The Breast Isn’t Really That Important



CHAPTER 1: THE BREAST ISN’T REALLY THAT IMPORTANT

Dr. Elkins’ office looked different when I entered it again in the summer of 2017, and not in a good way. Usually, I enjoyed Dr. Elkins’ office –I always appreciated the effort he had put in to make sure the floors matched the drapes and the colors pleased the eye. Every piece of furniture and décor he had chosen was precise and exquisite – it was an impressive display of self-restraint and taste.

In some ways, I felt coming here was a peaceful respite, from the busy San Francisco downtown traffic just outside, cars honking and people moving, where everything was a mess of clashing architectural styles and colors.

As I had used to remember it, the clinic was nondescript, from outside: a plain concrete box with yellow walls, but within: calm and quiet, beginning with the waiting room. A little water installation sat by the entrance, with the trickling of the streams just offsetting the noise beyond, leaving everything inside sterile and silent.

But this time, when I entered, something was off. I felt it, under my skin, tingling in my muscles, in my bones, coursing through my veins. It was an eerie sort of feeling, like everything was there, but just not quite right.

The hanging lights shone just a little too bright, the wallpaper garish, the fake fireplace in the wall seemed contrived. The water installation – oh the water installation in particular – was just trying too hard, the drip-drip-drip of water just incessant and annoying.

There was no one else in the waiting room. Just me, and the receptionist, an African-American woman whom I was certain was new. The last time I was here the receptionist was an Eastern-European old lady with glasses.

This new girl looked barely out of college, typing away at her iPhone, and not on mute either, so the rapidfire “pwik pwik pwik pwik” sound of the virtual keyboard was even more obvious in the silence of her surroundings.

I had barely waited ten minutes when she called out my name. Thank God she did too, because another minute and I would have just simply left.

“Song, Jenny!” she hollered without looking up from her text message.

“Yes,” I said, getting to my feet. I crossed the room in a few steps, to the large wood door on the other side of the room, rapped once and entered.

***

Dr. Elkins’ office was at once recognizable as a doctor’s office – sterile, with whites and pastels all over. Occasionally, there was a splash of color in corners; a little red with his curtains, a little yellow with an abstract painting on the wall. He was deliberate in everything he did, even design it seemed.

The bulk of the room was occupied by a large oak desk, one of those that looked like it came from a Vintage / Heritage / Whatever Kind of Term for Old catalogue. The desk was well-organized, neat and precise. A small box of stationery sat precisely at the top of the desk, creating an imaginary line down the middle – the left half organized with papers and folders, while the right half held a small series of books standing upright, marked by a stainless steel bookend.

But, just like my feelings about this return visit, this office that would usually appease my aesthetic senses now seemed like it was trying too hard, trying too hard to make its patients feel comfortable, when really they should have been running out the door bawling their heads off.

Dr. Elkins sat in a chair behind the desk, and he looked up as I entered.

“Jenny,” he said, looking at me dead in the eyes. “Please, take a seat.”

I noticed something else in his voice too, a little twinge of regret and pain, that confirmed my instincts. Something was not quite right.

Dr. Elkins had a beige folder in front of him, and it was open to what looked like charts. Numbers and symbols all arranged in varying boxes.

Not quite right.

“The results of your biopsy are in,” Dr. Elkins said.

I took a deep breath.

“How are you feeling today?” he asked.

I exhaled.

“Good,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “Any pains? Aches?”

I glanced past his head to a model skeleton on a shelf behind him, dangling like a hangman from his plastic noose.

“The usual,” I said.

“Okay. Well,” Dr. Elkins said.

“Just give it to me, doc,” I tried to muster up as much of a smile as I could.

The skeleton, on the other hand, looked like it had no trouble being happy.

“I have some bad news,” Dr. Elkins said.

Not quite right.

“The lump we biopsied turned out to be malignant. Unfortunately, it is an aggressive form of cancer,” Dr. Elkins said. He picked up the table of numbers and symbols in front of him and turned it rightside-up towards me. “And it appears to have spread to other parts of your body.”

“What?” I turned my attention back to Dr. Elkins. The dangling, grinning skeleton lurked in the background, just within my peripheral vision and I suddenly had this immense feeling of surrealism. Like an out-of-body experience, like this was virtual reality, a video game, I was disconnecting, the floor was getting far away and nothing was true.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Dr. Elkins said.

“It’s bad cancer,” I clarified. “Like my mom’s.”

“The cancer is Stage IV, Grade One,” Dr. Elkins said. “Your mom’s... was a similar case, but hers advanced a lot quicker than what we’re seeing, though we’d have to run some tests to confirm.”

“Stage IV,” I said, feeling the words form around my tongue. It sounded like one of those theaters at the downtown indie, old classics cinema – “Stage Four! Now showing, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho - The Play!”

“Yes,” Dr. Elkins said. “The pain you mentioned feeling along your lower back? It’s a symptom how far the cancer’s spread.”

“The metastasis,” I said.

