“
Mr Freeman: "Art without emotion is like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag." He sticks his finger down his throat. "The next time you work on your trees, don't think about trees. Think about love, or hate, or joy, or pain- whatever makes you feel something, makes your palms sweat, or your toes curl. Focus on that feeling.
When people don't express themselves, they die on piece at a time. You'd be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside- walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a mack truck to come along and finish the job. It's the saddest thing I know.
”
”
Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)
“
Tragedy seems to bring out all varieties of unexpected qualities in people. It was as if some folks got dunked in plastic, vacuum-sealed like backpacking dinners, and could do nothing but sweat in their private hell. And others seemed to have just the opposite problem, as if disaster had dipped them in acid instead, stripping off the outside layer of skin that once protected them from the slings and arrows of other people’s outrageous fortunes. For these sorts, just walking down the street in the wake of every stranger’s ill wind became an agony, an aching slog through this man’s fresh divorce and this woman’s throat cancer. They were in hell, too, but it was everybody’s hell, this big, shoreless, sloshing sea of toxic waste.
”
”
Lionel Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin)
“
You had a fucking friend who needed you. What the hell was that, Jocelyn?"
He shook his head slowly. "Don't," he whispered hoarsely, dipping his head so our noses were almost touching. "Don't do this. Not now. Whatever shit your spinning in that head of yours, stop. She needs you, babe." He shallowed hard, his eyes glimmering in the streetlights. "I need you."
I felt that familiar choking in the bottom of my throat. "I didn't ask you to need me," I whispered back.
I saw it. The hurt flickered across his face before he quickly banked it. Abruptly, he let go of me. "Fine. I don't have time for your multitude of emotional issues. I have a wee sister who may or may not have brain cancer, and she needs me, even if you don't. But I'll tell you something Jocelyn," he stepped forward, point a finger in my face, his own hardened with anger, "If you don't see her through this, you'll hate yourself for the rest of your life. You can pretend you don't give a shit about me, but you can't pretend Ellie means nothing to you. I've seen you. Do you hear me?" He hissed, his hot breath blowing across my face, his words cutting though my soul. "You love her. You can't sweep that under the rug because it's easier to pretend she means nothing to you than it is to bear the thought of losing her. She deserves better than that.
”
”
Samantha Young (On Dublin Street (On Dublin Street, #1))
“
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways.
We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances… and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
”
”
C.S. Lewis
“
I hazarded to your mother that tragedy seems to bring out all varieties of unexpected qualities in people. I said it was as if some folks (I was thinking of Mary) got dunked in plastic, vacuum-sealed like backpacking dinners, and could do nothing but sweat in their private hell. And others seemed to have just the opposite problem, as if disaster had dipped them in acid instead, stripping off the outside layer of skin that once protected them from the slings and arrows of other people's outrageous fortunes. For these sorts, just walking down the street in the wake of every stranger's ill wind became an agony, an aching slog through the man's fresh divorce and that woman's terminal throat cancer. They were in hell, too, but it was everybody's hell, this big, shoreless, sloshing sea of toxic waste.
”
”
Lionel Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin)
“
For, indeed, this is the great horror, solitude, when the soul can no longer bathe in the ever-changing mind, laugh as its sunlit ripples lap its skin, but, shut up in the castle of a few thoughts, paces its narrow prison, wearing down the stone of time, feeding on its own excrement. There is no star in the blackness of that night, no foam upon the stagnant and putrid sea. Even the glittering health that the desert brings to the body, is like a spear in the soul's throat. The passionate ache to act, to think: this eats into the soul like a cancer. It is the scorpion striking itself in its agony, save that no poison can add to the tortue of the circling fire; no superflux of anguish relieve it by annihilation. But against these paroxisms is an eightfold sedative. The ravings of madness are lost in soundless space; the struggles of the drowning man are not heeded by the sea.
”
”
Aleister Crowley (The Soul of the Desert)
“
A valise without straps. A hole without a key. She had a German mouth, French ears, Russian ass. Cunt international. When the flag waved it was red all the way back to the throat. You entered on the Boulevard Jules-Ferry and came out at the Porte de la Villette. You dropped
your sweetbreads into the tumbrils – red tumbrils with two wheels, naturally. At the confluence of the Ourcq and Marne, where the water sluices through the dikes and lies like glass under the
bridges.
”
”
Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer (Tropic, #1))
“
This guy sounds like an alcoholic Kermit the Frog with throat cancer.
”
”
John Green (Paper Towns)
“
Yes?” Came the thin and reedy voice.
I winced as I pushed the door open. Beth sounded terrible. And when I got an eyeful of her, she looked just as bad. Sitting up against the headboard with a mountain of blankets piled around her, she had dark circles under her eyes. Her pale, waiflike features were sharp, and her hair was an unwashed, tangled mess. I tried not to breathe too deeply, because the room smelled of vomit and sweat.
I halted at the bed, shocked to my core. “Are you sick?”
Her unfocused gaze drifted away from me, landing on the door to the adjoined bathroom, it didn’t make sense. Hybrids—we couldn’t get sick. Not the common cold or the most dangerous cancer. Like the Luxen, we were immune to everything out there in terms of disease, but Beth? Yeah, she wasn’t looking too good.
A great sense of unease blossomed in my belly, stiffening my muscles. “Beth?”
Her watery stare finally drifted to me. “Is Dawson back yet?”
My heart turned over heavily, almost painfully. The two of them have been through so much, more than Daemon and I had, and this . . . God, this wasn’t fair. “No, he’s not back yet, but you? You look sick.”
She raised a slim, pale hand to her throat. “I'm not feeling very well.”
I didn’t know how bad this was, and I was almost afraid to find out. “What’s wrong?”
One shoulder rose, and it looked like it had taken great effort. “You shouldn’t be worried,” she said, her voice low as she picked at the hem of a blanket. “It’s not a big deal. I’ll be okay once Dawson comes back.” Her gaze floated off again, and as she dropped the edge of the blanket, she reached down, put her hand over her blanket-covered belly, and said, “We’ll be okay once Dawson comes back.”
“We’ll be . . . ?” I trailed off as my eyes widened. My jaw came unhinged and dropped as I gaped at her.
I stared at where her hand was and watched in dawned horror as she rubbed her belly in slow, steady circles.
Oh no. oh, hell to the no to the tenth power.
I started forward and then stopped. “Beth, are you . . . are you pregnant?
”
”
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Opposition (Lux, #5))
“
Everybody is giving birth to something - everybody but the lesbian in the upper tier. Her head is uptilted, her throat wide open; she is all alert and tingling with the shower of sparks that burst from the radium symphony. Jupiter is piercing her ears.
”
”
Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer (Tropic, #1))
“
A patient suffering with cancer of the throat was informed of a new X-ray machine that would cure his condition. This man could neither read nor write, nor was he informed about any of the instruments or procedures of medical practice. When he first sat down in the doctor's office and received into his mouth a thermometer with which the doctor sought to take his temperature, he believed he was undergoing X-ray treatment. The doctor, alert to the practices of psychology, recognized this, and after leaving the thermometer in the patient's mouth for ten minutes, excused him and told him to return in two days. Three weeks of treatment with a thermometer cured this patient's cancerous condition! Obviously, it wasn't the thermometer that did it. It was Faith!
