Something Seen Something Said

The Doctor Will See You Now

Nadia Popovici looked forward to the October 23rd Seattle Kraken hockey game as an exhaust valve; an elixir to her day’s typical complexity. Nadia’s occupation as a crisis intervention specialist at a local suicide prevention hotline offers no shortage of drama or people to help. The work is as tiresome and demanding as it is rewarding and addictive. And so the idea to travel downtown to Climate Pledge Arena that Saturday with her parents (who were among the lucky few to hold Club Section Season tickets to Kraken home games) Nadia found simply irresistible. Catching her newly adopted Kraken take on the Vancouver Canucks in a minty-fresh arena while luxuriating in glass-fronting seats just inches from the ice? Please. Adding to her fairy tale Saturday evening? The temptation of Detroit Style Salumi Pie, Loaded Nachos with Chili Lime Carnitas in a mini-helmet and a Warm Bravarian Pretzel paired with lager-infused cheese dip. Just the vision of an effortless night out on the town with her folks had Nadia doing joyful somersaults in her mind. And so, Nadia and her parents excitedly journeyed to the arena where they arrived early allowing plenty of time to stock up on treats savory and sweet. The night would conclude in spectacular fashion due to serendipitous circumstances completely off-ice. Unknown to her at the time as she settled into her seat, Nadia would not leave Climate Pledge Arena without saving a life, forging a life-long friendship and cementing her decision to further explore medicinal studies.

IN 2018 when the Seattle Kraken were noisily introduced as the latest NHL expansion team (complimenting the staggeringly successful Las Vegas Golden Knights), no one really know what to expect. Professional hockey hadn’t called home to Seattle in over a generation. Hometown reception, team makeup, its name, and League credibility were among the hot topics ricocheting among hockeyheads all over town. Financial success, however, was never in doubt. Twelve minutes after opening up for Season Ticket deposits ($500 for regular seats/$1000 for Club seats) on March 1, 2018, the Team’s servers crashed under momentous demand. The Team has set a goal of 10,000 deposits; a goal that was met at 10:12am. For comparison’s sake, the Vegas Knights took six weeks to meet the same milestone. Back in Seattle, the Team pulled the plug on the website at 5pm with over 32,000 commitments for an arena that hosts only 17,151 seats. Remember, these are just commitments to pay for multi-year Season Ticket packages. All told, 33,000 deposits were accepted AND an additional deposit-required Waiting List numbering 53,000 was necessitated to sate the overwhelming demand. Not even the mid-Pandemic August 2020 announcement of lofty Season Ticket price packages was enough to ameliorate the frothy boilover. Minimum three-year contracts (up to 5) spread out across 40 package familes amounted to annual outlays of $36,960 for each premium Lower Bowl seat and $22,440 for those located in the Upper Bowl. For each seat at 44 games. NO matter. Seattle residents were hungry for pucks on ice and the Kraken imperfectly slaked that thirst. Nadia’s parents were among the lucky few to get in on the 2018 action. Their Club 01 Section Row A seats afforded them unrestricted view of the sticks action. An added bonus, their seats directly fronted the Visiting Team’s Bench. The only thing separating the Popovici’s seats and said Bench was a series of 75 pound 5/8-inch thick 6-foot tall tempered optically-perfect glass panels. That, and a bucket’s-full of heckling.

At the game on October 23rd, there was no heckling coming from the Popovici seats despite the Team’s 4–2 loss to the visiting Canucks. The game put an exclamation point on a 4 game losing skid in a Season that was only 6 weeks away from the dropping of the first puck. At that point, the Team’s record stood at a 1–4–1 (things have NOT improved since in spite of name brand talent occupying the home Bench where the overall Record is 10–19–4). The Kraken’s inauspicious start was NOT top of mind that night for Nadia who spent the better part of the game perplexed. Paradoxically, what was troubling unfolding on the ice concerned her less than the more alarming events off ice within her direct view. What was appealing to the Popovicis about their seat selections made in 2020 was their close proximity to visiting Teams. Even though the obstructed views amounted to looking at the icy forest through the sat trees, the Row A seats sparkled with dazzling electricity and unbounded opportunity.

