Shane and Carmen: The Novelization Ch. 23

"Fuck the concert," Shane said, "we'll be right there."

"Okay, would you call everybody else and tell them what's going on? We're in the ER, and I think they're going to admit her, so you'll have to track us down. Call me or text me when you get here and I'll tell you where we are."

"Right, got it." Shane snapped her cell shut and suddenly felt herself loosing it. All her sixth and seventh and eighth senses kicked in, all her radars. She felt a sense of dread, and suddenly found herself crying. She pulled herself together and hurried back down the aisle, caught Carmen's attention, and signaled to her to come out.

"What is it? Is she hurt? What happened?" Carmen whispered as they hurried up the aisle.

***

Carmen raced down Robertson Boulevard to Cedars-Sinai, which was only half a dozen blocks from the Abbey, while Shane worked her cell phone. She got Bette and Tina, and Jenny and Kit's phones went into voice-mail mode, so she left voice-mails and text messages for them. Carmen found a parking garage near the ER, and they hurried inside. There were several people in front of them at the reception desk, and while they waited, Kit arrived. There was some confusion about exactly where Dana and Alice were, and it took a few minutes to learn they had immediately transferred Dana up to the cancer center on the sixth floor, rather than a bay in the ER. As they were leaving the ER and heading toward the cancer ward they saw Bette coming in, and she joined them as they made their way to the right floor and the right department. When they arrived they were shunted into a small waiting room.

After an hour, Alice came and found them.

"Alice!" Shane called out, the first to see her coming down the hall.

Alice came and was hugged by Bette, who said, "Honey, you must be so exhausted."

"She's really sick," Alice said.

"What happened?" Tina asked. "I thought it was a benign lump."

"She didn't tell us the truth," Alice said, "and it's a lot worse than they thought. And the cancer spread."

"Ah, fuck!" Kit whispered. "Fuck." Bette rubbed her sister's arm.

"You guys want to see her?" Alice asked. They did, and Alice led them to Dana's room. Lara sat on the far side of the room, holding Dana's hand.

"Hi," Jenny said meekly as they filed in. Dana's eyes were barely open, but she smiled weakly.

"Hey, Dana," Carmen said softly.

It took her a moment, and finally Dana said, "Hi," only it wasn't even a whisper. It was barely even a breath.

"What you doin' in here, baby girl," Kit said gently. Bette came forward to stand alongside Dana's bed. She took Dana's left hand. "Dana," she said, "sweetie. We love you. Do you know that? We love you."

"Yeah," Dana whispered.

***

They decided to go to the hospital's food court, located at street level in the medical complex's south tower, and which stayed open until midnight. Nobody was very hungry, but they got coffees or sodas, and pulled two tables together so they could talk. They were somber, and nobody wanted to talk first, so Carmen decided to become the moderator.

"Okay," she said, "Alice? Lara? Can one of you tell us what the fuck is going on? Because it's pretty apparent we're all in the dark. I'm not saying I'm mad at anybody; I'm not. But it's clear we've been lied to. I don't care about the lies, or who told them. I just want to know the truth."

Alice and Lara looked guiltily at each other.

"I guess it's my fault," Lara began.

"Lara," Carmen interrupted, but her voice was kind and consoling. "I don't care about fault. I'm not blaming you or anyone else. I get it that Dana didn't want us all to know things. That's all behind us now. It's not about fault. Just tell us what happened."

"She had a mastectomy," Lara said. "A radical mastectomy. And it looks like they didn't get it in time."

"She told us the lump was benign," Shane said.

"She said the surgery was no big deal," Bette added.

Lara and Alice looked at each other. Alice clearly wanted to talk, but it was also clear that she had a tight grip on her mouth, and was deferring to Lara, who was Dana's partner.

"It wasn't benign," Lara said. "I was actually the one who found it ... well, I won't go into that. But I said, you have to have this looked at, and she did. And the biopsy came back positive. So she made me swear to keep it secret. They gave her the diagnosis and the options. It was something called invasive ductal carcinoma. It's the most common type of breast cancer, over half of all cases are this kind. They call it IDC."

"I've read about it," Bette said. The others nodded.

"Anyway, she wanted a mastectomy right away, so that was the surgery she had. The one she told you guys was nothing. Well, that was it. And ... " Lara choked up and had trouble finishing.