”
”
Uell S. Andersen (Three Magic Words)
“
I spot the roof first as I climb the hill: slate gray like an angry storm cloud. Seconds later, the rest of it appears, and my breath snags in my throat. Dark stone works its way across the front of the house, broken only by the blood red door, the only relief of color in this sea of gray. Ivy covers the left side of the house, but instead of charming, it’s threatening—like a slow-moving cancer. I
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Verity)
“
As blood cholesterol levels decreased from 170 mg/dL to 90 mg/dL, cancers of the liver,II rectum,I colon,II male lung,I female lung, breast, childhood leukemia, adult leukemia,I childhood brain, adult brain,I stomach and esophagus (throat) decreased.
”
”
T. Colin Campbell (The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health)
“
But there are still plenty of people who will tell you that the most evil thing about Karl Marx was what he said about religion. He said it was the opium of the lower classes, as though he thought religion was bad for people, and he wanted to get rid of it. But when Marx said that, back in the 1840s, his use of the word “opium” wasn’t simply metaphorical. Back then real opium was the only painkiller available, for toothaches or cancer of the throat, or whatever. He himself had used it. As a sincere friend of the downtrodden, he was saying he was glad they had something which could ease their pain at least a little bit, which was religion. He liked religion for doing that, and certainly didn’t want to abolish it. OK? He might have said today as I say tonight, “Religion can be Tylenol for a lot of unhappy people, and I’m so glad it works.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Armageddon in Retrospect)
“
WHEN I DESCRIBED THE TUMOR IN MY ESOPHAGUS as a “blind, emotionless alien,” I suppose that even I couldn’t help awarding it some of the qualities of a living thing. This at least I know to be a mistake: an instance of the pathetic fallacy (angry cloud, proud mountain, presumptuous little Beaujolais) by which we ascribe animate qualities to inanimate phenomena. To exist, a cancer needs a living organism, but it cannot ever become a living organism. Its whole malice—there I go again—lies in the fact that the “best” it can do is to die with its host. Either that or its host will find the measures with which to extirpate and outlive it. But, as I knew before I became ill, there are some people for whom this explanation is unsatisfying. To them, a rodent carcinoma really is a dedicated, conscious agent—a slow–acting suicide–murderer—on a consecrated mission from heaven. You haven’t lived, if I can put it like this, until you have read contributions such as this on the websites of the faithful:
Who else feels Christopher Hitchens getting terminal throat cancer [sic] was God’s revenge for him using his voice to blaspheme him? Atheists like to ignore FACTS. They like to act like everything is a “coincidence.” Really? It’s just a “coincidence” [that] out of any part of his body, Christopher Hitchens got cancer in the one part of his body he used for blasphemy? Yeah, keep believing that, Atheists. He’s going to writhe in agony and pain and wither away to nothing and then die a horrible agonizing death, and THEN comes the real fun, when he’s sent to HELLFIRE forever to be tortured and set afire.
There are numerous passages in holy scripture and religious tradition that for centuries made this kind of gloating into a mainstream belief. Long before it concerned me particularly I had understood the obvious objections. First, which mere primate is so damn sure that he can know the mind of god? Second, would this anonymous author want his views to be read by my unoffending children, who are also being given a hard time in their way, and by the same god? Third, why not a thunderbolt for yours truly, or something similarly awe–inspiring? The vengeful deity has a sadly depleted arsenal if all he can think of is exactly the cancer that my age and former “lifestyle” would suggest that I got. Fourth, why cancer at all? Almost all men get cancer of the prostate if they live long enough: It’s an undignified thing but quite evenly distributed among saints and sinners, believers and unbelievers. If you maintain that god awards the appropriate cancers, you must also account for the numbers of infants who contract leukemia. Devout persons have died young and in pain. Betrand Russell and Voltaire, by contrast, remained spry until the end, as many psychopathic criminals and tyrants have also done. These visitations, then, seem awfully random. My so far uncancerous throat, let me rush to assure my Christian correspondent above, is not at all the only organ with which I have blasphemed. And even if my voice goes before I do, I shall continue to write polemics against religious delusions, at least until it’s hello darkness my old friend. In which case, why not cancer of the brain? As a terrified, half–aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business, though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be “me.” (Bear this in mind, in case of any later rumors or fabrications.)
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Mortality)
“
Ou my throat.” “Ruth I wish you werent taking that X-ray treatment. . . . I’ve heard it’s very dangerous. Dont let me alarm you about it my dear . . . but I have heard of cases of cancer contracted that way.” “That’s nonsense Billy. . . . That’s only when X-rays are improperly used, and it takes years of exposure. . . . No I think this Dr. Warner’s a remarkable man.
”
”
John Dos Passos (Manhattan Transfer: A Novel)
“
Esther Rubenstein. The late wife of the patron of this exhibition.” I blinked, and finally managed to finish, “Died aged twenty-six, of cancer.” I swallowed the emotion in my throat and stepped closer to Esther’s portrait. “Placed in this exhibition by her husband, who never remarried. He took this picture, and hung it in this exhibition. It reads that even though this picture didn’t change the world, Esther changed his.
”
”
Tillie Cole (A Thousand Boy Kisses (NEW BONUS CONTENT))
“
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous"
i
Tell me it was for the hunger
& nothing less. For hunger is to give
the body what it knows
it cannot keep. That this amber light
whittled down by another war
is all that pins my hand
to your chest.
i
You, drowning
between my arms —
stay.
You, pushing your body
into the river
only to be left
with yourself —
stay.
i
I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after
backhanding
mother, then taking a chainsaw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel
in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls.
And so I learned that a man, in climax, was the closest thing
to surrender.
i
Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.
Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn.
Say autumn despite the green
in your eyes. Beauty despite
daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn
mounting in your throat.
My thrashing beneath you
like a sparrow stunned
with falling.
i
Dusk: a blade of honey between our shadows, draining.
i
I wanted to disappear — so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was still alive. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast cancer ribbon on his keychain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky — to hold every flying & falling at once.
i
Say amen. Say amend.
Say yes. Say yes
anyway.
i
In the shower, sweating under cold water, I scrubbed & scrubbed.
i
In the life before this one, you could tell
two people were in love
because when they drove the pickup
over the bridge, their wings
would grow back just in time.
Some days I am still inside the pickup.
Some days I keep waiting.
i
It’s not too late. Our heads haloed
with gnats & summer too early
to leave any marks.
Your hand under my shirt as static
intensifies on the radio.
Your other hand pointing
your daddy’s revolver
to the sky. Stars falling one
by one in the cross hairs.
This means I won’t be
afraid if we’re already
here. Already more
than skin can hold. That a body
beside a body
must ma
”
”
Ocean Vuong (On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous)
“
If it changes shape and structure, form and even content, it is because that is the nature of the story itself: it inspires the teller to bring fresh insights to each new version, bringing us ever closer to understanding Rama himself. This is why it must be told, and retold, an infinite number of times. By me. By you. By grandmothers to their grandchildren. By people everywhere, regardless of their identity. The first time I was told the Ramayana, it was on my grandfather’s knee. He was excessively fond of chewing tambaku paan and his breath was redolent of its aroma. Because I loved lions, he infused any number of lions in his Ramayana retellings—Rama fought lions, Sita fought them, I think even Manthara was cowed down by one at one point! My grandfather’s name, incidentally, was Ramchandra Banker. He died of throat cancer caused by his tobacco-chewing habit. But before his throat ceased working, he had passed on the tale to me.
