At First She Felt Guilty
The range of reactions was part of the beauty.
At first she felt guilty. Before she understood what it was she was doing, she felt guilty for enjoying the moments. She tried to hide that guilt with awkward little gestures like patting a head or rubbing a hand, as if these instances of empty connection could dilute the sting of her message to her patients, which was, she decided with much contemplation and sleeplessness the night of her first time giving the message to a 71-year-old woman with a tumor that would turn out to be, as she predicted, extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, You’re probably going to die soon.
The words probably and soon were small invasions into the sentence that her fellow humans all knew, in their own peculiar ways, they had to accept. Most hid behind science (we will find a way to end aging and possibly reverse aging) or religion (the next life, heaven, and those who preceded me in death await) as tactics to both ease and delay their acceptance – but accept their impermanence they all eventually did.
You’re probably going to die soon.
I don’t know how soon. I don’t know the precise probability.
The message might have stung less if she’d had more information.
There’s a 99% chance you’ll die by Tuesday.
Then again, even if the probability bordered ionic bond-like with certainty, her patients would never see the certainty through the chance. The less probability there was of survival, the more hope they seemed to have.
When she could feel her enjoyment with these moments growing like betrayal in her gut, she told the hospital therapist, who replied the enjoyment was her way of coping. Of allowing herself to do her job. But this was the danger of psychologists who gave advice; the advice excused behaviors of selfishness and rarely got at the truth that lay between us. The truth was more concerning.
She knew that she’d started to enjoy these moments because of the connection. Nothing allowed her to connect with someone like telling them they were going to die. Soon. It was their reactions. How they responded. Some quite stoic. Some with tears. Others squeezing the hand of a loved one. The range of reactions was part of the beauty.
Each reaction was uniquely pure and sad. It was regretful. It was hopeful. It was rebellious and angry and full of a fire that had been missing only moments ago. It was all-consuming.
In that small moment after she delivered her message, the past and the future converged for her patients. Everything they had done, everything they would do. Everything they’d change. Everything they’d loved. Everything they’d not said. Always everything they’d not said, everything they’d withheld. She was able to feel everything a person had been, was, and would be in a small moment. It was as if pieces of life formed a whole, pain and beauty and time, they shattered and scattered again.
She looked down at the chart: Male. 43. Presenting pain after urination. Bilateral optic nerve swelling. Imagining showing a 3cm mass on the left kidney.
You’re probably going to die soon.
She drew a shallow breath, knocked, opened the door.
“Mr. Peters. … Mrs. Peters. … And you must be Riley. Aren’t you just the most gorgeous princess ever? … Thank you all for coming in today.”