You are an 78 year-old retiree with a passion for golf.
You are a 72 year-old doctor working at Walden Houses.
You are a 49 year-old engineer.
You are a 35 year-old social worker.

You enjoy walks with your dog,
the dog might not as much
because you don’t walk nearly as quickly as you used to.

You’ve been working for decades,
seeing patient after patient after patient.
The days are long, but manageable enough.
Retirement, though you’ve been pushing it off,
will come soon.

You earn big bucks at IBM,
going to conferences, and the like.
You’ve got the wife, the kids, the house.
Things are working out for you.

You work hard,
nurturing the community at work
and nurturing the baby at home.
But you’re content, you’re doing what you love to do.

I watch you all,
from the corner of the exam room.
I wish I didn’t have to,
that I might be able to see you at
the mall
the movies
anywhere else but here.
Some place happier.

You sit on the crinkly paper laid out on the exam table.
It’s a warm day; you take off your jacket.
Eyes wandering, you seek anything,
everything,
to take your mind off of that dreaded question plaguing your mind.

How much time do I have left, Doc?

You are polite,
though anxious,
You don’t want to bother the doctor,
you feel you’ve asked too much of him,
So you stare at me, the shadowing student, a while.

Sometimes I look away,
and other times I stare right back.
I smile at you
and sometimes you smile back.

I can’t help being surprised.
Your face radiates warmth,
your physique exudes strength,
as if there were nothing wrong with you at all.

But your eyes,
your eyes speak a different story.
They are grave,
but not quite downcast,
not gloomy or brooding,
and speak of endless determination.
I will never forget them.
I can never forget them.

I think of you often while researching in the lab.
While looking through the microscope,
I can’t help grimacing from time to time,
realizing that those despicably beautiful cancer cells
swimming around in my cell plate
are wreaking havoc in your body.

As I look into your eyes, sometimes I fancy I see those cells swimming around.
Then I notice that glint in your eyes,
that sharp fighting spirit
that sends the cells packing.

I only wish that could really happen.

You are Stage IV patients.
The cells are everywhere,
having spread from your lung
to your
liver
brain
stomach
and who knows where else.

Yet you do not despair,
which almost prompts me to ask you if you are going mad.
How do you do it?

How do you continue to play golf,
beating your healthy friends,
while all the while on chemo?

How do you continue to see patients,
when you yourself have been a cancer patient
for 6 years?

How do you manage to continue working full-time through chemo,
looking so healthy that your very own children have no clue that you’ve been diagnosed?

How do you continue to hope
when you are so young
and yet close to Death’s door?

You, all of you,
are my inspiration.
You are why I continue to research cancer,
even when bacteria repeatedly confound my results.
Even when there seems to be
no possible breakthrough.
You are why I hope to become an oncologist one day,
even though I’d be in school for another 13 years at the least.

I hope to help you in your fight for life,
and I’d give anything for you to
reign victorious over cancer.
It pains me to say that all I can offer you now is a smile,
but one day,
mark my words,
one day,
I’ll be able to give you my all.