”
”
Ashok K. Banker (Ramayana: The Complete Edition (Ramayana #1-8))
“
Mr. Freeman: "Art without emotion is like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag." He sticks his finger down his throat. "The next time you work on your trees, don't think about tress. Think about love, or hate, or joy, or rage - whatever makes you feel something, makes your palm sweat or your toes curl. Focus on that feeling. When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time. You'd be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside - walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job. It's the saddest thing I know.
”
”
Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)
“
the mountains are so beautiful." She had said that last night looking out of the window with tears in her eyes. "The mountains are so beautiful." Her father was dying there, Mrs. Ramsay knew. He was leaving them fatherless. Scolding and demonstrating (how to make a bed, how to open a window, with hands that shut and spread like a Frenchwoman's) all had folded itself quietly about her, when the girl spoke, as, after a flight through the sunshine the wings of a bird fold themselves quietly and the blue of its plumage changes from bright steel to soft purple. She had stood there silent for there was nothing to be said. He had cancer of the throat. At the recollection--how she had stood there, how the girl had said, "At home the mountains are so beautiful," and there was no hope, no hope whatever,
”
”
Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)
“
Depression, that is,” I continue. “People who’ve never experienced it think it’s a mask, but it’s not. It’s a curtain. And when it falls, it shuts you off from your life, plunging you into complete darkness. There you stand, arms flailing around you, reaching for anything to find your way back. But after exhausting yourself, grasping at only more darkness, you give up and drop to the floor in resignation. “And so you sit. You and the blackness. You and the accusations. You and the self-hatred, the lies that become truth, the failure and pain and hopelessness and black thoughts that twist through you, impaling you to the floor. There you bleed, alone in your black hole, convinced the audience on the other side of the curtain has given up and gone home. The show is over. “Before you know it, you realize the curtain has turned into a cement wall, and you couldn’t escape the darkness even if you wanted to, but by now you don’t care anymore. What’s the point? There’s nothing waiting for you on the other side, and even if there was, you’re such a useless waste of space that you wouldn’t dare to contaminate the world outside with your cancer anyway.” I stop, my eyes burning, my voice heavy in my throat. “You feel like crying all the time but you rarely do. Depression isn’t sadness; it’s numbness. You don’t have the energy for sadness. You can’t sleep. You don’t eat. You have no desire for the things you used to love, but it doesn’t matter because you can’t love anyway. You feel nothing, just a dull, heavy ache that makes it hard to breathe sometimes, let alone get up to start the search again. You fantasize about disappearing, just erasing your pointless existence and sparing the Earth from your toxic presence. By now you’re so exhausted just from the effort of living that there’s nothing left to live it.” I
”
”
Alyson Santos (Night Shifts Black (The Hold Me NSB Series Book 1))
“
She would go into the maids' bedrooms at night and find them sealed like ovens, except for Marie's, the Swiss girl, who would rather go without a bath than without fresh air, but then at home, she had said, "the mountains are so beautiful."
She had said that last night looking out of the window with tears in her eyes.
The mountains are so beautiful.
Her father was dying there, Mrs Ramsay knew.
He was leaving them fatherless.
Scolding and demonstrating (how to make a bed, how to open a window, with hands that shut and spread like a Frenchwoman's) all had folded itself quietly about her, when the girl spoke, as, after a flight through the sunshine the wings of a bird fold themselves quietly and the blue of its plumage changes from bright steel to soft purple.
She had stood there silent for there was nothing to be said.
He had cancer of the throat.
At the recolection—how she had stood there, how the girl had said, "At home the mountains are so beautiful," and there was no hope, no hope whatever...
”
”
Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)
“
IN THE PAST, when dying was typically a more precipitous process, we did not have to think about a question like this. Though some diseases and conditions had a drawn-out natural history—tuberculosis is the classic example—without the intervention of modern medicine, with its scans to diagnose problems early and its treatments to extend life, the interval between recognizing that you had a life-threatening ailment and dying was commonly a matter of days or weeks. Consider how our presidents died before the modern era. George Washington developed a throat infection at home on December 13, 1799, that killed him by the next evening. John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, and Andrew Johnson all succumbed to strokes and died within two days. Rutherford Hayes had a heart attack and died three days later. Others did have a longer course: James Monroe and Andrew Jackson died from progressive and far longer-lasting (and highly dreaded) tubercular consumption. Ulysses Grant’s oral cancer took a year to kill him. But, as end-of-life researcher Joanne Lynn has observed, people generally experienced life-threatening illness the way they experienced bad weather—as something that struck with little warning. And you either got through it or you didn’t.
”
”
Atul Gawande (Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End)
“
Back to Copper Cliff: on the eastern limit of the town, really not a defined edge, the town ended, and a few feet later the smelter—the the heart of Inco’s operations in the Sudbury area—rose up. Huge buildings humming and whining, acre after acre of industrial devastation, hot metal and slag cars to-ing and fro-ing. Row upon row of blast furnaces, molten metal being carried in giant ladles the size of small submarines by overhead moving cranes, with bits of white-hot crap falling out of them, and the mind-numbing hiss of mighty industrial production, punctuated by warning horns, and all viewed through a smog of sulphur dioxide so potent that it would sting your eyes, nose and throat to the point of tears. Workers wore “gas masks” that were little more than cloth nose and mouth covers, dipped in some solution intended to neutralize the paralyzing acidity of sulphur dioxide. They did not work. My dad worked here, and when he later became a shift boss in the Orford building and I was a summer student at Inco, he showed me through this inferno (not Dante’s; that’s only in fiction). This was the real deal and the guys who worked there pretty much all succumbed to some form of lung disease—emphysema, cancer, COPD, you name it—anything you can get from inhaling eight hours a day, five days a week, concentrated S02 and S03, not to mention the particulate crap that filled the air.
”
”
Bill Livingstone (Preposterous - Tales to Follow: A Memoir by Bill Livingstone)
“
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and
cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors — anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
”
”
C.S. Lewis
“
Today, such studies are illegal. Medical scientists cannot offer inducements like pardons to persuade prisoners to take part in their studies. Although they can award small cash payments to research subjects, they are forbidden from giving anyone so much money or such tempting favors that their compensations might constitute what ethicists term an inappropriate inducement, an irresistible temptation to join the study.
Now, more than eighty years after the 1918 flu, people enter studies for several reasons—to get free medical care, to get an experimental drug that, they hope, might cure them of a disease like cancer or AIDS, or to help further scientific knowledge. In theory at least, study participants are supposed to be true volunteers, taking part in research of their own free will.
But in 1918, such ethical arguments were rarely considered. Instead, the justification for a risky study with human beings was that it was better to subject a few to a great danger in order to save the many. Prisoners were thought to be the ideal study subjects. They could offer up their bodies for science and, if they survived, their pardons could be justified because they gave something back to society.
