“There were.” Petey grimaces and Jasmine frowns. “I was getting headaches and some flashes, but I was drinking quite a bit after you left.” Her conscience prickles. She had ripped his world apart – she knew that. Maybe she should have checked in on him? But she hadn’t. She had swanned off to university, and as soon as she could, she had embarked on another love affair without a thought for the lover she had discarded. She had behaved as badly as Phoebe would. Never thinking about someone further than their usefulness.
“It was easier to cope if I was drunk,” he continues. “Every night I’d just get blotto. So, when things started going wrong, I put it all down to that and just drank more. Headaches, feeling sick and puking. There was this weird tingling and sometimes I couldn’t get my words out.” Petey retrieves his hands from hers and rubs them along his jeans. “Finally, I had a seizure and Mum called an ambulance.” He looks at the carpet again.
Jasmine wants to wrap her arms around him and tell him it will be okay. But it won’t. She closes her eyes. Is it possible this was her fault? If she hadn’t left him, he wouldn’t have been drinking and he might have noticed the symptoms sooner. Everyone knows that with cancer, the sooner you catch it, the better your chances.
“I don’t get it, Jas. All my life I’ve been unremarkable. Now there’s hundreds of thousands of people and then there’s me. I would have had more chance of dating a supermodel than having a brain tumour. I just don’t understand. Why me?”
She drops her arm around his shoulders and pulls him close. Personally, Jasmine thinks any supermodel would be lucky to date Petey and she has never considered him unremarkable, but she cannot conceive of any way he deserves this. Like most people, she is vaguely aware smoking, drinking, and overeating are all risk factors for cancer, but in all the years she had dated him he’d never done anything more than having a few beers. And a few weeks of getting drunk surely couldn’t have caused it. Cancer takes years to develop.
She steels herself to ask the next question. “How long?” she asks and they both know what she is referring to.
“They don’t know exactly. Maybe six months. A year at most.”
“Oh, Petey!” Jasmine wraps her arms about her friend, because it is what he still is. “Is there anything I can do?”
His reply is whispered and she has to lean closer to hear him. “I really need a friend, Jasmine. Come back to me. Please? As a friend. It won’t be for long.”
A year. Jasmine is floored. And if she is feeling devastated, she can only imagine how Petey feels. All the images she had in her head when she left him, ideas of the two of them moving into the future on different paths, each of them finding their own eventual happiness. Those images are gone. For Petey, there will be no home of his own with roses around the door, no loving wife, no children. She cannot really imagine what will happen to him because she knows very little about cancer. How many youngsters do? She knows enough to understand it will probably be hard, sickness and chemo and hair falling out, and, maybe, painful.
He draws a ragged breath, suppressing a sob, and Jasmine pulls her attention back to him. She loosens her arms but doesn’t drop them.
“Kate’s home on compassionate leave but she has to go soon.” He pauses. When he continues, his voice is thick. “Mum’s struggling. And it won’t be for long. I just … I don’t want to die alone.”
Jasmine’s Choice
When Sean comes home, he is surprised to find Jasmine sitting in the dark, curled in a ball, head between her hands. The supermarket shopping is still in two bags sitting on the worktop and he realises immediately something is badly wrong.
“Has that bastard dumped you?” he asks in a borderline growl.
She uncurls enough to shake her head, momentarily mute with grief. “It’s not him.” It is worse. She realises that, only hours ago, she would not have been able to conceive of anything was worse than being left by her lover.
Sean tries levity. “Don’t tell me you got a B on an essay?”
When she doesn’t even attempt a smile, Sean knows it is dreadful. He kneels in front of her. “Your family?”
“No.” Jasmine rouses herself. “It’s Petey. He came to see me today. Although God knows how he managed the trip.” She stops to take Sean’s hand. She is aware Petey and Sean have always got along well, and her news will upset him. Over the last couple of years, she and Petey and Sean have often hung out together. It is harder to break the news than she expects, like giving form to the words makes everything solid and undeniable. She takes one deep breath and echoes Petey’s words earlier. “He’s sick. He’s got some sort of tumour on his spinal cord.” She barely manages the final words needed. “He’s dying.”
“Petey?” Sean’s voice is full of disbelief.
She nods.
“But can’t they, like, do something?”
“Apparently not a lot. They’ve done a biopsy and it’s bad. I’m sure there will be some treatments but nothing can cure him.”
Sean extracts one hand to run it through his hair. “But what about chemotherapy? Or that radiation thing they do?”
“I didn’t ask,” she confesses, “but I can only assume they will do everything possible. Doctors generally try to keep their patients alive wherever possible.” Jasmine has heard a couple of her sister Anna’s stories, where medics want to keep trying long after the patient or their family have accepted death.
“And he came all the way here to tell you?”
“Not exactly.” Jasmine drops his other hand and sits back. “He came all the way here to ask me to come back to him.”
“It’s not really fair of him to ask,” says Sean, taking a seat on the other chair in the room. They both know the truth of his statement but they also know it is a measure of Petey’s desperation that he did.
“He’s dying.” Jasmine twists her head. “I think if what he asked is unfair, this doesn’t even come close to that.”
“What about Ben?” asks Sean after a moment. “Did you tell him about Ben?”
