Irony

Twelve Weeks Ago

I blocked out the oncologist's voice and pretended I was deaf. Then, I realized how ridiculous I was being and fixated on reopening my ears. "I'm sorry, what?" I vaguely remember managing a smile. I always smiled at inappropriate times.

"I said the tumor has metastasized to your spinal cord, Ms. Thomas. The radiation and chemo, while still an option, did not completely halt the advance of the cancer. Now, what we CAN do is …"

I went deaf again. I was tired. Body and soul. His words faded into buzzy silence, and I furrowed my brow as he slipped a heavy stack of papers into my hand. The letters jumbled together like a scramble puzzle, and my smile weakened. I'll look at it later.

I nodded to the doctor as I got up to leave; the look of protest on his face implied we were not, in his mind, quite done with the consultation.

Yes, we were.

Eight Weeks Ago

I laid my head down on the table and adjusted the long brown ponytail where my hair met the hard slab. My husband expected my hair to have fallen out months ago from the chemical cocktails the Spanish Inquisition had dripped into my bloodstream. I told him I didn't expect it. That was the last time I remember him laughing. He now stood on the opposite side of the glass window with his thumbnail between his teeth. I looked away to the plastic bag of electric pink liquid held aloft by an I.V. stand and followed the thin plastic tubing that attached it to my arm. It even looked radioactive. I asked the attending nurse if I would glow in the dark afterward. She nodded without a grin.

"Wait. Seriously?" My mouth contorted, and I'm sure I looked more confused than amused.

"Yes, it's one of the common side effects of the SRT. You were given information to read and you..." The nurse flipped open the chart at the end of the table and scanned. "...you did sign the waiver."

I closed my eyes and realized, annoyed, I had forgotten to read those papers. Par for the course. "It's fine. I can be my own nightlight."

The nurse nodded again and pressed the chart to her chest. She wiggled her index finger to two orderlies who came forward to spread blankets, both fabric and plastic, over me. I shivered and turned my eyes again to the pink fluid. I stared it down. Or tried to. It didn't work; liquid can't really be intimidated. Eventually, the three left the room. My husband Justin was still in the same position he was before. At least he grinned at me and lowered his thumb long enough to mouth a few words. I couldn't make them out.

The intercom crackled. "Commencing fluid induction."

The floor cleaner snaked down and disappeared into my arm. I shivered again, but whether from cold or anxiety, I can't remember. Perhaps both. When the pink slime was gone, the intercom crackled again. "Initiating position alignment."

The table beneath me jerked and slid backwards into a large hollow tube that looked to me like an MRI machine I had to use when I took that line-drive to my jaw. The table came to a sudden stop, and I stared up at a red eye set into the ceiling of the tube.

"Hello, Hal."

The intercom crackled again, "What was that, Ms. Thomas?"

I smirked. "Nothing. I'm fine."

There was a pause and then another crackle. "Are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be. This had better work."

Another pause. "Commencing radiation agitation." The red eye blinked and turned angry as its iris dilated. I smiled at it. The last thing I remember was it staring back.

Six Weeks Ago

I pushed the tray away and gulped down the bile rising in my throat.

Justin pushed the tray back towards me and gave a tired sigh. "Stop it. I know you don't want to, but you need to eat."

I turned a sour face towards him. A war raged between my head and stomach; I felt hungry and nauseated simultaneously. I knew I was being childish about it, but I didn't care. If the anti-emetics the hospital had given me weren't helping, why would Jell-O?

"Don't make me play airplane landing in the hangar."

I snorted, amused, and picked up the plastic cup of Jell-O and handed it to him. "This is going to make me feel worse, Justin, but go ahead."

He opened the cup and dipped the spoon into the contents. The sound of a persistent raspberry accompanied a back-and-forth approach pattern as the Jell-O made its way to my mouth. I opened up obligingly and swallowed. This repeated itself until the cup was empty. I sat back, frowning.

"Well?" Justin reached for the emesis basin.

My brow wrinkled more and more the longer I waited. The tumbling in my stomach slowly but surely subsided. I waited another beat and finally lifted my head.  "My nausea's gone."

Five Weeks Ago

I placed my hand on my husband's mop of crisp curls. "I'm sorry, honey. All you did was prep for that interview." His lowered head rested upon hands gripped in frustration. I turned towards him. "That's strange, though. You were perfectly qualified for it and..."

I could see I was not helping and resigned myself to offering quiet sympathy. After minutes of nothing, a nurse entered the room. "Ms. Thomas, your scan results are back. The doctor will be with you in a few minutes to talk about them." As she turned to leave, I rolled my eyes. What's a few minutes in Doctor Speak? I opened my mouth to say that exact thing when Dr. Hearten entered the room. My jaw snapped shut, and I swallowed my comment.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Thomas." He sat down, adjusting his pristine white lab coat. "Though it's too soon to be absolutely positive, it seems that your tumors have receded."

Justin lifted his head and blinked. "Receded? How much?"

Dr. Hearten smiled. "We can't find a trace of them. We'll have to run a few biopsies just to be sure, but it seems you have entered remission. The SRT did its job, quite a bit sooner than we anticipated." His smile was one of Nobel Prizes and other accolates.

Justin grinned, then laughed. "That's... that's wonderful! Thank you! Erin, did you hear him? Erin?"

He peered down at me as I stared straight out the window. "I did not expect that."