The Navy inmates were perfect for another reason. Thirty-nine of them had never had influenza, as far as anyone knew. So they might be uniquely susceptible to the disease. If the doctors wanted to deliberately transmit the 1918 flu, what better subjects? Was influenza really so easily transmitted? the doctors asked. Why did some people get it and others not? Why did it kill the young and healthy? Could the wartime disruptions and movements of troops explain the spread of the flu? If it was as contagious as it seemed, how was it being spread? What kind of microorganism was causing the illness?
The normal way to try to answer such questions would be to study the spread of the disease in animals. Give the disease to a few cages of laboratory rats, or perhaps to some white rabbits. Isolate whatever was causing the illness. Show how it spread and test ways to protect animals—and people—against the disease.
But influenza, it seemed, was a uniquely human disease. No animal was known to be susceptible to it. Medical researchers felt they had no choice but to study influenza in people. Either the Navy doctors were uncommonly persuasive or the enticement of a pardon was overwhelmingly compelling. For whatever reason, the sixty-two men agreed to be subjects in the medical experiment.
And so the study began. First the sailors were transferred to a quarantine station on Gallops Island in Boston Harbor. Then the Navy doctors did their best to give the men the flu. Influenza is a respiratory disease—it is spread from person to person, presumably carried on droplets of mucus sprayed in the air when sick people cough or sneeze, or carried on their hands and spread when the sick touch the healthy. Whatever was causing the flu should be present in mucus taken from the ill.
The experiments, then, were straightforward. The Navy doctors collected mucus from men who were desperately ill with the flu, gathering thick viscous secretions from their noses and throats. They sprayed mucus from flu patients into the noses and throats of some men, and dropped it into other men’s eyes. In one attempt, they swabbed mucus from the back of the nose of a man with the flu and then directly swabbed that mucus into the back of a volunteer’s nose.
”
”
Gina Kolata (Flu: The Story Of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It)
“
Like,” he repeats with distaste. “How about I tell you what I don’t like? I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn’t be—basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful—nonfiction only, please. I do not like genre mash-ups à la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and crossbreeding rarely results in anything satisfying. I do not like children’s books, especially ones with orphans, and I prefer not to clutter my shelves with young adult. I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and—I imagine this goes without saying—vampires. I rarely stock debuts, chick lit, poetry, or translations. I would prefer not to stock series, but the demands of my pocketbook require me to. For your part, you needn’t tell me about the ‘next big series’ until it is ensconced on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Above all, Ms. Loman, I find slim literary memoirs about little old men whose little old wives have died from cancer to be absolutely intolerable. No matter how well written the sales rep claims they are. No matter how many copies you promise I’ll sell on Mother’s Day.” Amelia blushes, though she is angry more than embarrassed. She agrees with some of what A.J. has said, but his manner is unnecessarily insulting. Knightley Press doesn’t even sell half of that stuff anyway. She studies him. He is older than Amelia but not by much, not by more than ten years. He is too young to like so little. “What do you like?” she asks. “Everything else,” he says. “I will also admit to an occasional weakness for short-story collections. Customers never want to buy them though.” There is only one short-story collection on Amelia’s list, a debut. Amelia hasn’t read the whole thing, and time dictates that she probably won’t, but she liked the first story. An American sixth-grade class and an Indian sixth-grade class participate in an international pen pal program. The narrator is an Indian kid in the American class who keeps feeding comical misinformation about Indian culture to the Americans. She clears her throat, which is still terribly dry. “The Year Bombay Became Mumbai. I think it will have special int—” “No,” he says. “I haven’t even told you what it’s about yet.” “Just no.” “But why?” “If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit that you’re only telling me about it because I’m partially Indian and you think this will be my special interest. Am I right?” Amelia imagines smashing the ancient computer over his head. “I’m telling you about this because you said you liked short stories! And it’s the only one on my list. And for the record”—here, she lies—“it’s completely wonderful from start to finish. Even if it is a debut. “And do you know what else? I love debuts. I love discovering something new. It’s part of the whole reason I do this job.” Amelia rises. Her head is pounding. Maybe she does drink too much? Her head is pounding and her heart is, too. “Do you want my opinion?” “Not particularly,” he says. “What are you, twenty-five?” “Mr. Fikry, this is a lovely store, but if you continue in this this this”—as a child, she stuttered and it occasionally returns when she is upset; she clears her throat—“this backward way of thinking, there won’t be an Island Books before too long.
”
”
Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)
“
cancer of the throat;
”
”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball)
“
Chlorophyll: builds a high red blood cell count helps prevent cancer provides iron to organs makes the body more alkaline counteracts toxins eaten improves anemic conditions cleans and deodorizes bowel tissues helps purify the liver aids hepatitis improvement regulates menstruation aids hemophilia condition improves milk production helps sores heal faster eliminates body odors resists bacteria in wounds cleans tooth and gum structure in pyorrhea eliminates bad breath relieves sore throat makes an excellent oral surgery gargle benefits inflamed tonsils soothes ulcer tissues soothes painful hemorrhoids and piles aids catarrhal discharges revitalizes vascular system in the legs improves varicose veins reduces pain caused by inflammation improves vision
”
”
Victoria Boutenko (Green for Life: The Updated Classic on Green Smoothie Nutrition)
“
Celiac sufferers who fail to avoid gluten can experience as much as seventy-seven-fold increased risk for lymphoma and twenty-two-fold greater risk for cancers of the mouth, throat, and esophagus.
”
”
William Davis (Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health)
“
Glow Worm
With miles to drive
On a cerebral highway
Where it leads our hearts to
That empire where all unfolds
We drag our knees
Through these badlands
And we hurt ourselves
Just to feel anything
In the mecca of us
We all glow forever
With cobwebbed eyes
An affair with the puppets
You've seemed to have forgotten
And now you sleep with the rats all alone
I held you so warm
Like a brother
A part of you in a part of me so spoiled
I cut you off like a cancer
In the mecca of us
We all glow forever
It's simple
How you complete my core
So potent in your eyes
To move mountains
To burn skies
We've broken
Our arms and throats
For our portraits
Demons or not
It doesn't make a difference to me
I'm so tired of screaming
In the mecca of us
We all glow forever
”
”
Sonny Moore
“
Seriously,” Ben said. “This guy sounds like an alcoholic Kermit the Frog with throat cancer
”
”
Anonymous
“
Creation Myth
I'm the great-grandson of a sheep farmer,
child of sumacs, trash trees shedding their ancient scales.
I'm drawn from fair grass on the north end, my molecules
spat from coal and cattle, the Indiana dusk.
I'm notes scrawled on freezer paper,
the one looped oven mitt Aunt Bev crocheted
while the baby lay feverish in its crib. I rise
from a day gone thin as Cousin Ceily,
who wore her cancer wigs to church.
I come from boys unfastening in the 4-H bathroom,
the stink of urinal cakes, dirty hands that scratched an itch.
I breathe in arc welders and air compressors.
I breathe out milk leaking from nurse cows,
Uncle Jake's spoiled old bitches. I'm run through
with moths and meth labs, a child of the KKK,
men who lynched Tom Shipp from a split
oak in Marion, August 1930. My cells
carry his shadow swaying over uncut grass.
