Wit

Vivian tells the audience that most dramas would only show the highlights of a story, or as she puts it, the “most interesting aspects” of her illness (34). But Vivian wants viewers to understand her daily experience, too, which is mostly waiting. She says time drags on, despite being scarce, and warns the audience that if she were “writing this scene, it would last a full fifteen minutes. I would lie here, and you would sit there” to fully capture the tediousness of her treatment (35).

But the scene changes anyway, and now Vivian finds herself in the middle of “Grand Rounds,” which is when Dr. Kelekian and Jason bring in medical students to review her case. After a quick, “How are you feeling today,” Jason lifts Vivian’s gown to expose her abdomen (35). There she lays on full display as the doctors discuss her case among themselves. Jason uses clinical terms to outline Vivian’s cancer, its locations, and her treatment, and some students even reach over to poke at Vivian’s abdomen. As Jason speaks over her, Vivian tells the audience that the students read her “like a book,” and she remarks that while she once “did the teaching, now I am taught” (37).

Jason concludes his overview and Kelekian takes over, asking the students questions about Vivian’s medication, its side effects, and treatment. Jason interrupts repeatedly to answer Kelekian and correct his fellow students, who miss one key side effect of Vivian’s treatment: her hair loss. Kelekian and Vivian have a moment where they bond over the incompetence of students before they move to the next patient. Kelekian reminds Jason about his bedside manner, and he turns to thank Vivian as an afterthought. Vivian tells the audience that the Grand Rounds’ “scrutinyseems to me to be a nefarious business,” but she does not believe ignorance is a satisfactory alternative (40). Instead, she looks up terms the doctors’ mention in order to learn the truth of her condition. 

After the Grand Round, Vivian finds herself reminiscing about “the very hour of the very day” when she knew “words would be [her] life’s work” (41). The scene rapidly changes, and Vivian—now a five-year-old child—sits at the feet of her father, who is reading a newspaper. She picks up the book The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, but as she begins reading, she stumbles over a word she does not know. Her father, never looking up from his newspaper, encourages Vivian to sound it out; the word is “soporific,” and her father explains it means “causing sleep” (42). He then asks her to use it in a sentence, and Vivian—thrilled with her new linguistic discovery—proclaims that the floppy bunnies are soporific because they ate too much lettuce. As the vignette ends, Vivian, once again an adult, explains how learning the word “soporific” sparked in her a deep, insatiable love for language. “The illustration,” she explains, “bore out the meaning of the word […] it seemed like magic” (43). Now that she is sick, Vivian uses her love of language to understand her medical condition, explaining that her “only defense is the acquisition of new vocabulary” (44).

Susie enters the scene, signaling the shift to a new moment in Vivian’s life. Vivian has become terribly ill—she is weak, feverish, and shaking. She tells Susie that she took a cab to the emergency room once the symptoms started, and Susie reassures Vivian that she did the right thing. Susie settles Vivian in a chair and comforts her before going to get Jason, who is on rounds. Susie gives Jason Vivian’s vitals, and Jason diagnoses Vivian with “fever and neutropenia” (45). He orders tests and prescribes fever-reducing medicine before leaving. Susie stops him before he can walk off and tells him he needs to discuss lowering Vivian’s chemotherapy dose with Kelekian. Jason refuses, insisting that Vivian “can take it” (45).

Vivian is transferred to isolation to protect her compromised immune system from additional infection. Jason reappears to check her status, clearly inconvenienced by the extra work caused by her isolation. He has now adopted a new refrain; in addition to asking Vivian how she feels each time he sees her, he now tells her to “keep pushing fluids” (47). Once Jason leaves, Vivian tells the audience that she is not in isolation because of her cancer, but because the treatment “imperils” her health (47). That, she explains, is a paradox worthy of Donne himself: the very drugs that are supposed to be saving her life might be killing her.