The Clairvoyant
Last night I went with my friends to the village carnival, where I saw a colorful tent with a sign over the door announcing “Fortunes Told.” I decided to amuse myself and went through the dusty flaps. Inside a cheesy actress dressed as an old woman sat at a small table. I could hear snickering behind me as I presented my palm for her scrutiny. Faded posters of flowers, mostly lilies, hung from the walls around us. The scent of sandalwood undulated overhead as she traced a few lines down to my wrist and looked straight at me.
“You are going to die before the new year begins,” she announced - and then bolted from the tent through a fold in the back.
I sat there like a mannequin for just a second too long before guffawing and hollering for an ambulance, much to the delight of the crowd.
The next afternoon as I drove to the office of my oncologist, I sensed that the trees appeared greener than usual. The sun was at a particular slant in the sky that seemed to cast an artificial glow all around, as if the world was suddenly in another part of the universe. Walking from my car to the office, I figured I was just experiencing a fillip of paranoia after my visit to the soothsayer - after all it had been almost three years since I completed chemotherapy. Still, her words were not exactly reassuring - of all the foolish comments she could have made, her prediction was particularly cruel to anyone who has had a serious illness. It was just my stupid luck, I thought, as I waited in the exam room. I looked around and noticed some new photographs the doctor had taken - this was one of his hobbies. A large framed shot of white irises overlooked the sink.
“I wanted to show you something,” my doctor said as he sat down on a stool next to me. I caught the faint essence of his cologne. “I noticed that your tumor marker was slightly high last fall, so I re-checked it at your last visit. Now it is much higher. I think we need to get some scans to see if there is any evidence of return of the cancer.”
He continued to speak to me, but I felt myself sliding down a chute backwards, screaming silently as the roar of a hurricane blasted my ears.
* * * * * * * * * *
Sometimes I feel like the gypsy in the circus wagon, cursed with the gift of clairvoyance, forced to reveal unhappy secrets to those whose lives are a glorious unfurling in the morning sun, but a forlorn withering by nightfall. A rising tumor marker in a perfectly healthy cancer patient is one of the most distressing developments ever conceived. It is a harbinger of adversity, a black mountain on the distant horizon that is the gathering storm, an unlucky card laid down by Madame Sosostris. Medical oncologists, however, play more than one role in this drama. They are also charged with the responsiblity of staring Kismet in the face and daring it to continue; they are given the task of conjuring a reversal of fortune for anyone suffering the oracle’s doom. Someday - not in my lifetime, but soon - a miracle is coming, and then the doctors’ laughter will be matched only by that of the people whose lives have been given back to them. That will be a sound worth waiting for.
That is an incredible piece… and sweet. That’s all I can say.
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