With their seats, the Popovicis were literally looking at backs-of-heads beyond which the field of play teemed with busy gameplay. In front of Nadia plopped assistant equipment manager, Brian Hamilton, during the first period. His fortuitous decision to forgo a thick hooded jacket for the game set in motion a chain of events that would forever bind the two. A medical student-in-training, Nadia spotted an unusual — and foreboding — marker on the back of Brian’s neck. A mole. Maybe two centimeters in diameter. Red-brown in color. Irregularly shaped. All the telltale signs of skin cancer, melanoma. Nadia’s eyes nervously danced between the in-her-mind mute slow-motion game and Brian’s mole. Once seen, it could NOT be unseen. Her training as a former nursing assistant illuminated giant warning signs complete with blinking red neon arrows pointed directly at Brian. Nadia pointed out the growth to her parents who were equally alarmed. The surprise quickly turned to dilemma as tell-him-or-don’t-tell-him hypotheticals swirled violently around them. Is it rude and impolite to armchair diagnose someone without their consent? What if she was wrong? What if his treatment was already in-progress and he saw this as an abject violation of his privacy? What if, offended, he recoiled with the venom of a thousand snake pits? What if, what if, what if. The negative scenarios rolled on and on and bounced around in her mind for what seemed like an eternity. One question defanged and answered ALL of them. What if she was RIGHT?

Determined to do the right thing and tell Brian of her troubling consultation from afar, Nadia’s busy mind turned to methodology. An email to the Team, maybe, since at that point he could have been anyone with the Canucks. A phone call to the front office perhaps. These channels where quickly discarded as too prone to going the way of spam and too inexact as to do much good. After all Nadia would be describing his general likeness while seated in an email to a possibly unmonitored inbox or phone call to an offsite 3rd party toll-free message collection service understaffed and overworked; the consequences too dire. So Nadia decided on a direct approach. She tapped the Notes app on her iPhone and anxiously typed, edited and retyped a brief message with trembling fingers: “The mole on the back of your neck is possibly cancerous. Please go see a doctor!”. Nadia opted to highlight the words mole, cancer and doctor in all Caps, large font and brilliant Red. She looked at the finished note. Then she glanced up at Brian’s neck and nodded in self-affirmation. Nadia tapped her iPhone’s screen after it had dimmed returning it to full brightness. She angled her message to her parents who similarly nodded in agreement. Nadia saved the Note and, turned the screen off and tucked her iPhone away. By this time, the game was nearing its end and the cacophony of the raucous crowd, arena music and animated announcers rose to deafening levels. How would she get Brian’s attention as the game concluded and the Canucks erupted in celebratory cheers of a well-earned road victory. Does slapping on a nearly 100 pound, inch-thick 24 square foot pane of glass make ANY sound in a venue shrieking with them? Would Brian dart for the locker room at the sound of the final horn, impervious to all behind him? Determined, Nadia knew she had to act in any way possible to get his attention. So as the third period expired and the final horn blasted, Nadia erupted to her feet and banged on the glass. Furious waving and kinetic motioning did the trick as Brian curiously looked back. Nadia, shaking, pulled her phone from her pocket and it opened to her Note already on-screen. She pressed it to the glass where his eyes darted to its contents. Reflexively, Brian reached back to rub his neck. He looked away — emotionless — and walked with his Canucks to the locker room. Nadia immediately felt sickened thinking she had just committed a grave invasion of his personal privacy. Dejected, Nadia and her parents made their way out of the arena and debated the whole car ride home about the merits and implications of her actions. So much for a relaxing day off. Nadia immediately fell asleep once home, readying herself for a likely busy early shift at work. She tried her best to put the night’s events behind her knowing that in the end, she did the right thing.

