The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine

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The Listener

[Editor's Note: Michele Gazzolo is a writer at work in Michigan, who continues to live without permission from her doctor. (March 28, 2007)]

"Anyone who listens is fundamentally open. Without this kind of openness there is no genuine human relationship. Belonging together also means being able to listen to one another."
-- Hans Georg Gadamer

"If it is true that 'no genuine human relationship' exists without the radical and reciprocal openness of listening, it is significant that listening -- in spite of its entailing such a crucial issue -- is either ignored by philosophical study or, at best, touched upon fortuitously."
-- From The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening by Gemma Corradi Fiumara.The moment I am brought to my room after surgery I am facing a watercolor of two wooden chairs sitting on a beach, which fills me with dread.

The bland hideousness of the picture haunts me more than the words of my surgeon, that the cancer has spread from the colon to my liver. He is standing at the end of my bed as he speaks, his hands folded. Somehow, he looks like a schoolboy. First I pity him, and then I realize I am the one to be pitied. I go back and forth, wondering who I envy less: me with my curtailed life, or he with his lack of figurative imagination. After a few moments I decide to relinquish the question; it gets me nowhere. I wonder if the watercolor looks as hideous to him as it does to me, or if he's never noticed it. As I cannot turn away from the picture, I order my mother to cover it with a sheet.

I am split open like an orange, and there is a seam running down my abdomen. They have removed the criminal part of my colon where the cancer dwelt, and left the innocent part. He tells me chemotherapy could stretch my life out a year or two, if I would consider it. His eyes, cast down, say I owe it to my daughter.

Different doctors come each day to visit me and to inspect my wound, or as they call it, my incision. They are kind and brisk.

I feel as if my body is a kind of territory that does not entirely belong to me. They are visiting it. For now, it is their concern. But they had nothing to do with this body until now.

In fact, even I did not bring it about; I just walked into it. I did my best with it. Now it is like a broken toy.

I live in dread thinking what they must say about my body. And, of course, about me, since the surgeon has made a prognosis. Not in these words, but in elliptical terms my death has been predicted, like an appointment. There are not too many people who get this kind of specificity; it is a fact we often lament that this aspect of life -- it's unavoidable ending -- is so opaque. So in this way I might consider myself lucky.

The thought does not occur to me right away. At first I have a sense of being robbed of something, some kind of innocence or obliviousness. Now death is in my thoughts almost constantly, even as they tell me how well my incision is healing -- as if I have won a spelling contest.

How do they do it? How do they remain so businesslike and full of cheer in this room, and down the hall? We are pinned down to the beds and happy to see them when they come.

At least I am. They seem confident, almost bursting with competence. Their names are sewn so nicely on their jackets. I lie in bed and imagine myself standing upright and wearing clothes. I will not be here forever. There will be a brief time during which I may walk around like any other human being, disguised as it were, and ready for business. At some point I will start to fail. Eventually it will be impossible to hide the fact that I am on my way out. I can't picture how it will happen, whether my body will become diminished or distorted, or simply cease to work, but they seem to be sure of it.

I wish we could all be wearing the same coat, the coat of a human being. How do I tell them?

Even now, the sight of a white coat with embroidery fills me with dread. I can't count the days I have been out. I keep thinking one of them will find me and return me to the place I was. I keep thinking I have no permission to live.

Published: December 7, 2006