The Probability of Miracles (4 page)

Dr. Handsome—that was really his name, and it led to endless jokes about whether he was a doctor or just played one on TV—held his silver pen above the computer screen and used it as a pointer to trace an imaginary circle around the bright orange glow surrounding her kidneys. He used the same silver pen every visit.
Which says a lot about him
, Cam thought. The pen was probably a gift, which meant he had people who loved him and were proud of his doctor-dom. And he was sentimental if he cared enough not to lose it. It was either that or he was a little obsessive. Detail-oriented.
Which is a good trait for doctors to have
, Cam thought. You didn't want them slipping up. The longest Cam had ever kept a pen was probably five days, max. She and Dr. Handsome were very different.

“This is not what we were hoping to see,” he said as he swirled the pen in a little loop-de-loop and then just let it droop between his finger and thumb. He dropped his head into his free hand and combed his fingers through his black hair and sighed.

This was the first time Cam had seen him show any negativity. He had always been so positive. His posture today seemed so defeated.

“Maybe that”—Cam took the pen from his hand and traced it around the orange—“is my second chakra, you know? I think that's about where it's supposed to be. The second chakra is the orange chakra. The seat of power and change. Can that machine pick up chakras and auras and whatnot?”

Dr. Handsome tried to speak, and then something caught in the back of his throat.
Is he about to cry?
Cam wondered. He was.

“Cam . . .” He composed himself. “I'm sorry. I'm just very, very tired. . . . Cam, there is nothing we can do.”

Cam had been coming here for five years, and she thought she'd seen all of his moods. He could be goofy and giddy when he was tired, and he was great with the little ones. He had a rubber blow-up punching clown in his office, so the kids could blow off some steam before their appointments. Cam gave the clown a little jab now and he rocked back and forth. “But you're Dr. Handsome,” she said. She knew what really centered him was when he focused on the medicine. “Put away those emotions and pull out some of that doctorspeak. You need to talk cold, hard science. Say ‘malignancy' or ‘subcutaneous' or something. It'll make you feel better.”

“Science is just not enough this time, Campbell Soup. What you need is a miracle.”

Cam's mom sat on her favorite deck chair and leafed through an
InStyle
magazine. She put her coffee down on the glass patio table and without looking up asked, “And so is there a new trial we can get into?” She was pretending to be nonchalant, but Cam could see that telltale crease between her eyebrows change from fine line to deep-set wrinkle.

“There's nothing left.”

“There's always something left,” she said, turning another page of her magazine, to an article that showed you how to wear the latest trend (black lace) in your twenties (stockings), thirties (little black dress), forties and beyond (never!).

“They've run out of trials, Mom. Anything else they try will kill me before the cancer does. My counts were not good.”

“I'll call them today, Cam. I'll get you into something. They can at least give you some more cisplatin,” she said, finally looking Cam straight in the eye.

“Mom. You're not listening. There's nothing left.”

“We'll just go to St. Jude's or Hopkins or something.”

“We've been there, Mom. St. Jude's twice. They've done everything they can do.” Cam was tired. She didn't want to think about this anymore. She just wanted to sleep and forget for a few hours. The new, rubbery, custom patio cushions in parakeet green hissed a little as Cam let her head fall back. The Florida sun felt good on her face for a couple of seconds, but soon it started to feel less like warmth and more like radiation. “Dr. Handsome said I need a miracle.”

“Well then, Cam,” her mom said, sighing and then snapping a stale piece of Nicorette, “we'll find you a goddamn miracle.”

“That's not exactly a good way to start.” Cam opened her eyes and looked at the cloudless blue sky overhead. “You don't
damn
God before you ask for a mira—”

“I'm not giving up, Campbell. I will never give up on you.” The last four syllables built to a crescendo, followed by Alicia's hand slamming onto the glass table.

“Cancer's not in my ears,” Cam mumbled. “Yet.”

“Dammit!” Alicia yelled and threw her coffee mug onto the cement pool deck. It shattered with an empty pop.

“You're going to regret that. That was the Santa mug,” said Cam, unfazed. Her mom's favorite coffee mug was printed with a faded, barely perceptible picture of Cam and Perry sitting on Santa's lap taken ten years ago.

Cam was used to her mom's outbursts. She had been living with them for years. Something had happened to Alicia in midlife, where every emotion—sadness, fear, joy, confusion, helplessness—could only find an outlet through her anger. It was especially prominent after her first cup of coffee in the morning. Her mom said it was hormonal. Cam thought it was just Alicial.

“Campbell, you have to believe me,” Alicia said, composing herself. “I am not going to let you die.”

“That's reassuring. Really. I believe you. Now I need to take a nap.”

As Cam hugged her mother and walked back to her room, she realized she'd be spending the rest of her short life making other people feel better about the prospect of losing her.

CAM HELD HER BREATH AND DUNKED HER HEAD BENEATH THE SURFACE of the water. She needed to drown out the sounds of her neighbors cheering as they caravanned to school for graduation.

It was too hot for a ceremony on the field, so each graduate could only invite two people to watch from the air-conditioned seats of the auditorium. Cam had stuck her tickets to the “Commencement Excercise”—with the word
Exercise
misspelled in expensive golden ink—between pages 218 and 219 of
Anna Karenina
.

