Lois slumped back in the chair in her doctor’s office, stunned.
No. She was shocked.
No. This was beyond stunned, beyond being shocked. She felt as if she’d just been hit in the face with a baseball bat.
She gathered herself, then stood and blinked. She saw the young doctor’s mouth moving and realized that she hadn’t heard a word of what he was saying. “Wait!” she cried out. “This – you can’t be right about this! There’s no way I have – that there’s – that – “
He needed to work on his sympathetic look. “Ms. Lane, I’m sorry. The diagnosis is real. You are suffering from advanced late-stage pancreatic cancer.”
“But – but I – you can’t – I – “
“I’m truly sorry, Ms. Lane. I can refer you to a specialist for further care.”
“But – No! I only had a low-grade fever! I only felt a little tired!”
“You’re young and strong. Your body hid the major symptoms from you until just last week. You’re still doing far better than most patients in your condition.”
Clark’s recent story on the current state of cancer research and treatment popped into her mind. “Wait! Wait a minute! My paper recently published a story on survival rates of a bunch of different cancers! And the experts said that – that pancreatic cancer had a very low survival rate!” She paused to remember more, then said, “How advanced is this cancer?”
He frowned. “Ms. Lane, I’d rather you go over this with the oncologist. He or she can give you more precise information – “
“No! You tell me right now! How bad is this? How sick am I?”
The doctor – who looked younger than Doogie Howser to her – frowned, then sighed deeply, then said, “Most patients who are initially diagnosed at the stage you’re in have two to four months.”
Her vision grayed out for a moment and she fell, loose-limbed, back onto the chair. “You – you mean – four months – to live? That’s it?”
“I’m afraid so. I’m still surprised you didn’t show any symptoms before now – “
“I came in two days ago thinking I had the flu.” She took a deep breath and her eyes focused on the boy in front of her, the doctor whose voice hadn’t yet gone through puberty. “Now you’re telling me I probably won’t see my twenty-seventh birthday.”
“Sometimes these cancers present few overt symptoms in young, active patients. Ms. Lane, I’m sorry to give you this news. I really am. I wish it could be better.” He knelt down close to her and spoke as gently as he could. “Shall I set up an appointment with the oncologist? We have a close working relationship with an excellent clinic.”
The kid’s name had leaked out of her mind like water through a sieve. She looked at his ID tag and read ‘Gregory Bell.’ “Huh? Oh, yeah, sure, Dr. Bell. Do that.”
“Good.” He stood. “I’ll have Connie call you.”
“Connie?”
“Connie Schwartz, the nurse who took your blood earlier. She’ll take care of all the arrangements. Should she call you at home or at your office?”
She’d forgotten Connie’s name, too. “Uh. Home, I guess. If I’m not there call the Daily Planet.”
He extended his hand to her. “I think you should be with your family now. Let them help you get used to the situation.”
She stared at his hand and almost burst out laughing. Situation? He wanted her to get used to the situation? He expected her to just pull the covers up over her head and let death creep up on her and take her without a knock-down drag-out war?
Not likely. Not her. Not Lois Lane.
Or did he expect her family to help her? Her absent father, the great doctor and inventor with no time or appreciation for her? Her mother, the serial drunk? Her sister, the flighty flake?
That wasn’t likely to happen either.
She stood without taking his hand. He stood also and tried to appear sympathetic, but to Lois he just looked like a boy dressing up in his father’s clothes. Lois leaned forward and glared at him from inside his comfort zone. “I may not have much time left, Doctor, but I’m going to do something important, something significant, something noteworthy with it. You just hide and watch.”
His smile didn’t light up his eyes. “Good for you, Ms. Lane. I’m certain you’ll do exactly what you intend to do.”
He didn’t believe her. He thought she’d dry up and blow away. But she’d built a life by confounding the expectations of others, whether it was her father, her sister, her mother, her faculty advisor, her boss, or her partner. She’d build her death the same way. If she had to go out now, she’d do it on a high note and make people remember her.
The office door didn’t hit her in the backside as she stormed out.
*****
By the time she opened all the locks on her apartment door, the bravado she’d displayed at the doctor’s office had evaporated and she was fighting tears. The slam of the door signaled that battle was lost.
She never knew how long she lay prone on the living room carpet, crying and wailing and pounding the floor with her fists or curled up in a ball trying to hide from the awful truth that she was dying. Her death, once far in the future, was crashing into her life with the force of a runaway subway train. If cancer could have been flushed out of someone’s body by weeping, it would have left Lois and been swept downstream to Hob’s Bay.
