Life, on the Line by Grant Achatz (book club reads .txt) 📕

He turned back toward Keith and said firmly, “It doesn’t matter who . . . he . . . is. This is about life and death. If he doesn’t get this treatment within a couple of weeks he will be dead in a matter of months. Period.”

“What is the survival rate after this type of treatment?” Heather asked. She fired out the one we were all thinking. I guess I didn’t need to worry about her.

“Around fifty percent. Maybe sixty percent for two-year survival,” the doctor answered.

I hadn’t said a word since the doctor began his examination, letting Heather and Keith ask the questions, but now I had to speak up.

“Wait a minute. You’re telling me that even if you rip out my tongue, chances are good that I will die within the next year or two? What is my quality of life? Can I eat or swallow?”

“Unlikely.”

“Can I talk?”

“Not really. With therapy you might . . .ʺ

“The tongue will be reconstructed, right?” interjected Heather.

“Yes. Typically we take tissue from the arm or leg and fashion a tongue from it. But it is not a tongue, obviously, and speech will be severely compromised.”

The doctor then proceeded to imitate what a patient would sound like. The noises tumbling out of his mouth were unrecognizable as speech.

Heather closed her eyes. Keith, always upbeat, always chipper, was deflated. “Well, quite simply, that is not going to happen. I’m not going to get that surgery.”

“You don’t understand. If you do nothing, the tumor will grow rapidly. It will be impossible to eat anyway. It will block your ability to breath. It will take your life in a matter of months. You must drop everything now, have surgery, and hope it saves your life.”

“Are there any other options for treatment? Any at all. Anything.”

“No. No good ones. This is what you must do.”

The elevator ride down took three hours, or so it felt. The walk outside took another hour. I gathered the courage to look at Keith and Heather, let out a sigh, and said, “Well, there you go.” I smiled, but just for a moment.

Heather wrapped her arms around me.

“What are we doing for dinner tonight?” I asked. “Let’s go somewhere great.”

They looked at me oddly at first, then understood. “Can you eat?” she asked. Heather had noticed that lately she did most of the eating and I did mostly grazing. I hadn’t had a proper big meal in weeks.

“I’ll pump myself full of Vicodin and I’ll get through it. I want to eat.”

“How about drinking some crazy wines tonight? Charlene and I would love to take you and Heather out. I can call Roy and we’ll head to Cru and pop some silly bottles, stuff you’ve never even seen before.” I looked from Keith to Heather, waiting for the nonverbal okay, got it, and smiled.

“That would be great, Keith. Life is short, apparently,” I said with a laugh. “Might as well enjoy it.” They didn’t smile. I looked at Keith. “I don’t think I’m going to get the surgery, Keith. Would you do it if you were me?

Keith spoke slowly, “I . . . I just don’t know.”

Keith called me at my place of refuge, the golf course.

I had been up until three that morning reading research abstracts on alternative treatments. I had long ago committed to playing a four-ball matchplay tournament with a good friend, and had spent the preceding five hours walking the course, thinking about what to do. I was biding time mentally until I heard from Keith about the Sloan visit. Maybe they knew something that Masonic didn’t. Anyway, there was nothing I could do.

Of course, when you don’t care about the outcome of something you perform your best. I didn’t think of golf all day except for those three seconds when I hit the ball. We placed second in the tournament and I sank a clutch twenty-foot putt to do so, in a playoff, with a hundred people watching. Apparently a complete mental breakdown was what I needed to get rid of the yips. This dispassionate golfer theory was really starting to take hold of me. Things around me were awful, but my golf game was at an all-time high.

The phone rang, and I headed for the parking lot to talk.

“Hey,” Keith said. Over the preceding ten years, about a year of my life had been spent on the phone with Keith, talking shop and trading war stories (or any other tale he felt like spinning). Keith loved telling stories, and he did so with relish. He always started with “Hey,” and then, before I could answer, would just launch right into it. Today, however, there was a “Hey” and a long silence.

“What did they say?” I finally asked.

I thought we had lost the connection. “You there?”

“Yeah. Ohhhhh.” Long pause. Deep inhale of breath. “You know, it just isn’t good. It isn’t good at all. I mean, he’s fucked.”

Instantly, I knew that Sloan had said the same thing.

“How is Grant?”

“He’s taking this remarkably well, or else he’s incredibly good at hiding his emotions. Or maybe he didn’t really get it, or believe it. I don’t know. But we need to figure out a way to move him out here. You need to convince him to do the surgery. We can get an apartment for him near Sloan, get a twenty-four-hour nurse, have great food delivered. I’m sure the chefs of New York will be happy to cook for him. It will suck, but it won’t suck as much as if he were in a hospital all day, every day.”

“Move him to New York? I mean, is the treatment there going to be any different? His support system is here. Alinea is here. He won’t want to move away.”

“Well, he might not even have the surgery, he says. It was awful, Nick. I’ve never been in a room like that. It’s just tragic.”

I had never heard Keith talk