By Lorraine C. Lordi
The conductor announces, "This train to New York is sold out. Take the closest seat." And the closest seat is one by the window next to a Middle Eastern woman.
"Do you mind if I sit here?" I ask.
The woman smiles and folds up her tray table so I can squeeze through. I don't intend to talk much with the woman sitting beside me. I have to study for a nursing class I'm taking. The material is complicated. I need to concentrate. But after I settle in, I decide to make a little small talk before I get into my own important stuff. It's only polite.
"Are you visiting New York?" It's a safe question. A yes or no answer should take care of it.
"I'm moving there," she says.
"From where?" I don't know why I ask. But I do.
"Los Angeles."
Again, I don't know why, but I keep talking. "I lived in Burbank and San Francisco. The weather was perfect. Sunshine every day."
"Most days it is," she says.
"Then why move back to this?"
The bare trees outside the train window drip with cold tears. The gray sky hangs like a shroud over this colorless landscape. It feels bleaker than bleak.
"My life became too comfortable. Does that sound crazy?" She laughs like a little bird.
"A little," I say, chirping with her. "But change is probably the best way for a person to grow. I think you're very brave."
Now here I am, the one determined not to open up, sharing my philosophy with a perfect stranger.
"I don't know about being brave," she says. "But when I was offered this job last month, it felt like the right time to return."
Now it's her turn to connect. She left New York five years ago, she says, because it was too hard to stay. Her parents, who lived there with her, had died. First, her mother in 1999. Stage IV gastric cancer. Then her father. Lung cancer in 2002. He never smoked. She looks at me, her wide eyes full of wonder — and tears. I don't look away.
"My dad died of cancer six years ago," I tell this stranger. "Metastatic melanoma. He was a doctor, and he knew how much time he had left. Four to six months. He lived five."
"Cancer as a death sentence is changing," she says with conviction. "We've made great discoveries in the last five years in cancer research. Exciting new drugs target cancer cells specifically. One of my patients responded so well to this new treatment that she's been cancer free for two full years."
"You're a doctor?"
I don't mean to sound so surprised. But I am. Humbled, too. For here I was, intending to impress whoever was sitting next to me with my flashcards of medical terms written neatly in my own handwriting. As if what? I understand anything?
"I'm an oncologist," she says with more tenderness than I deserve. "I'm moving back to New York to work at Columbia Presbyterian. I start this Monday."
"That doesn't give you much time to get settled," I say.
"I'm not worried about that," she says. "My patients have taught me that time is precious."
"But isn't it hard. ..."
"To work with the dying?" she finishes my question.
I nod. I want her to say yes, it is hard. That yes, she — and my doctors, too — have a human side to them.
"It is hard," she says.
Last week, one of her patients, a lonely young man, died. She told him his chances were good with this new drug. But he gave up. When she heard of his death, she went home and cried.
"The next morning, though, I met a young mother with lymphoma. She agreed to be a part of the new trial because her two children need her. That day, I didn't cry. I know she'll make it."
"How can you be sure?" I have to ask.
"Because the cure is near." Her dark eyes glow. "And also because that young mother has at least two great reasons to live."
Lorraine Lordi lives in Londonderry. To order the most recent collection of her favorite Derry News columns, visit www.plumriverpress.com.
