"Month. Two. Three. Maybe more. No way to tell."
"Radiation—won't slow it down?"
"Can't use strong doses that near your brain, Phil." He grasped his telephone again. He told his nurse to arrange the biopsy. Immediately. He wrote an address.
"I'm busy tonight," he told me. "Can't get out of it. What about tomorrow—for dinner?"
I said, "Swell. When will I have the report?"
"Monday."
"Be quite a long weekend."
He commenced writing a prescription.
I had told him how well he seemed, when the nurse had ushered me in. He didn't seem well any more. The vestige of his White Mountain tan was saffron. In fifteen minutes, circles had come under his eyes. He handed me two little rectangles of paper. "No—pain?"
"Not yet." It was a cruelty.