I was heading to my new breast cancer center, navigating a hospital building shaped like a traffic circle to my first chemo in my new location, my new doctor, my new care team. An unfamiliar space, a familiar procedure. The elevator popped me out at the second floor; I turned to study the direction signs. A tall, loud white woman stood there, at the intersection of the cancer clinics, talking on her phone. Loudly. I can hear everything she’s saying, each sentence more troubling—
“He doesn’t want to, he doesn’t want to come to the shelter, he wants to die. That’s what’s going to happen, he wants to die and well, let him DIE then.” And so on.
I pass her quickly, roll my eyes, and walk down the long carpeted hallway (hoping I picked the correct hallway!). Then she does too. Still talking, marching close behind me for about half my trek. I picked up my pace, annoyed we are both going the same way.
I lose her before the waiting area. I can breathe again, literally. I slow my pace and focus on preparing my tense body for the upcoming infusion, hoping my veins will behave. Phone Talker had stopped in front of a window, leaning on the sill in a posture of ownership, her voice bouncing off the hard glass. More alarming words spit out, but she’s staying in one spot. In a few more hurried steps, I can’t hear her anymore. Relieved, I check in with the very friendly staff and settle in to a chair facing the sunny windows. Big breath.
Then, Loud Lady enters, still on her phone. She leans on the reception counter, continuously talking to her phone while the staff check her in.
Then she turns back towards my bank of chairs, pacing back and forth, somehow talking even louder.
“You should have seen it, BLOOD EVERYWHERE!”
She passes in front of me, a cloud shadow over my head. I lean forward into her field of vision, gesture for her attention and say as gently as possible—-
“Ma’am, you’re having a very disturbing conversation that we can hear!”
She turns away from my eye contact, continues with her phone friend, her voice thick with disdain—“She said I’m having a DISTURBING conversation”. She rolls her eyes with her whole body.
She continues to move down the hallway, but instead of leaving, she loops back, then back and forth, pacing and talking in front of the twenty people waiting in scattered groups, all of them cancer patients. All of them, all of us, have to be there, have to wait, have to endure her. Because of the check in, I assume she has to have treatment too. This registers but I can’t locate any empathy. She may be one of us, but she’s the shark in our aquarium.
Exasperated and annoyed to lose my comfy spot in the glassy sunshine, I move to a chair further away, behind a dark sheltering column. Finally I make some distance between myself, fragile and anxious, and the troubling intrusion of Loud Lady.
Like all my cancer experiences, the problem follows me, invades every aspect of my life and hovers in my vision. Threatens to overpower me. All I can do is move out of the way.