Love and Laughter in the Time of Chemotherapy by Manjusha Pawagi

Author:Manjusha Pawagi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Second Story Press
Published: 2017-09-19T15:22:47+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

The woman who has the bed next to me is very friendly, gushingly so, at first. “You’re so beautiful!” she says one morning, as her mother pushes her wheelchair past where I am sitting in the chair by my bed. “Your skin just glows!” She even praises my cheekbones, which I guess are thrown into relief by my bald head.

Then her mother pipes in, clearly also wanting to compliment me somehow, “And your son is so tall!”

They have not yet seen Jack. They are referring to Simon, who is six foot three. At least their flattery makes sense now. For someone who has a forty-six-year-old son, I do look pretty good.

Her friendliness ends abruptly when I ask her to turn off her overhead light one night. It’s almost 10 o’clock. I’ve been fretting since 8:30 about when would be a reasonable time to bring up the issue of the light. A nurse carefully doles out one sleeping pill to me each night. It takes about thirty minutes to take effect. If I take it while the light is still shining brightly it won’t work, and it will be wasted because I’ve found if I don’t fall asleep in that first half hour, the night is shot. I’m tossing and turning, figuratively that is, as I can move only with great difficulty. I sleep on my back, in almost a sitting position. I long for the time I can lie flat, curled cozily on my side, one hand tucked under my pillow. It’s now 9:45. We each have control over an overhead light and a reading light. Because the curtains separating us don’t reach the ceiling, when one overhead light is on it’s pretty much as bright as if all of them were on.

I rehearse the words in my mind: Would you mind turning off your overhead light, I’d like to go to sleep? Sorry to be a pain (insert friendly self-deprecatory laugh here) but could you turn off that light? Do you think…The nurse arrives with my sleeping pill. I take the easy way out, scrunch up my face in a pained expression, point to the light, and whisper to the nurse, “Could you ask…” The nurse immediately goes over to the next bed.

“Time to turn the light off, other patients need to sleep.”

“But I’m reading,” the woman protests. “I can’t go to sleep this early.”

The nurse is curt. “Use your reading light.”

“It’s not strong enough, my eyes…” The nurse just stands there. “I can’t read by it…” Her protests dwindle. “…not one word.” Finally she repeatedly yanks the pull cord and the light clicks, first brighter, then brighter still, then finally off. But I’m tense now, imagining that compliments from her are no longer going to be flowing my way, and I don’t fall asleep for hours.

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