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Show CHRYSALIS PAGE 4 Wednesday. Mark has taped a message to the telephone, marked URGENT. The doctor wants me to call back immediately, which I do. I talk to the nurse. She says nothing except that Doctor Sontag wants to see me. She will not tell me why. Secret messages make me nervous. I swallow a yellow pill before I go. Doctor Sontag seems surprised to see me. "Oh, Jody," he says, looking somewhat shocked. "It's you. Somehow I didn't connect this with you." Connect what with me? "Sit down." He ushers me to a swivel rocking chair in his office, and he sits across from me. "I have some bad news," he begins. He tells me that I have cancer - malignant melanoma, a particularly rapid and virulent, deadly form of cancer - in the mole he removed from my shoulder. I don't cry. I don't even blink. They want to operate soon, tomorrow or the next day. He wants to remove part of my arm, to make a "wide re-excision." He speaks of deranged cells, lymphatics, metastasis, of skin grafts from my thigh. He says, "Pathology indicates the melanoma cells are in an invasive state," looking at his hands as he speaks, and not at me. He shows me the medical report of the pathologist's diagnosis. But I'm too young, I remind myself in protest. I have just |