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know how young she was, relatively. “I’m turning forty this year.” Too young for breast cancer. She wanted him to care so that he would do a good job. Her breasts and
her life were at stake. “My mother had cancer at forty-nine. She survived. How old are you, Doctor?”
    “How’s your mother?”
    “She’s okay. Occasionally she gets bad infections from not having enough lymph nodes. But she’s okay.”
    “I’m forty-six,” he said. “I’ll tell you what.” Pollack looked down on her as she was once again lying on the table, shirtless, against the wall. “I won’t charge you for the cysts. That’ll save you about five hundred dollars, although later you’ll have to pay three hundred each for the lab. But that’s one payment you can put off. I do have to charge you for the biopsy.”
    “Thank you, Doctor.” Eva was ashamed of feeling relieved at having to successfully bargain her health care. “That will make a big difference. It really will.”
    Losing her job had already taught Eva the essential life lesson that there is a difference between overwhelming debt and even larger overwhelming debt. They all have to be dealt with, but the larger ones take longer.
    “Okay.” He was excited, happy. “Let’s aspirate those cysts before my supervisor comes in and charges you. Alicia, iodine.”
    Alicia the Silent handed him a dripping Q-tip.
    “Okay, here we go.” He tapped the iodine twice onto Eva’s left breast, the one against the wall. “Kootchie-koo.”
    Oh God .
    “Look at the screen,” Dr. Pollack said. “You can see everything. Alicia, needle! These sonograms are amazing. Mammograms show nothing with large cystic breasts like yours. Okay. Here comes a little prick.”
    “Oh God,” she said.

    “Look, you can see it on the screen. Open your eyes. Eva? Eva? Look.”
    She opened her eyes.
    “There’s the cyst and there’s the needle. There it goes. Watch, watch. I’m right inside you. Perfect entry. Look at all that fluid. The cyst is getting smaller. I’m really sucking you out.”
    Help , she thought. And shut her eyes.
    “Amazing. Okay, now out comes the needle. There you go, Eva. Open your eyes. One more time. Okay, here comes a little prick.”
    Eva was wildly calculating. First of all, she might have cancer like her mother. Otherwise why would they do a biopsy? Second, if she got up and walked out right then, she would still have to pay the fifteen hundred dollars, and the next place she went to would make her pay it all over again. Plus, she would also have to pay the extra five hundred for the cyst aspirations that Dr. Pollack was giving her for free. And as pathetic as it in fact was, she really did not have another sixteen hundred dollars in credit to cover another round. This is the reality of how decisions get made. Even if the insurance company did cover some of these expenses, it would only be in drips and drabs that would take months of phone calls to get a hold of. That was the deal. Five hundred dollars and Pollack got to do his little routine. She just couldn’t afford to leave. It would all be over soon.
     
    Once, more than ten years before, Eva’s mother, Nathalie, had been in the hospital with a bad infection resulting from her loss of lymph nodes. She’d burned her arm cooking, and the infection spread quickly through all the places where the breast and lymphatic cancer surgeries had removed essential tissue. There was nothing
there to hold the poison back. Eva, avoiding her sister Ethel and other disapproving relatives, made sure to get to the hospital room when no one else was in the vicinity. It was eerie and smelled of Lysol. Her mother lay on the bed, exhausted. Eva sat on the radiator and watched her sleep. Then, after some time, she watched her come back to life.
    “Hi, Mom, it’s me, Eva.”
    “I’m dying,” Nathalie said.
    It was so strange. There had been times in her life when Nathalie was hysterically mean, but she was never fatalistic.