I visited Luminita on the morning of the surgery. Her sister had flown in from San Francisco to be with her. The sister was a tall woman of the same build, but dark with brown hair and eyes. I studied them both carefully. So this was what Luminita was supposed to look like, sans the pigmentation defect. The sister complained to me about the lack of care and attention the nurses gave. I was happy when she left the room.
“Are you two close?” I asked.
Luminita nodded. A nurse had shaved the girl’s head. Without her hair, she looked like a ghost.
I handed her a small bag full of Myra’s licorice men. “I brought you a little something for after the surgery.”
She took it from me slowly. “Are you allowed to give me this?”
I pulled up a chair and sat beside her. “It’s just candy. I’m not a big fan of licorice myself, but sometimes I find myself eating it on my nerves. You can have it when you go home.”
Luminita peered inside and smiled. “Thanks. I have something to show you too.”
She revealed her own brown paper bag and withdrew from it a handful of white strands. “My hair,” she said. “It’s my hair.”
She was crying. Quietly though, with her lips pressed together tight. I wanted to lick the tears that gathered at the corners of her mouth.
“I didn’t know that they give you your hair back,” she said. “The nurse said they do it because it’s still considered your personal property.”
“You have beautiful hair,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get like this.”
I took her hand, began stroking the underside of her wrist with my thumb. Touching her, I felt electricity travel from the warmth of her flesh, and travel deep into my veins. “You’ll be fine. You just have to take it one day at a time. Right now you have to get through this surgery.”
She rubbed her eyes with her free hand. “My parents decided it would be more sensible if they saw me after the surgery.”
“More sensible?”
Luminita shrugged. “It doesn’t surprise me. They’ve never agreed with my life. They probably think the cancer is some kind of decision I made.”
I gently released her hand and stroked the length of her arm instead. “I’m sure you are very much in their thoughts and prayers.” Luminita looked me full in the face and smiled. “You’re a good man, Doc.” She withdrew her arms and folded them across her chest. “What is your wife’s name?”
The surgery began with an incision to the scalp, followed by a removal of bone flap and the opening of membrane to expose the brain. Then they lifted the girl slowly out of anesthesia.
The noise in the operating room cleared momentarily when I called her name. “Luminita. Wake up, Luminita.”
She opened her eyes, and looked up at me with sleepy innocence. In the head clamp, her face was the same face that haunted me. She stared at my mask and gloves, then nervously at the other surgeons in the room, until it registered with her that she was in the presence of her own operation.
“Can you hear me?” I asked.
“Yes.” Her lips moved slightly; her voice sounded distant and strange.
I was afraid for Luminita, at any moment, she could begin talking backwards or go into a seizure right there on the operating table. It had happened before to several patients, some to the extent where the surgeons had to put back pieces of brain matter they had already removed.
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