The T(r)opic of Cancer

[This story, as the title announces, deals with cancer, as well as death and suicide.]

. . .

Now, here I stand amidst the falling snow.

Two hours ago, I called home from the payphone in the medical-center lobby. “I’m on my way.”

“Your client visit go well?” my wife asked.

I did have lunch with a client. But I didn’t mention the appointment after that. “Smooth as silk.” Keep the call short, I thought, before my voice cracks or wavers.

“I’m glad you’ll be home by dinner. That Canadian clipper is supposed to reach here by this evening.”

“I’ll see you soon.” Then I stepped out to the lot, into a cold drizzle. No reason to assume my 2-hour drive would pose any challenges.

The challenge comes when I arrive home. How do you tell your wife and children you’re terminally ill, close to hopeless, when you’ve been hiding it for months? When I ignored the early symptoms for years.

What did the doctor have to discuss? The one thing I didn’t want: the topic of cancer. “Three months at most if we don’t act soon and aggressively.”

“And if we start chemo now?”

“It’s spread from your prostate — which would have been easy to treat early on — into your bones. We can give you a year.” A year of nausea and pain and delirium.

The drive rolled along, uneventful, as I passed the suburbs, exited the interstate, and began the country roads until I reached a fork, where I chose the road I rarely take. It’s more scenic and serene, giving me some extra time to think. Then I saw the sky ahead of me. Darkness arriving far sooner than expected.

A wave of freezing rain overwhelmed the drizzle. And I saw a doe and her 3 fawns close in tow begin to cross the road. My first reaction was not to hit the brake but to think it strange she gave birth in winter, and then to think it stranger still for her to have given birth to 3, and only then to think I need to hit the brake.

Too hard on the newly icy pavement. Soon enough to alarm the momma deer and babies, who all slid and scampered to safety, but not soon enough to avoid a spin, round and round, disorienting, until I found myself off the road, down a hill, near the edge of a pond, its surface smooth shimmering ice. When the sleet turned to snow — a most magnificent snow with enormous flakes, each more beautiful than the one that last landed on my windshield — I sat, stunned and marveling, until I knew I had to extricate myself and hope to find a way to safety.

So, here I stand. And stand.

The ice of the pond now hides under a layer of new-fallen snow. Across the open expanse, on the undiscovered shore, a cabin sits. A light illuminates a window as the darkness of the sudden storm is replaced by dusk. A door opens and a figure, in shadow, steps out toward the far edge of the pond.

They wave to me. They know I’m here! Do they beckon me to cross the pond or warn me?

My body is rapidly chilling. I can’t just stand here. I think of Jack London. Build a fire. But an inner voice tells me that would be fruitless. So I shuffle off the land, onto the ice, and begin the short trek to the other side and refuge.

I leave footprints in my wake that rapidly fill in, as if I’d never walked this path, until I reach the midpoint, where I stop.

The figure, still shadowed, continues to wave . . . more animated, more frantic. It is a warning. But now I’m as close to one shore as the other . . . and as far. It looks so much farther to shore than it did upon setting out.

When I hear the crackle and feel the tremor in my deterio-rating bones, then the snap, then the pop beneath my feet.

I’m going to slide into the depths to thoughts of breakfast cereal? The tragic mixes with the absurƒd. Maybe I’ll be lucky and the pond is shallow, and I’ll drop a foot or two at worst.

And with a whoosh, the ice gives way. I plunge, submerged completely, without touching bottom, shocked by the cold.

I struggle to swim back up to the surface, though my mind is clouding, my limbs are stiffening, and I’m unsure of the direction.

Why fight or grunt or sweat? It’s a fight I’m not going to win. Lean my head back and accept this frigid pond. Accept that it’s my time.

They’ll pull my hypothermic body through the hole in the ice. They’ll transport me to the cabin and warm me slowly to avoid shock. They’ll nurse me back to health. Well, not health; no one knows the ruin my body has become. I’ll return home and be faced with the horrible moment, telling my family that, though I’ve been saved, I haven’t. That our family is about to descend into a hellish journey, facing months of heartache inevitably leading to grief, whether sooner or later.