"She thought she could bluff her way through it," Alice said. "She thought she was this real tough tennis jock, and a mastectomy was nothing, and she could take a couple days off and then it would be all gone, and everything would be okay. But that was wrong." Alice was tearing up, too.

"So anyway," Lara picked up, wiping her runny nose, "the secrecy thing. That mostly wasn't about you guys. It was mainly about the media, reporters and tennis officials and tournament people. She didn't want them all finding out Dana Fairbanks had breast cancer, or had a mastectomy. She thought it would really set back her career, even if her physical recovery was fine. She didn't want to be known as the tennis player with one tit. I know that sounds stupid, but that's how she felt."

"She didn't want her family to know, either," Alice said. "You know how they are. They'd be over her house every day and every night, they'd call every twenty minutes, and her mother would be flying in specialists from the Mayo Clinic and the Vatican and God knows where. It would be a circus. And unfortunately, I gotta say, Dana was right about that. It would have been a nightmare. Probably the media thing, too. So she went into this big denial thing, like it never happened."

"So, not telling all you guys," Lara said, "it wasn't so much about not telling you, but more like not telling the media, and not telling her family, and living the bluff, and not telling you guys was kind of ... I don't know ... a side effect. Keeping it contained, that's what she said. She didn't want you guys to know, because that would have broken the facade. She wouldn't have been able to carry off the charade if you guys knew the truth."

"So not telling us, that helped her to not tell anybody else," Shane said quietly.

"Yes. Exactly. That's it exactly. And believe me, she felt bad about it." Lara said.

"But what about treatment?" Carmen asked. "Didn't she need follow-up? Chemo? Radiation?"

"Well, yeah," Alice said sarcastically. "See, that's what went wrong with the plan. She started the chemo, and it kicked her ass. It was way tougher than she thought it would be. Like I said, she thought she was this tough jock. The funny thing was, when she had the lump, she felt perfectly fine, and she even won that tournament. Then, they do the mastectomy, and Dana thinks, okay, all I have to do is take the medicine. And the medicine turned out to be far worse than the disease."

"Well, except that the disease was going to kill her," Jenny said quietly.

"It metastasized," Lara said. "The chemo and the radiation, they cripple your immune system. They kill the fucking cancer, and you die of something stupid, like a common cold or something."

They all knew it was more complicated than that, but no one argued.

***

Cedars-Sinai kept Dana for three days, and got her healthy enough and strong enough to go home. Lara told the group Dana didn't want to make a big deal out of coming home, so the group all nodded and said yes, they understood, and so they made a medium-sized deal out of it.

Carmen noticed that Shane took the news of Dana's condition a lot harder and more seriously than she would have guessed. On the way home from the hospital Shane had not only been even quieter than usual, but Carmen noticed Shane was on the verge of tears. Her eyes were watery and she sniffled.

"You okay?" Carmen had asked quietly when they pulled up at a stoplight.

"Yeah," Shane whispered.

"'Yeah' means 'No,'" Carmen said. "Shane, talk to me." Then she let Shane work on it.

After a block, Shane said, "I always thought of her ... "

"Yes?"

"I always thought she was so tough. The athlete thing. They cut off her tit. I don't care about the lies. But she's so much sicker than we thought. And ... I get this really bad vibe from her. I'm afraid ... ." There was nothing more.

"You're afraid we could lose her."

"Yes."

"Me, too," Carmen said. She didn't tell Shane she'd picked up the same vibe. And of course she couldn't tell Shane that she'd discussed Dana's condition with Ixchel, who had sadly shaken her head.

"It's very bad," Ixchel had said.

"Is there anything we can do? You can do? I can do?" Carmen had asked, but the jaguar had only flicked her long tail.

"Be her friend," Ixchel said. "There is nothing more."

"Is she going to die?" Carmen asked.

"We've been over this," Ixchel had said. "I'm not a fortune teller, I don't predict the future. I diagnose, and I try to cure. My powers are very limited, and I can only help one person at a time. It's why I couldn't do anything for Jenny. It stretches the limits of my power to help you keep Shane healthy and stable, despite all her self-destructiveness. And anyway, my cures are all holistic, and herbal remedies. Remember, I'm an ancient goddess, not a modern one. I'm not an oncologist, and I'm not a surgeon."