But she finally ran out of tears. She sat up, knuckled her eyes dry, and began thinking about what she needed to do next.
The thought that resonated in her mind like an air horn in a gymnasium was that she would not – absolutely would not – give up and die without accomplishing something important. And the best way to do that would be to break some story that would give people something to talk about at her funeral, one over which people would shake their heads in wonder. It would be her continuing epitaph, a marker she would sink deep into the earth to tell everyone who passed this way that Lois Lane had been here, and that Lois Lane had made a difference for good with her life.
But what story? How could she work out of the Planet without letting Perry and Jimmy and Cat and Eduardo and Clark and everyone else know about her illness? There was no way they’d treat her with anything other than kid gloves once they knew. They’d fuss over her and bring her drinks and snacks and put those fake smiles on their faces and remind her of her appointments and ask her if she’d taken her medication and treat her like she was made of wafer-thin porcelain.
Especially Clark.
She almost started crying again as he took center stage in her mind, but she ruthlessly pushed the tears back. She couldn’t allow herself to weep every time she thought about him, or about any of her other friends at the paper. It was time for her to be hard, to be merciless, to be fearless and determined.
And it was time for her to make a decision about Lex. The man had flown her to Italy for dinner. He’d taken her to the opera as his special guest. He’d offered her an executive position at his TV news network. He’d defended her that night at the Planet when those armed thieves had shot him. He’d proposed to her, told her he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
And that thought brought her up short. She realized that she didn’t want to spend the last few weeks of her life married to Lex Luthor, using the initials L.L.L or – horrors – L. L-L, assuming he’d even go through with his proposal once he found out she was dying. No, if she were going to spend her last days hyphenated with anyone, it would be Clark.
“Clark Kent?” she wondered aloud.
She turned the thought over in her mind several times, took it out and looked at it from all sides, and decided it was one of the best thoughts she’d ever thought in her life. Even better than dying in Superman’s arms.
That just wouldn’t do. The superhero would baby her, cater to her every whim, try to amuse and distract her, but when it came right down to it, she didn’t want to die in Superman’s arms. He’d want to save her, to heal her, but he couldn’t, and it would tear him apart to watch Lois’ death. If she had to close her eyes for the last time while raging against the dying of the light, the person she would want to be holding her when she breathed her last was Clark.
The realization stunned her, but it was a good kind of stun, the kind that lit up your entire week and put a near-permanent smile on your face and opened your eyes to possibilities and realities you’d never considered before.
Lois was sure of this one. She’d rather die in Clark’s arms tomorrow than live a few months as the wife or girlfriend or consort or whatever to the third richest man in the world. Clark would take care of her without demeaning her, without treating her like a glass sculpture, and he’d give her everything he had to give without reservations or conditions.
Lex’ devotion to her wouldn’t – couldn’t – come anywhere near Clark’s love. And that assumed that Lex would continue their relationship once he found out about the cancer.
Besides, she loved Clark, not Lex.
And that realization gave her the courage to do what she knew she needed to do next. It would be hard on her friends, and doubly hard on Clark, but if she was going to leave her mark on the world she couldn’t drag anyone else along with her. No one else could suffer along with her while she conducted her own personal crusade. She had to do this alone.
If the mark she left on the city was going to be a big one, she had to bring in the biggest story of her career – no, the biggest story the Planet had ever printed. And in moments it came to her what she had to do.
Someone out there was pulling a lot of the criminal strings in the city, someone who was all but invisible, someone who was hidden from the view of the lower-level hoods and thugs, but who controlled most of the major crime in the city. That person was the Moriarty to her Holmes, the Napoleon of crime to her stand for justice and truth. There was no proof that such a person actually existed, and no real evidence of this alleged person’s identity, but she knew – as surely as she knew her time on Earth would soon end – that there was someone directing the evil afflicting her city.
That was her target. That was her story.
She had to take down The Boss.
That would be her legacy.
*****
Perry leaned out of his office and glanced at the empty desk. Lois hadn’t come back from her doctor’s appointment, nor had she called in. It wasn’t like her to be out of touch this long on a Tuesday afternoon, even if it was a slow news day.
Although her partner was at his desk. The young man was busy frowning at something on his monitor and making lots of notes. Maybe he knew something. “Kent,” he called out through his open office door, “have you heard from Lois since she left for her appointment this morning?”
