Life, on the Line by Grant Achatz (leveled readers .TXT) 📗

pain.” I told him I was taking some Vicodin—actually, I was eating them like candy. He looked at me in disbelief. “These tumors are amazingly painful—one of the most painful cancers there is. So many nerve endings there. I’m going to write you a prescription for a patch that you put on your arm. It’s fairly narcotic, so I wouldn’t recommend driving much if you feel spacey from it. But it will relieve the pain and you’ll be able to eat again.”

I was incredibly thankful for this, but Nick was impatient and incredulous. Our last great hope was recommending, essentially, palliative treatment. “Doctor. Look, we understand the situation,” he said. “But he’s thirty-two years old, he tastes for a living, and really lives to taste. Is surgery really the only treatment? That just seems impossible. Given Grant’s priorities and career, there must be something. I’ve read about other treatments and protocols.” Nick was desperate for an alternative solution.

Dr. Pelzer used a model skull to describe the physiology of the disease. He was thorough, scientific, and engaging despite the macabre subject matter. He discussed in detail the aspects of the type of cancer cells that had invaded my tongue. And he got into specifics that were all too graphic . . . how it would be easier to cut my jaw in half vertically and then open it up side-to-side and have access to the whole tongue to remove the cancerous tissue. How it was critical to remove it all, plus an area around it for “margin.” He would want to perform a radical neck dissection, and having watched the You Tube video that Nick sent me—he was thorough and unflinching in his research—I was terrified.

Then Dr. Pelzer, somewhat unexpectedly, as a way of wrapping up the description of the procedure said, “That is what I would do. That is what I have done for the last twenty years. But I bet Everett Vokes would tell you something very different. I don’t know which is better; we can’t know. But if it were me, my family, my friend, I would recommend the surgery I described. It’s not pretty and it’s destructive and painful, but it gives you the best chance to live. I would recommend the surgery and I would do it personally and with the greatest care. But if it’s right for you, I can’t say. That’s up to you alone to decide.”

Roger Ebert was right. This is a doctor who cared deeply about his profession and patients. Clearly he thought his methodology was best, but there was a slight chink in the armor of certitude, a concession that treating cancer is often as much art as science. And while I tried to absorb what he had just said, Nick quickly asked, “Vokes is at Chicago, right? Can you call him for us? I’ve tried to get in there and haven’t heard back.”

Dr. Pelzer recommended we see his radiation oncologist in the afternoon and promised he would give Dr. Vokes a call on my behalf. He wrote me several prescriptions for more pain medication, called over to Northwestern to book the afternoon appointment, and shook my hand. Somehow I felt a bit better.

We left the office and Googled Walgreens on our phones to find the nearest pharmacy. We walked through the city, getting lost along the way just as we did when we were building Alinea. At the first pharmacy they looked quizzically at my prescription and said, “We don’t carry that sort of thing here,” and recommended another nearby pharmacy. We chuckled at the thought that they think we must be addicts. I looked terrible—tired, unshaven, and I could barely speak. Nick was an emotional wreck, and though he never lost his cool at the appointments or with me, I could tell his anger and sadness were sitting just below the surface.

We walked for a while without saying a word. It was a perfect, crisp day—unusual for this time of year—and we were only a few blocks from the lake. At a corner, we waited for the light to change and Nick grabbed my arm suddenly and said, “Look, I don’t want to have this conversation with you but there are certain things that you should deal with now while we can—before surgery.” He kept talking about the surgery as if it were inevitable. “You need to get your life in order. You need to tell me what you want me to do for your kids. We have a policy on you for Alinea, and I’m sure a portion of that can be set aside for them—the investors are behind you, they’re good people, and they’re not concerned about the finances of Alinea. You need to write a will. I know you don’t have much, but you don’t want it in probate. That’s a shit-show and lawyers will get whatever you do have. And you need to tell me what you want me to do with Alinea.”

“With Alinea? What would you do with it anyway?”

“I don’t know. We could keep it open, doing the recipes and menus in your honor. I don’t want the place for me. We could give it to chef Keller. I don’t know. I just want to know what you want me to do with it.”

I smiled at him and said, “Why in the world would I give a fuck what you do with Alinea? If you have sole say in the matter, then that means I’m dead. Enjoy yourself, man. Do whatever you want.”

Somehow, we both found this unbelievably funny. We laughed out loud . . . looked at each other and laughed some more. We missed the light. We laughed at our idiocy and my misfortune.

We laughed because it wouldn’t be at all cool to cry.

I helped Dagmara put the kids to bed and went and sat in our den, staring at the wall. I had been totally withdrawn for months, beginning with my mom’s stroke and continuing right through