Cam blinked her eyes open in the bright turquoise pool. It was harder to tell that you were crying when your head was underwater. Plus the cold water felt good on the lovely blue-spotted rash that she was developing all over her forearms, called “blueberry spots.” What a cute little name for a cancerous lesion.

The buzzing of the pool's robo-vacuum vibrated up through her spine, and she let herself sink until she sat on the slippery pool bottom. Cam had decided to skip graduation today. She had missed so much school because of her chemo and trials that she had lost touch with most people there. And she didn't want to hear about her classmates' plans for the future, most of which involved working at Disney, at least for the summer. Alexa and her sidekick Ashley were waiting anxiously to see if they had gotten cast as one of the Cinderellas. Cam was a little jealous that people had futures at all, if she had to be honest. She didn't want to think about the future.

The final straw may have been that no one on the faculty could spell
exercise
.

Cam sprang to the pool's surface, taking a gasping breath. Then she climbed out and dabbed at the mysterious rivulets of tears that had merged with the streaming drops of chlorinated water dripping from the ends of her hair. She blotted them away rather than swiping because her nana had told her years ago that wiping your face causes wrinkles.
As if
. She laughed.

Luckily she had signed up for a shift at work. That would be a welcome distraction.

Cam loved mornings in the kitchen. A restaurant kitchen in the morning was like a gentle, yawning beast. Blinking, stretching, clicking, opening, closing. You could still hear distinct, individual sounds before things got going full steam and the beast recovered his fiery breath amid the cacophony of the cooking.

Joe, the cook, was always the first one on the job, and he and Cam had a system that worked. No one talked until noon. Joe needed his coffee to kick in, and they both enjoyed the silence before the chaos.

But this morning, Joe could not shut up.

“So maybe I'll put some tarragon in the sauce,” he said. “What do you think, Cam? A little mustardy bite to the sweet and sour?” He was stirring a stainless-steel vat of the stuff with a big wooden paddle. Joe's hoarse and staticky boom-box choked out his favorite Zeppelin track. He had figured out years ago how to disconnect the magical mood music piped in through the infinite sound web that reached every corner of the park.

“You need to stick to the recipe, Joe. It's only a temporary move, remember? So you can have some health insurance for the kids,” said Cam without lifting her gaze from the cutting board. She sliced through another pineapple, halving it perfectly with one swing of her mouse-ke-cleaver.

“Right,” he said. “No tarragon.” Joe was a brilliant chef who hoped to move quickly up the ranks to one of the Disney restaurants that actually had a menu. The Polynesian Hotel served meals banquet-style, which was boring—the same dinner for everyone for two seatings in a row—but it was a step up from the food court at the All-Star Sports budget hotel. Cam was trying to convince him to audition for one of those chef reality shows where you could win your own restaurant, but they couldn't imagine what role he could play. He was completely nondistinct, a Midwestern, khaki-wearing guy of average height and weight, with light brown spiky hair.

“But that's who you could be,” Cam would argue. “The completely nondescript Midwestern guy who comes from behind and shocks everyone with his brilliance in the end.”

She hacked through another pineapple. Her cleaver made a satisfying thud as it lodged itself in the cutting board.

“So what are you doing this summer, Cam? Have any big plans?” Joe asked as he poured a three-gallon jug of coconut milk into the vat.

“No. Not really. Why are you so chatty, Joe? I don't like the new chatty Joe.”

“I am? I hadn't noticed. Just making conversation, I gue—”

But before he could finish his sentence, the whole cast of “Aloha” suddenly burst into the kitchen dancing to the music of the tom-tom. Women's hips hopped back and forth, and the men stomped in time with the deep, hollow rhythms. Her mom held the biggest steaming chocolate volcano dessert Cam had ever seen, and they all yelled, “Congratulations, Cam!”

This was much better than attending any ceremony.

“Thanks, everyone!” said Cam, blushing.

Her mom handed her a graduation gift—an iPhone—and then someone in a Tigger suit came bounding in and handed her a big check.
The wonderful thing about Tiggers
, thought Cam,
is when they hand you a big, fat check.
The bigwigs at Disney had somehow heard about her plight and had written her a graduation check. It wasn't even in Disney Dollars.

“We can use that for Tijuana,” said her mom.

It had been a month since Dr. Handsome's prognosis, and Alicia had been true to her promise. She had practically quit her job to take on the role of miracle hunter. It was a miracle that Cam was able to come to work today and that she didn't have an appointment with a “healer” of some sort.

“I'm not going to Tijuana,” said Cam. Many of the miracle cures her mom had researched involved trekking to some shady, expensive clinic in Tijuana, where they injected you with all kinds of crazy shit.

In the past month Cam had been to an acupuncturist, a Reiki practitioner, a reflexologist, an herbalist, a hypnotist, a
taulasea
—a Samoan medicine woman who made her drink breast milk—and had had a phone call with a “distance healer” from New Zealand named Audrey. They had paid eighty-five dollars Australian, plus the cost of a phone call to New Zealand, to hear Audrey hum into the phone for a while and then send Cam an e-mail with the “results” of the healing, which included bar graphs measuring the strength of her aura.