Working from the Cancer Floor

I held a bedpan under my daughter’s head while she puked yellow goo, her whole body heaving. My work laptop was balanced on one knee, a nurse poked her head in; more bile? I nodded, hoping my Zoom was on mute, forgetting whether my camera was off. My marketing director continued to talk, so either everyone was being very understanding or no one knew what was happening on my end. Relief sat solid in my stomach while my daughter’s emptied itself again.

My manager chimed in about a project I was working on and paused, waiting for my input. I unmuted but kept my camera off.

Can we just make sure we factor in that we need to be able to offer live sessions in  addition to–

A loud beeping cut me off. Air in line! a string of black text blinked on the medical terminal’s screen. The alarm blared. A nurse pushed the door open and spun the hospital pole around so the screens faced her. She pressed some buttons and the beeping stopped.

I fumbled an apology. Sorry about that, sorry, I’m with Carolyn in the hospital. I just want to make sure that we don’t lose sight of- BEEP. I froze, my mouth open, anxiety climbing into my throat. I looked at my manager’s face in his square. He looked uncomfortable. His eyes dropped to his keyboard, his whole head turning down. The nurse came in again; Woop! These lines and their air bubbles!

I tried to remember what I was saying, aware every square on my screen was a little world in which my hospital background sounds were now echoing. I hit the mute button. Sorry about that, everyone, I typed into the chat. Keep in mind we need to be able to offer both live and online offerings through whichever system we choose to move into. Be right back.

A Slack came through from my manager: You okay?

I didn’t know how to answer. Since the pandemic hit, things had gotten looser with allowances for meeting disruptions. Everyone was working from home, making it work, contending with e-schooling and shared offices with their spouses, but I was the only person I knew who was regularly working from a hospital. I knew I was walking the line between what was an acceptable distraction and what was not.

Another Slack: You sure you can handle this?

I wanted to be brazen—my kid has cancer, I’m working from the hospital, give me a break! Instead, I was frantic and apologetic, so American, almost embarrassed that my sick kid was pulling me away from work. Yes, I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.

Losing my job, and my insurance with it was terrifying. There wasn’t a second parent to pick up any slack I dropped—my kids’ father left when they were babies, and we’d never heard from him again. I’m the sole caregiver to both my kids, and I had to figure out a way to make it all work.

In grad school a few years earlier we had been broke, living with my mother and surviving on SNAP benefits and infrequent freelance work. I still carried my ACCESS card in my wallet because it got us cheap admission to museums and events around the city, and every time I saw it. I remembered the anxiety of being broke and hungry. I didn’t want to ever go back to that place. I didn’t want to spend my time chasing resources to try to meet our base needs. I was afraid that eventually I’d burn out, or Carolyn would die, or both.

There were other mothers staying with their children in the hospital, and I tried to make conversation with them around the microwave or nurse’s station. Socializing was infrequent, there was a pandemic and all of our children’s immune systems were in the tank, but occasionally we’d chat from doorways a safe distance away. When their kids were in the hospital for long stays—as blood cancer patients often are—I wasn’t shy about asking them how they made it all work. Oh, my husband is home while I’m here was the endless refrain. Also: I don’t work, or I left my job, and always, he carries the insurance.

I daydreamed about having another adult to carry something. The insurance, the time at the hospital, the responsibilities at home. I didn’t know how to be with my daughter and with my son at the same time. I was going back and forth from home to the hospital, spending the driving time sobbing into my steering wheel. I hadn’t ever wished for a second parent before, but I felt like I was drowning. I thought I’d throw my treasured independence to the wind if it meant someone would throw me a life raft.

I stared out of the hospital’s window towards the railroad tracks and imagined I was home, the cool of my blanket against my back, the sounds of cars passing slowly on the street. I kept one eye on the clock. My job officially started at 8:30, and while no one was watching my time, the pinging of Slack notifications and Outlook chimes signaled when I’d need to find something to occupy Carolyn and turn my focus to work. She spent most mornings scrolling her iPad or snapping LEGO together while I pretended I wasn’t in hell trying to work from my kid’s cancer room. In the background the infusion machines beeped, nurses filtered in and out to deliver medications and ask after symptoms or measure fluid intake (marked with lines on a Gatorade bottle I constantly encouraged Carolyn to sip from). Her hospital bed breathed in and out, inflating and deflating with huge mechanical sighs, a feature designed to prevent bedsores and which became the white noise of our lives in room 595.

If you need quiet, you can go to Katy’s Korner, one of the nurses said after a particularly disruption-heavy meeting. Katy’s Korner was a room on another hall of the 5th floor. It had been donated by the family of a little girl who had been treated for cancer at the hospital. It was quiet, removed, and only one family could sign up to use it at a time. There was a big leather couch, stuffed animals, a playhouse, a toy car city carpet, and a projector loaded with every kids film imaginable. Carolyn would often ask to have movie nights in Katy’s Korner, but during the day it was as a place where I would be able to work uninterrupted. I knew, logically, that it made sense to set aside specific times during the day and retreat there with my computer and notebooks. It was what I should be doing if I wanted to keep up.

