Lies of a Story Teller

The Doctor's Wife

The doctor looked over the documents meticulously. The only sounds in his otherwise silent office were the crackle of a page turning or the dry rasp of the sheets rubbing together as he shifted them about on his desk.

His office was large and open, to better accommodate patients, and designed to look modern, but not stuffy. The furniture and art was all bronze; the sculpture on the coffee table, the lamp on his desk, the framed modern art on his wall, though most was actually only plastic painted to look bronze. The walls were painted denim blue, save the one on his right which was a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows with a spectacular view of the Sandia Mountains. His workspace took up the majority of the room, with a large wooden desk, a computer desk behind, and three tall filing cabinets.

He sat behind it now, his reading glasses on the tip of his nose as he scanned lines of text. In front of the desk, in a chair with leather backing, sat a woman, watching him intently, a purse in her lap, her hands politely folded in front of her.

At least it would have appeared polite to the common man. To the doctor, she looked positively stiff. He could see it in the way her glossed lips were pursed, in the way she held her shoulders sternly back, in the way she occasionally tucked back short strands of her fading blond hair, though there was no stray hairs there, and, especially, in the way her sharp green eyes, unwavering those eyes, met his and bore into him, spooning out his guts and feeding them to ravenous dogs.

He didn’t let on, of course.

“Well, doctor?” Some toddlers said “broccoli” in the same tone of voice.

“It looks like cancer,” the doctor replied, his tone flat and emotionless. “You have a tumor on your brain.”He peered at her over the rim of his glasses. “That would explain the headaches.”

She sat quite still in her seat, adjusting her mauve sweater, her gaze, for once, on something other than him.

He was disappointed. He’d hoped she would be more shocked. She was getting a bit more antsy now, he could see it. She was getting fidgety. The doctor fought the impulse to grin.

“What are my options?” she asked.

“First you could go through surgery. We would go in and remove as much of the mass as we could and then you would have to assess your options from there, but, most likely, a month of chemotherapy following and after that…well, all’s that left is to wait.”

“Alright,” she said, after a time of staring at her hands. “How long do I have?”

“In your current condition…” he paused, more for dramatic effect than for actual consideration. “A year, maybe less.”

“And what do you recommend, doctor?” Again she said “doctor” as if she was spitting poison.

“Well,” he said, sitting back in his office chair, crossing his arms.

“Paying for treatment is out of the question; there simply isn’t the money for it. So my recommendation is to simply wait this one out.”

Her lips turned white under her lip gloss and quivered with feeling. “You mean to let me die then? Does thirty years mean nothing to you?”

He gave her what he hoped was his most vehement stare. “No, it means everything.”

She stood up, tears forming in her eyes, and walked out.

“See you at home, dear,” he called jovially. And then he crossed his arms behind his head, sat back in his chair, and sighed contendedly.

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Writing Prompt:  A man finds out his wife has terminal cancer.

Another writing prompt from class. Ended up being more morbid than I thought it would be, but that's okay. I kinda liked it. ;D

Feel free to comment!

-flyon