Read:   Chapter One    Chapter Two    Chapter Three

Many years ago, when I was in my Masters of Fine Art fiction program, a fellow student wrote a story in which a twenty-something woman was involved with an older man, an oncologist. For effect, he was referred to only as “the oncologist,” and every time I read that, a frisson ran down my spine. It seemed like shorthand for “a sensitive person who has taken on a huge burden and must be suffering greatly.” In the story, “the oncologist” grew plants on his rooftop garden in Chinatown. Of course he did. He needed to see life beginning, too.

My first oncologist, who I named Dr. Pop Tarts for his insistence that nutrition had no bearing on cancer, did not fit the profile of the sensitive, nurturing doctor. Luckily, I’d been able to get an appointment with another doctor, this one at Memorial Sloan Kettering, New York’s leading cancer hospital. Still, after my experience with Pop Tarts, my expectations for Dr. R were low. Maybe all oncologists were assholes, I thought. Perhaps the “God complex” that afflicts many doctors is magnified in them, from helping certain patients cheat death for a while. Or maybe they’re all just overworked and tapped out on empathy.

The experience with Pop Tarts had been notable for other reasons, including the dismal, hangar-like aura of the hospital’s waiting room and the two-hour wait we’d endured before seeing the doctor. So it was a relief to find a vastly different vibe when hubby D and I arrived at the Thoracic Oncology floor at Sloan Kettering. A smiling receptionist greeted us, and the waiting room was filled with light, populated with comfy sofas and plants (artificial, but still), as if someone had actually put thought into what might make a cancer patient’s ordeal bearable. Overall, the place felt calm, devoid of the seething frustration that permeates many doctors’ waiting rooms. The positive impression continued when my name was called—less than twenty minutes after arrival!—and we were escorted by a cheerful young man into a consulting room.

As we entered the room, I could immediately see that thought had been put into its design. Large and bright, it had an ensuite bathroom and a triangular doctor’s desk discreetly tucked into one corner. It was nothing at all like the cramped, grimy room where Dr. Pop Tarts had failed to win my trust.

Maybe these things weren’t important, but they felt somehow significant, in the same way that the personal touches in the waiting room had. Sometimes, a small design tweak can make a big difference—like the time eight years before when, as part of an apartment remodel, we’d changed the angle of a doorway just enough to prevent the bathroom door from banging into the toilet every time you opened it. A small thing, yet not insignificant: for months afterward, I’d smiled at the lack of a clang when I opened that door.

D and I sat down, and I huddled against him, cold: I’d been getting mild fevers lately. Earlier, in the Japanese restaurant where we’d eaten lunch, I’d become weepy for only the second time since my diagnosis. I’d confided my worry that my cancer would pull us apart: that he would be left helplessly treading water while I, floundering in its swells, would grow jealous of his stability. I was also worried about the kids, for obvious reasons—particularly Thing 2, whom we’d adopted as a newborn. “She can’t lose another mother,” was a refrain that often ran through my mind.

D put his arm around me and leaned his head against mine, and we sat like that for a while, quiet. In the past few weeks we’d experienced confusion, anger, disbelief, exhaustion and fear. There wasn’t much left to say, except what I’d said when I’d fainted after my liver biopsy, then regained consciousness and remembered where I was, and why. “Nothing about this is okay,” I’d whispered then to D.

Maybe this new doctor would open the door to the dark room our life had become, let in some air, dispel the fear. But that was a lot to put on one individual.

He was, however, opening the door and stepping into the room. Broad face under a thatch of dark grey hair, a slightly lumpy nose, soft eyes with droop-down corners. A gentleness about him, sort of what you’d get if you crossed Mr. Rogers with a friendly sea otter. He reached forward and shook our hands, smiling in a way that was reassuring without being too upbeat or fake. Behind him came a small Chinese woman who he introduced as his resident trainee.

“So,” he began after he’d settled himself into a chair, “I read your history, and if I can summarize, you had some symptoms, then a few misdiagnoses before you got to the point of having a CT scan. And then,” he leaned forward, “the results came back, and it was as if you’d woken up into the worst nightmare you could imagine.”

“That’s right,” I said, and something seemed to lift in my chest. To have my experience recognized and validated in that way felt like a gift—but gifts can be overwhelming too. Suddenly, the dam I’d carefully erected to hold back my feelings broke, tears gathering in the corners of my eyes, then bubbling over and rolling down my face. “I’m sorry,” I managed to say eventually, “I’m a bit weepy today.”

Dr. R plucked a tissue from a box on the desk and handed it to me. After a moment, he reached forward and patted my arm. “It’s all right,” he said. “This certainly isn’t the first time someone’s cried in this room, and it won’t be the last.”

I looked at him, blotting my tears with the tissue. His calm reaction, and the willingness to offer physical comfort, spoke volumes. He must have encountered situations like mine hundreds of times, yet he was fully present, sympathetic. Design tweaks: Dr. Pop Tarts hadn’t even known whether D or I was the patient. He’d buried himself in the computer and scorned my stance on nutrition. He’d left me feeling as if the bathroom door wasn’t just banging against the toilet, but cracking its porcelain bowl.

Dr. R was talking about treatment options. My genetic testing had revealed that I had a specific mutation, ALK+, for which there were new targeted therapies: I would go on the one approved as the first line medicine, Crizotinib.

“It can cause nausea; we’ll prescribe something for that,” he said. “But why don’t you try it without, first,” he gave an encouraging smile, “to see if you can tolerate it that way?”

“All right,” I sniffed and smiled unsteadily back at him. Behind us, his resident trainee scribbled a note onto a legal pad. I felt a sense of kinship in the room, a murmur of possibility. Together we could beat back the evil colonizers marching through my organs. For the first time since my diagnosis, I sensed the potential to breathe normally again, to relax.

There was one loose end to sort out. I mentioned that Dr. Pop Tarts had also put in an order for medicine for me, which might confuse the insurance and the specialist pharmacy. This struck me as a bureaucratic nightmare—but, unperturbed, Dr. R told us his nurse would deal with it. I’d already spoken to her by phone, and he apologized that she was out for the day. “She said she’s really looking forward to meeting you,” he added.

Afterward, D and I stood in the waiting room, slightly dazed, as if we’d just come from an audience with the Dalai Lama. “What did you think of him?” D asked.

“I loved him,” I said sincerely.

My husband, who I sometimes chide for his skepticism, looked back at me with a slightly goofy, star-struck expression. “I did too,” he said.

We smiled at each other then, and the door opened a crack, letting in a small, warm beam of light.

We had found Dr. Right.