“Yes, the metastasis,” Dr. Elkins agreed.

Metastasis – another word that sounded so foreign and strange, like a beast. Cue the second play of the doublebill, Godzilla vs. Metastasis.

“How long do I have?” I asked.

Dr. Elkins looked at the chart. His face took on the tint of his tone; he now wore a weird expression of regret mixed with sadness.

“Months,” he said. “We won’t know further until we run more tests.”

“So what do I do now?” I asked.

“The tests come first, and then I will come up with a specific treatment plan for you to undergo,” he said. “You will have to come in again for another few consults. Once you agree to the course of treatment, we have to get the paperwork done, and then we can begin – ”

The feeling of surrealism intensified.

I looked beyond Dr. Elkins’ head, and the skeleton’s mouth seemed to widen, a grotesque grin.

The head bobbed, buoyed by the draft of cold wind jetting down from the A/C unit above it. Then the skeleton’s head started to tilt to one side, deliberately like a dog would cocking its ears. Then it flopped down to a final angle and stopped bobbing altogether, just smirking at me like a kid who got away with some heinous crime.

I was overwhelmed with a strong desire to smack the smirk off the skeleton.

“ – have to be ready for a lot of difficulty and challenges in the coming months. You have to be mentally prepared for that.”

“Yes,” I said, looking back at Dr. Elkins. “I’m prepared.”

“You will also need to inform anybody close to you,” he said. “I know that it’s difficult right now, with your situation, but if you have anyone else – ”

“Possibly,” I said. “It’s fine. I got this.”

Dr. Elkins looked at me. Was that now pity, I noticed, mixed in with all the other well-rehearsed emotions?

“I got this,” I reassured, and Dr. Elkins nodded, though he didn’t seem convinced.

Whatever, I thought. His office gave me the creeps.

***

That night, I texted my boyfriend, Brian, to come over for dinner.

“I can’t babe,” he replied back. “I have to finish this project. We’ve got a meeting tomorrow morning.”

I texted again. “This is serious. We need to talk.”

I saw the grey ellipsis pop up on screen, indicating he was typing. I counted down the seconds.

One, two, three, four...

The grey dots vanished from the screen –

...five, six, seven...

– appeared again –

He typed back, “OK.”

Such a long waiting time for a short little trinket of a message. Just like life, really, the more I thought about it.

***

Brian came over that night, in his executive shirt, tie and pants, which made him look very dapper, very modern, very I’ve-got-my-future-all-planned-out. It was what drew me to him in the first place, his ability to plan for things fitting in perfectly with my need to have my things planned out and clear.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “We didn’t schedule a date tonight.”

“I know,” I said, and he followed me into the dining room-kitchen.

My home was nothing more than a tiny apartment on San Francisco, only slightly bigger than a suburban garage, and drained much too much of my monthly income.

When I came home that day, it didn’t annoy me or make me feel weird as I thought it would, as Dr. Elkins’ office had. Something about this still felt like familiar and that was how I knew I was still grounded in reality.

The front door opened into a small room, which I furnished with simplistic items I had found around flea markets across the city. Two armchairs dominated the space, adorned by a small side table; both faced a 40-inch TV on the wall my mother had given to me years ago, while three Victorian-style lamps cast shadows on the clean, indigo walls.

Connecting it to the dining-room kitchen was a narrow hallway. The one complete wall in the hallway displayed just three objects: A small Victorian-era framed mirror, a photo of my mother and myself at the old family home, and a poster of my favorite movie.

We walked past the wall and into the dining room-kitchen, which consisted of a simple dining table surrounded by a set of metal chairs – a bottle of wine. To be precise, a 2006 Hayman & Hill Highlands Reserve Pinot Noir. A really good, full-bodied wine.

On either side of the bottle: two glasses, and two boxes of spicy chow mein from the Asian restaurant at the corner of the street, the one both Brian and I agreed wasn’t too spicy and made us sweat just the right amount.

Brian recognized the label on the bottle. He turned to stare at me.

“Is everything OK?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said. I walked over to the bottle, picked up the corkscrew, and started opening the bottle.

Not really.

“Something’s wrong,” he said.

Something is off.

He came over, up behind me.

The feeling of groundedness, of reality was gone now, back to the off-tilt feeling of the doctor’s office and as I felt his arms wrap around me – half a hug and half a grab of my waist – instinctively I tried to pull away.

The cork popped out the bottle. I picked up a glass and poured some of the wine.

Brian’s arms tried to do the half-hug, half-waist grab thing again, but I gently slid the glass into his nearer hand.

“Tell me,” he said.

“I have breast cancer,” I said. “The really bad kind.”

Brian’s eyes bore into mine. "I hope this isn’t a joke."

"No."

Brian took a gulp of the wine, and his upper lip folded into his bottom. “Well. There’s treatments. There’s all sorts of things we can do to fix this.”

“Nope,” I said. “Not this time. There’s no fixing this time.”

“It’s bad bad,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. I poured myself a glass of the wine, and as I raised the glass and felt the liquid slip down my throat, I savored its mild acidity and impact.

