Hope and Other Punch Lines(65)

“I’ll get right to it. As you can see, Abbi handled the anesthesia beautifully. Once we were inside, we decided to do a full excision of the pulmonary mass, mostly because of the extremity of the symptoms—for example, the blood-streaked sputum,” Dr. McCuskey says, and then pauses. She looks deliberately at my mom, then my dad, and finally me, the same way I checked my mirrors on my driver’s test. Is she intentionally taking her time?

If I were a doctor, this is not how I’d drop big news. Instead, I’d bounce into the room and shout it out in basic English, as quickly as possible: Benign! Malignant! Stage III!

No need to keep us twisting in the wind.

Also, what’s sputum?

“Vessels were found around the mass, which helps explain the bleeding,” Dr. McCuskey says, and the monitor starts to beep. My poor heart. Again the dangers of sneaky optimism. Sometime since this morning, I’ve let the possibility of my being all right sneak in. I realize how stupid that was. “But there was no sign of any other growth. All the blood work looks good.”

“Okay,” I say, in an attempt to encourage her to get to the point.

“Shhh,” my mother says, and clamps her hand over my mouth.

“In short, the biopsy showed a benign clear-cell tumor of the lung. As usual, we sent a sample to an outside lab to verify, but I think it’s highly unlikely the results will be different,” Dr. McCuskey says.

“Yes!” my dad screams, his fists raised in victory, as if his beloved Jets scored a touchdown in the Super Bowl.

“I don’t understand,” I say. I’m having trouble making sense of her words, realigning them into English. “What does that mean exactly?”

“It means you’re going to be fine. It means…” My mother stops talking midsentence and folds into herself. She drops her head between her knees. Her entire body shakes with sobs. She is keening, a word I didn’t really understand the meaning of until this moment.

My dad looks at my mom, and then he too starts tearing up.

Dr. McCuskey clears her throat. My dad wipes his nose on a handkerchief he takes out of his back pocket. My mom sits up and pulls herself together.

“We need to check Abbi regularly. I’m going to order a chest X-ray every three months to start, and then every six months, because these sorts of growths don’t always manifest with symptoms. Of course, if she is experiencing any coughing or wheezing, I need her to come in to see me immediately. Is that clear?” Dr. McCuskey asks.

I nod.

“Are you telling me I’m not going to die? For real?” I ask.

“You are not going to die. At least, not from this,” Dr. McCuskey says.

“Of course you’re not going to die,” my dad says, his voice thick with something like rage. “You are never going to die.”

“Well, that’s not quite true, is it?” Dr. McCuskey barks an awkward laugh. She releases the pencil from her hair, and we watch as her long gray curls cascade down as if in slo-mo. She is not the doctor I would have cast in the movie version of my life.

“You just said she’s fine,” my dad insists.

“She is. But let’s address the elephant in the room, shall we? Most sixteen-year-olds do not get lung tumors. I mean, it can happen, but statistically you have a far greater chance of, I don’t know, being struck by lightning. I don’t know that that’s true, but you get my point. I do think we need to assume this is connected to your chemical exposure as a baby. Of course, there are many complicated aspects of nine-eleven syndrome, and it’s not fully understood. It can present in numerous ways—respiratory disease, cancer—and we don’t know enough at this point to predict how or even whether it will manifest. I’m going to enroll Abbi in the World Trade Center Health Program. She’s entitled to the benefits of—”

“So what you are saying is she’s not fine,” my mom says.

“No, she is fine,” my dad says.

“Let me try this again,” Dr. McCuskey says, but breathes out in that God, give me the strength kind of way. I get it. My family can have that effect on people. “Abbi is now tumor free. The tumor that we did remove was benign. We need to treat her health with excessive caution and be aware of the risks she faces. Things like this could pop up from time to time and could potentially be serious. We got lucky this time, but we don’t know what will happen. Hence the monitoring. And she’s entitled to health care. Got it?”

“So what you are saying is I can sleep at night, but no, not really?” my mother asks, her voice thick with hysteria.

“You can sleep. We can all sleep. We just need to be careful,” my dad says. “We can manage that. Can’t we?”

“So to be clear, I’m not dying?” I ask again, and Dr. McCuskey nods, I don’t know if in frustration or confirmation or possibly a blanket yes to all of our questions, and leaves the room.

And that’s when I catch up to my parents, and the good news hits me so hard and so fast I feel light-headed. Giddiness gives way to pure happiness, clear and profound and overwhelming. I laugh and cry at the same time, a loud eruption of water and guffaws and even an animal-like moan.

I’m not dying. Not yet.

The refrain repeats in my head. I’m unzipped, and the world and its infinite possibility seep in, life rushing to fill in all my empty spaces.