A Tribecan's Story of Survival, Love and the Arrival of an 'Unexpected Angel'

"He took my hand beneath the table, and its warmth made me believe that a divine intervention would provide me with the strength and resililence to do battle for the fight of my life." Photo illustration courtesy of Over the Rainbow Entertainment

Editor’s note: This is a true story told by Tribeca resident Karen Sachs, a survivor of  Stage 4 9/11-related colon cancer. Sachs tells of overcoming the disease with the help of an unexpected “angel” who becomes her boyfriend. In partnership with Sachs, fellow Tribecan Alixx Schottland, a writer, producer and president of Over the Rainbow Entertainment [1], is working to develop the story, titled “Thomas Is Tuesday,” into a feature film. 

The Tuesday we first met, I was dying but didn’t know it. The following Tuesday, I knew, and I told him so. Thomas, that was his name. A man I plucked from the endless shuffle of faces in an online dating queue, just days before a doctor spoke the words that split my life into Before and After: Stage 4 colorectal cancer. The year was 2011.

Thomas claimed angels intervened, commanding him not to turn away from a woman who canceled a second date by citing impending death. It’s dramatic, even absurd, but he wore it with conviction. And when I told my sister, Claudia, and my closest girlfriends that he loves the way I smell, that he nuzzles me like I’m something worth keeping, it felt strange, as if his potential love could be just the thing that might save my life and be the extra strength I needed to endure and persevere through what I knew would be the darkest hour of my life. 

We had connected on Match a mere two weeks before. He had sent me a couple of intra-site emails, the second a bit more persistent, and when I saw his stated height as 6’2”, I replied. Just having returned from celebrating my semi-centennial in Paris with my lifelong best girlfriends and in a slightly whimsical state of mind, after a few exchanges, I agreed to a phone conversation. While telling me, among other things, during our call that he’d learned secrets about his 30-year-old son by reading about him on Page 6, I cautiously decided I loved his voice. I agreed to a dinner date that Tuesday night, and when he suggested Blue Ribbon on Sullivan St., he gained yet another internal check mark. 

So, on a late hot summer evening, I loped into Blue Ribbon in hopes of laying eyes on my new Prince Charming. As I entered through the heavy velvet curtains that separated the front door from the restaurant’s interior, the soft golden light and faint-sounding jazz set the stage. He was already there waiting by the bar when I walked in the door and, at first glance, he presented better than his profile pictures. We were whisked to a pleasing corner table, which he had reserved. He was indeed the height he had claimed. Trim and toned from years of yoga, he seemed to be winning at his own challenge to aging. He was casually stylish, yet exuding quiet strength. We talked of art and travel, kids and divorce, passions and life changes. A capacity for joy seemed within reach for this man, reflected in his smile, a quality I was beginning to notice less and less during my dating adventures. By the time I had returned home to my apartment, he had texted asking to see me again. I appreciated the chivalrous nature, and we made a plan for the following week. 

Between that night and exactly a week later, following a previously scheduled colonoscopy, my life as I had known it had suddenly changed forever. “I need to cancel our date tonight. I know this sounds improbable… but I was just diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer today.” Silence…. “That doesn’t scare me. I still want to get to know you.” 

Now six weeks later, at the Odeon on West Broadway, we were sitting together for what I called the “last supper.” The next morning, I’d take in the poison that would drip into my veins, searching for tumors buried deep within me. But that night, I ordered comfort food and a well-deserved dirty martini. He took my hand beneath the table, and its warmth made me believe that a divine intervention would provide me with the strength and resilience to do battle for the fight of my life. 

Once, the question was whether I could find someone to build a life with; peace, growth, and all the things a woman might want. I once had a partner, and we created two beautiful boys together. I had what I believed was the perfect life in Tribeca. But as our lives changed, we both started heading in two separate directions, which made us realize we were no longer aligned in our vision for how we wanted to live our lives. Looking back, I see it shouldn’t have been about us or our partnership, and that we should have fought harder to save the relationship for the sake of our family. But life rarely unfolds as we see it from the rearview mirror. 

