Sweet Potato Pie

The cancer center waiting room felt more like a crowded boarding area for an overbooked flight. Except we were all waiting for a different kind of transport. 

My son and I leaned against a wall for a while and then found seats some distance apart as their occupants departed. When the guy next to me was finally wheeled in to see his oncologist, he shouted “Wait, wait!” and pointed an accusing finger at the big screen TV in front of us, which was blasting “The Price is Right.” 

“No way that car is just $29,000!” he yelled. Until he raised his voice, I hadn’t noticed how young he was. I’d assumed he was an older man, like me, but he was just a teenager. The people around us, some in chemo turbans, some bald, some hunched over phones, all looked up. “No way,” someone said. 

I’d been there a couple of times already, but only for tests. Today they were going to tell me the plan. But I felt like I stuck out among my fellow travelers. 

While I was still standing, chatting with my son, a woman in a mask (we all wore masks, it’s not political there), eyed me warily from her chair. A flexible steel tube extended from her nose to an electronic monitor in her pocket. I knew that because I’d spent some time with that tube myself. I found it easier when people ignored it, but my indifferent glance was enough for her. She asked if I was a doctor and how much longer her wait would be because she’d already been waiting a long time. 

That happened on my first visit, too, with someone else. 

I wanted to say I was one of them. I’d already had a good look through the veil between how we live our lives and the chaos that accident or illness brings. I didn’t want another. 

I was diagnosed with lymphoma 40 years ago and did a year of chemo and 90 days of radiation, followed by remission and a full life all the way to age 60. But in the waiting room that day, those 40 years felt like an interrupted dream. 

This was the reality, here, waiting for you to wake up to it all along. The dream didn’t matter. Here was this thing again reducing you to a medical history, a name to be called, another traveler, waiting. 

“I think he’s right about that car,” my son said. 

This new diagnosis had meant something different to him than it meant to me, though it took me some time to grasp that. But now he was home from college for a few days, and I invited him to the appointment. Whatever I could tell him about it would unavoidably pass through the stubborn filter of parenthood and emerge as some mangled version of reality designed to protect us both while accomplishing nothing. So he came along to hear it himself. 

A nurse led us past and through intersecting corridors and other waiting areas full of more travelers, apologized for the delay, and put me on a scale. 

“You’re down a few pounds from last time; are you trying to lose weight?” he asked. 

I laughed. “No, just lucky I guess.” The nurse laughed too, politely. He was a young guy, just a couple years older than my son, and a lymphoma survivor himself. We’d bonded over that on my earlier visits, though I suspect that was true for every patient he met. We were all survivors, travelers in different lands of the same name. 

We sat with the oncologist and a surgeon and went over the latest data. 

The tumor didn’t look like it had spread, but it was bigger than they liked and in an awkward spot in my abdomen.

“Frankly, any tumor that’s inside me is in an awkward spot,” I said. 

Maybe they smiled under their masks, but I think they’d heard that one before. 

We’d start chemotherapy immediately and then reassess in a few months. Surgery would be a ready option if it didn’t work. Then we’d reassess again. 

I’d been to this hospital so many times over the last 20 years for friends and relatives, including my son, but now I was so preoccupied I got lost trying to find an exit. 

“Do you think it’s this way?” suggested my son, knowing full well where to go. I recognized his mother’s tact. 

We’d arrived early on empty stomachs and now it was almost noon. I asked what he wanted to eat, but he was hesitant. Eating was not something I enjoyed anymore. 

“I know where to go,” I said and reminded him of the diner I used to take him to when he was a little boy for mac and cheese and sweet potato pie. 

He said he’d never been there. 

Maybe he just didn’t remember. I could see it in my imagination. I could see those hours we spent there and so many other places. I took him everywhere, I thought. But had I just meant to and meant to and meant to, and never made time to do it, to do anything? 

We sat at the counter. The diner was unchanged except for the staff. “You’re sure I never brought you here?” “Yeah, no, never, but it looks really good.” Ever the diplomat. 

Despite it being his first visit, he boldly ordered a large breakfast of unfamiliar foods and then some more breakfast to go with it. I ordered a piece of sweet potato pie. 

He cleaned his plates while I picked at mine. “How is it?” he asked. 

“It’s good. You want to try it?” 

“Wow, that is good. I’ve never tasted anything like that. I would’ve remembered.” He looked at me. 

I thought, This is what I wanted from that life, even if it was a dream.

Ted Olinger lives in Vaughn.