"I know," Carmen had said. "I guess I'm still stuck on some of my childhood notions of Catholicism. Praying to saints and expecting miracle cures, and things."

"And what was their cure rate? How often did those miracles occur? There is a reason they called them miracles," Ixchel said. "They happen once in a million times."

"I know," Carmen said. "What can I do for Shane?"

"Same thing. Be her friend. Comfort her. Be tolerant and understanding."

"I had no idea she and Dana were that close."

"What you have to remember is how sensitive Shane is. How she picks up vibes and feelings so strongly and so much more often and more deeply than most other people do, and how it takes her so much longer to process all that information. Aren't you concerned and worried about Dana?"

"Sure, of course I am."

"Well, so is Shane, but five or ten times more so. That's just how she is. You're worried about Dana. Shane is worried, times ten. You're afraid, and so is Shane, but times ten. You've picked up this bad vibe about Dana. So has Shane—"

"Times ten," Carmen finished Ixchel's sentence for her.

"Yes. And this is why you and I have to work so hard on your relationship with Shane. Everything is amplified, magnified. You are doing the emotional work of dealing with not one woman, but who knows, five, six, eight women, whatever the degree of amplification is. It isn't a criticism of Shane. She is what she is, and you've chosen to love her. That's good. But it requires so much more from you than it would if you were in love with someone ... simpler. Less complex. If you were in love with Helena or Tina or Kit, it would be like a walk in the park compared to Shane."

"What about Bette?"

"Bette would be a little harder, but not too much. Maybe almost as much as Jenny. Jenny and Alice are both high-maintenance girlfriends. So is Bette to some extent, but nowhere near as difficult as Shane. Shane is no maintenance, the polar opposite of Alice, but just as hard to deal with. She's not needy, she's lack of needy. She's self-contained and doesn't think she needs love and affection, like other people do. If you hadn't come along, she'd have gone on the rest of her life, happily fucking two or three girls a week, never falling in love, never having a relationship. Except for the sex, that's anti-needy. The trouble is, when somebody's in love a reasonable and moderate amount of maintenance comes with the territory."

"Sometimes ..."

"Yes?"

"Sometimes I think about what it would be like, to be in love with someone else. Somebody less ... complicated."

"That's normal. Everyone does that, even if the lover of the moment is easier or harder to love. Sometimes it's just simple lust, or curiosity, and sometimes it can be even more. Sometimes you have this view that monogamy is easy, simple. For you, monogamy is easy, most of the time. For others it can be much, much harder, and for some people it is impossible."

"Sometimes I think that about Shane."

"It is extremely difficult for her. First, it's not in her nature. Second, after well over a decade of having random meaningless sex with hundreds and hundreds of women, it has become a habit. So both nature and nurture are working against her. Or rather, against you. You and me. We've always had our work cut out for us, ever since that first moment you walked into Arianna Huffington's dressing room."

"Sometimes I wonder if I'm up to it. If I'm strong enough."

"Even being a deity, I can't answer that," Ixchel said. "But I can tell you this. You are the most loving, most skilled, most compassionate person I've ever worked with. Ever met, even. You are the most sensual and sexual woman I've ever known, and you put one hundred percent of yourself into this relationship. I don't know if you can make this love work, but I do know that if you can't, then no one on the face of the earth can do it."

"Do you really think that?"

Ixchel flicked her tail in annoyance. "Have I ever bullshit you?"

"No."

"Then that's your answer. And there's something else."

"What's that?"

"Do you remember when you asked Shane if she was in love with Cherie Jaffe, and Shane said no?"

"I remember. I'm still not sure she was telling the truth."

"She was telling the truth insofar as she understood it," Ixchel said. "But do you know why she wasn't in love with Cherie Jaffe?"

"No."

"Because when she first met Cherie, Shane didn't know how. She didn't know what love was, and she didn't know how to bein love. Despite all the women she'd fucked in her past, she hadn't learned how to love any of them. Remember, love scares the shit out of her. So no, she didn't love Cherie Jaffe, but she had all these complicated feelings for her. If you put all those feeling into a basket and gave them to someone else, it would have been love, no question about it. But in Shane, all those feelings, mixed with all those fears, and all those habits she'd learned, it meant that those feelings never came together or solidified into what we'd call love. So no, Shane didn't love Cherie Jaffe a year ago, and she didn't love her last month. But she did still have most of those feelings."