Four Weeks Ago

Sometimes, you can't stop yourself from thinking of horrible things no matter how unlikely or impossible they might be. You think of a terrible action, cringe at its conception, and do your best to push it away. The fact that you cringed at all makes you feel like you're not a bad person, even if your mind is filled with the tripping of annoying children or the slashing of someone's tires. Or worse, perhaps the grisly burning demise of that guy who cut you off in traffic the other day.

But what happens if your imaginings take on a life of their own and not only don't occur, but the exact opposite happens? Is one evil simply by having evil thoughts? It can't be that cut and dry. If I can do good in the world, or at least prevent things from happening, by thinking horrible thoughts, what does that make me?

Worst. Superpower. Ever.

Two Weeks Ago

I don't even know if I can tell him, I thought as I watched my husband fix dinner. He wouldn't believe me, or he'd blame the medication I'm on or...God, any number of things. I was careful to keep my mind as blank as possible as his hands waved over the blue flickering lights of our gas stove. That did not work as well as it was supposed to. I tried to drown out the demons in my head by mentally screaming BURN! BURN! BURN! over and over again. That's how it's supposed to work, right? I expect him to burn his hand, and then he doesn't. It’s stupid. It won’t happen.  The momentary thoughts recede as does the fear, and I can’t help but feel relief.

I was pulled out of my reverie by a loud yell. Justin gripped his hand and quickly ran for the kitchen sink, dousing his already-blistering fingers under cool water.

Oh, God.

I choked out an "I'm sorry" before running from the room. I needed to get away from him.

"What? You didn't do it. Erin!"

But I did.

Three Days Ago

I paced the floor of my living room. My eyes flickered to the door my husband had disappeared through, and I allowed myself a breath. "I'm over-thinking this. I have to be. Maybe if I just keep talking, I won't be able to think. Simple as that. I can't let myself pause. Have to keep talking. Have to keep talking. Have to keep talking..."

"Hey Erin, what do you-," my husband called out from the other room.

I didn't mean to. It just came out. "SHUT UP! I'M TALKING! Have to keep talking. God, what do I talk about, though? It can't be just anything. It has to be terrible. It's the only way I don't hurt people. Killing a puppy. Ok, that's bad. How would I go about doing it? Ok, first, I'd find the fluffiest, cutest puppy I could. Then, I'd take a blow torch..."

I spotted motion from the corner of my eye and turned. My husband, jaw slack and eyes wide, watched me pacing. I stopped talking. And then realized I had and burst into laughter.

"Have to keep talking. Have to keep talking. Blow torch. Ok, what if I took the blow torch first to its fur, and then..."

"Erin, what's going on?"

"I SAID I'M TALKING! I can't continue that line of thought. It's making me sick. What could I do that would be even worse, but impersonal? Oh, right. Chicago. There's lots of people in Chicago. Lots of families. Lots of homes. That's good. I would demolish it. Nuclear weapon right on the South Loop. That'd get a lot of people. Hm. What else? That's not enough. Maybe..."

I felt hands on my upper arms. My husband turned me to face him. "Stop. If this is a joke, it's not a very good one. What the hell has gotten into you lately?" His earnest face contorted. "All you've been doing is muttering for days now. What the hell was in that pink crap?"

I smiled. I always smiled at inappropriate times. "Life and death, Justin. It gave me my life back, but now I can take everyone else's away. Just by thinking of it. I have to think of bad things so nothing bad happens. It's hard to control, though. Like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man? 'What did you do, Ray?' Don't you see? I think bad things, about puppies, about Chicago, and suddenly I've saved everyone. No one has to get hurt."

His eyes widened as he stared at me. He let go of my arms, letting his own fall to his sides. He paused, staring at me for a few brief moments before turning heel and walking off. “I’m calling the doctor.”

I felt tears running down my cheeks, “But he can’t help me.” It came out as a sob as I fell back into our couch. “He can’t help me.”

Present

My eyes had a hard time staying open. It felt like those few moments just after you hit your alarm clock in the morning.

"Tickling, though it brings on laughter, is a panic response. Your subconscious detects danger from the other person and perplexingly makes you laugh. You're not supposed to be able to tickle yourself, even if you are the person most capable of producing harm. Oftentimes, you are your own worst enemy, your own arch-nemesis.

"First, my body tried to demolish itself with cancer. My body turned its back on my own life and tried to destroy it.

"Secondly, my mind rebelled. I knew what I had to do. I had to think bad things in order to do good. But you cannot use reverse psychology on yourself. It's like trying to tell yourself to not look down. Everyone looks down eventually. Humans are funny like that. We look into dark chasms beneath us because we cannot help it. L'appel du vide. When we tell ourselves to not think of something, our mind becomes a spinning wheel of paradoxes. If you tell yourself to not imagine something, you've already imagined it.

"I have lost the filter between mind and body. I no longer have that safety net. Normally, even if you think of something terrible, your body will not necessarily act upon it. But it's no longer my hands or my mouth or my feet producing physical effects in the world; it's my mind. Whatever I imagine will happen, the opposite occurs. I cannot keep my mind from thinking of the other fork in the road. How do you stop a gear from turning if you don't have a wrench to gum up the works?

I tried to lift my arms, but the bands around my wrists prevented it. I stared up at the ceiling and tilted my head, eyeing the water stain in the dry wall above. I managed a smile, and then remembered I always smiled at inappropriate times, “I expect my restrains will continue to itch."

I sighed in relief and closed my eyes as the irritation stopped.