“No,” she says, “you’re fine. Whether he shows up or not, I have some things I need to catch up on here, anyway.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“What’s that?” she responds, looking at me over the frames of her black plastic glasses.
“If this is what oral chemotherapy’s like, is it really that big of an improvement over the IV stuff?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I think any kind of chemo’s going to be really hard on your system. Some people do better with the capsules, some people do better with the IVs, but I don’t think anyone has a fun time with any of it.”
“Where are you from?” I ask.
“San Diego,” she says. “My parents moved here when I was a teenager, and I guess I just never really felt the urge to go back. What about you?”
“Delaware,” I tell her, and then I get to the question I really wanted to ask. “I don’t suppose there’s any way I could fire up a J in here, is there?”
“Sorry,” she says. “The administration frowns on that sort of thing in the hospital.”
“Bummer,” I answer.
“But…” she says, reaching into her desk, “and this has got to stay between you and me.”
She pulls a vaporizer pen from one of her desk drawers. “It’s strawberry flavored,” she says. “You can’t even taste the other stuff.”
“You just keep that in your drawer?” I laugh.
She smiles. “Let’s just say you’re not the first person I’ve been in here alone with who could use a little relief.”
“Do you have an alcohol wipe or something?” I ask. “It’s not that I don’t trust you or anything, I just don’t trust the other patients who’ve-”
“I meant me,” she says.
My jaw actually drops.
“You’re serious?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says. “I’ve got a valid prescription and everything — it’s totally legal. I’m sure the doc wouldn’t be too thrilled if he knew I had it here in the office, but he’s never seemed to notice.”
With that, she gets out of her chair and locks the door to the office before coming over to me and handing me the vaporizer.
“You’re not going to join me?” I ask.
“I’m still on the clock,” she says.
I take a puff, and even though Yuri assured me that there wouldn’t be any illicit smell, it still takes me about 30 seconds before I feel comfortable exhaling. Even then, I breathe out into the sleeve of my sweater.
The phone rings and Yuri answers it, saying, “Dr. Churchill’s office.”
I take another puff and try to remind myself that what I’m experiencing right now is a real
ity. I’m sitting in a locked office with the assistant to my oncologist who just hooked me up with MJ extract.
“Okay,” Yuri says into the phone. “Grace is still here, should I send her home or should I call down to…uh huh…uh huh…”
I take another puff, forgetting my still-low tolerance for the fact that what I’m doing really doesn’t feel like smoking anything except candied strawberries, and I’m already starting to feel less nauseated, less sore, less pained.
“All right,” Yuri says, “I’ll tell her.”
She hangs up the phone, gets up from her desk, and takes a seat next to me.