“Huh? Uh, no, actually I – I haven’t.”
Perry watched the younger man’s face morph from mild surprise to real concern. “Son, if you do hear from her, let me know right away.”
“Yeah. I mean, will do, Perry.”
The editor ducked back into his newly remodeled hidey-hole. Luthor’s money had refurbished the building and filled the Planet’s coffers once again and their pages with advertisers, but Perry wasn’t sure he liked all the changes. He and Luthor had butted heads more than once in just the few days since the transfer of ownership had been completed, and he’d come to dread the man’s sudden appearances on the news floor. It seemed that trouble followed Lex Luthor wherever he went. It coated everyone in his wake with soot and grime and slime, yet it never splashed a drop of mud on him.
Like now.
Perry sensed the shift in mood on the floor before he smelled the expensive cigar smoke Luthor seemed to exude from his pores. Through the window, Perry saw the new owner lean down to speak to Clark. He also saw Clark’s body tense as Luthor spoke. And he was almost gratified as he watched Luthor’s frown grow.
But that gratification fled as Luthor straightened and strode to Perry’s office, trailed by the tall Englishman who Perry mentally called Luthor’s White Shadow.
“Perry, have you heard from Lois today?”
“Why, no, Mr. Luthor, I haven’t. She left for her doctor’s appointment at ten and she hasn’t been back.”
Luthor glanced at the gem-studded Rolex on his wrist. “It’s nearly three o’clock now. Might she have gone home?”
“It’s possible, but she’s always kept in touch on stuff like this. If she’s sick at home, she hasn’t called in.”
For the first time in Perry’s experience, Luthor looked as if he didn’t know what to do. If not for their shared concern for Lois, Perry’s gratification would have made a curtain call and bowed to the audience.
Finally, Nigel St. John leaned in and whispered something to Luthor, who hesitated before nodding his head sharply. Then he turned back to Perry. “I’ll let you get back to work now. Please let me know if you do hear from her.”
“I will. I hope you’ll do the same if you hear from her?”
Luthor locked eyes with Perry for a moment as if reestablishing his authority. “Of course, Perry. We’ll chat later.”
Not if I see you first, thought Perry.
*****
Clark Kent actively disliked Lex Luthor. Of course, he knew the man for who he really was, but that knowledge had come to him because Clark was also Superman, and he couldn’t get Lois to believe bad things about Luthor unless he told her while wearing the Suit. There was no reasonable way for Superman to know some of the things Clark knew about Luthor. And if Superman were to inform Lois of his suspicions, she’d eventually want to know how Superman knew things that only Clark should have known. The old “We’re good friends and we talk” excuse was wearing pretty thin by now, and Clark couldn’t risk his secret leaking from Lois to Luthor. He wasn’t too uncomfortable with Lois knowing, but Luthor could never know. That was a possibility too horrible to contemplate.
But the slimy worm did have a legitimate concern. Lois should have been back by now, or, failing that, should have called by now. Of course, if she were covering a story she’d stumbled into on her way back, that would not only explain her absence, it would be typical of Lois. She could get in trouble or snag a headline while going to the grocery store for a quart of milk.
He had just about decided to put off worrying about her when his phone rang.
“Daily Planet, Clark Kent speaking.”
“Kent, why does your partner need a gun?”
Clark blinked in confusion for a moment. “What? Who is this?”
“This is Bobby. You know, Bobby Bigmouth?”
“Oh! Sorry about that, Bobby. You took me by surprise when you – hey, what do you mean about Lois needing a gun?”
Bobby sighed into Clark’s ear. “About forty-five minutes ago, Lois bought a three-fifty-seven magnum double-action revolver with a six-inch barrel, a box of thirty-eight special ammo, and six three-fifty-seven rounds from a street dealer in Suicide Slum. She made him show her how to hold it, how to load it and clean it, and she even made him explain how the revolver would hold either three-fifty-seven magnum ammo or thirty-eight special ammo because the diameter of both rounds is the same but the three-fifty-seven cartridge is longer and shoots a bigger bullet faster and makes a way bigger bang and causes more damage. Plus she had him show her how you can pull the hammer back into the cocked position or just pull the trigger to shoot it.”
“I don’t need a ballistics lesson or a sales pitch here. I need you to tell me what you know about Lois.”
“I’m telling you about Lois! After that little lecture, she loaded the gun, had Walt – that’s the guy who sold her the gun and ammo and only charged her two-fifty for the whole thing, which is about the best deal you’ll get anywhere – anyway, she let Walt check it and make sure it was right. Then she pointed it at his head and demanded to know who he was working for, who he reported to, who he paid off, and who supplied the guns he sold.”
