Last Wish

H

  A Seemly Sex Story

  by

  BobbyB.

  This story, like all Seemly Sex Stories, is pure fiction, an imaginary concoction of the seemly but mischievous mind of BobbyB. Any resemblance to any actual person or situation is completely coincidental.

  Copyright 2017 seemlybobbyb

  Last Wish

  Carl stepped up to the oncology nurses' station apprehensively. He had little doubt about what he was about to hear. He'd treated too many patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer to have any uncertainty about his own condition. For only the second time in his life he wanted his reputed diagnostic insight to fail. For the second time he felt the dreadful anxiety he had felt a quarter century before when he had pinpointed his beloved wife Simone's ovarian cancer from a pattern of vague symptoms.

  "Good morning, Dr. Frieder!" the nurse greeted him. "It's good to see you again. We all miss you since your retirement."

  "Good morning" he answered.

  "Dr. Goodkin is with a patient. He asked me to have you wait in his office while I go get him." She opened the door for him and he stepped inside. "I'll get Dr. Goodkin" she said as she closed the door.

  Ralph Goodkin's office is a mirror image of the office Carl for years had himself occupied on the opposite side of the nurses' station, the office he had passed on to the clinic's young new oncologist when three years before, at age seventy, he had retired. He knew this office as well as he had known his own, and the familiarity of the surroundings brought a flood of memories. Dr. Ralph Goodkin is a couple decades Carl's junior and had long been one of his most respected colleagues. One of Goodkin's first patients at the clinic had been Simone, and a bit more than a decade later Carl had cared for Ralph and Mary Jane's son when a tragic and rare lymphoma had taken his life one year before he had completed his university premed training as the first step toward following in his father's career footsteps. Carl had barely begun to remember these events when the door opened and Ralph stepped in.

  "Hi, Carl" Ralph said, and he offered his hand. The offer was a dead giveaway. Carl and Ralph had worked on opposite sides of the oncology nurses' station for years, and they had seen each other for Carl's workup only a couple days earlier. It was as unusual for these two old colleagues to shake hands on meeting that morning as it would be for a pair of brothers to get out of bed in the morning and shake hands. Ralph wasn't saying hello. He was reaching out in sympathy to his friend.

  "Looks like my metastatic pancreatic cancer hunch was right" Carl guessed from the offered handshake.

  "Yeah, shit!" Ralph answered. "The scan showed it has spread. Why couldn't your clinical impression have been wrong at least this once."

  This was the worst part of being an oncologist, the conveying of a fatal diagnosis. Each of these men had had to perform this sad duty all too many times. The experience, one might have thought, would have prepared them to handle their present situation. But it hadn't. Ralph sat on the corner of his desk staring down at the floor, and Carl sat on the chair in front of the desk looking through his old colleague, his eyes focused on nothing at all. Ralph finally spoke.

  "Do you want to try to fight this thing, Carl?"

  "No, Ralph. I keep up with the literature, and I accept its conclusions. There's nothing effective to offer. There isn't even any promising clinical trial I have any hope for. At my age and with no family there's no reason for me to make a heroic struggle against impossible odds. I think palliative care is best."

  "Do you have anyone to help you at that retirement community you moved to?" Ralph asked.

  "Yes I do, as a matter of fact. They have a well developed and well staffed program for transferring residents to assisted living and then full care as the need develops. And when patients are terminal they have a close arrangement with The Lutheran Brotherhood's Hospice, the same one, in fact, you and Mary Jane had for Ralph Junior. So with you directing things I'm sure I'll receive the best possible care."

  The reference to his son's death started Ralph's own remembering.

  "We've been through an awful lot together, Carl, haven't we?"

  "We sure have. Each of us has had a tragic loss to the disease we have spent a lifetime fighting. You with your son, and me with Simone. But except for her death, I've had a good life. Medicine has come a long way since I started in this specialty. Back then we often had little to offer. Now things are much better. Not for pancreatic or ovarian cancers yet, but that will come."

