Abstract
He would rid himself of cancerous relationships
And fight the cancer blooming inside him.
“I'm done with cocaine and trust me,
I won't buy any Oxycontin.”
The start of a new life.
I set up parameters for his safety
wrote out morphine prescriptions
and rehearsed for the split that was sure to come—
in the car, in the elevator.
But week after week he passed.
The drum of doctorly duties ensued:
tox screens, DEA numbers, thank yous.
“Doc, I've found this psychic
balance between the pain
meds and the Ativan and the chemo.
I can feel the tumors shrinking
as it goes in my veins, he told me”
In an outpatient treatment room
with a new brew of chemo infusing in his port
We'd discuss his lawsuit to save his house from foreclosure,
and the reconciliation he avoided with his family,
Barricades erected from his past.
Meanwhile his muscles vanished, his face sank
And all the vitality receded from his eyes
Weeks later in the hospital his blood ran out of sugar.
A remote dangled by a cord from his nightstand
between an unopened box of tissues and his dormant body.
Traces of his skin clung to an IV needle in a porcelain sink,
sterile fluid drained from its plastic tubing.
No flowers, no stock cards.
Barricades stood.
From the television the distorted noise of a car commercial
collided with the arrhythmic sound of his breathing.
His nurse knelt at his side holding pressure on his wrist.
I glanced at an empty bag of dextrose
he had requested a day before to give him a little more time.
I dialed an area code many miles away.
“The county will pay for his funeral.”
A long pause and then his brother's sullen reply
“Thank you.”
