Terminal

“I’m going to help another woman today, Mom,” Tom said as he sat down to eat his eggs and bacon. He knew how proud his mother was of him. She had always praised him even when he’d been a lonely child with eye problems. His schoolmates had teased him mercilessly about his crossed eyes, chasing him home nearly every day.

“Don’t worry, my little man,” Alice would say when he’d arrive at the house in tears. “We’ll always have each other. We don’t need other people.”

And that was how things worked out. Tom had never felt any desire to leave home. For a while, he worked at a local veterinarian’s. Then at his mother’s suggestion, since she’d always been interested in medicine, he’d taken a course to be an EMT. After his training, he got a job with an ambulance company but had trouble getting along with the other workers. He decided he would be better off as an orderly. That way he wouldn’t have to relate to so many people. First he’d worked at Miami General Hospital but got into a fight with his shift supervisor. Then he worked at a funeral home before joining the Forbes housekeeping staff.

“The woman’s name is Sandra,” Tom told his mother as he ran his dish under the faucet at the sink. “She’s older than you. She’s in a lot of pain. The ‘problem’ has spread to her spine.”

When Tom spoke to his mother, he never used the word “cancer.” Early in her illness, they’d decided not to say the word. They preferred less emotionally charged words like “problem” or “difficulty.”

Tom had read about succinylcholine in a newspaper story about some doctor in New Jersey. His rudimentary medical training afforded an understanding of the physiologic principles. His freedom as a housekeeper allowed him contact with anesthesia carts. He’d never had any problem getting the drug. The problem had been where to hide it until it was needed. Then one day he found a convenient space above the wall cabinets in the housekeeping closet on the fourth floor. When he climbed up and looked into the area and saw the amount of accumulated dust, he knew his drug would never be disturbed.

“Don’t worry about anything, Mom,” Tom said as he prepared to leave. “I’ll be home just as soon as I can. I’ll miss you and I love you.” Tom had been saying that ever since he had gone to school, and just because he’d had to put his mother to sleep three years ago, he didn’t feel any need to change.

IT WAS almost ten-thirty in the morning when Sean pulled his 4 × 4 into the parking area of the Forbes Cancer Center. It was a bright, clear, summer-like day. The temperature was somewhere around seventy, and after the freezing Boston rain Sean felt he was in heaven. He’d enjoyed the two-day drive, too. He could have made it faster, but the clinic wasn’t expecting him until late that day so there’d been no need. He spent his first night in a motel just off I95 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

The next day had taken him deep into Florida where the depth of spring seemed to increase with every passing mile. The second night had been spent in perfumed delight near Vero Beach, Florida. When he asked the motel clerk about the wonderful aroma in the air he was told it came from the nearby citrus groves.

The last lap of the journey turned out to be the most difficult. From West Palm Beach south, particularly near Fort Lauderdale and into Miami, he fought rush-hour traffic. To his surprise even eight-laned I95 coagulated into a stop-and-go mess.

Sean locked his car, stretched, and gazed up at the imposing twin bronzed, mirrored towers of the Forbes Cancer Center. A covered pedestrian bridge constructed of the same material connected the buildings. He noted from the signs that the research and administration center was on the left while the hospital was on the right.

As Sean started for the entrance, he thought about his first impressions of Miami. They were mixed. As he’d come south on I95 and neared his turnoff, he’d been able to see the gleaming new downtown skyscrapers. But the areas adjacent to the highway had been a melange of strip malls and low-income housing. The area around the Forbes Center, which was situated along the Miami River, was also rather seedy although a few modern buildings were interspersed among the flat-roofed cinder block structures.

As Sean pushed through the mirrored door, he thought wryly about the difficulty everyone had given him about this two-month elective. He wondered if his mother would ever get over the traumas he’d caused her as an adolescent. “You’re too much like your father,” she’d say, and it was meant as a reproach. Except for enjoying the pub, Sean felt little similarity with his father. But then he had been presented with far different choices and opportunities than his father ever had.

A black felt sign stood on an easel just inside the door. Spelled out in white plastic letters was his name and a message: Welcome. Sean thought it was a nice touch.