The Bird Cage by Kate Wilhelm

again. He was in his chair, watching the blood-red stain spread on the white table cloth.
    The Fountain of Neptune

    SHE DID MOST THINGS RIGHT, got a second opinion, did not panic, did not go on a drinking binge, or search for a third opinion. What she failed to do was take a friend with her or tape record the conversations with both brain surgeons. Consequently, her memory of what one or the other said proved to be sketchy, but key phrases were ineradicable. Inoperable. A baseline cat scan. More blurred vision likely, more frequently. Possible double vision. Possible distorted images, illusions. Possible hallucination. Probable headaches.
    “Live your life normally,” one or the other said. “I’d like to see you again in three months.”
    “Why?”
    “With another cat scan we can better predict what to expect.”
    Her question had covered both parts, live a normal life, as well as a return appointment. A normal life meant working every day for a corporation that cared as little about her as she cared about it. She remained in her apartment for several days, spending time weeping, then she added up her assets, including the sale of her car, cashing in her retirement plan, selling most of her possessions. She bought a laptop computer, a beginner’s Italian language CD, and a new digital camera. And she made a reservation for a flight to Rome. At the last minute she made it first class.
    She had been to Rome once for a three-day conference and one day of sightseeing. At the near demand of a tour guide, she and everyone else in the group, had dutifully tossed a coin into Trevi Fountain. “Rome will call you back,” the young guide had said.
    She did not tell her mother, who would berate her for leaving a job with health benefits at a time like this. Nor did she tell her sister, who would scream and wail and insist that she come live with her and her family of four noisy children under the age of twelve and a husband who worked when it was convenient. She told them both that she was being transferred to the Rome office. She did not burden her few good friends who would grieve helplessly, or her ex, who would not. And she did not tell anyone in the office. She knew it would be on her insurance record, and she never would be insurable again.
    She was forty-two years old and more than likely she would be dead within six months. So she flew to Rome first class.
    She had found an apartment on the Internet, and chose it because it had Internet access, sparing her the search for a cyber café. Her landlord thought she was a writer, and in a sense she was. She had spent more than a decade writing meticulous reports for an R&D department, and now she began keeping a record of the progression of her inoperable tumor. At first there was no particular reason, but after she missed her appointment scheduled for early May, she decided to send the medical record to the brain surgeons.
    The blurred vision came more often, sometimes embarrassingly in public, more often when she was in her apartment.
    She spent one week in Florence, awestruck by David and the Pieta, overwhelmed by the Tivoli gardens, and the Ufizzi museum, but her call had issued from Rome and she was not tempted to leave again. There were days in the Vatican museum; operas in a gothic church; days wandering around the Colosseum, populating the arena with gladiators, the forum with politicians; a special exhibition of Leonardo’s work reproduced full size; a close-up view of the Last Supper…
    She was in love with Rome, with the streets strewn with litter that came alive in any breeze, with the gelatos and pizza slices topped with anything edible, the espresso, all the food. And most of all she was in love with the magic of its sunlight, the complexity of Rome’s agelessness, where contemporary glass and steel structures stood side by side with those from a past of almost inconceivable antiquity—a monument here, a stele there, remnants of a temple, a statue, the