Clark didn’t respond for a moment. This did NOT sound like Lois. It had to be a joke of some kind, maybe something she and Bobby had cooked up to yank his chain. That was it. Had to be. No way this was true.
“Look, Bobby, you can tell Lois that it isn’t funny and I didn’t buy it. Now put her on the line so I can—“
“You idiot! Your partner has flipped out! She’s gonna kill somebody if you don’t stop her!”
“Who, Lois? Kill someone? Come on!”
“You stupid – Look, Walt didn’t spill the beans just because he had a gun pointed at him. He’s a little guy but he’s a lot tougher than that. So Lois pulled back the hammer and told him to answer her. He laughed. And do you know what happened next?”
He was sure it was a joke now. “No, Bobby, tell me! I’m dying with anticipation!”
“She shot him in the foot and threatened to put the next bullet in his knee. Then he answered her questions. And when she left, he dragged himself to a phone and called me to take him to the emergency room.”
Clark waited a moment. “That’s not much of a punch line.”
“Punch line?” Bobby’s voice got louder. “Punch line! One of my friends is in the Metropolis General emergency room right now! He’s going to have surgery on his foot and it’ll be weeks before he can walk normally again! And your partner has gone crazy and is shooting her snitches! She might even take it into her head to shoot me! And you think this is a joke?”
“Wait – you’re serious? This is for real? You’re not kidding me?”
“I’m not kidding you, Kent! Lane is out there now with a gun and a bunch of bullets and she’s willing to use them! You need to bring her in before she kills someone!”
And with that, Bobby Bigmouth hung up.
****
Perry had watched Luthor leave. He’d glanced at Clark as the reporter’s phone rang, but he’d been distracted by his own phone call. “Perry White, Daily Planet.”
“Yes, this is Connie Schwartz calling for Lois Lane, from Dr. Bell’s office. I’m unable to get her on her business line.”
“Ms. Lane isn’t here at the moment. May I take a message?”
“Hmm, that’s strange. She’s not answering her home phone either.”
“Well, that’s our Lois. May I take a message for her?”
“Yes, please. Tell her to call Dr. Bell’s office as soon as she can. And please tell her that her diagnosis was incorrect.”
Her diagnosis? “I’m sorry, Ms. – Schwartz, is that your name?”
“Yes. I’m Dr. Bell’s nurse.”
“Okay, Ms. Schwartz, what diagnosis are you talking about?”
“The one Ms. Lane received this morning. You see, Dr. Bell is also the attending physician for Ashton Acres Retirement Community, and we have a comatose patient there named Louis Lanier, and apparently the lab work for Mr. Lanier and Ms. Lane got mixed up at the lab and we thought Ms. Lane had terminal pancreatic cancer but it’s really Mr. Lanier who does and we didn’t realize it until just now when Dr. Bell saw that Mr. Lanier’s lab report said he wasn’t pregnant and – “
“Look, Ms. Schwartz, I understand about the mix-up. Can you tell me what’s really wrong with Lois Lane?”
“Oh, I guess so, since you already know about that wrong diagnosis. She’s just a little run-down, slightly anemic due to poor sleep habits and an unhealthy diet, and she’s suffering from stress. All she really needs is a few days of rest and healthy meals and she’ll be as good as new.”
“Thank you, Ms. Schwartz. I’ll give her that message. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, sir.”
As he put down the phone, he noticed Clark standing in his doorway. “Chief, I just got the craziest story about Lois from Bobby Bigmouth. I don’t think it’s true – I don’t even understand how it could be true – but Bobby believes it.”
Perry nodded and sat back. “Well, you sit down and tell me your story about Lois, and then I’ll tell you one about Lois that will top yours.”
“I don’t see how, but okay. Bobby said that Lois just bought a gun from a street dealer and then shot him in the foot when he wouldn’t answer her questions any other way. Isn’t that insane?”
Perry frowned in thought. Then his eyes bugged out and he lurched forward. “Lois’s doctor gave her someone else’s diagnosis and she thinks she’s dying of cancer.”
He watched Clark put the two tales together in reverse order and saw his face as he came to the same conclusion that Perry had – that Lois was going after a big story she didn’t think she had time to work correctly and had thrown all the rules out the window.
In unison, they blurted out, “We have to find her now!”
