Room 400

7.14.10

My little brother has cancer.

I poured too much sugar in to this styrofoam flavored coffee that the oncologist's waiting room has provided. The room is surprisingly small. Small and light blue with extremely inoffensive art(?) on the walls. The click-clock of the door knob turning is like a siren, and when it click-clocks we all turn our heads to see what or who is emerging. The nurse comes through the door and and says "Brendan?" and we look at him with the most supportive eyes we can muster. With a whispering whistle, Brendan signals to his fiance, Heather, to follow. Mom and I are left alone with the art and magazines.
Dad arrives at 2:15 for a 2:00 appointment and is irritated that we are being kept in the waiting room away from the informative doctor. Mom is equally frustrated that she wasn't chosen to accompany her son, and has resorted to breathing loud and extensively to display her discontent. I'm trying to keep them reasonable - my words are far more calm than I actually am at this point.
The room is cold. I've flipped through magazines and didn't take notice of anything within the covers.
The cancer is consuming my brother, but it has also consumed my mind. It's consuming the family. We wait in silence.
I'm worried about Brendan, because of the cancer, of course, but moreso now because I can see how scared he is. Today, sitting here in this office, I can see how scared he is.
There is nothing I can do to help him.

An hour later, the same nurse pops her head back in the room and lets us know we can join Brendan. The doctor isn't back yet, and Dad nervously asks if he is coming back to talk to all of us. When he finally comes back in he is a tall, white haired man with hippos on his tie, who only occasionally looks directly at any one of us while he explains the situation. The jist, is that Brendan caught it early - he's probably been harboring the cancer cells for only 2 years (....ONLY?!), and that he is young, and that Hodgkin's Lymphoma is the lesser of the cancer evils. Dad hurriedly inquires about treatments and time lines, and we are all told that until further tests, which will include removal of one of his infected nodes, and a PET scan, are done we can't know the extent of what it will take it wage this war. Mom bends down behind Brendan and rests her hands on his head, sliding them down to his shoulders and pressing her face in to his hair. When she stands up straight again she breathes out the breath we have all been holding for the past two days. She manages a smile, I catch Brendan's gaze. He looks at me with wide eyes that seem to probe mine for hope.
Without anymore questions for the doctor, we file out of his office, and in to the narrow hallway. The air is sprinkled with optimism as we pile in to the elevator and onward to face the heat of the July summer.