When it hit Gord’s mother it was quick and vicious, a Doberman going straight for the jugular. One day she was complaining about a pain in her abdomen, somewhere just under her pronounced stomach. Her voice echoed off of the dinged-up walls and ran right through Gord’s head. She complained. She always complained. Gord’s life up until that point was a litany of complaints laid at his feet by his mother. Her head was sore. Her feet ached. Her neck was kinked from having to hover in front of a touch screen all day. Her molar bothered her when she bit down on it the wrong way. The house was too stuffy. The house was too cold. There were mice running in the walls. Something smelled in the ceiling. The neighbour was peeping in her window again, trying to catch her changing. This last was something Gord actually paid a sort of half-attention to, since he knew that old Bill Evers was a pervert of the highest sort. They were still on the police route then, however, so he had never taken any sort of action on his own about it.
The thing with her abdomen had started off like anything else. She had complained, and Gord hadn’t really paid attention to her. He had figured that it was just a stomachache, or a muscle problem, or something equally benign that would come and go like anything else. The complaints had gone on for days, though, and by the time Gord had finally started to think something was wrong she had collapsed. She had been standing in the kitchen, putting a peanut butter and jelly sandwich together on their cracked faux-marble counter, and her hand had snaked to cradle the spot on her lower abdomen that she had been complaining so much about. She had hissed - Gord had heard it clearly - and she had crumpled to the floor as though she had been tethered to reality by a string and the string had been cut.
He had been by her side moments later, shaking her and calling her name in hopes that she would shake it off like it was no big problem. Eventually her eyes had fluttered open, but they had been unfocused, and they had darted around the room as though they hadn’t really been seeing anything at all.
"Gord?" she had called out, not realizing that her son was kneeling beside her. "Gordie, are you here? I’ve fallen, I’m so weak, I’ve fallen Gordie, are you here?"
"I’m right here, mom," he had replied, his heart throbbing in his rib cage. "I’m right here, what’s wrong, what’s going on?"
"It hurts," she had murmured, as though there was a limit on how loud her voice could go. Her eyes had closed again and her breathing went shallow.
Gord had done the only thing he could think of, and called an ambulance. When the driver arrived he came to the door and immediately asked for his mother’s insurance card. Gord had not thought to find it and had to rummage through his mother’s purse for five minutes before he finally found it, stuck behind a Sav-R-Rite points card. The driver had examined it for another two minutes, checking various spots on it, and Gord had nearly lost his temper at that point. The card had been run through the machine, though, and it had come out clean, so the driver called the attendant and together they bundled Gord’s mother into the ambulance. Gord had tried to climb in with her and the driver had coldly informed him that he wasn’t running a taxi service and unless he wanted to pay the full rate he could find another mode of transportation.
Gord had not had any money on him, and his mother’s purse had been barren as well. He had called around to a few friends, but after receiving no answer he had thrown on his worn old white tennis shoes and walked the three miles to St. Margaret’s Hospital on 3rd Street. By the time he had arrived he had been slathered in sweat and nursing a growing sore on the back of his right heel. He had gone in through the ER entrance and the triage nurse had thoroughly examined him up and down before grudgingly telling him to wait in the general waiting room. After an hour of tapping his fingers on the arms of the uncomfortable waiting room chairs a tired-looking blonde nurse had approached him and told him to follow her.
They had wound their way through a maze of passages into a section of the ER constructed out of ratty beds and hung sheets. Moans and stifled cries could be heard from behind the sheets, and here and there Gord had been able to hear soft weeping. The nurse had led him to one sheet in particular and then had turned to walk away without saying anything. Gord had called after her but the nurse had ignored him completely. Behind the sheet he had found his mother, hooked up to a machine made out of sober grey plastic that contained a number of incomprehensible readouts. Her eyes had been closed. He had taken a seat on the small red stool beside her bed and had put his face down into his hands. He could feel tears on the horizon, somewhere beyond the verge of his eyes, but they wouldn’t come. When he had lifted his face up from his hands, his mother’s eyes had been open. They had stared at each other for a long time before she had spoken.
"They tell me they think it’s a cancer," she had said, her voice even and dreamy. Gord had recognized that she was on something sweet and heavy, and had found himself envying her.
"Ma, that can’t be it," he said. "Cancer is something for old people." As the words came out of his mouth he found himself wondering. How old was his mother, now? He was sixteen, she’d had him back in the good old days when she was...twenty-three? Twenty-four? Which would make her barely forty, if that. Too young, even by modern standards.
"Oh, that’s not true," she said, her voice gliding along a smooth path, far and wee like the balloonman. "Cancer is for everyone. Cancer is the opiate of the masses. Anyone, young, old, big, small, rich, poor, we can all grow lunatic clumps of cells that will eat us right up. I’ve got it eating up my abdomen right now, and it’s going to go through my stomach, my kidneys, my liver, who knows? "
"Ma, stop, come on. This is absurd, you aren’t going to die."
"We all get cancer and we’re all going to die. You, me, the doctor that saw me, the nurses that passed me by. If anyone lived forever they’ve been smart enough not to tell anyone about it."
There had been a rustle at the sheets dividing their little cell from its neighbours. An exhausted brunette nurse, maybe forty-five, lines and fractures on the rough skin of her face, appeared timidly through the line of division. Her expression had been apologetic but her voice had brooked no nonsense.
"We’re going to need this bed for someone else, folks," she had said. "Are you able to get home or should we call a taxi for you?"
"Wait, you’re just throwing us out, then?" Gord had asked. "You aren’t going to do anything for my mom?"
"Do?" the nurse had replied. "Like what?"
"I don’t know," Gord had said, taken aback. "She thinks she has cancer."
"Your mother has cancer," the nurse had said, and her matter-of-fact tone had been as sharp a slap as any physical blow could have been. "She has cancer, a lipisarcoma to be exact, but her insurance reported back denying her application for coverage. So we have stabilized her to the point where we’re certain she won’t die in the next twenty-four hours, and she’s being sent home. There’s nothing else we can do. If you wish to take it up with your insurance provider you can feel free to do so, but until we secure payment all we can do is send you home. The attending doctor has your mother’s file in queue and will be emailing you quotes on the possible treatment paths we can pursue."
Gord had stared at her without comprehending anything she had said. It had all come out in a rush, like a disgusting hairball expelled from some noxious cat and left on the floor for all to be disturbed by.
"Now, do we need to call you a taxi?"
"No, we can afford a taxi, I think," Gord’s mother replied dreamiliy. The nurse gave them a distracted thumbs-up and left them alone. Gord started to say things many times, and the words failed to pass his lips every time. His mother sat in stoned silence, her head swiveling around to take in all of the nothing that decorated the walls.
Eventually the nurse had returned to tell them that the taxi had arrived for them. Gord helped his mother stumble along the beige hallways, passing by others who huddled behind sterile hospital sheets, lacking insurance and looking for simple stability. Here and there, moans and stifled cries could be heard from behind them. To Gord it sounded as though they were walking through the waiting room of Pandemonium. His mother, however, walked through it with a placid smile on her face, looking for all the world as though she were listening to the greetings of old friends.