Trancas Canyon

Fast Gonzo

Madli's whole world had collapsed like a papier-mache globe. One day she was at the office worrying about the fall out from a one billion dollar settlement for consumer abuses the bank where she worked as an investment strategist had committed. Her offer on a penthouse condo in Wicker Park had just been accepted and she was obsessing over how the bad press might affect her business leads.

When escrow closed forty-five days later, her father was admitted into the hospital for pain and jaundice and she and her siblings were given the news that her father was being placed directly into the Palliative Care unit at the hospital. Seemingly the next day she and her siblings, Gonzalo, Jr. and Liisa were gathered around her father's bedside. It was almost impossible to manage her father's end of life care with purchasing and moving into a home. Madli was on information overload and thought she might lose her mind.

So many friends and colleagues had described the inevitable passing of their septuagenarian and octogenarian parents with acceptance. They were sad but resigned when their parents inevitable left this earth. Her father, who had over the years become known as "Fast Gonzo" because of his relentless drive and work ethic, had not been ready to let go of life. He was still a youthful sixty-two-year old man when his Pancreatic cancer symptoms first appeared. At Christmas, he was not well. He was uncomfortable and complained of inexplicable abdominal pain. He put on a stoic front but didn't want to eat his usual holiday foods, surprising everyone by turning down the traditional tamales and pozole opting instead to pop Pepcid. When pressed by his children, he alluded to constipation.

The pain was finally severe enough that he asked Madli to find him a General Practitioner at the University Hospital. By then he was slightly jaundiced so he was referred to a specialist who immediately checked him into the hospital for two days worth of testing.

Madli took the hospital stay as a very bad sign. There were no results the next day or the day following. By the end of the week, her Dad had developed jaundice. She felt mildly nauseated all day and struggled to compartmentalize her feelings. Three days later, on an afternoon when she had let her guard down and was joking around with one of the loan underwriters about how desperately they needed the three day Martin Luther King weekend even though they had just had almost two weeks off at Christmas, her cell phone vibrated. It was her father.

"Mija, their telling me I have cancer! Can you believe it?"

She couldn't believe it. One day her father was fine and the very next day he wasn't.

"Do me a favor. Talk to the doctor."

Her Dad handed the phone straight to the doctor, who told Madli in no uncertain terms that her father had Pancreatic Cancer. She could tell by the doctor's measured words he was holding back. She immediately went into problem solving mode.

"How do we fix this?"

The doctor was silent. The rest of the conversation was a blur. Madli marched straight to her office and Googled Pancreatic cancer. She spent the rest of the afternoon calling every major hospital, cancer center and research hospital in the United States. She took detailed handwritten notes of every conversation she had with countless patient care coordinators about their respective referral and in-take processes.

Later that day, her brother picked up their father from the hospital and drove him home. Madli left the office early and took an Uber straight to her childhood home, clutching the notepad that sat in her lap. Her father looked exhausted and seemed to have aged five years over the course of a few days. He surprised Madli with his doubtfulness of his diagnosis by his American doctors. The next day, without a word to anyone, he hopped on a plane to Laredo, Texas then rented a car and drove himself across the border to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. He checked himself into a small but modern hospital hoping for a more benign diagnosis like IBS or Celiac's Disease.

Suddenly the expatriate Mexican who had fled his home country without ever looking back, was nostalgic, sentimental and proud of the Mexican medical schools and their doctors. American doctors had abruptly become second rate. He recalled the time a few years ago when an acupuncturist was able to resolve his high cholesterol with Chinese herbs instead of pharmaceutical drugs that had plagued him with a short list of annoying side effects.

Madli's mother was of little comfort. Her words were sharp as always. She unnecessarily highlighted Gonzalo's struggles with his weight and reminded her daughter that Gonzalo had the disgusting habit of smoking in the bathroom every night after dinner. She also observed that Madli's father had worked at a dry cleaner when he first moved to Chicago then spent years inhaling the toxic chemicals at the auto body shop where he had started as the sweeper. Even as the owner of the multiple shops, Gonzalo had spent his days exposed to hazardous automotive products that contained petroleum and Benzene.

He returned a few days later from Mexico where the advanced testing of the hospital in Nuevo Laredo had duplicated the results of the hospital in Chicago. It was too late for surgery or chemotherapy. Her Dad was in excruciating pain and after only a couple of days at home with Madli, Liisa and Gonzalo Jr. looking after him, he willingly returned to the university hospital where the American oncologist concurred with the Mexican doctors that it was too late for surgery or chemotherapy.

They were all – including her father, in shock. His pain was so terrible that after just two days in the hospital, the oncologist recommended her father be placed in the Palliative Care unit. It was a dismal day. Madli, Liisa and Gonzalo watched the inauguration of President-elect Trump in their father's hospital room where he lay in bed on a hydromorphone drip for pain.

As she sat in the spartan wood framed chair next to her father's bedside, she was in disbelief at what was happening on the television and all around her. Reality television star Donald Trump was being sworn in as the 45th President of the United States and her father was dying. The morphine was making her Dad giddy. He had proudly voted for Trump and cheered as Trump placed his hand on the Bible.

Madli understood how Trump's raw Pancho Villa machismo and showmanship, his "shoot first and ask questions later" bravado appealed to her father. He had always identified with Republican ideals of self-sufficiency and the right to bear arms. He had grown up in squalor in Mexico and used his own scrappiness and wit to survive. Stealthily drowning neighbors hens in neighborhood wells so he could eat them and building ramps across flooded walkways in Guadalajara so he could then charge pedestrians to keep their feet dry as they crossed the flooded streets of the colonial city.

Gonzalo didn't trust career politicians or the religious leaders his mother had revered in Mexico. Priests at the Catholic church where they were parishioners, explained to him as a child that his family was poor because God loved them. This made no sense to him then or now. He saw Trump's raw attitude as that same grit that had helped him survive his childhood and succeed in the United States.

Her boyfriend Luke who was a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, had a different way of explaining Trump's defeat of Hillary Clinton. He was both hilarious and astute as he explained Trump's popularity as a response to global immigration patterns and a base fear that once the gun rights of Americans became limited, socialism would inevitable take over the country.

Luke had been noticeably absent since her father's diagnosis. With Trump's election, Luke's field of study of how group influence shaped politics was a trending topic. He was being asked to present papers at universities all over the country and political science associations were asking him to guest lecture. He had even gotten a couple of phone calls from NPR and nightly news shows asking him to appear as a guest commentator. This week, he was in in London for a meeting with an NGO funded by DFID to map out areas of conflict in Baghdad during the parliamentary elections in the spring.

The time difference between London and Chicago made it difficult to reach him. He had posted selfies from his flight on Instagram including one with a Golden Retriever occupying the seat next to him. On Facebook, she saw pictures he had taken of the Parliament buildings accompanied by his usual witty remarks. Other than that, she hadn't heard from him.