—1—

The voice from the overhead speaker is kind and direct. I’m on my back, on a sheet, on a narrow metal table, arms up and grasping onto metal handles above my head. Alone in a room, giant machinery whirring, smoothly, around me in an arc.

It’s my forty-fourth birthday, my fifth day of radiation, and I’m trying to figure out where I’d put a camera. Not that I need a camera, but this experience — surreal and very real at the same time — has so much going on visually, that trying to figure out how anyone would somehow capture any part of how this feels, or just how it looks is a real puzzle.

And that’s as good a distraction as any. At least as much as the overheard speaker playing, in an unintentionally hilarious twist, I’ve Had the Time of My Life.

I see the reflection, in the large rotating pane of glass, of the blacklight-toned laser lines that locate my body within the space. I see a growing and shrinking pixelated field of yellow below my ribs, and a red orb across the lower part of my sternum as I breathe in and out. A glowing sun next to a shifting mountain.

In the giant mirror-eye above me, with its opening and closing aperture, I see a reflection of what the technician calls “the material,” a lightweight curtain of tiny brass plates that frankly look like the texture of every fancy 70s thrift store purse I own. Disco, but make it medical.

And then, for contrast, there’s the white duct tape fastening that in place, a pillowcase and a washcloth shoring up its position. Add in a few sharpie marks on my skin. Where within this could an observer, and another machine, insert itself at an angle to capture any of it?

—2—

Each day I ride downtown, mask up, and tell security I’m headed to the basement. Each day I notice something a little bit different, even if the days start to bleed into each other. A few, I make field recordings on my phone. A few I feel barely awake. Most days I hope that lockers 11, 12, or 13 are available — they’re the closest to the changing room — and my brain automatically kicks into “got a tattooed tit, say number thirteen,” which is kinda hilarious to me now. Yes, I just have one tit, but it’s the area where lefty once was that’s got the little ink dots. I think about my friend Miles and how when I first met her she showed me her number 13, then her Julie Doiron tattoo. Outside the Pirate House bonding over dumb shit. The start of a 20+ year friendship.

—3—

I’m back on the table. Being scanned, looked at, examined, adjusted, and then, well… beamed? Waves are sent at me, towards me, into me. Do the beams count as light? Is it light entering me? There’s really nothing about the radiation I can see, which makes analogies or visualizations difficult.

I stare into the weird video-game goggles and think about that EMA/The Future’s Void cover in the zine I made during my first go-round with this stuff seven years ago. I think about how I should’ve laid out that spread better, the adjacent diagram getting split more and more with each successive copy-and-staple. I think about the space between the pages and the slight pull of a scar, the attempt to join things together. I think about replication, how in libraries and archives sometimes we talk about replication supporting preservation, that the more copies there are of something, the more likely it is a copy will remain. I think about bout how that’s good for zines and ephemera, and bad in terms of cancer cells.

I think about how my tiny tattoos serve as registration marks for aiming the radiation each time. They’ve added a new one on my clavicle, a crude tiny dot. Each time they set up, I hear them say “96.5, sub-clav.” Honestly? I’d rather just have something that’s straight-up CMYK or a some random ill-advised kitchen table stick-n-poke.

Compared to seven years ago, the scene this time is much more sci-fi, the goggles narrower, and my field of vision goes far beyond the pong-ish goggle display that monitors my breathing. According to this video, I’m supposed to be using these “augmented reality glasses” to look at something in a museum, train on a Pelaton, or pilot some dumb drone. But the use of this headset today is both far more basic looking, and far more critical to my goal to keep on livin‘.

Here’s how it goes:

You breathe in, and as you do, an orange line moves up and down. Your goal is to get the orange line into the green box, then hold your breath for as long as you possibly can. Twenty seconds, thirty, more. Keep as still as possible, make deals with yourself. Learn how to keep holding when you think you can’t any longer.

During the first pass, they’re taking a 3D image. During the subsequent times that the giant panels slowly revolve around you, you can take a few little breaks. When you allow your breath to move the line out of the green square, the giant parts of the machine surrounding you pause, until you breathe in again. You’re directing and controlling this giant thing that entirely surrounds you. You feel tiny. And kinda powerful.

—4—

The zap sessions themselves are short. Years ago at U of M, I had a radiation tech who — noticing the Guns & Roses winter hat I rocked in place of hair — queued up November Rain. Those nine minutes lined up just about perfectly. Bless that dude for making me laugh/feel seen during an exhausting and isolating time.

It’s the getting to and from the hospital downtown, the waiting. That stuff means that each M-F for the last six weeks I’ve needed 3-4 hours for this daily task. One day there are four of us in the waiting room and according to the “on deck” screen, three of us are named Maria(h). All different ages, backgrounds. I learned that the kind woman at the front desk has a daughter named Mariah. I hope she never has to do any of this. If she does, I hope there’s someone as kind as her ma working the front desk each day.

—5—

It’s done. Suddenly, it’s the last day. One day earlier than I was expecting, but none too soon. The last few weeks I’ve been getting dizzy if I stand up quickly, sleeping a ridiculous amount, and feeling clumsy and distracted.

I try to show up the best I can, as a friend, as a person, but I feel really dumb and really drained. I’m supposed to go out for ice cream to celebrate, but instead fall asleep at 7:30pm. This isn’t the version of myself I want to be. It’s been a long six weeks, the last big chapter in a long eight months of treatment.

But this is it. After this, I’ll have checkups, and some additional things to prevent recurrence, but overall?

I’m free. I’m done. It’s time to get to resting, and healing, and making things, and loving all my favorite people better, and being in the world the ways that I want to be.

I exhale.