As a former model, I’d always drawn men to me. They wanted me, they pursued me, and I always felt alive with desire and passion. But something always unraveled: the intrusion, the morning after, the inexplicable fade. Now, all of that seems so trivial in comparison to what my new life unraveling before me was about to look like. Now, only the war inside me mattered. Still, Thomas was there, holding my hand in a Tribeca café as I contemplated my colon and liver betraying me, mutating quietly as if to mock the body I’d worked so hard to stay healthy, fit, and strong on an almost entirely vegetarian diet. Thoughts raced through my mind. Why me? Why now? Maybe it was September 11th, only 10 years ago, though it felt like yesterday.

My three-year-old son, my partner, and I were running for our lives. We had just seen it with our own eyes, the burning fires, a gaping wound in the first tower, moments before it collapsed in on itself.

We fled, terrified, and took shelter in the garage of our building on Reade Street, where we hid for hours. When the second tower fell, the air turned thick and gray, almost impossible to breathe. Outside, there was only chaos, sirens, screams, a kind of bedlam that didn’t feel real.

Through it all, my only focus was staying calm for my son. Minute by minute, we tried to think clearly, to plan, to find a way out. Survival became a strategy. Every decision mattered.

Perhaps I lingered too long while the embers burned downtown and around me. But who would have known? They said after two weeks, the air was safe to return home, although deep inside me, I knew it wasn’t okay. How could it be safe for my family and me when it smelled of burning rubber, and hell? 

That morning, I stepped into the chemo suite for the first time, I felt mighty and prepared. But as soon as the first drip of chemo slid into my vein, my armor began to crack. The only thing anchoring me through the worst fear of my life was Thomas walking into the suite, holding a cozy, warm red cashmere blanket that he gently draped around my shoulders. His smile met mine, and something inside me buckled. In that instant, I knew I would not walk this road alone. 

As the weeks went on, we created a ritual after those grueling days in the chemo suite. We’d wander out into the city’s end-of-day rush hour, my head spinning with the reality of my new life, nausea swelling in my stomach. I marveled at the seemingly healthy people sprinting past me while I moved slowly, unsteady like I was walking through peanut butter. Whenever we passed Bergdorf Goodman, my eyes would brighten at the magical clothing and accessories glowing in the windows. Sometimes my gaze drifted to the colorful autumn leaves tumbling to the ground, and I would tear up, remembering my own blonde hair falling to the floor or shedding in clumps in the shower earlier that morning. 

Thomas always noticed. He’d see my watery eyes, then disappear into Bergdorf Goodman, only to return with a small surprise: a perfume I loved, or my favorite skin cream. A tiny gift to bring me back to myself. A reminder that even in my darkest season, an unexpected angel was walking beside me. 

During the longer chemo sessions, Thomas read to me from my favorite novel, “The Catcher in the Rye.” His voice became a kind of anesthesia; steady, intimate, transporting. When he slipped the lavender-scented silk eye mask over my eyes and gave each of the book’s  characters their own voice, the sterile room dissolved. The IV drip faded to background noise, and I drifted somewhere else. 

Holden Caulfield, wandering New York angry, lost, clinging to something pure, felt strangely familiar. Like Holden, I was suspended between worlds: no longer who I was before the diagnosis, not yet who I might become after. The city mirrored my inner landscape: chaotic, unforgiving, and deeply frenetic. 

I held onto the image of Holden at the cliff’s edge, catching children before they fell. In those moments, Thomas became my catcher. As toxins dripped into my veins and my body weakened, he stood guard over my mind, keeping me from tumbling into fear. Cancer tries to take everything. But there, with his voice in my ears and Holden’s story unfolding, my mind stayed intact. For a little while I wasn’t a patient or a prognosis. I was just listening and that was enough to keep me from falling. 

For all its surreal contradictions, romance can bloom beside the specter of death. I felt safety, comfort, and something dangerously close to true love. In those very moments with Thomas, I contemplated the future and what I would do to help others if I could live long enough to tell my story. 

Karen Sachs survived to tell her tale. As a member of Imerman Angels [2], she helps to inspire others facing cancer treatment. For more information on “Thomas Is Tuesday,” the feature film in development, contact: Alixx Schottland, alixx@overtherainbowenterainment.com