"I was afraid of that. And I could sense it."

"The good news for you is that Shane picked just about the very last person on earth who might have taught her how to love, how to put all those feelings together, and that was Cherie. A promiscuous, self-absorbed, narcissistic, spoiled, cougar MILF? It was an impossible relationship from the very beginning. There was no way Cherie was going to give up her lifestyle and her marriage to fall in love with Shane, much less teach Shane to love her back. And that's even assuming Cherie had the ability to teach Shane how to love."

"So ... she does have this thing for Cherie?"

"Thing? Yes, but you needn't be concerned. Because that's all it is, this nameless, shapeless, unidentifiable 'thing.' Because Shane is finally learning how to love somebody, as awkward and unskillful as she still might be. And it wasn't Cherie Jaffe who taught her how. It was you."

Carmen didn't know what to say.

"Don't think about the sex, the fucking. That isn't love. Think about the romance and how lovers behave. Do you see Shane and Cherie taking long walks on the beach and holding hands in the moonlight? Walking in the rain? Whispering sweet nothings? Gazing soulfully into each other's eyes by candlelight over dinner in some cozy bistro up the coast in Carmel?"

Carmen laughed.

"Exactly," Ixchel said. She flicked her long tail, got up, walked around in a circle, and laid back down, as cats, even big ones, sometimes do. "It was you who taught Shane how to do those things."

Carmen looked at her hands, knowing it was true.

"There is something else to consider."

"What's that?" Carmen asked.

"There's a parallel. Shane isn't the only person with a complicated but impossible love affair in her past. In that regard, you and Shane were in exactly the same place. Tell me, how do you feel about Sister Rosario? Don't you still have all these residual feelings about her?"

"I ... um ... well, I see, I guess."

"The feelings Shane had for Cherie Jaffe last month are much like the feelings you have for your old lover, Sister Rosario. And you may always have those feelings for Sister Rosario, although they'll gradually fade away over time. And Shane may always have those complicated feelings for Cherie, and they'll fade away over time, too, just like yours will."

"I guess."

"That relationship of yours was also doomed from the start. Were you and Sister Rosario ever going to walk together on the beach holding hands, stroll through a summer shower, gaze into each other's eyes by candlelight?"

Carmen understood the answer was no.

"Did you ever entertain fantasies of you and Sister Rosario moving in together, and living the rest of your lives together as a warm, loving, committed couple, growing old together? Maybe raise children? Did you ever for one moment believe she'd give up the church, her marriage to Jesus, for you?"

Again, Carmen said nothing.

"It was an affair, that's all it was, but it had no future, and you would have realized that if you'd ever stopped to think about it, and no one would blame you if you didn't, because you were infatuated, and that's how crushes like that go. Tell me this. If Sister Rosario came through that door right now, if she walked up to you and took you in her arms, and if she kissed you, and took your hand and put it inside her blouse, on her breast. Do you think you would remain loyal and true and monogamous with Shane? Would you tell Sister Rosario that it's been lovely seeing you again, and even though you were weak in the knees and wanted to get down on them to lick her pussy all night long, you weren't actually going to do it, because you had this other girlfriend?"

Carmen looked down at her hands, but she had a faint smile on her face.

"No, I thought not," Ixchel said, also laughing. "When push comes to shove, Shane wins, Sister Rosario loses."

"So what do I do?"

"You have to get rid of this idea that being faithful and monogamous is easy. In many circumstances, it can be damned difficult, and in some it might be flat-out impossible. It's like what they always say in those TV cop shows about murder -- that under the right circumstances, literally everyone is capable of it. Well, if under the right circumstances you, Carmen Morales, might murder someone, then under the right circumstances you, too, might be unfaithful. As long as Shane stays away from Cherie Jaffe, and you stay away from Sister Rosario, you'll probably be okay. Just don't think you're all that different from Shane. Anyway, she's been doing the best she can. I think you'll probably admit that."

"I admit she's worked really hard," Carmen said. "She's done better than I ever expected. Just that one lapse."

"Your old church kept telling you that you humans are imperfect people. Not some of you, but all of you, everyone. Even you. Whether you call something a 'sin,' or just a mistake, or a lapse, or whatever, you all do it, just some more than others."