They carry my second third cousin
cheering in the back. I rise from aphids
in honeysuckle, egg yolks flecked with blood.
Born one humid summer night, my body hums
like a black cricket, transmitting August
across the fields. I sing till my throat bleeds. I smoke
like a pan of scorched sugar. I'll never forget
the miracle of firecrackers, freezer meat, murky
gray lemonade. I'm born to thunder
in the veins, a child of form, a rusted gasket ring, some
disenchanted thing, the promise of a worm.
”
”
Bruce Snider (Fruit (Volume 1) (Wisconsin Poetry Series))
“
One hundred percent of the nearly 1 million pounds of chloroform released in Mobile County in 1988 was released in Africatown. Chloroform is classified as a probable carcinogen by the EPA. Chronic long-term exposure, such as one would experience living in the shadow of two paper mills, can cause liver disease and affect the central nervous system. One hundred percent of the chlorine dioxide in the county was released in Africatown. Nearly all of the 1.8 million pounds of hydrochloric acid released in the county in 1988 was released in Africatown. Nearly all of the acetone, methanol, xylene, chlorine, methyl ethyl ketone, and toluene released in the county were released in Africatown. The chemicals are linked to cancer, birth defects, fertility problems, kidney and liver damage, nose and throat irritation, asthma, and loss of hearing and color vision.
”
”
Ben Raines (The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning)
“
Meeting him is instantly repellent, like lifting the lid of a garbage Dumpster. I imagine Dr. Best of the Best clinking ice in his Scotch at the country club, rocking back just a little on his feet—the other men asking him, So what’s the latest on cancer? And Dr. Best of the Best clearing his throat, careful to speak softly, frame his thoughts, move his free hand now and then in a certain way to brandish his words. Careful to reflect his Ivy League articulation. His friends, titans of business, are wide-eyed at how smart and serious the doctor is—how good to have him in their circle.
”
”
Carole Radziwill (What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love)
“
I was initially misdiagnosed with an abscessed tooth. When in reality, I had a rapidly growing aggressive cancerous tumor in my throat. Had I listened and trusted this misdiagnosis, I wouldn’t be writing this today. #truth
”
”
Lisa Manyon (Spiritual Sugar: The Divine Ingredients to Heal Yourself With Love)
“
In January 1973, Murray lost Barlow to cancer. By September, she had resigned from Brandeis University and entered the General Theological Seminary. The year after she earned her Master of Divinity degree, she became the first African-American woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest.
”
”
Pauli Murray (Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage)
“
It was as though someone had ripped away the proverbial curtain, showing me that what I’d been thinking and what was real were at complete odds with each other. I’d been treating cancer like it was the flu, an inconvenience that I’d have to put up with temporarily. Except cancer wasn’t just a sore throat and a fever, and chemo wasn’t just a shot in the arm. Cancer wasn’t a bump in the road—it was the road, and I’d better make plans to treat it that way.
”
”
Matthew Iden (A Reason to Live (Marty Singer #1))
“
There were herbs in the Waters of Massasauga Swamp that could be rendered into medicine for just about every affliction: yarrow and plantain for bleeding wounds, elderberries and boneset for flu, willow bark for fever, and foxglove and dandelion for too much pressure in the body. Mullein for eliminating mucous, slippery elm for sore throats, honey for ulcers, and turkey tail for the old cancers, if you caught them early. And if you asked Herself to make a potion or tonic to fix you, she would study the veins in your hand and the whites of your eyes while considering what kinds of poison to add in minuscule amounts. Bloodroot? Snakeroot? Rattlesnake venom, if she had it?
”
”
Bonnie Jo Campbell (The Waters)
“
The World Health Organization also classifies alcohol as a Group 1 carcinogen and is linked to 7 different types of cancer, including breast, mouth, throat, esophagus, liver, larynx, and colorectal.
”
”
Kim Murphy (Plant Powered: How to Prevent or Reverse Chronic Diseases, Lose Weight, and Feel Great with the Power of Whole Plants)
“
What kind of cancer do you think you’ll get from that?” I ask, nodding toward the cigarette in his hand.
He quirks a thick brow, his pretty blue eyes sparkling in the morning glow. “I dunno. Lung cancer is too typical. Throat?”
“Do you think you’ll die?”
He barks out a short laugh. “I fucking hope so.
”
”
H.D. Carlton (Does It Hurt?)
“
Alcohol is carcinogenic (it causes cancer). The evidence of the link between drinking and cancer is almost irrefutable. For breast cancer alone, more than one hundred studies have reaffirmed the link between drinking and breast cancer. Women who drink three alcoholic beverages a week have a 15 percent higher risk of breast cancer; that risk is increased by 10 percent for each additional drink women have daily (which makes you really rethink those bottles of wine with pink ribbons on them). Breast cancer is only one of the cancers linked to alcohol consumption; the others include mouth and throat, esophagus, voicebox, liver, colon, and rectum—basically, any place in the digestive system that alcohol comes into contact with. The cancer risk isn’t reserved for heavy drinkers—light to moderate use puts us at greater risk for cancer, period.
”
”
Holly Whitaker (Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol)
“
Researchers believe poppers to be the direct cause of Kaposi’s sarcoma, a rare form of skin cancer that afflicts the nose, throat, lungs, and skin.77 Kaposi’s sarcoma was the initial indicator disease of AIDS, but it was also common in gay men who were not infected with HIV. Poppers can severely damage the immune system, genes, lungs, liver, heart, or the brain; they can produce neural damage similar to that of multiple sclerosis, can have carcinogenic effects, and can lead to “sudden sniffing death.
