20 QUESTIONS

I run into Tom Rajput in the McCormick Partners employee kitchen (at work).

McCormick is on the 17th floor of a 1930's office building on 29th and Madison. The office has just been redone. It's airy and blandly modern with acres of desks and phones, way more than needed.

A year ago, Tom announced at the Christmas Party that he had six month to live.
Pancreatic Cancer. Turns out he was misdiagnosed but they (his team) still don't seem so hopeful for him. He tells me.

Tom is tall and Indian, with big brown eyes and a painted on smile. I'm not really a friend, but I've know Tom from the last time I worked at McCormick, eight years ago.

This past office Christmas party, I cornered him at the bar and told him I TOO was having issues. (At this point I didn't know what my issues were) We talked, but I think he was more interested in the blond that was standing near us.

Today we spoke again.

"Hey, Charlie, have you had any progress with your diagnosis? " he asks routinely.

"Well, (I say) it's just the worst thing you can imagine."

(I feel like I have to confess to people or I'll have no understanding of what is happening to me)

"MS?" he asks, looking for paper cups.

"no" I say, (remembering my sister saying - oh, if only by brother had a simple case of MS)

"no", I say, " I mean its terrible, just TERRIBLE." making him guess like we're playing an obscene game of 20 questions.
I may have even been smiling.

(Long pause)

"Lou Gerig's disease?????????????????"

I nod.

Tom looks stunned. His saucer eyes stay fixed in the distance and he doesn't move like he’s picturing telling this very story of our conversation to his family and friends or therapist and he's saying,

"And I thought I had it bad, but THIS guy! This guy is just standing there in the kitchen at this loser job, and he's telling me he's got Lou Gherig'!!!s"

If his expression wasn't that, it was the perverse joy of finding out that someone is far worse off than you are.

(Even in disease and death, there is a wrangling for who is in the better spot.)

I tell him "I don't have a diagnosis yet". (Trying to win back some of what I've lost)

"Let's just hope you don't have THAT " he concedes.

"I'm not really sure what I'm going to do". (I toss in)

And he smiles "I don't know WHAT I would do"!

And I'm thinking, YOU don't know? Weren't you given six months to live? I mean how far off am I from THAT?

Tom Rajput sighs and laughs (at the same time) at the monstrous complications of it all,
like we've been talking about the IRS and ten years of back taxes.

He makes his exit, unsteady and ghostlike (the man IS ill)

Left alone, I say to no-one in particular,

" I feel like I'm talking about someone else, like it's happening to somebody else."

and go back to my cubicle.