was one of those special people we’d heard of; maybe she would remain immune to the side effects of the powerful drugs.
Saturday evening, she began to complain of fatigue. Her bones ached, she said. She slept fitfully, tossing and turning and moaning. On Sunday morning, she got out of bed and I fixed her a hard-boiled egg. She ate it slowly, almost cautiously, as though she knew what was about to happen. Fifteen minutes later, she was vomiting in the bathroom. I knelt beside her as her body lurched and heaved. I put a cold compress on her forehead, wiped the dribble from her chin and cheeks, the sweat from her temples, the tears from her eyes.
She stayed in bed for the next thirty-six hours, barely able to lift her head. All I could do was help her back and forth to the bathroom and make sure she took in water. I’d never felt so helpless.