Or. . . . Make this the moment, and make the pain and heartache and grief swift and simple. They’ll find my ice-cold body and determine I froze to death. No months of radiation or chemo, no deciding to keep up the battle or letting it go. I may be put in the ground without them ever knowing of the disease rampaging through me, without my ever having to tell them.

Which is a better decision? At this point, I don’t know. But the water is taking my weary life in its embrace, deciding for me.

Let my mind continue to wander. Imagine I haven’t taken those steps. Imagine I’m still standing by the water’s edge. Imagine warmer waters.

. . .

I’m stepping out from the lodge’s verandah, walk the path to the tiny patch of beach, bathe in the warm rain sprinkling me like a baptism, stroll across the warm sand, leaving bare footprints in my wake that the lapping wave of a rising tide will soon wash away. A blessed change from the stinging snow hitting my face as I got out of the cab and entered the airport just days ago.

The Bonefish Bella Vista lodge, chosen for its name and for being the closest point on land to the spot, the line, that I seek just out to sea. This place of pilgrimage.

I stand still, at the warm water’s edge, feet sinking slightly into the wet sand, and watch the dark clouds roll in. They drench me to the skin. Would that they carry miraculous powers to cleanse away the disease and give me a chance to begin again.

I remove my wet shirt and relax slowly into my folding beach chair, as did von Aschenbach on his Venetian beach, as the clouds gallop past like the four horsemen.

Take in the sun returning, the bella vista of the blue Bahamian sea. Dream about a life I could have had: a wife; 3 children, triplets; a job I love; a tranquil home far from the bustle.

My time has come, and how can anyone say if I could have made a better decision? In an hour, with the sun directly overhead, I’ll stand up, look down, and see no shadow. Ah, to be a vampire, cursed — no, blessed — with eternal life. Then walk into the warm water.

I lean back, close my eyes, and dream.

I’m not in a career that has soaked up every drop of my life, not in a position of power, not in a life that I hate. I’m helping, not hurting. Building, not crushing. Embracing, not grabbing.

Life has its way of squandering opportunities.

And the rewards for my choices are organs failing, bones devastated. And no one to mourn my passing. No one knows I’m here, nor why I’ve come here. They’ll never understand the humor of where I’ve chosen to spend my last few days on earth. What a gift it would be to have a family to share my pain and memories with. To have a family that will stand by my grave to mourn and weep.

Once upon a time, in my carefree youth, I rode the European rails, rolling north as far as I might go on this same date, the summer solstice, to experience the midnight sun. And now I have this capstone to a wanderlust life, where our sun shines exactly overhead at noon.

My time has come. Here I stand, shadowless, stepping into the warm water.

How far must I swim to reach that imaginary line stretching left to right across this sea, so real and meaningful now to me? Will I perish before I reach there, or will I find it . . . and a miracle?

Step, step, step, the water inches up my body until I’m immersed and begin to swim. A hundred feet out. I change my stroke. A hundred yards out. I pause and paddle and look back at the land that I may have left forever.

Do my eyes deceive me? The lodge owner stands at the water’s edge, waving to me. And, strangely, snow drifts down on him. Does he admire my swimming prowess or beseech me to return to shore?

I turn south again to the open expanse of ocean. Two hundred yards out. I see a fin cut through the water toward me. After all my plans, is this unexpected turn how my life concludes — not placid, but bitten, bleeding, awash in red? To which the gods reply! An orca, mouth agape, takes the shark in its jaws, clamps down tight, taps me with its tail as it descends, and disappears. Did that really happen?

Three hundred yards. I shift briefly to backstroke and peer into the sun. Four hundred. Five. How close I must be.

All energy has escaped me. So there is nothing more to do but float on my back, buoyed by the amniotic salt water, stare directly up into the searing sun . . . and be cured of this life, in the tropics with cancer . . . and imagine the chill of death and colder waters.

. . .

NOTES:

• As I did in my previous story, I took up the challenge to write a story where I read every “or” among the prompts, whether explicit or implied, as “and.” The 5 prompts this week lay out 12 options. However, given the story is a twice-told tale, if, as I’ve done, all options are applied to each half, there are 24 options altogether.

• Bonefish Bella Vista is a real place, located on Great Exuma Island in the Bahamas at 23.4616ºN, just north of the Tropic of Cancer and the closest lodging to it.