Chapter 2

Ruby: i love you :)

Clark: you do?

ruby: yes more den anythin

Clark: I see

well, I’d say we have a problem because I

love you

your love might clash with my love, resulting into

a shitstorm of unicorns, babies, puppy dogs, and

couples ice skating

it could get ugly

ruby: hahahahahahahhaha

and tandem bikes

I remember the pharmaceutical names of his medications—amitryptyline, Zoloft, methadone. It’s only thanks to my archive of our Gchat conversations—me from my work computer, he from our apartment’s couch or his hospital bed—that I remember that we called gabapentin his “Guptas.” They were brown, like the skin of Dr. Gupta, his kidney specialist. The Dilaudid pills he took for breakthrough pain were “hydros,” a nickname for the drug listed on the label, hydromorphone hydrochloride. He’d imitate a surfer when asking for them.

Clark: man, my left leg is useless

I really hope this chemo helps

I can barely use it anymore

ruby: i know

it will work.

Clark: figure I’ll notice there first

ruby: you never know

Clark: when are you leaving?

can I get a nap in?

ruby: yes!

see you in like 45 minutes snoopy

Clark: cause i can’t seem to think of when I can get a nap in BEFORE practice cause when you get home I just want to hang with you

ruby: yes, take a nap!

Clark: k i love you

ruby: i will get gatorades and ensures. and be right home. love you.

Clark: LOVE YOU!

It was winter 2008 and Clark was taking part in a trial, his second, at the National Institutes of Health. It involved a drug called high-dose IL-2, which stimulates white blood cells to grow and divide in an attempt to overtake the cancer. The treatment has

a slim chance of success but it’s one of the only regimens approved specifically for melanoma by the FDA. Patients are typically bedridden with dizzying flulike symptoms and are uncharacteristically irritable or moody. Clark was no exception.

He had a high fever and soiled the bed again and again during his second IL-2 treatment. One time, after I held up his body so that the nurse could change the sheets, he shit as soon as I placed him down. During this stint at the hospital, the fourth dose of drug sent him mentally over the edge. He screamed at me and called me a bitch. I left the hospital in tears.

It was the only time during his illness that I elected not to sleep next to him. When I arrived at my friend Alyson’s, I had a text message from him that said, “You left me, so I’m leaving you.” Two hours later, he called me sobbing, apologizing. He barely remembered specifics the next day, but I still get a lump in my throat when I think about it. We had this conversation three days after we returned home:

Clark: you make me so happy

everyday is wonderful with you

ruby: really?

Clark: no

ruby: you promise?

Clark: not really

I’m just playing with your emotions

ruby: :(

Clark: YES REALLY

stupid pants

In December 2008, Clark called my mother to apologize for the fact that I wasn’t going to be home to spend Christmas Day with them. I know it’s not uncommon for people my age to be away from their families during the holidays, but my mother, brother, sister, and I had never spent a Christmas apart. Clark and I opened presents at his mother’s house that year. My mom told him not to worry. “There’ll be plenty of other Christmases,” she said.

“Come on, Mom,” he said.

She told me this after he was gone, and it haunts me. Did he always know he was going to die, or did he think there was a chance? Did he believe me when I told him stories of the people whose tumors had shrunk to nothing, seemingly by magic? It was easier for me to play cheerleader; I wasn’t the one shitting the bed and gritting my teeth through the pain.

Clark: babies, did they say the next treatment is rough? like IL-2?

Me: the one they want to do to you?

Clark: yes

ruby: i don’t think anything compares to IL2.

but i think it is semi rough. i think it’s less puking, pooping, ill feeling and more weak, tired. however, IL2 has a really low success rate, the other treatment has a high one.

i was reading testimonies of people who have been cured by the treatment, this was a few months ago, and the one guy wrote that absolutely nothing compares to IL2.

honey?

Clark: i can’t stop crying

its hard to read the computer

i’m so happy

ruby: yes baby

Clark: :-D

we are going to do it baby

ruby: i’m so happy too

i know we are

Chemotherapy was our last-ditch effort to beat back the cancer. There was the tiniest chance that it would work. If all went according to plan, the chemo would shrink his tumors to manageable levels, and we’d return to the NIH to participate in a different clinical trial, the one with the best success rate.

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