  "You know" Ralph began in a reflective tone, "Mary Jane and I always wondered why you never remarried after Simone's death. You were relatively young, and as Mary Jane says, there are all too many widows anyone of whom would have been overjoyed to have been your wife."

  "Well, there were several reasons, Ralph. Probably the most important one was the depth of my attachment to Simone. What's the modern cliché? ... Oh yeah, 'Joined at the hip.' That's what we were. I just could never have felt comfortable with any other woman in Simone's place. And then there was my work. It was able to pretty completely occupy me, to keep me from being too lonely."

  "That much was clear to everyone! You kept so busy you didn't realize how hard you were working everyone else. I was afraid a couple times we'd loose excellent nurses, you were working them so hard."

  "I didn't know that. You should have told me."

  "I would have if it had ever come to that point, but fortunately it didn't. Everyone has to handle his grief in the best way he can, and work was your way. So as long as the nursing staff was able to bear up, I was willing to go along. They knew perfectly well what you were going through. So Christian charity led them to tolerate the workload until you worked your way out of the doldrums."

  "I've always thought we had the best nurses in the business. Now I have another reason for my opinion.'

  "So no other woman ever attracted you?"

  "I never really gave any other woman a chance to attract me. I don't know why. It wasn't anything Simone had ever said. But somehow I felt she would have felt she was loosing me if I ever remarried. That's a stupid thing for a person of my religious beliefs to feel. As you know, neither Simone nor I ever believed in an afterlife. Yet, somehow I had the feeling she'd know and would feel deserted if I ever took up with another woman."

  They both sat for a moment pondering the implications of Carl's remark. Ralph Goodkin and his wife Mary Jane are completely convinced Christians. They have no doubts whatsoever about the existence of an afterlife. Had either of them been in the situation Carl had been in after Simone's death, then a concern for the feelings of the departed mate would have been reasonable. After all, each would have been certain the mate continued a spiritual existence and could therefore be aware of a remarriage. For either of the Goodkins this consideration would have been relevant to a surviving spouse contemplating remarriage. But as he himself admitted, for a nonbeliever like Carl such concerns didn't make any sense.

  Finally Carl interrupted their reflections.

  "It's a strange coincidence for you to bring up this topic, Ralph. As you know, I was pretty sure what my CAT scan would show, so I've been contemplating what I might do with the little bit of life I have remaining. And my thoughts keep coming back to women."

  "You mean you're thinking of remarriage? Now? After decades of single life?"

  Ralph's question didn't conceal his considerable surprise. But he was too kind to add something they both knew perfectly well. With a diagnosis of metastatic pancreatic cancer, Carl probably had less than a year's life remaining. It was hardly a time to be contemplating marriage.

  "Well, no. Remarriage isn't what I've been thinking about. Sex is. It's ridiculous, perhaps even psychologically pathological, but since I
decided I have a terminal condition I've been as horny as a teenage boy. What I really want to do with what's left of my life is have a passionate, honeymoon-like, love affair with some attractive young woman. I guess I've finally become a dirty old man."

  "All of that may not be as strange as you think. I've had a couple patients who reported the exact same thing."

  "So have I" Carl agreed. "You know, Simone was an avid gardener, and she used to say some plants bloom like mad just before dying. She claimed it is a biological response to help assure the species' propagation. I never knew whether she based this opinion on any sound botanical knowledge, or if it was only her impression. But she believed it."

  "Well, I'm afraid I don't know of any program able to help you. But let me know if you discover anything. Who knows? You may be on to a new kind of therapy!"

  Ralph said this with a slightly lascivious laugh, a laugh Carl joined. It was good to break the gloom of the occasion with a laugh, even if it was a bit off color.

  Just then the nurse knocked at the door. Ralph stepped over and opened it.

  "X-Ray called, Dr. Goodkin. Your patient is finished down there and will be back up here as soon as she's finished dressing. I'll put her in the north examination room when she arrives."

  "Thanks!" Goodkin acknowledged the nurse's information. "Tell her I'll