Sunday, May 28, 2007

As Nick and I sit in the restaurant of the hotel, I marvel at the surroundings. The omelet bar at the buffet where the white-shirted chef stands waiting to customize your order, the array of fresh fruit, skinless and seedless, ready for effortless consumption. The patterned carpet designed to hide stains and serve as decor to the dark furnture, white linens, glittering glass. From the window we can look out onto the grounds - pathways lined with glorious flowers, fountains with sprays of water in beautiful arcs. It has become almost a tradition for Nick and I to sneak away while everyone else is sleeping and go to the hotel restaurant for early morning coffee. Last summer at Treasure Island we met every morning, having rich, dark coffee and playing keno before anyone in the family was even awake.

There is a beautiful pool area with a hot tub and an exercise room, countless cafes and a gift shop. The hotel room is like an efficiency apartment - a living room, cable on two TVs, a small refrigerator, the bathroom with stone-lined walls found in luxury spas. As we walk down the hall to our room, we pass the gold-leaf mirror that reflects the ornate vase filled with silk flowers so real you want to reach out and touch them.

Occasionally you have a dream so familiar and real you don't know you are dreaming. Then you see or feel or hear something your mind recognizes can't be reality and you think to yourself "I must be dreaming - this isn't real".

As we turn the corner I see it, and my heart is gripped by a fear so intense that I feel physicl pain. My mind processes the wheelchair at the end of the hall with the same fear that I felt watching The Shining when the twin girls would appear. In a twisted reverse of awareness of dreaming, I am forced to admit to myself our reality.

We are at MD Anderson, not in Las Vegas. My dad is dying of cancer.

Whether it is the intense feeling of deja vu of a lifetime spent vacationing in luxurious casinos or my mind's intricate form of denial, I have convinced myself that we are on another family vacation.

Don't look at the woman pushing her masked, bald, frail husband up to the table in the restaurant.

Ignore the abnormally high number of people walking around in white coats.

Admire the old woman with the walker inching her way toward the pool - my, how she gets around. Never mind the fact that her face looks 40.

Think how cool the young girl's parents are for letting her shave her head like a goth princess and marvel at how beautiful her eyes are.

We're in Vegas, we're in Vegas, we're in Vegas and everything is fine.