Meanwhile, at multiple points beneath the stands at Climate Pledge Arena in the labyrinthine maze that snakes its way to the Visiting Team’s locker room, Brian kept reaching back and feeling the back of his neck. What he’d read on Nadia’s phone shook him. The matted ice-blue walls of the arena’s hallways matched Brian’s mood. The bus ride back home to Vancouver was the longest journey of his life as he furiously Googled melanoma, moles, cancerous moles, benign moles, malignant cancer, stages of cancer. The rabbit hole of internet self-diagnosis took over from there. Worrisome text messages to his girlfriend, Jessica, were returned with constructive positivity and realistic optimism. “One thing at a time, Brian”, Jessica assuaged him. As soon as he got home, Jessica had a look for herself and confirmed what Nadia had so bravely brought to light. They jointly decided to visit the Canucks team doctor in the morning for an impromptu 3rd opinion. It was to be a restless night with little sleep but one rewarded in truth. The next morning in the bowels of Rogers Arena in downtown Vancouver, the Team doctor was equally troubled with Brian’s mole and referred him to a dermatologist. There, Brian’s doctor removed the mole and had it biopsied. The results where unnerving and breathtaking at the same time: type-2 malignant melanoma. But because of its very early detection, Brian’s melanoma was easily removed and treated. His doctor, in a very Cowboy-type-of manner, comforted Brian: I’m going to diagnose you with cancer and I’m going to cure you of cancer in the same phone call. Had this gone undetected for 4 more years, we’d be having a much more dire in-person conversation. Those words stung and sung in equal measure.

His own fate secured, Brian’s next most pressing item of business was locating his unnamed hero so say THANK YOU. Problem is, to him, his hero could have been anyone from anywhere. So he penned a letter and send it to the Canucks Comms Team who promptly posted it to the Team’s Twitter account. At the same time Brian was anxiously awaiting feedback from his Team’s unusual social media missive, his heroine slept soundly 173 miles due south in Tacoma, WA. While Nadia slumbered in peace after a long overnight shift at the suicide prevention hotline, her phone — silenced — sprung to life with countless text messages missed phone calls displaying on its screen. Each was from her Mom. Nadia awoke around 5pm and looked puzzlingly at the missed activity. Bleary-eyed, she didn’t bother reading any of the messages or listening to any of her voicemails. Instead she just called back and her mother enthusiastically answered within the first ring. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN; You’re NOT going to believe what happened, Nadia’s mother exhaled. Nadia, frozen on the edge of her bed as the crisp afternoon twilight settled into night through her bedroom blinds, was transfixed as she digested the news. The stony pit of regret Nadia harbored for months dissolved into comforted joy as she collapsed back onto her bed, arms outstretched, beaming. Nadia couldn’t stop smiling.

After quickly DMing the Team, plans were set in place for Nadia and Brian to meet in person. Appropriately enough, at the next meeting of the Canucks at Kraken this past Saturday — New Year’s Day. At a pre-game press conference, Brian tearfully recounted the beautiful serendipity that connected he and his heroine. He methodically depicted Nadia’s brave selflessness, common love of humanity and relentless sense of purpose. Brian also extolled the virtues of meticulous skin observation and care (ABCDE: Asymmetrical Shape, Border irregularity, Color inconsistency, Diameter, Evolution) and to emphasize early detection as the next best thing to a forever cure. After the press conference concluded, Brian met with Nadia in private where Brian’s thanks were metered out on more personal terms with colorful, heart-felt emotions painting the room. They wept as the pair compared their experiences of Oct 23rd and the long days since. But Brian, the Canuks and the Kraken had one more surprise in store for Nadia. Having returned to her family’s customary seats, arena announcers during a pause in the game surprised Nadia with a $10,000 scholarship for medical school. Nadia was recently accepted to two unnamed medical schools as she embarks upon an auspicious career of helping others later this year. The story of Nadia Popovici and Brian Hamilton is a timeless one. It’s also a reminder that sometimes in a fragmented society beset with a host of upsetting issues (including a still-in-progress Pandemic), sometimes all is right in the World — for a beautiful moment in time at least. The woeful Kraken STILL lost to the Canuks, 2–5, but we all WIN by virtue of Nadia’s fine example.