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

Grant’s diagnosis. I internalized it all, except when I was short-tempered, rude, and generally not great to be around.

Dagmara sat down next to me. “You know, people survive cancer all the time. Think of all of the women we know who have gone through hell with breast cancer and have come through it okay. You’re doing everything you can, and he’s a tough guy.”

I told her about the diagnosis at length and the hundreds of pages of abstracts on head and neck cancer I had sorted through on the Internet. Her father had provided me with data and patents on anti-angiogenesis drugs, and I sifted through the American Cancer Society website for hours looking for clinical trials or some other hope of alternative treatment. I looked at her and said, “Yes, dammit, I know it’s not a death sentence. It’s worse than that. It’s a disfigurement sentence. The Grant that we know will cease to exist in a few weeks, and I’m sorry, but that is just tragic. And after everything with my mom, I’m just not certain that he isn’t right.”

“Right about what?”

“That he might be better off not fighting.”

She paused and looked at me and hugged me. She could see I was struggling. I pushed her away for a second and she thought I was angry, but instead I pulled out my phone and showed her the picture of the duck dish he had made that night. “Look at this. When I came back from Michigan that night he made me duck.”

I lost it completely. I started sobbing uncontrollably as Dagmara looked at me.

Then she hugged me again and let me be alone. And I determined that it would be the first and last time I let that happen. From here on out, we were moving forward.

I had told my parents and the staff at Alinea. We had seen three doctors at three different hospitals. Nick was reaching out to pretty much anyone who might know something or someone to see if there was another treatment option. At some point, my story was going to leak to the press. “A Top Chef Has Tongue Cancer” is a man-bites-dog kind of headline. It would definitely make the papers.

Nick and I were alone in the front dining room of Alinea trying to decide what to do. We had a long talk about scheduling the surgery. The more set I became on doing nothing, the more Nick turned the conversation to Alinea.

“What do you want to do regarding the press? I think it’s going to leak out soon enough. There is no way that our entire staff keeps silent on this, let alone all of the doctors and friends we’ve called. I think we should draft a very simple press release and send it off to a few key food writers.”

“Fine. Do it,” I said.

“What do you want to say?” he asked.

“Say I have cancer and am going to die, but will be working here in the meantime.”

Nick went off to the computer in the basement. I sat looking around at the dining room for a minute, then grabbed the clipboard to see what the reservations looked like for that evening. A few minutes later he returned. “I wrote something up. I figure, keep it short and to the point. Do you want to read it?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

It read:

I want to personally report that I have been very recently diagnosed with an advanced stage of squamous cell carcinoma of the mouth. I have consulted several prominent physicians and will likely begin aggressive treatment within the next few weeks. I remain, and will remain, actively and optimistically engaged in operations at Alinea to the largest extent possible. Alinea will continue to perform at the level people have come to expect from us—I insist on that. I have received amazing support from friends, family, and everyone who has thus far been told of the disease, and I look forward to a full, cancer-free, recovery.

“That’s fine. I want to send out a few of these personally first. I was thinking that writers like Penny Pollack, Phil Vittel, Ruth Reichl, and Pete Wells need to see this come from my e-mail address. Then send it to Jenn Galdes and let her put it out to everyone else.” I was reluctant to tell the world. I knew that once I told everyone it would be real.

I called Jenn, our publicist, from my car and let her know that Grant had sent off the press release. “He wanted to do it personally,” I said.

“Makes sense. There is going to be a storm of inquiries. What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“Nothing. That’s the statement in full for now. Except, well, if you get a call from someone prominent, just give them my cell number. I don’t want them bothering Grant.”

Five minutes later my phone rang. I recognized the number as coming from the Chicago Tribune, since they all start with 312-222. I figured it was Mark Caro, who penned the article about Trio’s last night and whom I now hired to work on the Alinea cookbook based on that piece.

“Hello, this is Nick.”

“Nick, hello. This is Phil Vittel from the Chicago Tribune.”

“Wow. That was fast,” I thought.

“I’m sorry to bother you on what is obviously a difficult day, but I was hoping to ask you a few questions. And of course I wanted to convey to Grant just how concerned we all are for his well-being and recovery.”

“Thanks. Sure. Whatever you need.”

Phil Vittel was the head dining critic of the Tribune, and I wasn’t surprised he was calling.

“Well, can you tell me more about the cancer? I’ve done a little research, and if he has an advanced stage of squamous cell cancer that’s a difficult prognosis, right?”

I chose my words very carefully, something I would do over and over that day with a number of people in the media. I focused on the positive: Grant was getting the best possible consultation