Free It's Always Something by Gilda Radner Page A

this the part where Robert Redford crashes the airplane?” and she’d jump up and say, “Why aren’t you asleep?”
    Another nurse had this incredible punk, spiked haircut. When you touched it you could cut yourself on the points. I decided I wanted my hair cut that way. One of my day nurses drew a picture of how it could look and the next day I got a hairdresser friend to come and cut my hair. I also asked to have a manicure and a pedicure and someone came and gave me those. Sometimes that would be the only event of the day, or a sponge bath, or getting my legs shaved, but I always had some life force, some activity, going on.
    I was always hungry for news from my nurses—tell me about your life; are you dating anybody? One nurse was single and would tell me all these incredible stories of her going after guys in rock bands and having affairs in the backs of cars and good, dirty stuff like that. Another had a boyfriend who was trying to be a stand-up comic so she would tell me about her adventures going to nightclubs, trying to help him in his career. Of course, I had lots of advice in that department.
    I took it all in. I wanted to know everything. Usually I would be seeing them again so I wanted to know the next installment. I was even a little happy, despite the cancer and all. I don’t know why I was happy except that I found out I have a very strong spirit, a powerful will to live. In the hospital, it never entered my mind that I wouldn’t live. I just had to take one step at a time.
    Every day I would walk around my floor and put chalk marks on a blackboard at one end of the hall to note how many times I had walked around. There was an older man with stomach problems who was there the whole time I was there. He was always watching sports in his room, and I would go in and make bets on the games with him. He’d make bets on how many times I could walk around the floor. I saw that I could make the best out of the situation at hand—that I was someone who said, “This is what I have, this is my world now, so make the best out of that world.” I watched myself on “Saturday Night Live” reruns, young and alive. I looked healthy and I wanted to be that way again. I became my own audience.
    Gene came every day and sneaked Sparkle in with him. He said that if anybody was going to stop him, he would say he bought her at the gift shop and she ran on batteries. So I got to see my Sparkle.
    Gene would go shopping in Beverly Hills and bring me beautiful things in boxes like you would see in the old movies, with big bows on them that you could take off with one pull—like Tiffany’s. I’d just pull the string and the bow would come open and in the box would be a new nightgown or a new robe. It was joyful every time he appeared in the doorway bringing gifts and messages from the outside world. Gene became funnier than I have ever seen him. He is very funny in the movies but he’s not that funny in real life. He’s shy. He’s a comic actor as opposed to a comedian. I think I am a comedienne—a performer, an entertainer, where he is an actor. But he became very funny, telling stories around my bed, assisting the nurses like Dr. Frankenstein, holding a flashlight for intricate procedures and shaking it on purpose like he was nervous.
    I became mischievous myself. I liked walking as fast as I could while Gene was pushing my IV stand, so he couldn’t keep up with me. That would make me laugh so hard. It was dumb stuff, but it would make me laugh that I could walk faster than he could push my IV bottle. The nurse couldn’t keep up with me either. The truth was, they were putting me on. Anyone could have gone faster than me. But I was just like a child. I felt like Eloise, the fictional little girl who lived at the Plaza Hotel in New York. Gene would have his dinner in the hospital with me every night. I didn’t eat for a month, but after he ate he’d lie in bed with me and we’d talk or watch TV. I would cry as