”
”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
“
us. He made his choice that night in the laundry room when he let me go. He has his priorities, and right now I’m not one of them. She takes the box I was wrapping and returns it in front of her and starts wrapping it again. “That night I told you I had cancer, and you ran to Will’s house?” Her voice softens. She clears her throat, still avoiding my eyes. “I need to tell you what he said to me… at the door.” I remember the conversation she’s referring to, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. “When he answered the door I told him you needed to come home. That we needed to talk about it. He looked at me with heartache in his eyes. He said, ‘Let her stay, Julia. She needs me right now.’ “Lake, you broke my heart. It broke my heart that you needed him more than you needed me. As soon as the words came out of his mouth, I realized that you were grown up… that I wasn’t your whole life anymore. Will could see that. He saw how bad his words hurt me. When I turned away to walk back to the house, he followed me into the yard and hugged me. He told me he would never take you from me. He said he was going to let you go… let you focus on me and on the time I had left.” She places the wrapped gift on the bed. She scoots toward me and takes my hands in hers again. “Lake, he didn’t move on. He didn’t choose this new job over you… he chose us over you. He wanted you to have more time with me.” I take a deep breath as I absorb everything my mother just revealed. Is she right? Does he love me enough that he would be willing to let me go? “Mom?” My voice is weak. “What if you’re wrong?” “What if I’m not wrong, Lake? Question everything. What if he wants to choose you? You’ll never know if you don’t tell him how you feel. You’ve completely shut him out. You haven’t given him the chance to pick you.” She’s right, I haven’t. I’ve been completely closed off since that night in the laundry room. “It’s seven thirty, Lake. You know where he is. Go tell him how you feel.” I don’t move. My legs feel like Jell-O. “Go!” she laughs. I jump off the bed and run to my room. My hands are shaking and my thoughts are all jumbled together while I change my pants. I put on the purple shirt that I wore on our first and only date. I go to the bathroom and inspect my reflection. There’s something missing. I run to my room and reach under my pillow and pull out
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Slammed (Slammed, #1))
“
If you enjoyed the show, tell your friends. If you didn’t I trust you’ll get throat cancer and die without ever again uttering another word.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (The Absolute Sandman, Volume 2)
“
It’s okay. There’s no one to contact or worry.” “No one?” Leigh asked and she could hear the frown in her voice. Valerie shook her head. “I was an only child. My grandparents died one after another of heart attacks and cancer as I was growing up and my parents died three years ago in a car accident. There’s just myself and an aunt who moved to Texas thirty years ago. I’ve only seen her twice since then. At her parents’ funerals.” She shrugged. “Other than Christmas cards, we don’t stay in touch.” “Oh,” Leigh said softly and fell silent. “What about friends?” Anders asked, and Valerie nearly jumped out of her skin. Both at his sudden joining of the conversation and because of his chest brushing her back as he reached around her to set a small Petsmart bag on the counter. “Waste pick-up bags,” he murmured by her ear, his fingers drifting lightly over her bare upper arm as his hand withdrew. “Since Lucian was here to keep you safe, I popped out and picked them up for you.” Valerie stared blankly at the bag, aware that shivers were running down her spine and goose bumps were popping up on her skin where his breath and fingers had passed. She had to wonder how she could be staring at something so unsexy and be so turned on at the same time. A muffled laugh drew Valerie’s confused gaze to Leigh and the other woman grinned at her as she said, “That was sweet of you, Anders.” “Yes, it was,” Valerie said and then paused to clear her throat when it came out froggy. “Thank you.” “Mind you,” Leigh added. “Red roses might have been sweeter than red doggie pooh bags.” “I’ll keep that in mind for next time,” Anders responded. Valerie flushed and turned back to the pancakes. What Leigh was suggesting would have been appropriate if they were dating or something, but they weren’t, and she did appreciate his running out to get her the bags. She didn’t want to repay Leigh for allowing her into her home by leaving little Roxy gifts all over their yard . . . And what did his response mean exactly?
”
”
Lynsay Sands (Immortal Ever After (Argeneau, #18))
“
She is nice,” Valerie said with a smile. “Nothing like I would have imagined a vampire would be like . . . if I’d have even imagined vampires existed,” she added wryly. “But then you’re all nice. Well, all of you that I’ve met since escaping Count Rip-Your-Throat-Out.” “We’re just people, Valerie. We have good ones and bad ones and some in between,” Anders said quietly. She shook her head, a crooked smile on her face. “And you’re delusional if you think that, Anders.” When alarm crossed his face, she patted his hand soothingly. “I believe you want to believe that. But you aren’t ‘just people.’ ‘Just people’ don’t live centuries or even millennia. They can’t see in the dark, or lift a small car with little effort, or read the minds of, and control others. And ‘just people’ don’t need to feed on other ‘just people’ to survive.” “I—” “It’s all right. You were born this way, so you don’t have a clue that you’re like a fricking superhero. You probably don’t even realize how differently you see things. That your perception of time is so much different than non-immortals because it has so little hold on you,” Leigh had mentioned that to her. That one of the things she’d noticed about immortals since becoming one herself was that the old ones had a different concept of time. That what she considered a long time, was a mere twinkling of time to them. Valerie supposed if you lived thousands of years, a day was a blink in time and a week wasn’t much more. Grimacing, she added, “You probably don’t realize that you have so many fewer fears and worries than mortals because cancer, and heart disease, and all those other nasty little life stealers can’t claim you. And you’ve surely never been afraid of a mortal doing you harm.
”
”
Lynsay Sands (Immortal Ever After (Argeneau, #18))
“
She’s dying, Win. Cancer. She has maybe a week or two.” “I know.” Myron sat back. His throat felt dry. “Is that the entire message?” “She wanted you to know that it’s your last chance to talk to her,” Myron said. “Well, yes, that’s true. It would be very difficult for us to chat after she’s dead.” Myron
”
”
Harlan Coben (Back Spin (Myron Bolitar, #4))
“
A fearful sob suddenly rises in my throat as I think of what it will be like without her, to not have her warm chest to lie against, to not have her kind face to look into, lost in a darkness without a mother to turn to and her here, daughterless.
”
”
Annie Fisher (The Greater Picture)
“
Dear Alexis, Last week at our debate, I talked about the essential unfairness that my friend and colleague Levon Helm had to continue to tour at the age of 70 with throat cancer in order to pay his medical bills. On Thursday, Levon died and I am filled with unbelievable sadness. I am sad not just for Levon’s wife and daughter, but sad that you could be so condescending to offer “to make right what the music industry did to the members of The Band.” It wasn’t the music industry that created Levon’s plight; it was people like you celebrating Pirate Bay and Kim Dotcom—bloodsuckers who made millions off the hard work of musicians and filmmakers. You were so proud during the debate to raise your hand as one of those who had downloaded “free music and free movies.” But it’s just your selfish decision that those tunes were free. It wasn’t Levon’s decision. In fact, for many years after The Band stopped recording, Levon made a good living off of the record royalties of The Band’s catalog. But no more. So what is your solution—charity. You want to give every great artist a virtual begging bowl with Kickstarter. But Levon never wanted the charity of the Reddit community or the Kickstarter community. He just wanted to earn an honest living off the great work of a lifetime. You are so clueless as to offer to get The Band back together for a charity concert, unaware that three of the five members are dead. Take your charity and shove it. Just let us get paid for our work and stop deciding that you can unilaterally make it free.
”
”
Jonathan Taplin (Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy)
“
She cleared her throat. “Bryan, I know you’ve interviewed a lot of caregivers—”
“Too many,” Bryan shot back.
She inched her chin up a notch. “I’m not your typical caregiver. I’m different.”
Bryan laughed with no humor. “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before—okay, impress me, Delilah Walker. What exactly makes you different?
”
”
Josephine Harwood (Empathy)
“
That evening I sat across from Jeremy Bulloch and Jacob at the dinner table. I watched as Jeremy, who seemed to speak Jacob’s silent language fluently, drummed his fingers up and down on the edge of the table, as if playing a piano. A delighted Jacob mimicked the actor’s actions. My throat filled with tears. I met Ben’s eyes across the table, where he sat straight with pride next to his son. He was enjoying the show just as much as I was. Jacob was in his element, interacting with an actor from his favorite movie. The other men at the table were part of the set: Mike, the owner of the comic book store, who had made the entire thing possible, and the Mandalorin Mercs, new friends of the little boy who had
become one of their own, a comrade in distress.
