"The doctor finally returned with a handful of X-ray negatives, and before he could speak Moira reached over and grabbed her husband's hand."

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" F E A R "

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      Moira Bishop returned immediately on an overnight flight from India after the pain became so bad she could not sleep. Not trusting the Indian health care system and wanting to be close to her family, she met her husband at the airport and he drove her straight to the local emergency room. They administered pain medication, took X-rays, and left her waiting in a small white antiseptic examining room for over three hours. The doctor finally returned with a handful of X-ray negatives, and before he could speak Moira reached over and grabbed her husband's hand.

      It appeared there was a "suspicious mass of tissue" the size of a softball in Moira's right lung. It was pushing against the muscles of the back and causing the pain, where Moira had for weeks previously thought she had just pulled a muscle underneath her shoulder blade. Stunned, Moira and her husband listened to the doctor speak about tests, possibilities, and surgeries in complete silence. Since she had been in India, she was moved to a special quarantine hospital room for those who might have contagious pulmonary diseases. With a disinfecting chamber and room well removed from the other patients, Moira felt isolated and afraid. Over the next three days as the test results came back like so many ill omens presaging fates bad to worse, Moira cried, called friends and family on the telephone, commiserated with her husband, prayed - all in the almost absolute silence of this room for persons who might or might not have infectious tuberculosis.

      They discharged her four days later; for she had non-operable, terminal lung cancer, and there was nothing they could do for her. As her son wheeled her out of the hospital, Moira had cried as much as she could for the present. She asked for a piece of gum and calmly chewed it while waiting for her husband to pull the car up to the front of the hospital so they could go home. She sat next to the curb in the wheelchair surrounded by the evening darkness while staring straight ahead without thinking a single thought, desiring simply in her exhaustion to sleep in her own bed for a change with her beloved rose bush just outside her bedroom window.