I couldn’t go into Katy’s Korner alone. The first time I tried, I felt my breath tighten until it hurt to inhale. I stared at the printed sign outside the room: Katy’s Korner, donated in memory of our loving daughter. As I looked around at the cartoon character decals pasted on the wall, I could only focus on how it was all in memory of a girl who had died, DIED, died from cancer like my child was going to die from cancer. I felt like I was breathing through wet cloth. All my brain could do was play the same tape over and over: she died she died she died she died she died she died she died she died. If Katy had died, then my child could die, too, and that thought pulled my stomach into my throat and left me grasping for something to hang on to while my entire world tilted and spun.

I felt guilty for my dread. This girl’s parents had probably hoped this room would help other sick children and their families, and here I was shrinking from it, almost hating it. I felt broken in so many ways. I couldn’t respond to thoughtful, generous things like other people seemed to be able to. I worried that I was turning into a sour person, that I was the Ebeneezer Scrooge of cancer moms.

I took meetings in our room’s private bathroom. It echoed a bit and the lighting was dim, and there was often a plastic “hat” sitting inside the toilet’s rim to catch all of Carolyn’s bodily excretions. Everything with cancer patients is monitored, even their shit.

When there were too many people or activities happening in the main hospital room, I’d brave the smell of the bathroom. The door was heavy. I could talk without being overheard, and my self-consciousness at playing adult on my work meetings melted a bit. When the nurses suggested it might be quieter in Katy’s Korner, I politely declined, saying I felt better staying by Carolyn’s side.

A year into Carolyn’s cancer treatment and I started to slip. At home I’d sleep late, pretending to be online but staying in bed until 10 or 11, however long I could push it without my kids needing something. In the hospital I spent hours staring out the window into the train yard behind the hospital’s back parking lot. I could see the skyline in the distance, but there was so much ugliness between us and the city’s downtown. The tracks were littered with debris—trash, old blankets, empty cases of Miller High Life. I could look at the mess below and in it see the mess my own life had become. I was drinking enough to keep a constant headache pulsing behind my hairline. There were deep grooves carved into my forehead from my brows knitting together . I was forgetting things at work and withdrawing from my friends. We’d been doing the cancer dance for a year. Carolyn’s hair had fallen out twice. She’d been septic, gotten C-diff, and thrown up so hard she shit herself. We’d cried until all of our eyes felt like sandpaper behind their lids.

I struggled to stay engaged with my job. I didn’t care about online learning anymore. I only wanted the cells lurking in my daughter’s blood and marrow to disappear, for the terrible side effects to lessen, and for her to come home. I wanted a nice, boring life, maybe a dog and a cat, and normal people problems like fighting over what’s for dinner and whose turn it is to unload the dishwasher. Cancer felt endless, flat and empty, a little bit like hell.

My boss was trying to reach me via Slack, but I hadn’t checked my computer since the morning. I’d reviewed any overnight emails that came in, responded to a few that were timely, and then closed my laptop and left it charging at the end of the pull-out chair while I watched Studio Ghibli movies with Carolyn from her hospital bed. Now work wanted to know where I was. I reached for an excuse.

Hey, sorry, I’ve been taking care of Carolyn all day, planning to work tonight and flex some hours.

No worries. Hope she’s doing okay. Let me know when you have time for a call.

Fuck. I’m free now, I sent back. A zoom invitation popped up. I clicked it.

Hey, he said, meaning to be cordial but I could hear him bracing himself in his undertone. How’s it going?

Fine, I lied. I was surrounded by hospital lines, machines, with my sick kid pumped full of chemotherapy so strong it made her eyelashes fall out. I didn’t know how else to answer him. How’s things on your end?

Fine, good. I just wanted to touch base. I know you’ve got a lot going on with Carolyn, but just want to make sure we’re on the same page about the LMS project. Now’s where the rubber hits the road, you know, and we just want to make sure we keep all four wheels on the ground. Full-steam ahead.

I hated that I knew what he was saying. It suddenly all felt like nonsense, all the marketing jargon and corporate-speak, the inability to say what really needed to be said, which was that I was fucking up and should probably take a leave or be fired.

Yeah, of course, I’m there with you. Full steam. I’m on it.

Great. So you’ll have those evals ready for tomorrow? Meeting at 10?

Yep. I had no idea what he was talking about. What evals? All set.

Super. Let me know if anything changes. And we’re here for you.

Thanks, Mark. The Zoom ended, a pop-up asking me to rate my call taking its place. I clicked the single star and submitted without thinking, then felt guilty. That’s going to become more work for someone.

I went into the bathroom to sit on the toilet, wanting to put my head between my knees for a minute and regroup without anyone asking if I was okay. My nose caught the smell before I registered the source—the plastic hat in the toilet was full of Carolyn’s shit.

The author attempting to work in her daughter’s hospital room.

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Elizabeth Austin's writing has appeared in Thrillist, Reactor Mag, Business Insider, Past Ten, and others. She was a guest on the Kingsize podcast and has penned several Substack guest essays. She is currently querying her first book, a memoir about her mental health struggles during her daughter's three years in leukemia treatment. She holds an M.F.A. from Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with her two children and their many animals. She writes a weekly newsletter exploring her family’s post-cancer life at

Writing Elizabeth

. Find her on Instagram @writingelizabeth

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