”
”
Mary Potter Kenyon (Refined by Fire: A Journey of Grief and Grace)
“
A long time ago, I tried. More than once. She didn’t want to hear it. For a while, she wouldn’t even talk to Lily, which just about broke your grandmother’s heart. Slowly, they got back in touch over the phone. The occasional photograph. I never wanted to upset that delicate balance.” She watched him pull a bandana from his pocket. Sometimes Macon was so afraid of doing the wrong thing that it stopped him from doing the right thing. “At first I thought we’d patch it up. You were born and the years went by. Chicken came along. And then your dad’s cancer. It was so fast. And you lost him, Cat—you, and Chicken, and Amanda all lost him.” Macon wiped his eyes. “When I think about how close I got to never knowing you and Chicken—when I think about all the years I missed that I can never get back . . .” Cat’s eyes filled and the planks of the pier blurred. She willed herself not to blink. Macon cleared his throat, folding the bandana into a square. “I’ve spent years being sad and that’s enough. Now it’s time to make it right.” It wasn’t right yet, not to Cat. “You were wrong, you know. Having me was a good thing.” Macon looked surprised. “Well, of course, Cat. I know that. You can tell I know that now, right? Don’t hate the
”
”
Gillian McDunn (Caterpillar Summer)
“
Pale lights illuminate The Seven’s inner chamber. Once bright, the lamps are overgrown, dimmed by a sheet of stone. The room is octagonal, one side for the supplicant, unadorned. Six others each house a figure, statue-like, covered from head to toe in a thick layer of rock. All appear human shaped, with discernible wings, their postures neutral, dead. The seventh alcove lies empty.
The Vagrant holds the sword up, letting it hum, calling, calling.
As if returning from a dream, The Seven respond, slowly, sonorously. Splitting the shells that cover them, yawning into life. One by one, they catch the call and return it, till the harmony swells, reverberating from the walls and leaping up, vanishing into the fathomless, ceilingless dark above.
Beautiful sounds mature, becoming words, musical, passed from one to the other, filling the chamber and the Vagrant’s ears.
‘Mourning has become morning, and we rejoice …’
‘We rejoice in the proximity of your flame once more …’
‘Once more we are Seven …’
‘Are Seven together, come …’
‘Come and join with us …’
‘Join with us your light, diminished but still bright.’
Six arms drift out, gesturing to the last alcove, inviting.
Neither Vagrant nor sword move. An eye studies the chamber, pausing at each alcove, noting the blades housed there, buried beneath layers of stone, useless. Rage simmers between sword and Vagrant. He takes a lock of hair from an inner pocket, throws it down on the floor between them. The sword lowers to point at it, then sweeps across the figures, then makes a hard stab towards the doors.
Six faces freeze as the joyous echoes of song die out.
The Vagrant swallows in a throat suddenly dry.
Vesper dares a quick peek from behind the Vagrant’s coat.
Alpha, of The Seven, sings out. The note begins wondrous but imperfect, the others soon match him.
‘We see now your pain, most furious …’
‘Most furious you are and desperate to fight …’
‘To fight once more, your desire …’
‘Your desire we grant, go forth, take a second flame to our enemies …’
Voices come together, their force rocking the Vagrant backwards until he is pinned to the wall. Vesper holds his hand tightly, little feet rising from the floor.
‘Do not stop …’
‘Stop when the cancer …’
‘Cancer is cut …’
‘Cut from the bones …’
‘Bones and flesh …’
‘Flesh of the land …’
‘Land is clean!’
The Vagrant closes his eyes, squeezes them tight. He braces himself against the sound, pulling Vesper behind him raising the sword in front. Silvered wings unfurl protectively, shielding his face. An eye widens, blazing with indignation.
‘Then …’
‘Then, then and only then …’
‘Only then will you be free …’
‘Be free to return to us …’
‘Return to us and rejoice …’
‘Rejoice for true, complete again. Immaculate.’
Six go quiet, demands echoing after. Vesper’s feet touch floor again and she wraps herself around a comforting leg.
In the Vagrant’s hand, the sword trembles, humming dangerously. He takes a deep breath. From the depths of his stomach something is forged, travelling inevitably, gaining force as it goes, following tubes behind ribs, up through the chest, into the throat, teeth parting, allowing it outside.
The Vagrant opens his eyes, they are full of weariness, disgust, conviction.
‘No.
”
”
Peter Newman
“
cries stopped. Room 532 was the sixth one on the left, right across from the nurses’ station. As Hoss reached it, his breathing became heavy. He froze in the doorway, ashamed at his cowardice to enter. His mother, he saw, was as she had been the day before, resting peacefully in her bed. A heart-rate monitor was clipped to one finger. An oxygen tube was strapped under her nose. Overhead, the fluorescent lights captured what devastation cancer had done to her, a wasting disease that knew no mercy. She was a ghost of the woman she had once been. Emaciated. Bald from weeks of chemo. Her face, barely recognizable, had become a loose mask collapsed against the bone. A yellowish hue saturated her skin. The hollows of her eyes were in shadow. The hospital had called Hoss an hour earlier. The voice at the other end was soft, reluctant. An on-duty nurse. His mother had taken a turn for the worse. Family members were asked to be at her bedside. There wasn’t much time left. Listening to her, Hoss felt the words in the pit of his stomach. His eyes closed. A painful lump formed in his throat. He couldn’t speak. When he put down the phone, all he could think of with certain dread was this moment now. The final good-bye he’d have to face. Her bed was partitioned off from the others by a curtain. Looking around, Hoss was surprised at his father’s absence. At fifty-three, the man had become a withdrawn, brooding presence.
”
”
Alex MacLean (Grave Situation (Allan Stanton, #1))
“
I put everything back into the envelope, then called my friend Eddie Ditko at the Examiner. Eddie has been a reporter for about ten million years, and he answered with a voice that was maybe three weeks away from throat cancer. “Ditko.
”
”
Robert Crais (Sunset Express (Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, #6))
“
Observed health conditions in various high altitude workers were not limited to: Digestive Disorders, Heart Issues, Chronic Headaches, Strokes, Fatigue, Sleepiness, Sleep Disorders, Amnestic Disorders, Irritability, Aggressive Behaviors, Confusion, Various Mental Health Issues, Radiation Sickness including Faraday Cage Sickness, Benign Tumors and Cancers that included Throat, Lymphoma and Colon cancer.
”
”
Steven Magee
“
The following information really should be placed on all very high altitude job adverts and company contracts: WARNING – Very high altitude commuting presents many known health risks to sea level adapted humans. Some of the documented conditions are headaches, forgetfulness, confusion, irritability, aggression, hallucinations, visions, light headedness, fatigue, fainting, sore throats, runny noses, digestive disturbances, changed personality and panic attacks. Development of cancer, anemia, high cholesterol, heart, lung, brain, and blood oxygenation issues have occurred in very high altitude workers that have resulted in disability and premature death. The nearest fully equipped hospital accident and emergency facility is typically one to two hours away. Numerous very high altitude workers have been killed due to fatal mistakes on the job. Workers are expected to use a variety of company supplied drugs to offset the daily very high altitude sickness including "RX-Only" prescription medical oxygen. Daily long term self medication is known to damage human health. The work environment is comparable to a Faraday cage and Faraday Cage Sickness (FCS) may occur in long term workers. Radiation levels are abnormally high and long term radiation sickness may result. Blood oxygen levels are typically in the region of 80% and the medical profession regards this as a health risk. Extreme night shifts are associated with causing poor health and lifelong sleep disorders. Low oxygen environments are associated with the onset of irritability, fatigue and Sleep Apnea. Repeatedly reporting observations of abnormal behaviors in workers to upper management may result in your contract not being renewed or termination without notice. Permanently sickened workers are unlikely to qualify for corporate government disability payments, which may lead to a lifetime of extreme poverty.
