I was genuinely glad for them, I swear. And yet, after they had taken their leave, when I turned in my seat to watch them through the front window, I felt stabbed to the heart by the sight of their two figures walking side by side toward Gil’s pickup. They were almost touching but not quite; there was perhaps an inch or two of empty space between them, and you could tell somehow that both of them were very conscious of this space — acutely conscious, electrically conscious. I thought of a moment early in my acquaintance with Dorothy, when she had offered to show me around her workplace. She stood up and went to her office door, and I jumped to my feet to follow, reaching past her and over her head to pull the door farther open. I guess it must have confused her. She stepped back. For an instant she was standing under the shelter of my arm, and although there was not one single point of contact between us, I felt I was surrounding her with an invisible layer of warmth and protection.
Even that early, I loved her.
We met in March of 1996, during The Beginner’s Cancer. Byron Worth, M.D., was our writer — an internist who had already supplied the material for The Beginner’s Childbirth and The Beginner’s Heart Attack. These books were not particularly technical, you understand. They were more on the order of household-hint collections: how to sleep comfortably in the advanced stages of pregnancy, how to order heart-healthfully in restaurants. For the cancer book Dr. Worth had already turned in the chemo section, which included some delicious-sounding recipes for calorie-rich smoothies, but in radiology he fell short, by his own admission. He said we probably needed to consult a specialist. And that’s how I came to make an appointment with Dr. Dorothy Rosales, who had treated Charles’s father-in-law after his thyroid surgery.
She was wearing a white coat so crisp that it could have stood on its own, but her trousers were creased and rumpled, in part because they were too long for her. They buckled over the insteps of her cloddish shoes and they trailed the ground at her heels. This made her seem even shorter than she actually was, and wider. She was standing by a bookshelf when her receptionist showed me into her office. She was consulting some large, thick volume, and since her glasses were meant for distance she had pushed them up onto her forehead, which gave her a peculiar, quadruple-eyed aspect that caused me to start grinning the instant I saw her. But even in that first glance, I liked her broad, tan face and her tranquil expression. I congratulated myself for perceiving that her unbecomingly chopped hair was — as they say — as black as a raven’s wing.
I said, “Dr. Rosales?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Aaron Woolcott. I called you about consulting on our book project.”
“Yes, I know,” she said.
This threw me off my stride for a moment. I hesitated, and then I held out my hand. “It’s good to meet you,” I said.
Her own hand was warm and cushioned but rough-skinned. She shook mine efficiently and then stepped back to lower her glasses to their proper position. “What’s wrong with your arm?” she asked me.
It’s true that when I extend my arm to shake hands, I tend to aid it slightly by supporting my elbow with my good hand. But most people don’t catch that, or at least if they do they don’t comment. I said, “Oh, just a childhood illness.”
“Huh,” she said. “Well, have a seat.”
I sat down in a molded plastic chair in front of her desk. There was another chair next to it. I imagined that two people generally came for the initial consultation — a married couple, or a grown son or daughter with an aged parent. This office must have seen some very distraught visitors. But Dr. Rosales, settling behind her desk now in a deliberate, unhurried way, would have made them feel instantly reassured. She placed her palms together and said, “I’m not certain what you want of me.”
“Well, no actual writing,” I told her. “We have an internist doing that for us, Dr. Byron Worth.”
I paused, giving her time to react if she recognized the name. Instead, she just went on watching me. Her eyes were pure black through and through, without a hint of any other colors behind them. For the first time it crossed my mind that she might be a foreigner; I mean more foreign than a mere descendant of someone Hispanic.
“Dr. Worth is trying to give our readers a few tips for handling the day-to-day obstacles confronted by the cancer patient,” I said. “He’s discussed the emotional issues, the doctor-patient transactions, the practical aspects of various treatment options … except for radiation, which he hasn’t had any experience with. He suggested that an oncology radiologist might walk us through that — tell us what the patient can expect, in the most concrete terms.”
“I see,” she said.
Silence.
“Of course we would pay you for your time, and acknowledge your assistance in the preface.”
I considered going on to tell her that, after The Beginner’s Childbirth, a doula who’d been mentioned by name had tripled her client load. But I wasn’t sure that physicians actively sought out business in quite the same way. Especially this physician. She seemed to need nothing. She seemed entire in herself.
She seemed fascinating.
“Say,” I said. “It’s almost noon. May I take you out to lunch so that we can discuss this further?”
“I’m not hungry,” she said.
“Uh …”
“What,” she said, “you just want to know the process? But the process is different for each type of tumor. For each individual patient, even.”
“Oh, well, we wouldn’t have to go into great detail,” I told her. “Nothing excessively medical, ha ha.”
I was acting like an idiot. Dr. Rosales was sitting back and watching me. I started racking my brain for some sample questions, but none came to mind. Supposedly I was there just to make the arrangements. Then Dr. Worth would take over.
No way was I going to let him take over Dorothy Rosales.
“All right,” I said, “here’s a plan. I will make up a written list this very afternoon of what we need to know. Then, before you decide either way, you could look through it. Maybe over dinner; I could buy you dinner. Unless … you have a husband to get home to?”
“No.”
“Dinner at the Old Bay,” I said. I had to struggle to keep the happiness out of my voice. I’d already noticed that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but nowadays that didn’t mean much. “As soon as you get off work tonight.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why does this have to involve food?”
“Well … you’d need to eat anyway, right?”
“Right,” she said, and she looked relieved. I could tell this was the kind of logic that appealed to her. “Fine, Mr.—”