Three and a Half Years After the First Diagnosis (I Was Fourteen)
- Brace yourselves, Shmoopers, because there's a whole lot of tragedy in this section. You might want to surround yourself with a pile of kittens (unless you're allergic, in which case we suggest hairless Chihuahua puppies).
- Finally, David has surgery. The chapter begins happily enough—he's finally getting that growth taken care of, he feels comfortable in hospitals, and the nurse gives him a sedative to help him relax.
- When he wakes up from surgery, he's surrounded by his mom and a bunch of doctors, and the cyst-that-isn't-a-cyst is still there.
- His dad tells him that he needs a second surgery, which a specialist is coming in to do the following day. He tells David that nothing is wrong.
- That night, his mom comes into his hospital room to visit, and she actually starts crying.
- She tells David she'll get him anything he wants, within reason.
- He says there's nothing he wants—except, oh wait, another copy of that book she burned.
- She goes to the gift shop, brings back a copy of Lolita, and walks out.
- The following morning, it's time for surgery #2.
- This time, David wakes up unable to speak.
- Grown-up David Small—as in, our author—takes a couple of pages to explain the way vocal cords work. In short, when you have only one, as he does when he wakes up from the second surgery, you can't talk.
- He's also missing his thyroid gland, because he had thyroid cancer.
- (Trust us on this: Don't Google thyroid tumor. Unless, of course, you want to be an oncologist, in which case Google away, but don't say we didn't warn you.)
- Back at home, everybody acts like everything's normal, which is to say that the family goes back to being silent. David's silence, of course, is no longer optional.
- For two weeks, David just sleeps and watches television. But finally, one night, he feels well enough to change his own bandages.
- This is when he sees his stitches for the first time. They run all the way down the right side of his neck, from ear to collarbone.
- When he walks back to his room, he passes his mom, who's sitting at her desk writing a letter; she looks up and tells him to stop pressing on his neck or it will never heal.
- David goes to sleep and dreams about a little bat in the rain. The bat finds an umbrella, which he thinks is his mother, but when he opens the umbrella, it's broken, and the bat gets wet.
- David wakes up from the dream and walks back out of his room, past his mother's desk.
- He finds a letter she's been writing to Scary Grandma, in which she says, "Of course the boy does not know it was cancer" (3.169).
- He goes downstairs and glares at his mom, who's doing dishes. She glares back. Of course, neither of them speak.
- Suddenly, everything makes sense. David realizes his mom gave him another copy of Lolita as a way of granting his last wish when she thought he was dying.
- When she realized he was going to live, she came into his hotel room while he was sleeping and took it back.
- At school, David feels like he's becoming invisible. It's hard to have a social life when you can't talk.
- He starts skipping classes and going to the movies instead. He watches the same movie over and over—it's about a scientist who takes an experimental drug that gives him X-ray vision, then rips out his eyes because he can't deal with what he sees.
- At home, David is falling apart. He starts to imagine that he's shrinking and living inside his own mouth, and that every word that comes into his brain echoes in the cavern between his teeth.
- He starts being afraid to go upstairs to bed, because he doesn't want the screaming in his head to wake up his family.
- (Are you hugging your kittens and/or hairless Chihuahuas yet? You probably should be.)
- Another dream: David walks into a church and finds a small door. He opens it, goes through it, and finds another tiny door, then another, then another.
- When he crawls through the final tiny door, he sees a giant temple in ruins.
- His parents wake him up when they realize he's sleeping under the kitchen table.
- His mom, as you might imagine, is furious. He's left the lights on all night, and electricity costs money.
- The following night, he turns on all the lights, steals one of the family cars, and gets arrested at 2:00AM for driving without a license.
- He spends the night in jail.
- His parents send him away to an all-boys' school where they focus on sports, manual labor, and Bible study, which is the exact opposite of what he needs.
- He runs away three times, and the school expels him at the end of the school year, recommending he get psychiatric help.
- Back at home, David's parents sit him down and ask him if he has anything to say about his bad behavior.
- He asks, in his barely audible whisper, if they have anything to say to him—you know, about the cancer.
- His mom asks who told him he had cancer. They admit that he did, but tell him he doesn't need to know anything about it.
- The section ends with a repeat of the temple dream, which we learn becomes a recurring one.