”
”
Steven Magee
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There’s even a well-defined medical condition commonly known as “butchers’ warts” that affects the hands of those who handle fresh meat, including poultry and fish.45 Even the wives of butchers appear to be at higher risk for cervical cancer, a cancer definitively associated with wart-virus exposure.46 Workers in poultry slaughterhouses have been found to have higher rates of cancers of the mouth, nasal cavities, throat, esophagus, rectum, liver, and blood. On a public health level, the concern here is that the cancer-
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Michael Greger (How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease)
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My coworker at very high altitude died from colon cancer and another coworker died from throat cancer.
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Steven Magee
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Tobacco fields in the U.S. have been fertilized with the radioactive haillings from uranium mines, resulting in a tremendous increase in the incidence of lip, mouth, throat, and lung cancer. If you do not believe it, just look at the incidence of lung cancer per capita before 1950 and compare it to the lung cancer per capita at the present time. Are those who smoke committing suicide, or are they being murdered?
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Milton William Cooper (Behold! a Pale Horse, by William Cooper: Reprint recomposed, illustrated & annotated for coherence & clarity (Public Cache))
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Sloan hates him.”
“Why?”
“Because she thinks I’ve settled.”
He furrowed his brow. “Settled? How? Is something wrong with him? Is he a dick?”
I let out a long breath. “No. He doesn’t want kids.”
He scoffed. “Well, there you go. The kid thing is too important. Can’t be with him.”
It felt like a punch right to my uterus. A hard lump bolted to my throat, and I had to look away from him because I was going to cry.
There it was, straight from his own lips.
The kid thing is too important. Can’t be with him.
He stopped turning us, and he put my face in his hands. Once I was looking at him again, I lost it. My chin quivered and tears spilled over my cheeks.
His eyes moved back and forth between mine. “Don’t marry him, Kristen.”
My heart cracked in half.
“Don’t marry him,” he whispered. “Please.”
There was something desperate about the way he said it. I studied the look in his eyes. Distress. Longing. Pleading.
This wasn’t the look of a man who just didn’t want to give up his booty call. This was feelings. Josh has feelings for me.
The realization hit me like a deep, cancerous, soul-reaching sadness. These emotions I could see he had for me—they should have made me happy. I should have been ecstatic to know that what I felt maybe wasn’t so one-sided. But instead, a bitter disappointment descended on my body making me so weak I worried my knees would give out.
I had to cut him loose.
This thing between us had gone as far as I could allow it to go.
I wasn’t going to marry Tyler. I think I’d known that the whole time. After I’d said no, he’d begged me to think about it. So I did. But I wasn’t going to be with either of them. I couldn’t.
The kid thing is too important. Can’t be with him.
I couldn’t love Tyler the way he deserved, and I couldn’t give Josh a family. I could never give either man what he really wanted.
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Abby Jimenez (The Friend Zone (The Friend Zone, #1))
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Gluten is associated with cancers of the mouth and throat, esophagus, small intestines, and lymph nodes. It is also associated with type 1 diabetes as well as thyroid disorders, such as Hashimoto’s, the most commonly diagnosed thyroid dysfunction in America. Many patients achieve normalization of their thyroid function only after adopting a gluten-free diet. Gluten sensitivity is also associated with other autoimmune diseases, such as Sjörgens syndrome and dermatitis herpetiformis. Hair loss, or autoimmune alopecia, is another presentation. It is also associated with depression, migraines, arthritis, fatigue, osteoporosis, and anemia, to name a few.
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Alejandro Junger (Clean Gut: The Breakthrough Plan for Eliminating the Root Cause of Disease and Revolutionizing Your Health)
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If people believe the government is giving them AIDS and blowing up levees, and that white-owned companies are trying to sterilize them, they would be lacking in normal human emotions if they did not—to put it bluntly—hate the people they believed responsible.
Indeed, vigorous expressions of hatred go back to at least the time of W.E.B. Du Bois, who once wrote, “It takes extraordinary training, gift and opportunity to make the average white man anything but an overbearing hog, but the most ordinary Negro is an instinctive gentleman.”
On another occasion he expressed himself in verse:
'I hate them, Oh!
I hate them well,
I hate them, Christ!
As I hate hell!
If I were God,
I’d sound their knell
This day!'
Such sentiments are still common. Amiri Baraka, originally known as LeRoi Jones, is one of America’s most famous and well-regarded black poets, but his work is brimming with anti-white vitriol. These lines are from “Black Dada Nihilismus:”
'Come up, black dada nihilismus.
Rape the white girls.
Rape their fathers.
Cut the mothers’ throats.'
Here are more of his lines:
'You cant steal nothin from a white man,
he’s already stole it he owes
you anything you want, even his life.
All the stores will open up if you
will say the magic words. The magic words are:
Up against the wall motherfucker this is a stick up!'
In “Leroy” he wrote: “When I die, the consciousness I carry I will to black people. May they pick me apart and take the useful parts, the sweet meat of my feelings. And leave the bitter bullshit rotten white parts alone.” When he was asked by a white woman what white people could do to help the race problem, he replied, “You can help by dying. You are a cancer. You can help the world’s people with your death.”
In July, 2002, Mr. Baraka was appointed poet laureate of New Jersey.
The celebrated black author James Baldwin once said:
“[T]here is, I should think, no Negro living in America who has not felt, briefly or for long periods, . . . simple, naked and unanswerable hatred; who has not wanted to smash any white face he may encounter in a day, to violate, out of motives of the cruelest vengeance, their women, to break the bodies of all white people and bring them low.”
Toni Morrison is a highly-regarded black author who has won the Nobel Prize. “With very few exceptions,” she has written, “I feel that White people will betray me; that in the final analysis they’ll give me up.”
Author Randall Robinson concluded after years of activism that “in the autumn of my life, I am left regarding white people, before knowing them individually, with irreducible mistrust and dull dislike.” He wrote that it gave him pleasure when his dying father slapped a white nurse, telling her not “to put her white hands on him.”
Leonard Jeffries is the chairman of the African-American studies department of the City College of New York and is famous for his hatred of whites. Once in answer to the question, “What kind of world do you want to leave to your children?” he replied, “A world in which there aren’t any white people.
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Jared Taylor (White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century)
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Esther Rubenstein. The late wife of the patron of this exhibition.” I blinked, and finally managed to finish, “Died aged twenty-six, of cancer.” I swallowed the emotion in my throat and stepped closer to Esther’s portrait.
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Tillie Cole (A Thousand Boy Kisses (NEW BONUS CONTENT))
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Michael Douglas was a sex addict, you know.’ ‘Michael Douglas said eating Catherine Zeta-Jones’ pussy gave him throat cancer.
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Rebecca Humphries (Why Did You Stay?: A memoir about self-worth)