Free Faces in the Fire by Hines Page B

Dr. Swain evidently felt he’d uttered a complete sentence.
    â€œBut I can’t have a transplant until we get rid of the lymphoma.”
    â€œWe’ll switch chemo regimens. High-intensity, myeloablative.”
    Myeloablative. Score that one on a Scrabble board.
    â€œAnd that means?”
    â€œThat means, essentially, a very high dose. Higher than what you’ve been getting. Kills off the lymphoma cells, but also kills healthy cells—in your bloodstream, in your bone marrow. Then you receive new donor cells to bring back your blood counts.”
    Blood. From someone else. How Count Dracula.
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œAnd, if all goes well, you’re cured.”
    â€œThat’s what you said about the R-CHOP.”
    Another pause. Actually, he hadn’t said that, exactly. What he had said, not long after the old “You’ve been diagnosed with . . .” line, was “This is a highly curable form of cancer—85 percent or more. It’s a good one to get, if you get cancer.”
    She had laughed at that line, too, because really, what else could she do? That Dr. Swain was a real comedian. Are you okay? after dropping the lymphoma bomb, followed quickly by This is a good cancer to get. Swain would kill— kill —at the Improv.
    â€œHello?”
    She shook her head, trying to wrap her mind around this latest news. “Yeah. I’m here.”
    But for how much longer?
    She pushed the question from her mind.
    â€œAs I said,” Swain continued, “we need to search the registry. Several thousand names, lots of people on it. There’s a college football team, even, that signs up for the registry during spring drills—kind of a tribute to their coach.”
    Wow. Now they were talking about college football.
    â€œWhat . . .” Her tongue felt thick. “I mean, this transplant thing . . . is it dangerous?” Okay, that was a stupid question, but she figured old Swain could give her a break. Especially after some of his one-liners.
    â€œIt’s a complicated process. You’ll be in the hospital a minimum of a month. There’s a treatment-related mortality rate of . . . well, perhaps 10 to 15 percent. And after-wards, GVHD—Graft-versus-host Disease—but a little bit of that is actually helpful. Let’s just take the first step with the registry.”
    â€œOkay.”
    But that Swain-speak euphemism was sticking in her mind: treatment-related mortality. Really just another way of saying death . So 10 to 15 percent of people died just going through the transplant.
    â€œI’ll call you Monday. We’ll talk more then, and I should have some news on the registry.”
    â€œOkay.” She hung up the cell phone, glanced briefly at her computer screen to make sure her e-mails were still spooling.
    Breathe. Breathe normally.
    25.
    Most people would never be able to become bottom-feeders. Corrine knew that. Their sense of self-worth prevented them from doing so, along with their sense of order and hierarchy. For the vast majority—and this included people everywhere, not just in the good old US of A—the true comfort zone was a basement in their souls. No matter what they did for a living, there were always people in their own personal basement who were farther down the chain of misery. Prostitutes and druggies lived in that basement, sure. Hicks from the sticks or down in the holler. Welfare moms in the projects. Used-car salesmen. Tobacco executives.
    That basement was there so people could say, no matter their lot in life: At least I’m not that guy on the corner with a WILL WORK FOR FOOD cardboard sign. At least I’m not that woman living in a tin shack without air-conditioning, waiting until the first of the month so I can get more food stamps. At least I’m not that firebug I keep reading about in the papers and seeing on the TV news, a guy who gets his kicks by burning down buildings.
    Corrine