“It’s the same kind as your mother’s?” he asked.

“Possibly,” I said. “I kinda zoned out when Dr. Elkins was talking. All I could think about was that I wanted to dismantle this skeleton behind him.”

Brian shook his head. “It’s not funny.”

“I’m not making a joke,” I said.

“Now’s not the time to think of all your morbid, horror stuff."

“Dude,” I said. “I’m dying. Now is precisely the time to think of this morbid, horror stuff.”

Brian finished his wine and stared at me. “Maybe we should get a second opinion. I mean, these kinds of things, it’s better to be sure –”

I laughed. “Dr. Elkins helped my mom. I think I’ll stick with him.”

“He may be wrong,” Brian said, and his voice carried a tinge of desperation.

“Dr. Elkins is good,” I said firmly. “I don’t want to cheat on him with another doctor. We already did the vows and everything.”

Brian’s face contorted. “You’re still fucking joking,” his voice rose.

I felt a hot flush rising in my chest. “No, I think it’s hilarious,” I said. “I’m not even thirty-one, and I’ve got a few months left to live! What could possibly, possibly, be funnier?”

“You’re unbelievable!” Brian yelled. “Here I am concerned, and you’re trying to crack jokes and shit –”

“Oh, fuck you,” I said. “Who could possibly be more concerned about my cancer than me?”

Brian clapped his hands together. “You’re not looking at this seriously. You think it’s a death sentence, but there are treatments, there’s things –”

A snort escaped my mouth.

“You have to fight it, give it hell,” he said, and the desperation in his voice inched higher.

“I watched my mother go through this,” I said. “I know exactly what I’m in for. And you know, I’m more of a lover, not a fighter.”

Brian turned around, then back again, in disbelief. “More jokes.”

“I didn’t ask you to come here for you to lecture me,” I said. “I know what I need to do!”

“So why am I here?” Brian asked spitefully.

“Because you’re my boyfriend!” Now I was yelling. “I thought you should be the first to know, because I don’t know – you’d care, or something –”

“I do care!” Brian yelled. “But you don’t! You don’t care about anything in life, oh, besides the plan, the schedule, how things are supposed to be, well, how the fuck is that working out for you?”

“Oh, please!” I screamed. “As if you aren’t into that too. Everything in your life has to be by the minute, by the clock. It’s a fetish for you, right? The sex has to end by ten minutes and thirty seconds, or you can’t come?”

Brian made a sound that was between a furious roar and an unbridled laugh. “Fuck!”

I finished my glass of wine too and poured myself another one. “Like your plans aren’t important huh? So it’s just my plans, my plans that need to be derailed because of this fucking obstacle?”

“Please!” Brian shouted. “Be serious about this! For once, just put aside your fucking attitude! It’s a big change in your life, so it’s frightening. I get it. Go see a second opinion!”

I downed this glass in one gulp, and all of a sudden, I felt my back hurt, a dull ache, something inside my spine tingling and reaching out.

Metastasis.

“No,” I said.

The pain throbbed, and squirmed down to my upper glutes. It was the kind of sore I felt the day after legs day, when I used to do squats religiously and was all about The Daily Run. Thanks, Kristie Alley. Look where I am now.

“Jen,” Brian said. “Get a second opinion, or we’re done.”

I couldn’t believe my ears.

“Well, you saved yourself some time then,” I said. “Good for you.”

Brian stared at me. “I’m not joking.”

“Neither am I.”

Brian tried again. “They start with a mastectomy.”

“I know that, yes,” I said. “You forget, my mom’s been through this.”

“It’s not about her,” Brian shook his head, and that was strike two for me. “Just... focus on your body. Start from the source. The breast isn’t really that important.”

“What?”

“Like, it doesn’t matter. In sex, or in life... the bras, you can really make it look like something’s there. You need to cut out the root –”

“Fuck,” I interrupted. “Get out.”

Brian looked at me solemnly. “I’m trying to help you –”

“I don’t need help,” I said. “Get out.”

“What?”

“I said, get out,” I made a waving motion with my hands. “I don’t need you to tell me about breast cancer like you just fucking read the Web M.D. newsletter.”

“I leave now, it’s over,” he warned.

“Shoo,” I said.

Disappointment flooded Brian’s face. He turned slowly, almost hesitantly, and reached out to open the door.

“If that’s the choice you make,” Brian said. The door closed with a heavy click behind him.

I didn’t move for a few seconds, as I heard his footsteps clump down the outside hall and fade away.

Then I picked up the bottle of wine and hugged it tight in my arms. Its cool surface gave my flushed skin some relief. I looked up, and my reflection was staring back at me from the mirror on the wall across the room.

I checked myself out. Red cheeks, hair a little messy. ‘Fight with Boyfriend”, scratch that, “Fight with Ex-Boyfriend”, is never a good look.

Alone is best, I told myself. You never needed anyone anyway.



Next Chapter: Why Do You Like This Movie So Much?